The Marx quote under discussion implies that ruthless criticism is a
condition of science, or perhaps the social sciences in particular.
Is it possible to go one step further and contend that a position of
opposition to the existing social order is a necessary precondition
of science? This may be the case because:
1) it is only from this kind of position that sufficiently ruthless
criticism can be carried out.
2) it is only those classes and groups opposing the existing social
order who have an interest in discovering rather than obsuring
truth (big T).
This argument can be applied to the "hard" sciences, through
observing their genesis in the bourgeois struggle against the
hegemony of feudal religious ideology (parenthetically the pope has
recently stated that there probably is something to the theory of
evolution).
If accepted this argument provides a first criterion of
discrimination between different contending paradigms or versions of
Truth (small t). Of course not every oppositional ideology will
constitute a science but even short of a scientific outlook,
oppositional ideologies will have a greater chance of producing
knowledge than non-oppositional ones.
Terry McDonough
