Marx's Laws

Abstract

Marx was a party to 19th-century debates about what he called the ‘historical social sciences' and their laws. But he was more forthright in rejecting positivism and empiricism than he was in articulating his own constructive position. However, his scattered remarks on method and his own scientific practice provide the appropriate materials for an adequate reconstruction of his views. This essay develops a case that Marx was a scientific realist who rejected the Humean empiricist analysis of causes and laws. In substituting a realist analysis he provided a framework for understanding his own explanatory laws—the economic laws of motion of modern society. Yet Marx did not propose any so-called ‘natural laws of historical development’. Rather he articulated what are more properly termed principles of historical interpretation. In method as in politics Marx thereby offered a genuine alternative to the dominant views of the day.