Introduction

We begin this study by observing the war on science, attacks emanating from the corporate world, from the religious right, and, surprisingly, from progressive quarters of the academic community. These latter attacks have sometimes extended even into the Marxian tradition itself, despite the fact that Marx and Engels identified the scientific character of their analysis to be one of the distinguishing features of historical materialism. We argue that the subject–object nexus in historical materialism is organized around the paradox that arises when one contrasts the character of scientific truth, that is, the notion that a subject presents an accounting of the object world, with the dialectical standpoint, as it is often asserted, that the “truth is the whole”. Dialectical insights tend to repudiate any tendency to circumscribe the notion of truth by first dividing the whole into subject and object and then assuming that the notion of “truth” involves some kind of agreement between them. The axiomatic assumption of science seems to compromise the dialectical truism that “the truth is the whole” at the very start of the scientific endeavour. Science appears to accept a diminished notion of truth at its outset. This seemingly intractable paradox sets up for us the task at hand for this study. That is, we must come to an understanding of dialectics, as well as an understanding of the process of science, which overcomes this apparent divide between the two notions of truth. In our understanding of dialectics, the reconciliation of the dialectical understanding of truth and the scientific understanding of truth is predicated upon a similar understanding of the subject–object relationship.