I’m really interested in what sources this article cites.
Good call.
I tracked it down: [37] is from a popsci book called “The Lady Tasting Tea” by retired statistician David Salsburg, pages 147-149. While I’m sure he’s knowledgeable about statistics, he doesn’t seem to have any special qualifications regarding history.
I also went to the trouble of tracking down a pdf:
The claims about the government of the USSR seeing statistics as “an insult” seem to be partially his own speculation and partially the speculation of a statistics journal from the 50’s, rather than being drawn from any kind of official statements. The only claims that seem to have something to do with material reality are:
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The parts about the Vestnik Statistiki, which was not shut down but rather used as an official publication of the Central Statistics Administration (TsSU)
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A couple researchers leaving the field of statistics
I see absolutely nothing that suggests the study of statistics was banned or sidelined in any way.
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I have heard of this before, but I haven’t looked into it much. There’s a book on the early PRC and statistics (that I haven’t read) that goes into the relationship between socialism and statistics - https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691179476/making-it-count
In the us, there was a dark and dismal corner of poltical science called Kremlinology, where far to much attention was payed to the positions various people were during speeches and parades, trying to determine who was and was not influential with in party at any given time, and then try to determine Soviet policy and action based on this.
Having access to the archives, we now know that they were almost entirely wrong, and the times when they were right were basically just random chance.
Like, it was ancient divination more than it was real analysis. People called them out on it at the time, but, they were influential because the CIA was gullible and congress was desperate for any sort of insight.
Fascists are all the same.
Sounds a lot like Hitler decreeing quantum mechanics a “Jew science” and expelling almost everybody that knew nuclear physics from the country.
Me and my sociologist fiancé are both communists… but we are not tankies. I wonder if there is any correlation in that.
Why is theory so dense??? I cant even comprehend the Wikipedia summary of this lmao (im not asking for a rephrase).
https://monthlyreview.org/articles/why-socialism/
Don’t worry about labels yet, start here.
Sometimes we use technical jargon to say something that we later realize is fairly simple. It might be obvious in retrospect, but still require thousands of years to understand, during which time the technical language is essential.
Anyway, other times we just need new words for new concepts. You can’t contemplate what you cannot name. Even the smartest humans are stupid by default and ordinary language is outstripped by our intellectual ambitions.
If you’re from the US, much of the vocabulary is unfamiliar because education on these concepts is intentionally avoided in public schools. I can’t imagine why…
Which words are those?
“Communism”
“Socialism”
“Anarchism”
To name a few
I learned all of those from my small town USA education.
Then I learned about them in social studies classes in middle school.
Then I learned about the American form of democracy in a civics class. Which is where my understanding of its failures were formed, even before it had the ability to show my adult self
Then I was allowed to choose a number of elective courses in high school where I studied European history and post enlightenment political theory.
We even covered Marx and Engels.
Weird.
Those aren’t what I’m referring to. The comment I was replying to was about the theory density of this wiki article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_socialism
I’m referring to the vocabulary contained there.
Same reason any philosophy gets up its own ass when it goes on for long enough.
New concepts require new words. They also relate to each other in interesting ways, which have names, too.
Alternatively, if I ever wanted to assert something more complicated than the weather I’d need to re-build the entire conceptual framework from scratch using small words and pictures.
Marxism did begin as a purely scientific study, before Soviets mutated it into an ideology
You are incorrect. Marx felt strongly that his ideas should be used politically to change the state of the world. Aspects of Marxism can be applied in a scientific/apolitical way, but this is not what it was initially developed for.
Marx still wouldn’t agree with turning his work into an ideology to be followed. Besides, scientific doesn’t mean apolitical.
I’m not sure what you understand by the word “ideology”
The part where Marxism was basically treated as a religion in the USSR. You weren’t required to read or understand anything, as long as you follow The Party.
Every society has ideology, you just don’t notice the dominant one for the same reason a fish doesn’t notice water. Ideology is just a framework for understanding the world, everyone has some such framework and if you think you don’t it’s only because you haven’t examined it or considered other perspectives.
Western countries have had anti-communist purges, and as for treating ideology as religion, well…
As for this idea that “you don’t have to read or understand anything” that’s patently untrue. Literacy is consistently one of the top priorities of communists, and if you look at actual data as opposed to just saying whatever thought happens to enter your head, it backs that up.
Or as one anti-communist put it:
Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it
Where did you get that idea? Marx actively built the first international, how is that purely scientific study?
