Great post. My recollection is that Gerry Cohen adopted the hard core that you suggested some Marxists take. He also worked out some of the implications to a decent degree. The problem, IMO, has been less finding ways to test the theory than finding ways that conventional social science would recognize as testing the theory. Marxists have tended to be more qualitative than quantitative, and the main stream social science has valorized the second. Now, I think that these domains have had relatively little to say about actual quantitative magnitudes, but that has been the aspiration. Oh, yes and a veneer of calculus. So, the problem might be less making predictions than the grain size thereof.
Let me muddy the waters even further as a historian of science. All this Marxist debate was going on in the 19th century in the context of larger debates over whether the natural, social, and historical sciences were deterministic or not.
Oh, and I can't help but mention that Engel's phrase "reflexes of the brain" is discussed beautifully by Jonathan Miller in his essay "Going Unconscious" in the edited series of lectures, "Hidden Histories of Science." The point of Thomas Laycock's theory was that reflexes allow the mind to perform higher functions of thought in the same way that servants allow the rich to produce culture by taking care of the scutwork. In this regard Engels is using a scientific theory that employs an economic analysis to support his own economic analysis that he claims is a scientific theory. https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Histories-Science-Robert-Silvers/dp/094032203X/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=Hidden+Histories+of+Science+silvers&qid=1637338997&s=books&sr=1-2
Great post. My recollection is that Gerry Cohen adopted the hard core that you suggested some Marxists take. He also worked out some of the implications to a decent degree. The problem, IMO, has been less finding ways to test the theory than finding ways that conventional social science would recognize as testing the theory. Marxists have tended to be more qualitative than quantitative, and the main stream social science has valorized the second. Now, I think that these domains have had relatively little to say about actual quantitative magnitudes, but that has been the aspiration. Oh, yes and a veneer of calculus. So, the problem might be less making predictions than the grain size thereof.
Let me muddy the waters even further as a historian of science. All this Marxist debate was going on in the 19th century in the context of larger debates over whether the natural, social, and historical sciences were deterministic or not.
Oh, and I can't help but mention that Engel's phrase "reflexes of the brain" is discussed beautifully by Jonathan Miller in his essay "Going Unconscious" in the edited series of lectures, "Hidden Histories of Science." The point of Thomas Laycock's theory was that reflexes allow the mind to perform higher functions of thought in the same way that servants allow the rich to produce culture by taking care of the scutwork. In this regard Engels is using a scientific theory that employs an economic analysis to support his own economic analysis that he claims is a scientific theory. https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Histories-Science-Robert-Silvers/dp/094032203X/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=Hidden+Histories+of+Science+silvers&qid=1637338997&s=books&sr=1-2