Ah! I just realized I got the answer to my question, where do you get your confidence in Marxism, through this "Bruce Bueno de Mesquita" recommendation. I have immense doubts about BBdM's claims, because they are almost as immodest as they can possibly be, backed by obscured statistics, and in a tradition of prognostication that has a horrible track record.

You buy BBdM's claims, because you have a much lower threshold for believing that someone has "cracked" the scientification of society. You want to believe! In Marxism too.

Tendmote, let me categorize possible positions about the social sciences for you.

Position 1: Social sciences are exactly like the hard sciences. Through research and experiments you can derive "laws of society" comparable to the laws of physics that you can use to exactly calculate what is going to happen next.

Position 2: There are no such things as "laws of society" and trying to find them is futile. However, using amongst other means statistical data gathering and analysis, you can still look for patterns and trends in the way society evolves. You can then combine these patterns and trends into a scientific theory that, although not as rigid as most theories in the hard sciences, is a useful tool to predict and analyze what effects certain events are more likely to have on society and what effects they are less likely to have.

Position 3: Social "science" is a misnomer. There is no way in which science can produce any useful insight about society.

Position 1 is the position that you, tendmote, seem to be arguing against all the time. It is a red herring though as no one in this thread has said that this is their position. Therefore your arguing against it is annoying, completely unproductive and most likely merely more inspired by your own politically biased agenda to discredit the social sciences than by any honest attempt of yours to make a useful contribution to the discussion.

Position 3 is the position that you, tendmote, seem to be taking yourself. It is a completely defeatist position that cannot in any way contribute to the furthering of our knowledge about society, because it simply doesn't accept the premise that such knowledge can be found or even exists. If this is really your position, well okay, I can't help your stupidity. However, rather than continually crying from the sideline "it can't be done!!!" to the people who are trying to do something, you might want to consider shutting the hell up and letting the people that have confidence in the possibility to actually acquire knowledge do their work.

Now, for any sane person (which obviously excludes tendmote so far) position 2 is the only reasonable position to take. If you too wish to join the sane, tendmote, you are welcome to do so. If you are in doubt of how to go about that... here's a suggestion: instead of just talking about how in your opinion we cannot gain knowledge about society, try explaining how in your opinion we can.

BBdM is a neoliberal, so no. I just used him as an example of someone who has made correct predictions in the social sciences, because of your haterage for the social sciences.

Tendmote's entire ideology is defeatism. It pervades everything he says. It's hip and edgy to be cynical and mopey these days.

Then apparently Putin is *the hippest and edgiest* asshole around here, since he eclipses the combines negativity of the rest of entire WebDip community combines.

YOu have some gal insulting other people's attitude, Putyyfuck, since your soul purpose around here is to argue with everyone about everything, and call everyone stupid on a fairly continuous basis. You take all sides of every argument at any given moment in order to continue you moronic need to degrade others.

Fuck off.

Putin regequitted on me. I am still sad and hurt.

I never reggae-quit.

"YOu have some gal insulting other people's attitude"

I apologize for whatever some gal did, but I assure you she is not "mine".

Oh Puttybaby....trust us, we *all* know that no "gal" will ever be yours, seeing as how you and mapleleaf like spending so much time in the closet together with the kiddies...

None the less, while you may try to deflect by picking out my spelling error...you in no way dispute my actual claim, Putty.

I'm a cheerful dude. I'm fuckin' pleasant!

Regarding oscarjd74's three positions, for low stakes shit, I'm on position two, and for high stakes shit, I'm on position three. That is *even more* sane than being consistent.

Yes, interesting and valuable things, whose correctness is difficult to judge, can come out of social science. And that is all fine and good for political consultants and product marketers and such. Because when one of those clowns fucks up, no big deal. I'll take position two (useful information from social science) for those applications.

But when it comes to upending the whole social and economic order and establishing dictatorships because of some so-called """""science""""" of history, I take position 3. The stakes are just too high with that big of a bet, and in fact we've seen the goddamn ruination that happens once these dictatorial assholes gets installed. If you are gonna have a dictatorship, you cant exactly undo it when it goes sideways, so your predictions about its nature sure as shit better not be wrong. Social science does not cut it for that application.

Tendmote still doesn't have a clue as to what Marxism is.

In theory, tendmote has no clue about Marxism, and Putin33 does.

I practice, Putin33 has no clue about Marxism, and Tendmote does.

Marxism is the philosophy of "To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss." I mean, who's working for who in that mess?

My point is that the stakes are too high to empower authorities to such a degree that the attitude I described is even possible, even if your social """""science""""" seems to recommend that course of action.

The social science doesn't recommend any type of action. It is descriptive, not prescriptive.

""To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss."

You're confusing Marxism with neoliberalism. You're just too blind to see the suffering of people who are less privileged than you, and the enrichment of the filthy rich at the rest of the world's expense.

You can do nothing but construct strawmen and are laughably ignorant about the subject you are criticizing. You're becoming Krellin-esq in your echo chamber mentality here. It's really worthless to discuss this with you as you keep repeating trite one-liners with no basis in fact, and keep deliberately confusing what Marxism as a science of history is saying vs what Marxism as a political program says.

Marxism, *in practice*, only ends up replacing one unjust social order with one that is even more unjust. The main problem with Marxism and Marxists is believing that the things they describe are attainable *by some way that they know of*. If it's not the """""Science""""" of history informing the political program, then what do they know about achieving the justice they describe? Same as they know *with* this """""science""""" of history: nothing.

Also the Khmer Rouge, who originated "To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss" were Marxists. I'm not blind to suffering, I'm just suspicious of people who point at it, borrow it and advance their own agendas based on it.

No, actually, they weren't. Marxists kicked them out, whereas your buddies armed and supported them to fight Vietnam and USSR (actual self-professed Marxists) By their own admission, the Red Khmer were not Marxists.

"Marxism, *in practice*, only ends up replacing one unjust social order with one that is even more unjust."

Only if you think providing healthcare, education, full employment, and housing is "more unjust" because the bourgeoisie are adversely affected. And honestly, you really think the USSR was a step backwards from Tsarist Russia, serfdom, the pogroms, and the prison house of nations? Or Castro's Cuba was a step backwards from its predecessor? Or the PRC vs the footbinding prostitution ridden, routinely starving dynastic China? This is why anti-communists can't be taken seriously. They're so blind in hate they act look at the data objectively.

The science only informs the political program in the sense that it describes how social and political change occurs. It says nothing about what form that change should take or the strategies for changing it, per se. It says the same thing about feudalism comes about as it does about socialism.

And so far I haven't heard a single coherent word from you as to why the science of history is actually incorrect. If class antagonism and the mode of production doesn't drive history, what pray tell does? You offer no alternative. Just bitching and hysterical anti-communism, as usual.

@Puta-N33

Fair enough, there are worse things than Marxism, but that doesn't make it a good idea. The """""science""""" of history also isn't always 100% incorrect, as such, just not nearly accurate enough to yield predictable-enough results for the purpose to which it is applied, which *is* the political program, just as much as science informs engineering in the domains of actual science. The danger is that it inspires *certainty*, in a domain that is way *less* certain than hard science, leading people to submit to authoritarianism in a way that's hard to reverse.

Q: "If class antagonism and the mode of production doesn't drive history, what pray tell does?"

A: Fuck knows, man.

Although I take your point, it's got to be a real shithole before Marxism makes any kind of sense as an alternative.

The social science doesn't recommend any type of action. It is descriptive, not prescriptive.

""To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss."

You're confusing Marxism with neoliberalism. You're just too blind to see the suffering of people who are less privileged than you, and the enrichment of the filthy rich at the rest of the world's expense.

You can do nothing but construct strawmen and are laughably ignorant about the subject you are criticizing. You're becoming Krellin-esq in your echo chamber mentality here. It's really worthless to discuss this with you as you keep repeating trite one-liners with no basis in fact, and keep deliberately confusing what Marxism as a science of history is saying vs what Marxism as a political program says.

Wait a minute, was Stalin worse than the czars or not?

"Regarding oscarjd74's three positions, for low stakes shit, I'm on position two, and for high stakes shit, I'm on position three. That is *even more* sane than being consistent."

If for "high stakes shit" you take the position that it is impossible to gain any knowledge about society then you cannot prefer capitalism over socialism, nor democracy over dictatorship as such a preference would by your own admission be based on nothing at all. Therefore you like marxism just as much (or little) as any other ism, nor would you object to living under sharia law.

"That is *even more* sane than being consistent."

On the contrary, you just confirmed that you are indeed a retard.

@oscarjd74

Quite the reverse! Humans operate in the absence of scientific knowledge all the time. It is possible the prefer one candidate over another, or whether or not to support some law, or make any choice based on a heuristic assessment of what the impact is likely to be in practice, in the absence of any """""scientific""""" theorizing.

You don't *need* theory to proceed. Humans didn't wait for architecture and engineering to start building shelters. And it is always better to proceed in practice without a theory, constrained by the fact that you "know you don't know", than it is to proceed with a theory that is horseshit.

It is fair to say I like marxism as much or as little as any other ism. Can't stand any of them. I would object to sharia law because I don't like the things that sharia law prescribes. This is not science, and trying to make these choices """""scientific""""" is likely a mistake because of the false confidence """""science""""" inspires.

@Putin33

"Only if you think providing healthcare, education, full employment, and housing is more unjust because the bourgeoisie are adversely affected. "

Those are *not* the unjust things. The unjust things are the industrialization-at-any-cost economic programs, the crushing of dissent, the removal of choice from people's lives, and the continuous oppression of people of the present in the name of some hypothetical """""scientifically predicted""""" future, which only serves to reinforce and make permanent the power of the dictator and the privileged class that surrounds him.

"The unjust things are the industrialization-at-any-cost economic programs, the crushing of dissent, the removal of choice from people's lives, and the continuous oppression of people of the present in the name of some hypothetical """""scientifically predicted""""" future."

This pretty much sounds like the establishment of American capitalism.

@mendax Indeed it does. But at the end of communism's brutal industrialization, very little actually worked. The "just distribution" of productivity found very little to actually distribute.

Moreover the oppressions under communism are worse. The authoritarianism that distinguishes it from "liberal socialist" government are added to an economic system that isn't any kinder to people than rampant runaway capitalism, which incidentally I would not defend either.

These things occur when people *think* they *know* and go full-throttle because their ideology and their """""science""""" are in sync. These things occur when people look at economic predictions *and believe them*; or even when people look at economic explanations of the past *and believe them*.

It's better to realize that the best science you can do isn't very good at all, not nearly good enough to overwhelm common sense and ad-hoc decisions on what to carefully proceed with, what to roll back, and what sacrifices can reasonably be asked for.

As I said before, people built shelters prior to architecture and engineering. It's not crazy, it's heuristic.

Heuristic literally means "using experience to learn and improve" though. Since that's exactly what scientist do, including the social scientists, your notion that heuristics are somehow incompatible with science is blatantly ignorant.

Although, whereas you would just follow your unfounded and totally biased hunches to translate your experiences into learning and improvement, scientists actually use solid methodologies to quantify what is experienced (i.e. double blind experiments, statistical tests to detect bias in questionnaires, representative sample selection, etc. etc.) and how to translate that into what we can learn and how we can improve based on those experiences. Their findings and methodologies are then scrutinized in a lengthy peer review process before they are actually published. You could call it heuristics for professionals if you like.

Anyway, this then is why people tend to take the findings of scientists more seriously than whatever mostly random conclusions you would have them consider as derived via heuristics.

Nonetheless, even though you probably didn't even realize it, by putting forward heuristics as a methodology you have put yourself in the corner of those that see science as a productive means to gain knowledge about society and thus you have contradicted round about everything you have said in this thread so far.

If you've conflated heuristics with the scientific method, you're confused about both. I'm talking about relying on common sense, instinct, and modest ambitions for politics, rather than thinking the """""science""""" is adequate to make more ambitious plans.

I'm not anti-science; I'm against the overestimation of the effectiveness of social """""science""""". It is to be taken with a mountain of salt, and you don't want to bet to big on it's predictions.

"If you've conflated heuristics with the scientific method, you're confused about both."
I just couldn't stop laughing at the irony. Then you managed to outdo yourself by the second sentence and presented me with this:
"I'm talking about relying on common sense"
That's when I fell off my chair laughing.

@dD_ShockTrooper

Why?