Science in the Service of Capital

Science in the Service of Capital

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In the capitalistic society science becomes 'a productive force distinct from labour and pressed into the service of capital' (C , 1.361). In the era of monopoly capitalism scientific research is more highly organised than ever before , but always with the overriding aim of private profit and devoted increasingly to war. The training of natural scientist is so departmentalized as to make it difficult for them to acquire a theoretical grasp of natural science as a whole, and they receive no training at all in the study of human society. Conversely, social and historical studies are so organised as to exclude the natural sciences. Economics is separated from history and both from politics. History is taught as a thought it were not a branch of science at all. In the natural sciences , the student may know nothing about the Marxism, yet at least he recognizes dialectical processes in nature, even though he does not not know them by name; but the laws of dialectics mean nothing to the bourgeois historian, who does not even recognize the class struggle.

This contradiction in the bourgeois educational system between the study of nature and the study of man reflects the conflict in the bourgeois consciousness between the need to develop science as a productive force and the need to conceal the true relationship between capital and labour.

Some bourgeois scientists seek to defend their situation by maintaining that their concerns is with the advancement of knowledge for its own sake and not with the social consequences of their work; but, as the social issues become more pressing , it becomes difficult for them to persist in this attitude without loss of self respect. Meanwhile, others of them are brought through their industrial ties into contact with workers and so drawn into the class struggle. In this way they learn that only through the socialist revolution can science be reunited with labour as a force devoted to the production of use-values in the service of people.

~~ The Human Essence (George Thomson)