ABSTRACT
In our interpretation of Marx as a realist we must avoid giving an interpretation of realism so specific to the natural sciences that no social analysis could possibly resemble it; and giving a Marxist reinterpretation of realism such that nobody could be a realist without being a Marxist. In the following we will only consider Marx’s later writings, so we will not be involved in the debates as to whether these writings are inconsistent with his earlier works, particularly the 1844 Manuscripts and the German Ideology.1 Marx’s main intention in Capital, as well as in the Grundrisse and indirectly in Theories of Surplus Value, is to reach a successful characterization of the internal structure of the capitalist mode of production (CMP). More generally he intends to produce descriptions of the structures of various modes: primitive communist, ancient, Asiatic, feudal, capitalist, and so on. He takes the more apparent and observable features of social life to be explicable in terms of these underlying structures. They can be comprehended by the discovery of the causal mechanisms central to each structure; these mechanisms are characterized in terms of the relations between a small number of theoretical entities. Marx’s advocacy here of analysing the nature of these mechanisms implies a non-Humean view of causal relationships. Likewise he rejects the ideal of positivist science, the search for general laws and its connected model of explanation.2 He does however believe in the possibility of an objective science of social formations. He is both a naturalist and a realist.
