If science is not value-neutral, then what values does it reflect, reinforce and reproduce? For a marxist there can be only one answer to that question: the ruling ideas of any epoch are the ideas of its ruling class. (In case you are wondering what I'd say about societies whose ruling class is not capitalist, I'd reply that I am talking about all hierarchical and authoritarian societies, both capitalist and nominally socialist. I know of societies which have begun to deviate from that norm but none which has got very far.) If we say that science is not value-neutral, then we must mean that science thereby gets included in the critique of values. In its radical form the critique of values is the critique of ideologies. Then science - not some science or some sciences some of the time, but science - is ideological. We live under capitalism, so we have capitalist science. We want to bring a different set of values into being, to bring about a new set of ruling ideas—ideas of a society without rulers, a part of a different ideology or world-view. We want to bring about a socialist society. It will, if we are vigilant, have a socialist science. I can imagine it, or some of it.
So: Is there a socialist science? No; no more than there is a socialist society. But is socialism possible? Yes, we are struggling to bring it into being. I can imagine it, or some of it. To repeat: science is not value-neutral; it embodies capitalist and other hierarchical values. Our values are aimed at bringing about a different world-view - an alternative cosmology - that of socialism. Our scientific practice is therefore aimed at becoming part of socialist science. If so, we'd better get on with it in that scientific practice. (By the way, if you don't think that science is part of the world-view in which it is practiced, then you think it's value-neutral and cannot believe in a specifically socialist science, only in science under socialism. You don't really have to disturb yourself at work until the industrial working class has produced the revolution. That's a relief, isn't it?) The problem is to move from science which is capitalist to science which is socialist. In practice, in our work and lives, the problem is to place our work in science - our social relations at work and in other settings - inside (not alongside) our socialism. That is the second sense in which it is time to move on: to change our work and the rest of our lives so that our socialism comes first. Not many self-styled radical scientists have got round to that.
No comments:
Post a Comment