Conservatism, Marxism, and the Academy

Posted on July 5, 2010
Filed Under Philosophy, Politics | 10 Comments

I’ve honestly been avoiding the culture wars within the university the past few years because (1) I think there’s tons of overwrought hyperbole on both sides and (2) most of us are only in college for a few years and then spend the rest of our lives being grateful we don’t have to take finals anymore. I also think the influence of the academy over political life just isn’t as big as many think. That said, there’s something to be said about the apparent exclusion of conservatives from many departments. How much of this is actual political discrimination and how much due to a sort of self-selection I can’t say. (I suspect more self-selection, but that’s just a guess)

All that said there are moments where one just goes, “whoa!”

Here’s a snip from the post of one of my favorite bloggers. To say it surprised me is an understatement.


A lot of people have complained that no new political theory has been invented and that Marxism is the default position of the academy. Likewise, there have been complaints that there is no place for liberals, neo-conservatives, and conservatives in the academy. I’m of a divided mind about this. On the one hand, it is my view that the academy is dominated by liberals. Just think about the disproportionate place of thinkers like Rawls or Habermas in the academy and political theory. On the other hand, I’m really not sure that there’s much of a place for neo-liberals and conservatives in the academy (there I said it) as I think their positions are just plain false. That said, it’s important to note that the neo-liberals dominate economics departments and hold the top seats in the halls of our government. Finally, however, I’m perplexed by the call for new political theories. It seems to me that Marx gives the best description of the present that we yet have available.

I’m still shaking my head. What it brings to mind is Razib’s comments a few days back over at Gene Expression on economics.

I doubt that engineers worry about engineering bloggers talking about stuff they don’t know about. Economics is hard, but many of us who are not averse to giving due respect to professionals who have a real understanding of how the world works have shifted our assessment on the empirics of late. The econosphere would disappear in its current critical form if economists either toned down their pretensions, or actually showed us the money.

Put an other way economists overvalue what they’ve actually demonstrated. The fact so many disagree on the basic facts (especially in Macro) suggests they don’t really know what they are talking about. Yet it seems like each of these economists is convinced they have the truth and it’s empirically demonstrated. It’s odd in a way. Then they wonder why people on the outside looking in are so disdainful and skeptical.

I think this goes in spades for Marxism. Where’s the proof? This is basically Karl Popper’s critique of Marxism. It’s not science but puts on the airs of science. Marxism and Fredian psychoanalysis are two peas in a pod for him. I think most have come around to agreeing with Popper on psychoanalysis but oddly the lack of empirical verification doesn’t affect Marxism.

What I think happens is somewhat akin to the old joke about hedonism. If you think people only do things because it makes them happy you can always create a narrative explaining actions in terms of some desire for happiness. Self-destructive? You are just a masochist who enjoys hurting yourself. It’s the joke that when you are a hammer everything looks like a nail.

Getting back to Levi’s comments, I wouldn’t mind that people are convinced by Marxism. The problem is that it is ultimately a philosophical position and philosophical positions have at best weak arguments and evidences compared to science. Which out entail a strong humility about our philosophical positions. (Indeed I think philosophy is useful precisely because it forces you to engage with your foundational premises and learn a little humility about them)

If we say that different views ought be excluded because they are wrong even though the evidence for their wrongness is weak at best then there is just something fundamentally wrong. All in my opinion. And I love reading Levi’s work, but this was just surprising to me.

(Note: I’m not saying Popper’s critique of Marxism was really satisfying. I don’t find Popper satisfying on most of what he wrote. Just that in one sense Popper is calling for empirical evidence the Marxists haven’t provided – if you can always offer an explanation for any data there’s something fundamentally wrong.)

Edit: Somehow I neglected the link to the original post I was commenting on. Here’s the original Larval Subjects post. Here’s Razib’s original post at Gene Expression.

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  3. How Technology Threatens Liberalism and Conservatism
  4. Philosophy and Religion
  5. Higher Education Bubble
  6. Posner on Conservatism

Comments

10 Responses to “Conservatism, Marxism, and the Academy”
1 Michael Dorfman on July 5th, 2010 9:47 am

Clark: This is basically Karl Popper’s critique of Marxism. It’s not science but puts on the airs of science. Marxism and Fredian psychoanalysis are two peas in a pod for him.

Unfortunately, I don’t think Popper understood either Marxism or psychoanalysis at all. It’s not that they are not science, which is trivially true– it’s that they are attempting something fundamentally different than science, and cannot be reduced to science. (As an aside, I’d argue that most economics of the non-Marxist variety, and a good portion of psychology of the non-Freudian variety is not science, either.)

As you point out, Marxism is a philosophical position– or rather, a set of philosophical tools which then lead to certain positions. Even if every one of Marx’s positions were proven to be false, it wouldn’t invalidate Marxism, any more than Newton being wrong invalidates physics. Likewise, ceteris paribus, Freud.

The relevant question, for fans of Popper: do you know of any theories of society, or theories of the mind, that actually are scientific, in Popper’s sense?

I’d actually agree with you regarding Economics, although I’m not about to discount it all. The problem in economics is that many have confused being mathematical – a sort of projection – into discovering the de-worlding. Yet one can use mathematics in non-scientific ways. (Indeed that’s the typical use)

Note that I’m far, far, far from a Popperian. My point is more than Marxists have tended to treat Marxism as if it were science with the relationship to truth (or at least accuracy) that science holds. I think that by denying non-Marxism a place within the academy one is attempting to treat it as a science.

My problem with Popper is simply that falsification is no more robust than verification in that to falsify one has to have verified evidence with which to falsify. Further because evidence is always tied to a theory falsification runs into the same problems that Popper criticized. I’m no Kuhnian either, but I think he’s version of positivism is closer to the ideal than Popper is.

Put in more Heideggarian terms I think that Marxists in particular but many other groups think they’ve achieved a level of technical mastery that is belied by the facts. One need only look at the sorts of predictions Marxists make over the decades (and arguably that many economists have made) Compare and contrast this with say physics, chemistry or even areas of biology.

not that they are not science, which is trivially true– it’s that they are attempting something fundamentally different than science, and cannot be reduced to science.

That statement is completely false with respect to Freud. I suppose one could argue that, as we conceive science today, by which I mean physics with everything else as an analogy to physics, Freud wasn’t trying to do science. However, Freud’s explicit aim, quite explicit, was to do science. He made this very clear. Granted, his conception of a science of the mind was Brentanian, and was meant, largely, as a precursor to a more “experimental” science, but it was still meant to be science. Freud was quite clear about that (in case my two uses of the word “explicit” didn’t make that clear).

Chris, I was more speaking of Freudians in the 1950′s and 60′s. i.e. after many claims were falsified. (When did Popper’s writings on this all come out? Late 50′s?)

To make an example at one time speaking of the aether was completely acceptable as science. It really hasn’t been for quite some time. As to how good Freud was as a scientist I’ll avoid that debate. I tend to think he wasn’t sufficiently experimental. But that’s a blurry area, as we see today with string theory. However once the empirical data really did start to roll in many held to him in spite of the evidence.

Anyway, I think it’s fair to distinguish between Freud and Freudians just as (as Larval Subjects points out) one has to distinguish between Marx and Marxists.

Clark, I was mostly responding to Michael. I agree with most of what you said.

I do consider Freud a good scientist, but I think of him as sort of a theoretical psychologist in a time when experimental psychology was extremely limited. In a way, because of the nature of much of Freud’s theory(ies), we’re only now getting to the point where they can be tested experimentally, and in many cases they’re fairing quite well. In that sense, Freud is more scientific than string theory.

OK, I couldn’t resist that last jab.

Any suggestions on a good book going through where Freud is empirically today? I’m surprised many are being confirmed as the last I read it seemed like only more minor issues were being confirmed where the items seen as most characteristic of Freud (especially is sex) were discounted. (Say the “missing penis” issue with girls)

I can’t think of any books on the subject. Mark Solms has written several articles directly on the topic, but he’s prone to hyperbole, and worse. Instead, I’m thinking about simpler connections. For example, the influence of unconscious drives (we tend to call them “goals” now) on thought and behavior (not unique to Freud, I know; I suppose much of Nietzsche’s psychology has faired well in modern cognitive science as well), some of his work on depression and what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder, even if his “death drive” was a bit hyperbolic, some of his work on memory (not later radical interpretations of memory repression, but work on false memory, for example).

Well I think the unconscious goes back at least to the neoPlatonists who made a big deal about it. I think one can find it in Leibniz and Spinoza as well. For that matter I think the German Idealists with their world-mind had something similar. Or Kant’s noumenal thinking. I know you say this is hardly unique with Freud. But it seems so common a discussion from that era I kind of cringe when people attribute it to Freud. (Not that you are obviously) Although he popularized it in a way I suppose. With regards to psychology William James and other psychologists focused on the unconscious as well. I don’t know the details of who promoted what when, but even from my limited reading I don’t like to attribute this to Freud. He may have got it right but it was an idea pretty well in the air around him.

I think what’s more significant are the particular theories about the unconscious. He might have some ideas vaguely similar to modern ideas, but I’m not sure that’s the same as getting them right. But maybe I’m being overly pedantic. (Freud’s always been a bit of a burr under my butt for some strange reason)

There’s a difference between the unconscious itself and a more specific look at unconscious drives and their effects on behavior. This one can find in significantly fewer late-19th/early-20th century thinkers: Nietzsche (maybe from Schopenhauer), Freud, Jung, Lewin, and the followers of those thinkers for the most part. Both Freud and Jung owe a great deal to Nietzsche, of course (something Jung admits, and Freud hints at).

True, although I think James definitely was writing on this although it wasn’t his focus. You’re probably right that this is harder to pull out of Spinoza or the others though. I think it’s entailed within Peirce, but I don’t believe he explicitly wrote on it. His habits are effectively unconscious drives manifest in behavior. My understanding is that the pragmatists avoided the term unconscious preferring non-conscious or subconscious. (Dewey was pretty explicit on this – he didn’t care for the Freudian approach) Although for Dewey this subconscious included the social or at least dependent upon social conditions. My limited understanding of Freud is that he opposed the unconscious to the social. That the pragmatists didn’t is probably more an effect of their thoroughgoing externalism though.

One example of the analysis in Peirce is:

There are, as I am prepared to maintain, operations of the mind which are logically exactly analogous to inferences excepting only that they are unconscious and therefore uncontrollable and therefore not subject to criticism. But that makes all the difference in the world; for inference is essentially deliberate, and self-controlled. Any operation which cannot be controlled, any conclusion which is not abandoned, not merely as soon as criticism has pronounced against it, but in the very act of pronouncing that decree, is not of the nature of rational inference — is not reasoning. Reasoning as deliberate is essentially critical, and it is idle to criticize as good or bad that which cannot be controlled.

So Peirce sees reasoning as defined against unconscious drives and processes. Beliefs for Peirce are habits which typically are unconscious and which are explicitly manifest as behaviors.

Getting back to James though I know he imported a lot of Freud’s work on the unconscious to America. So how much is original to James, how much a product of Peirce, and how much a product of Freud and Breuer I couldn’t begin to guess.

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