The Stupidity of Scientism

'Scientism' proposes the methods of the hard sciences - mathematical modelling - as the preferred, or sole approach to studying any topic, no matter how inappropriately (particularly social science).

In psychology this leads to operationalism, in economics to the neoclassical synthesis, in sociology to structuralist accounts of society.

The methodology is ubiquitous in contemporary thinking: listen to any 'expert' on the radio, TV or in the press.

Friedrich A. Hayek in "The Counter-Revolution of Science" characterised Scientism thus (my emphasis):

"The persistent effort of modern Science has been to get down to "objective facts," to cease studying what men thought about nature or regarding the given concepts as true images of the real world, and, above all, to discard all theories which pretended to explain phenomena by imputing to them a directing mind like our own. Instead, its main task became to revise and reconstruct the concepts formed from ordinary experience on the basis of a systematic testing of the phenomena, so as to be better able to recognize the particular as an instance of a general rule. ...

"The social sciences in the narrower sense, i.e., those which used to be described as the moral sciences, are concerned with man's conscious or reflected action, actions where a person can be said to choose between various courses open to him, and here the situation is essentially different. The external stimulus which may be said to cause or occasion such actions can of course also be defined in purely physical terms. But if we tried to do so for the purposes of explaining human action, we would confine ourselves to less than we know about the situation."

In summary, Scientism removes intentionality from the world. It theorises as if people were Newtonian billiard balls, as if populations were classical manifolds - described by (usually linear) differential equations.

It requires severe contortions of mind to wrench-away all the common-sense complexities of the real (agent-populated social) world and to rely exclusively upon some oversimplified, reified model which then predicts counter-intuitive (and false) results.

Truly one has to be extra-smart and very-well-educated to jump through these hoops for Newsnight and Radio 4! It helps to be confident, well-spoken and well-connected too, for some reason.

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A cynic writes: "If the existing organisation of the world suits these people just fine, why not fix it for ever in some structural straitjacket from which it could never escape except by chaos?"

The deep state *is* the state

Much excitement in the States (but also in Brexit Britain) about elements of the state apparatus actively working to undermine the policies of an 'insurgent' government.

The governments in question are of the right, not the extreme left, but the founders of Marxism were clear that a truly revolutionary government cannot just take over the 'controls' of a 'neutral' state apparatus. They will be thwarted at every turn.

This is, of course, true of all bureaucracies. Successful 'turnaround' CEOs bring their own posse of senior managers - and waste no time clearing out the old regime. If they don't, their mission is toast. The political right, in order to to secure their victory, will have to purge the state of their enemies and repopulate it with supporters in their own ideological image.

Marxists, however, are seldom called out on what they think should replace the bourgeois state. Lenin and Trotsky, following the model of the Paris Commune, thought that the mobilised masses, organised in soviets (councils), would constitute a non-bureaucratic socialist state - a social formation not separate from broader society.

Marx himself never wrote much about it.

Yet the state is neither a contingent formation nor just 'bodies of armed men' safeguarding existing property relations. The state has an enormous, and under-analysed, role in social-coordination.

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Turn now to the economy. All Marxists agree that their post-capitalist economic model will replace private decision-making about the allocation of resources with 'consciously democratic', centrally-planned directives.

Given the complex and highly-technical nature of policy-making and implementation, both as regards the state and the putative planned-economy, this is not going to something managed by the masses through their councils. Nor is it going to be that old favourite, the mere 'administration of things, not of people'.

The PDF version is here

It's hard to resist the conclusion that - until the AIs take over (and where does that leave us?) - the post-capitalist state will continue to be large, bureaucratic and unresponsive. Much like the bourgeois state.

History tends to support that view.

I would guess that Marxists would not agree, but for people proposing a radical makeover of society's fundamentals, they seem remarkably coy about their proposed replacement model.

Such studied casualness wouldn't work in engineering.

Why does the far left get a free pass on something of such fundamental importance?