Hence, both positivists and Popper felt the need to demarcate science from the rest of knowledge-acquisition activities. That is why positivists who were inductivists maintained that the hallmark of scientific theories lies in their systematic verifiability. Popper replaces verifiability by falsifiability. According to Popper, the hallmark of scientific theories lies in their systematic falsifiability. Popper maintains that what distinguishes science from the rest of our knowledge is not that scientific statements are verifiable, but that they are falsifiable. The scientific theories are falsifiable, according to Popper, in the sense that they transparently state what circumstances lead to their rejection. Whenever scientific theories are advanced, it is also stated under what conditions they turn out to be false so that we try to obtain those conditions in order to falsify our claims. An ideal scientific statement is constituted in such a way that its terms instead of helping to survive enable it to readily accept the risk of being falsified. In other words, a model of scientific statement should readily yield test implications which we deduce in order to refute it. A statement however plausible and perfectly consistent with what we observe is not scientific unless we can easily deduce testable consequences from it. It is in this connection, Popper attacks Marxism as being pseudo-scientific² . When Marx propounded his theory of capitalist society, his theory was a falsifiable theory because it yielded test implications such as disappearances of middle class, revolution in advanced industrial societies, etc. However, these test implications were not borne out and hence the theory was falsified. But, the followers of Marx tried to explain the fact that the Marxist predictions did not come about by taking recourse to adhoc explanations and thus insisted that there was nothing wrong with the theory. In the process, they went on building safety valves for the theory with the result that the theory becomes unfalsifiable. A religious theory about the world is, of course, also unfalsifiable. But, the propounders of religious theories about the world never claim scientificity for their views, whereas Marxists do so vehemently. Hence, Marxist theory is not merely unfalsifiable and therefore unscientific, but also pseudo-scientific. It is this pretension to be scientific while being unfalsifiable makes the theory pseudo-scientific.

Notes and References

Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery , Hutchinson and Company, 1975 (first edition: 1959), p. 15

Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies , Volume II, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London , 1945...................................