marxism, free will, and social science's mortgaging of the future to justify its present status

i've been in somewhat of a creative philosophical slump the past few weeks, and i thought that perhaps either i had run out of ideas, or reading some formal philosophy for the first time since starting this blog had in turn hampered my ability to think on my own terms. so, i reread a few of my more recent previous posts and was inspired to write a new blog entry as a continuation of a previous idea. a couple of posts ago i posited that social science -- namely anthropology and sociology -- could only be considered branches of metaphysics and not science because their embedded theoretical framework was not scientific. on the other hand, some theoretical approaches of psychology, such as behaviorism, are scientific in nature -- clear cause and effect -- excepting social science's major fundamental flaw. operating on a macro level, social science is ultimately reducible to economics because survival is the ultimate gauge of the human race, and economics is the current discipline that is most easily reducible to survival. of course, macroeconomics does a relatively poor job of predicting human behavior, and even in its operations, it is doing so many on applied levels of analysis, not theoretical levels. so how does social science -- anthropology and sociology -- claim to operate on a macro theoretical level? well, marxism, of course!

as you probably know, marxism is deterministic in nature, "scientifically" outlining the inevitable downfall of capitalism through a systematic, dialectical process. so, being a social scientist -- anthropologist and/or sociologist -- often entails believing that marxism, in some form -- frankfurt school or other forms of neo-marxism, post-marxism, etc. -- is truly the ultimate and prevailing economic theory that explains human behavior on an economic, and thus survivalist, level for the past (rooted in history), the present (existing at a certain stage of capitalism, such as late-stage capitalism), and the future (the final downfall of capitalism), and not only does so in this all-encompassing fashion, but in a "scientific" manner. while even adamant anthropologists and sociologists would have a hard time defending marxism as true science with firm, straightforward causality, they might draw an analogy between it an other theoretical scientific frameworks, such as theoretical physics, in which scientific knowledge is applied to validate an overall theoretical structure that is primarily based on abstract inferences; studies done by social scientists could be incorporated into refining marxist theories just like new atomic physics experiments might hold implications for theoretical physics.

ok, so social scientists have embraced forms of marxism as a theoretical framework -- so what? well, first of all, let's examine the nature of theoretical frameworks for science. ultimately, science is about establishing a relationship between cause and effect, and in doing so, harnessing predictive powers. for example, a chemist knows that mixing two chemicals will result in a reaction yielding a new chemical compound. in cognitive psychology (the area of conventional psychology that best circumvents social science's major fundamental flaw), priming a subject with images flashing on a screen will result in a subject having a predictable range of response times when asked to respond accordingly. both of these would be considered "micro" examples; obviously, marxism and social science -- anthropology and sociology -- deal with issues on a macro level. the are two important ramifications because of this. first of all, experiments on a macro level are not very often repeatable, and particularly in the case of marxism, it has yet to complete its initial incarnation; it is also not supposed to be repeatable once it finishes its initial incarnation for once capitalism has been overturned and replaced by a more egalitarian economic system, there should be no reason for capitalism to reemerge. second, unlike experiments on the micro level in which there is a clear difference between subject and experimenter, with the experimenter controlling the experiment from the outside with negligible impact inside, experimenters on the macro level are also subjects in their own experiment. unsurprisingly, seeing as how they want their experiment -- marxism -- to succeed, marxist social scientists doggedly attempt to proliferate the world, and the area of the world over which they exert the most power -- academia -- with marxist propaganda in hopes of realizing marx's prophecy. the problem with this is that social scientists have unknowingly committed to a philosophical stance on free will in order to be compatible with marxism, which is a deterministic theory. social scientists seem to be indeterministic in their approaches to life, always mentioning the power of agency, using education to inform and mobilize the masses, believing that we can change the world, and so on. furthermore, postmodernism, the most current paradigm embraced by social science, appears to endorse indeterminism, as determinism would seem to contradict, through its mundane and fatalistic approach, all the key aspects of postmodernism -- self-empowerment, fractured chaos in place of a grand and holistic narrative, defiance and evasion of authority, etc. so how are these different positions reconciled? well, by default, marxist social scientists are, perhaps many of them unknowingly, compatibilists. here is wikipedia's description of compatiblism and the other two prominent positions on free will, hard determinism and libertarianism (both of which are forms of incompatiblism):

Compatibilism (also called soft determinism) is the view that the assumption of free will and the existence of a concept of determinism are compatible with each other; this is opposed to incompatibilism which is the view that there is no way to reconcile a belief in a deterministic universe with a belief in a concept of free will beyond that of a perceived existence.^[2] Hard determinism is the version of incompatibilism that accepts the assumption of determinism and rejects the idea that humans have any free will.^[3]

^{Libertarianism agrees with hard determinism only in rejecting compatibilism. Libertarians accept the existence of a concept of free will along with an assumption of indeterminism to some extent.}

in short, social science has gambled that its positions are correct, positions that cannot be proven correct at present and only possibly can be in the future while at the same time might likely not ever be disproven (marxism is not falsifiable and thus could only be "disproven" if capitalism is overthrown and then later reemerges; the philosophical problem of free will will likely never be solved). because their positions likely can never be disproven, social science thus remains in an unaccountable state, allowing it to freely and endlessly mortgage its future in return for claims to authority over its domain at present. additionally, such unaccountability with its predictive power makes social science open to attack from scientists who claim social science is not scientific. however, this is also beneficial for social science in that it is a self-perpetuating discipline; the combination of not embracing a paradigm with repeatable predictive power and having experimenters existing as subjects in their own experiment allows social science to adjust and adapt no matter how society evolves or what experiment on the micro level prove. at the end of the day, one can dismiss social science due to the aforementioned reasons, but social science ultimately counters with an authoritative, "you can choose to study people or not, and if you study people, there exists no better way than social science at present."

so, what could be done to improve social science? well, first of all, it would be helpful to attempt to conceive and embrace a paradigm that is repeatable on a macro level. since it is virtually impossible to be able to conceive of such an entity, this remains a criticism that is only really valid theoretically, not in practice. second, solving the problem of free will would do wonders for establishing social science's true purposes for its existence. again, however, this is only a criticism appropriate in theory, not in reality. what social science could do is elucidate the three major positions on free will and determine which one or combinations of them are most conducive to the goals of the discipline. by abandoning marxism, social scientists would then be free to embrace both compatiblism and libertarianism; hard determinism seems to go against the spirit of social science, for if everything is pre-determined, then studying people would seem to amount to, although not necessarily be limited to, descriptive activities of people without any useful implementation for improving society. discarding marxism would not be an instant solution for the problem of free will, but it would improve the odds of social science's approach and purpose for existence being correct from 1/3 to 2/3 (if determinism is considered an acceptable solution to the problem of free will, then the odds of being correct improve from 1/3 to a perfect 1), while the odds of marxism succeeding remain at 1/2 (these are theoretical odds, of course, not to be taken seriously at face value). as such, if i were a social scientist i would abandon marxism simply for philosophical reasons (regarding free will) that would allow me to sleep better at night. :)