The Problematic Inheritance: Marx and Engels on the Natural Sciences

This chapter returns to the writings of Marx and Engels on the nature of scientific knowledge and the relationships between science and capitalism. Marx himself did not specifically treat these questions in isolation from his general analysis of consciousness, ideology and modes of production (nor indeed should we expect him to do so), as for Marx and Marxism these themes are but part of a seamless web in which analysis of the social functions of science and its value as a mode of knowledge of the material world are integrated as a consistent strand through all the writings, from the early period of the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts and The German Ideology through to Capital itself. Our method in the first part of this chapter is so far as possible to allow it to speak in Marx’s own words, with the minimum of commentary, although there are areas where, as in the discussion of alienation and of ideology, it is necessary to develop the account inside the practice of science as a special case of Marx’s more general analysis. It was left to Engels to develop the common themes, which he and Marx had discussed, into a more coherent account of science, and the main legacy of Engels’ writing in this area is Dialectics of Nature , which was first published in 1925 some thirty years after his death. Engels’ analysis in Dialectics has raised serious problems of both theory and practice for Marxists, which are reflected at all levels in today’s struggles, and we therefore treat our discussion of it in the late sections of the chapter rather differently, so as to draw out the implications of Engels’ position and the subsequent debate it aroused.