Marx and Marxism

Abstract

Many kinds of relativism have been attributed to Karl Marx. We discuss three broad areas of Marx’s thinking from which lessons bearing on relativism emerge: his theories of history, science, and morality. We show that Marx was was committed to a naturalistic approach, which privileged genuine science over other ways of understanding the world, and in which the only kinds of "relativism" that remain are not incompatible with objective knowledge of the world. We also show how some later Marxists have misunderstood Marx’s ideas.

Keywords: Marx, relativism, natural kinds, science, ideology, Luckas, Habermas, Leni