Science and Leftism

As a scientist who has noticed for a while the affinity between the anarchist method and the scientific method, and the complete lack of scientific thought in authoritarian socialism, I have been waiting for this video :D very nice, as always

As a huge science nerd (though programmer and designer by trade), this had me wanting to do a standing ovation. A lot of people seem to accept most of the conclusions of science but not the methodology and why it's important to internalize that rather than the conclusions, to be a good critical thinker in all aspects of life.

Whenever I think of the relation between anarchism and science I remember this great quote from Lucy Parsons, from "The Principles of Anarchism":
"The philosophy of anarchism is included in the word "Liberty"; yet it is comprehensive enough to include all things else that are conducive to progress. No barriers whatever to human progression, to thought, or investigation are placed by anarchism; nothing is considered so true or so certain, that future discoveries may not prove it false; therefore, it has but one infallible, unchangeable motto, "Freedom." Freedom to discover any truth, freedom to develop, to live naturally and fully. Other schools of thought are composed of crystallized ideas - principles that are caught and impaled between the planks of long platforms, and considered too sacred to be disturbed by a close investigation. In all other "issues" there is always a limit; some imaginary boundary line beyond which the searching mind dare not penetrate, lest some pet idea melt into a myth. But anarchism is the usher of science - the master of ceremonies to all forms of truth. It would remove all barriers between the human being and natural development."

Science is incredibly cool and, in my opinion, the best method humans currently possess to determine truths about the world

as an anthropology student myself I really loved your take of the Scientific method with respect to the social sciences, really summarized a lot of my own opinions on that matter
Also, would you like to make an abridged video as a little intro to Social Ecology? that would amazing

This is something that has always gotten to me about Engel’s take on Scientific vs Utopian Socialism. Utopian Socialists are said to be so because they ignore material conditions and focus on ideas to the point of dogmatism, striving for communism because they think it’d be just dandy. On the other hand, Scientific Socialists see communism not as something to strive for, but as something that is inevitable, the logical next step after capitalism. But are we really to believe that Marxists _don’t want_ communism? Of course they do. I’d even argue that their conviction that it is inevitable is a product of their desire for it. We have seen time and again Marxists believing the fall of capitalism to be right around the corner, and time and again that not happening. Communism won’t come about by persuasion as early Utopian Socialists claimed. But it also won’t come about by capitalism simply “running its course” as so-called Scientific Socialists claim. Marxist-Leninists have attempted to push the progression along, but every attempt has ended in failure, just like the communes of the Utopians. Yet these self-proclaimed Scientific thinkers dogmatically stick to their failed experiments, as you say rejecting a true scientific approach in favor of just trying the same thing again. They are no more scientific than the Utopians.
It isn’t utopian or idealist to want communism. All communists do. It _is_ utopian to believe that communism will come about without people directly pushing for it to do so. Persuasion will not bring about communism. Capitalism’s contradictions will not bring about communism. People will bring about communism, not because they are slaves to history, but because they will to do so.

Science and anarchism go hand in hand, compliment each other and reinforce one another.

"They do not want to know that centralization is not only the death-knell of liberty, but also of health and beauty, of art and science, all these being impossible in a clock-like, mechanical atmosphere." ~ Emma Goldman

Incredible. I have quickly become a huge fan of your work and I am beginning my life working towards liberation, and come to find out you graduated with a Bachelor's in Physics with a minor in Philosophy. At the moment, I am a student working towards my own Bachelor's in Physics and Astronomy with a minor in Philosophy, and you've inspired me to work towards organizing a student led anarchist group. Keep up the fantastic work!

About bringing science to more people, here in Latin america, and specifically in Brazil, there's this conception of "outreach" as a pillar of the work of universities, along with research and teaching.
I say "outreach" in quotes because there's a fairly rich conception behind it, which is tied with the conception of popular education and involves the external communities not just as a "receiving end", but also as active - in the best cases even proactive - partners. The term used here is "extensão", and it's also expected - again, in the best cases - to bring new knowledge and new modes of thinking into the universities, being a force for change in them which would better align the unis and the knowledge they produce with their external realities.
Here in brazil, starting at most next year, 10% of the time on the curriculum of all graduation courses will be required to be comprised of active, executive participation of the student in these activities - something like this was first put as a goal over 20 years ago, being discussed for many decades before, but it has become law recently. The struggle now has been to get this to be implemented in a way which actually embodies the best cases of this kind of action, in an environment where the professors' careers are still primarily measured by publications and citations, as well as amidst crazy heavy slashing on funding (including a literal 20 year freeze amendment to the constitution), and the pandemic.
It's challenging, promising and frustrating all at the same time, but the reason I'm mentioning all of this is because I think it's an experience people interested in the intersection of science, universities and anarchism might like to look into - in fact, since especifismo was mentioned, I know of at least on such "outreach" program in which people who are at least close to especifismo are involved, as a continuation of community action which was brought into the university.

Very interesting video. I never thought about the stubbornness to keep trying methods that have been proved not to work as an anti-scientific approach to politics, but it does make a lot of sense.
I think the discussion of returning the science to the people is a very important one. Having gone through university, I've always felt very discouraged with how elitist our current science is, even on free universities. Paywalls to access scientific articles and the prohibitive cost of tuition are the obvious, perhaps biggest, issues, but even the needless intricate texts of such articles can be a huge barrier for someone who isn't very knowledgeable in a field to get information. I've lost count of how many texts could be heavily simplified to improve understanding, but some people believe the more intelligible the message, the more intelligent the author - and those who understand the text - is.
So even when an article is free, a lot of people end up relying on the news for "translation", which then can lead to skewed and heavily politicized readings.

As a PhD student in science, I’m happy to see this video. For a while I’ve been wondering how I could bring anarchism into my work and if it is compatible at all.

Never knew the original context in which Engels coined the term “scientific” socialism. That’s fascinating.

The very last part of the video was the most interesting to me. Because I think there's a lot of room for nuance here. Science is not a monolith, there isn't a single way or a best way to produce scientific knowledge. Currently there's a lot of good reason to think that the way we do science is not a good thing for society as a whole. Most of it is due to corporation and State power, but some things are harder to separate from our very methodology. I'd like to address a few things here.
I've just graduated from two bachelor degrees, one in cognitive sciences and one in anthropology and have also studied biology for a while (and participated in researches in ethology as an intern), so I really love science and its praxis and know a little bit about it.
Firstly, I'd like to address the easy stuff. If we want to strive for a more libertarian science we must end the parasitism of publishers and develope more free Open Access. To do so, beside Sci Hub and OA publishers, I think we should advance Peer Community In (PCI) communities. The direction of citizen labs is also very interesting. I wonder if democratic choice of research topics by the public and crowdfunding could also be implemented. I also agree with the idea that everyone should be involved in science, A People History of Science helped me understanding that (excellent read by the way).
But now I'd like to address the hard questions: is the scientific method possibly compatible with a libertarian, ecological and egalitarian society, does it necessary implies control and domination, and is it better than other types of knowledge production? I think that this is where we need nuance.
First, we should recognize that a lot of ways to produce knowledge are different from what we call science. Some overlapping exist, but indigenous epistemolgies often produce and teach knowledge in non-scientific ways. The idea that "science" (which is not a monolith) is the "best" epistemology should be harshly questioned. I think a good starting point to do so is the work of Feyerabend that shows, with some merits, that all epistemologies and methodology have limits and no single self consistent method could explain the entire history of physics. It follows that no epistemology is better and that plurality of methods, formations, models, etc. achieve better results. We should the be wary not to dismiss other epistemologies, at risk of both being bad scientists and perpetuate colonial domination.
The modern scientific method (that we could dub "engine epistemology", , there's a good article about that that I forgot the name of) seem to produce a specific type of knowledge that is both adapted to certain kind of political and economic systems and also helps perpetuate them.
First, we should acknowledge that some form of knowledge production has historically been connected to State power. James C Scott talks about it in details in Seeing Like A State. I suppose most people here will be familiar with the book but to sum it up: to administrate their land and societies, centralized power need to model and predict them. To do so they often tend to simplify reality with very broad models and use their power to transform the social and ecological world to fit their models.
The same thing is true with capitalism, even more obvious. The field of agronomy and plants genetics is a good exemple of that: science is used to create simple models and to adjust reality to it so that the predictions of the model enable control and commercialisation of the ressources. Bruno Latour wrote in article "explaining is building an Empire", because it enables power structures to capitalize on what is explained.
And it's not just a problem of State and corporate power: certain forms of knowledge encourage certain form of power, it's a feedback loop. When a simple, broad, non-situated model is constructed, it tends to make us think that we can apply it in every situations to predict and control the outcomes of events. By constructing models in controlled, uniform, environments (labs) we often encourage the uniformisation and control of other environnement. This gives more control to centralized, hierarchical power structures that then create more uniformity and domination.
I agree with you that we should try to strive sciences and scientists in the direction of more libertarian socialist directions, but we must also do so with our very method and epistemology.
I'll let anyone interested look for Deleuze and Gatari nomad science, for Haraway propositions, for situated epistemologies and knowledge production in ecology and anthropology in general and for indigenous critics of epistemological imperialism.
But to be clear I don't think we should abandon science or technology or anything. We should however be very careful with it, even if we manage to get rid of capitalism and the State, and should definitely reinvent it. I actually think that is a incredibly important part of prefiguration of anarchism and hope to one day create a democraticly managed citizen lab with my affinity group.

As a med student with bachelors in chemistry, I agree wholeheartedly. It was a breath of fresh air to hear this talk about science from an anarchist perspective

Enjoyed the video! Not sure why I missed it when it came out. Personally, though I'm casually interested in some science-y things (I'm a historian by training and am really a layman in all scientific subjects) I've always had the impression that people with backgrounds in science have a dramatically lower tendency to think critically about the systems governing the world today than people with a background in the humanities. I think this is probably because that kind of thinking is really the entire point of the humanities, while scientific fields try to deal with things (matter, energy, biological life, etc.) more directly and so have an easier time dodging broad philosophical questions on a human scale. I am also increasingly convinced that people place significantly more faith in science as a worldview than is really warranted - that is, it's difficult sometimes for people to process how impossible it is to be truly objective about anything. (In reality, there is no such thing as an uninvolved observer - the act of observing fundamentally alters the context of any event one might want to study.) To a large extent, I also think scientific ideology (if not scientific practice, which is of course distinct) is often a significant prop for capitalist ideology today, because it's so good at pulling people into the trap of thinking that progress (scientific or technological) is inevitable and will continue to iron out all the problems with human civilization as time goes by. This is of course monstrously untrue, and represents a catastrophic failure to think systemically and recognize the universality of the political. (Carl Schmitt has some useful things to contribute to this discussion, despite his obvious faults.) Science - as you point out - is a tool, and can be used in service of all kinds of political projects. Its application is only as "good" as people are.
All of this is really just to say that I think more leftists need to try reading 1. Michael Polanyi and 2. Jacques Ellul. Both are incredibly important thinkers that most leftists tend to overlook - they help us to consider science and technology critically and (particularly in Ellul's case) systematically. And while science is profoundly important for understanding the world clearly (Bookchin is a great anchor to avoid taking these ideas further than one ought to), I still think this is incredibly important.
P.S. I love the idea of leftism as an empirical project where we need to keep adapting our models to new data - you're so right, the authoritarian "left" are terrible at this.

As an Engineer, that merely had a year of general science at the beginning of my Computer Science degree, I've at least learned the Scientific Method, and it has always pushed me away from camarades when they unironically try to argue how Marxism is "scientific". I since learned how "science" had a different connotation at the times of Marx, and we should interpret it more to mean that Dialectical Historical Materialism is more a "systemic understanding" of history. Looking at history through the lens of class conflict tells a lot about the material conditions within a society, but it's not enough to consider this "science", it's just a frame of reference that implies certain conclusions. However, it is much better than analysis that ignore this social component.

Another banger, Anark. This is a subject I feel very strongly about so I'm glad to see you speak about it.

Can anyone recommend some reading about this? Anarchist (or marxist) critique of scientific socialism? Especially newer stuff. I would like a deeper understanding of it.
I had this small interaction online with a Marxist-Leninist, where they first of all explained it (assuming I didn't know anything about it), but in the end they argued "we do not see anarchism as opposed to the dictatorship of the proletariat, but we think it's immaterial because it does not have a scientific method to explain how we are going to achieve a society without class and money"
I find it arrogant and deceptive, but I don't know enough about what constitutes a scientific method yet to make a proper counter-argument. So any critical reading on this topic of science and leftism would be lovely!

ok, this is probably the best anarchist video I've ever seen.

I am so delighted to see an anarchist tackling this subject. The Marxist (mis)use of the term "science" has always irked me.

I’ve heard more than once that scientists are permitted to share their papers directly for free even if the journal is paywalled, and that they are often delighted to share their work.

Science has been the base of our movement since it’s inception. While initially there were libertarian like popular movements for the natural inclinations of freedom and autonomy such as medieval towns, indigenous confederacies, or agrarian populism like the Diggers; there were philosophical views on a stateless society such as the thoughts of William Godwin. Post-Enlightenment social critics saw the failures of liberalism to live up to expectations. As the system of capitalism became entrenched into the social fabric of the global order, these social critics and reformers saw the advancements of industrialization and mass production of wealth but poverty lingers?! Why are there still oligarchies, aristocrats, and material inequalities under such wealth and technological marvels? Liberalism has failed! Hence began the movement for a social science that would become sociology. Society needed restructuring and reform, society needed to be studied and reorganized under the auspices of the foundations of a social science. Thus marks the era of Socialism, the critique of industrial society and liberal political economy. The quest to complete the promises liberalism failed to deliver. Harkening back to Henri de Saint-Simon, perhaps the earliest socialist. He pondered reordering society based on administration of industry and scientific advancement rather than geographical government and political power. The Marxist movement would have the same ideas as seen with DeLeonism, libertarian Marxism, and orthodox Marxism. This industrial republic replacing the government or political State was the goal. But another strain of socialism was around following Proudhon, anarchism. Society governing itself without authority, the absorption of the political sphere into the industrial, the abolition of hierarchies and authority etc…. Proudhon called for a ‘scientific socialism’ concluding a scientific understanding of society lead to the principle of reciprocity and hence to anarchy. Marx held his own scientific socialism based in materialist dialectics and history. Bakunin his own scientific anarchism, and Kropotkin came to anarchy from natural sciences.
Socialism and Social Science are tied, they are of the same tradition of critiquing society, and reforming it based on scientific analysis of society.
Socialism is really just the branch of sociology that focuses on the critique of industrial society and political economy and reforming of the socioeconomic sphere, while Sociology is the broader picture outside of just economics. From this tradition stemmed the Positivist movement, and many wonderful socialist and social scientist cranks looking to create a universal or all encompassing science from all the sciences (Comte). Socialism comes from social science, it is not done any other way. And it could lead to a technocratic social engineering nightmare on one end (we’ve seen such projects from authoritarian socialists and Marxists) or liberatory and a complete understanding of the importance and preponderance of society for diversity, fecundity, decentralization, autonomy and self-administration. Cooperation and competition, autonomy and community, affinity and organization, free associative federalism and free contract.

Great stuff like always, just a small hint, in German a double-s or the ß (which is a double s but wants to feel special) is a very sharp sibilant that is held a bit longer than the normal s. You pronounced "Wissen" like "Wiesen" which means "lawn" or "pasture" ;)

At the beginning I was thinking of recommending philosophy if science as further reading for Anark. Then he blew my mind by actually having seriously studied the same. :)

It's extremely important to learn from past leftist attempts. History is crucial to prevent previous mistakes.

What do you think about epistemological anarchism?

I'm not used to the whole unstructured ramble style, but I got a ton of value from this! Especially considering I've wanted to get a formal degree in political science (completely unrelated to my career of IT but nonetheless) for a while now.

anark's thoughts on unifying quantum mechanics with gr??

It should be mentioned that Kropotkin rejected Hegelianism/Dialectic thinking that Marx, and later Bookchin, used as unscientific/pseudoscience(in Modern Science and Anarchism). Social Ecology is less compatible with Scientific thinking than alot of Bookchinites like to pretend.
I think the burden is on Hegalians to justify the use of Dialectics. Reading many big books that simply assume Dialectics is a poor basis for holding such a belief. Dialectics might have been a justified belief before the discovery of evolution, genetics, sociology, and psychology.

Yay, new (to me) anarchist. Subbed.

Extremely good take on science and leftism, in general.

But what about the socialist concept of class? Is that scientific? Compared to other sociological models of class such as Webers?

Science constrained by hierarchy looks very different from science that is unconstrained by hierarchy. I don't think people always make that destinction. It is similar to how one can think humans under capitalism is synonymous with woth humans under any differing system as if it were "human nature".

“If you’re enjoying these shorter videos...”
30m long👀
Lol jk bud keep it up. Fav political content creator.

How about a short video on your vision of how anarchism relates to feminism. We know that plenty of historical anarchist were sexist. What charges in thought or approach from them do you think are needed to prevent anarcho-patriachy?

The prime example of fine tuning our scientific models when they don't fit with what's observed are dark matter and energy.

My issue with science in the movements is what is referred to as Scientism

28:56 im pretty sure that we already have a good amount of at home scientists or whatever you want to call them, they are just normal scientists. But the thing is that 'doing your own research' is looked down on in the mainstream so people are taught that those people aren't doing science they are doing propaganda, which is backwards.
Id say theres not much holding the community back from sharing research and peer reviewing and setting up a place/platform where that can all be centralized and shared. I think the only real problem is, well first people's stupidity, but the fact that it is incredibly difficult to get things to conduct most experiments or it can be outright illegal for ypu to purchase things and if you actually try to innovate you will end up forgetting how to talk and share or you will end up missing.

I was thinking to myself "Bookchin's contributions fall in line with your line of thought for sure" and as I thought it, you bring his ass up, lol cool beans.

I don't think anyone is paying attention to the dawning of the robot/AI age what's going to happen when 60% of all jobs and task are taken over by robots and AI. Think 60% of the world's population being unemployable what then. Are the trillionaires just going to let everybody starve and if so how in the hell are they going to maintain their wealth when only 40% of people can buy things and how long would it be before all the humans lose their ability to be employed?

I think there is a problem with your definitions. It seems to me that you are defining the "authoritarian left" as people who have a very rigid view of how revolution and the world should be. Therefore, of course the authoritarian left isn't self-critical, because you are defining them as such to begin with. It's like saying that you don't like religious fundamentalists because they are extremists; it's just a tautology. And by talking that way, you are avoiding the real question of the matter, which is (I assume) how Marxist-Leninist thought (as a whole) has evolved through the decades. Because if someone were to point out some radical changes of ideas, new models, more flexible systems, you would just say, "Then they are not really authoritarians, so my argument still stands that actual authoritarians are all rigid."
And on the other hand, I think you are comparing the concrete actions of socialist countries with some cutting-edge anarchist theories, which is not really fair.

Great one. Indeed it would be weird for leftists to reject science. I find it interesting that you did not understand this general hesitance (which I agree exists) towards science when you later explicitely say 'its in ivory towers'...

If I understand you correctly, you seem to write-off Scientific Socialism because science has supposedly become more sophisticated than during Engels' time, and that Engels' word that has been translated into "Science" corresponds better with "Methodology". Since it's supposed to be a short video, I understand you want to keep this section short, but I feel like more time should have been spent on this line of argumentation. What exactly about Marxism makes it unscientific, even as one of the "soft sciences"?
I also feel like you severely misrepresent the "Authoritarian" tendency of leftism. Correct me if I'm wrong, but your main criticisms are that this tendency has no self-corrective mechanism, and that, like bourgeois economics, tends to double down on its single thesis in the face of what he considers repeated failures of its model. I wouldn't call myself an authoritarian leftist, but this seems to ignore the vast diversity of thought in what you consider the "authoritarian" left, as well as their boundless ability to criticize one another and themselves in their theory and their praxis.
I really liked your treatment of science within general Anarchist thought and how anarchists should conceive of science and should see science within their models of future societies and within their revolutionary praxis.

wissenschaft is the direct translation of sience...

This is an amazing video, but I wish that this account of communism was more nuanced.
You're right that there are these anti-scientific tendencies in communism; this is especially true of the dogmato-revisionists (Stalinists), of the likes of Hoxha, who did double down on the method of the comintern & Stalin; and this is found today in various Marxist-Leninists who honestly are utopians in Marxist clothing -- who need the USSR to have been perfect.
But there are many Marxist trends which critique the past experiences of socialist development. Their models of the dynamics of that failure are different from yours; as your video points out, that does not make them false -- simply in need of predicting more than your model.
Obviously, an honest critique of communism is not one which remains removed from the variety of critiques coming from within communism; it is one which proves itself better. I am yet to see that done, and that disappoints me given what you are saying here.
China had various critiques of the USSR, and they theoried the reason for its shift back to capitalism via the notion of "class struggle under socialism." This problem wasn't solved just by further "authoritarian means" but rather by implementing the 100 flours campaign, which involvwd massive debates between people and classes, when the struggle was more relaxed; when the class struggle became acute, and the capitalist elements in the party came to overwhelm the leftist ones, they attempted the cultural revolution, where the masses were mobilized against the state itself.
These are new models and new methods, which can predict the nature of capitalist restoration very well.
I wish this development of communism was grappled with in an authentic way.

I don't think MLs or authsocs double down on criticisms or failures to bring about a particular outcome, in fact historically failings were met with criticisms and proposed solutions within the ruling parties. Socialism did indeed develop in a methodological manner in the Soviet union and China, we can clearly see different eras of experiments and implementations throughout different periods and can see the results of them. This level of dynamic change within these states proves that Marxism-Leninism is hardly the outdated dogma that it's made out to be, even today we can find MLs in the process of updating socialist analysis. For example Cheng Enfu and Xue Muqiao were and are innovators of Marxism in our modern era. What would be dogmatic and unscientific however is understanding socialism exclusively for a particular and unchanging series of social relations, for them the failings of socialist projects is but the failing of opportunists who distort and sabotage the worker's heaven that socialism supposedly is meant to be.

Science is not the problem, but the professional managerial class is. Also the fetishization of science, as an ultimate truth, rather than just a tool to explore aspects of our world, not THE tool.

I have never thought of science as being anti leftist or anti egalitarianism. I have thought of it as simply something that can be manipulated if someone seeks to do that with science or with the parts which science is constructed from. I will listen and think and return with more thoughts lol hehe lol 😂🤣

🅿🆁🅾🅼🅾🆂🅼 😭