ABSTRACT
In examining the work of Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and the post-Mao leadership, this chapter criticises the devolution of theory within Marxism. It is critical of readings of Marx, which allege that his methodology was empiricist. Theory, its role, its articulation and its usefulness are no longer questions of Marxist scholarship. The role, articulation and usefulness of theory are obvious and are in fact as 'obvious' as the real nature of the real object of empiricist 'knowledge'. The chapter traces the emergence of reductionist epistemologies within Marxism and the effect of these on the development of socialist strategies of transition. It focuses on the rejection of the epistemological exercise and a more precise, much more specific, set of calculations, which are designed to examine the practices and their effects in quite specific conjunctures. It is with this very tentative proposition of the specificity of calculation that socialists can map out a body of practices, which can be called socialist.
