MARXISM RELIGIOUS FAITH AND BAD FAITH - Reason Papers.pdfVIP

MARXISM: RELIGIOUS FAITH AND BAD FAITH AXTONYFLEW Bowling Green State University t is remarkable, and should be remarked far more often than it is: Iboth that substantial and, we are told, increasing numbers of pro- fessing social scientists nowadays proclaim their attachment to the theories and putative methods of a nineteenth century predecessor; and that thei-e is, apparently, oiily one particular predecessor able to inspire such \videspread and continuing devotion-such a cult of personaiity, you might say Tllis is a phenomenon which should make anyone sincerely corn- rrlitted to enquiry both suspicious and curious. One discouraging yet possibly instructive parallel is with the applied pseudo-science of psy- choanalysis; where we hear first of the great divide betmen Freudi- ans and Jungians, and then of further faction fights among rival dis- ciples of these founders. In the social sciences, however, such party loyalty is mainly if not only for one particular Victorian Sage. Still more peculiar, and still more deserving of remark, is the fact that the devotion extends beyond the wide limits of one area of study. For in this unique case all the authors works on every subject, and often too his political policies, are treated with a similar respect, and taken to be similarly authoritative. Contrast the naturai sciences-and, above aii, the standard-setting, paradigm science of physics. There not even the greatest contributors attract chis kind of posthumous, partisan devotion. Their contribu- tions are quietly added to the ever expanding corpus of at least pro- \;isionally established truth; while their names appear in the current literature and in the textbooks solely-in stock descriptions of epony- mous principles, la~vs,or effects. Even in biology the enormous con- tribution