Science and Marxism, Scientism and Marquit

143 CORRESPONDENCE first of all from that segment of society that stands to gain from appücation of the results of such research to nature. Theoretical knowledge of nature and society both have a social basis. Moreover, there is nothing strange about the fact that the bourgeoisie as a class is interested in hindering the scientific study of a theory which will become an ideological weapon in the struggle to abohsh the class division of society and with it also the bourgeoisie, just as pharmaceutical firms oppose studies of the harmful effects of the drugs produced by them. Another of Suvin's errors involves confusion of the term absolute truth as used in metaphysical (mechanistic) reasoning with its use in the Marxist theory of knowledge, which considers truth to be both relative and absolute. It is relative, because at any given moment it is incomplete, partial, and, to a certain extent, Umited by the social conditions in which it is acquired. It is absolute, because insofar as it actually does reflect the objective reality, it has a certain true or absolute content. What Suvin really objects to is the basic Marxist position that there exist objective laws of social development. If such laws exist then the study of such laws becomes the science of society. Suvin arbitrarUy says that any beüef in the existence of such laws leads to mechanistic materiaUsm. Rejecting class struggle as the base on which revolutionary consciousness develops, Suvin substitutes a "Utopian will to revolution" and "knowledge of the preconditions for revolution." Lacking from this concept are the material means for expression of this will and the material means for carrying out such a revolution. It is the revolutionary organizations of the working class that are the material expression of Marxist revolutionary theory. This dialectical connection between the ideal and the material is precisely what is missing from Suvin's approach. His inabiüty to see the relevance of Engels' SUS to the situation today appears to be directly connected with his inabiüty to accept the working class and the class struggle as the leading factors in the revolutionary struggle for sociaUsm. Erwin Marquit NOTES 1.Darko Suvin, Minnesota Review NS6 (Spring 1976), 59. 2.Frederick Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. Page references are from Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works in three volumes, v. 3 (Moscow, Progress , 1970). 3.Karl Marx, Capital (New York, International, 1975) v. 1, p. 763. 4.Karl Marx, Letters to Kugelmann (New York, International, 1934), p. 112; letter dated June 27, 1870. SCIENCE AND MARXISM, SCIENTISM AND MARQUIT 1. I have read comrade Erwin Marquit's rejoinder to my essay " 'Utopian' and 'Scientific ': Two Attributes to SociaUsm From Engels" with care, since I am not vain enough to beheve that I could not go wrong-even fundamentally wrong-in a field so complex , so little elucidated, and so subject to conscious and unconscious ideological perversions . I am rather dismayed at the fact that his rejoinder can only be used for a polemic. I shall first go briefly through his surface arguments, and follow this up by discussing their "deep structure". Marquit's first 4 paragraphs seem to me-regardless of whether I would subscribe to this or that formulation in them-basically either to confirm my arguments (e.g. his quote in para. 3) or to repeat the ABC of a certain dubious "historical materiaUsm". His first outright disagreement with me (in paras. 4 and 5) is over "separating" 144 THE MINNESOTA REVIEW Engels from Marx. I shaU try to explain this at somewhat greater length in part 2; on a personal note, let me say I did not at aU "seek" to do so. From my fifteenth year on, participating in a minor but for myself whoUy unambiguous way in the Yugoslav Revolution , my Marxist education began with Engels, and in my very first footnote, appended to the very first clause of my essay, I refused a "total opposition" of a "bad" Engels and a "good" Marx. (In non-Stalinist Marxism such a position is, by the way, rather conservative and orthodox). But amicus Plato sed magis amica Veritas: I did, with quite some personal reluctance...