What makes Marxism scientific? – a scientific enquiry - In Defence of Marxism

“There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits.”– Karl Marx, Preface to the French edition of Capital.[1][We publish here the editorial of issue 55 of 'In Defence of Marxism' magazine – the quarterly theoretical journal of the Revolutionary Communist International. Get your copy now!]In preparing the present issue, a comrade asked the deceptively simple question: what makes Marxism scientific? The reader who is acquainted with Marxist literature may already have the answer ready in mind. But as Hegel pointed out: what is familiar and generally known, on account of being generally known, is not really known. What do we mean by this? If we are looking to understand something deeply we cannot anticipate an answer; nor can we presume that our method is sound. We must proceed systematically to investigate our subject on its own account, and in doing so to show how it necessarily unfolds. That is the scientific method of Marxism. And that is the path we will take. Let us begin. The claimIn order to answer our question, we will start from the simplest and most immediate form of answer