Communism
Scientific Experiment?
“It was juvenile of me to imagine that humanity as a whole, especially by splitting itself into two halves, could turn a whole period of history into a scientific experiment.” ~Max Eastman
Science
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Dialectic
Naive and Cloudy
“Dialectic Materialism, examined at its point of origin, turns out to be the rather naive, cloudy, unsuccessful and half-minded attempt of a matter-of-fact mind to escape from German metaphysics.” ~Max Eastman
Animism
States of Passion
“The most persistent and most threatening enemy of the scientific attitude is the disposition of men to think what they want to think, to bend the results, and pervert its authority, to the support of their purposes and states of passion.” ~Max Eastman
Animism
Common Sense
“The ability to rest in doubt, to withhold belief where belief is not warranted by methodological investigation is indispensable to expert common sense and it is the part most difficult for amateurs to learn.” ~Max Eastman
Animism
Science and Magic
“He (the scientist) is an implacable enemy of the occult. He really wants to know; the magician wants not to know.” ~Max Eastman
Freedom
Valid Knowledge
“Science regards all valid knowledge as derived ultimately from experience, derived by the methods of observation, experiment, and rational calculation, and subject to the practical test of action.” ~Max Eastman
Communism
Practical Thinking
“If Marx had understood the art of practical thinking, Das Kapital might have been as great a book as the Hegelian Marxists think it is.” ~Max Eastman
Animism
The Changeless
“Science has always occupied itself with changes, and animism has survived for the most part as an assertion of the Changeless which lies behind and beyond them.” ~Max Eastman
Capitalism
Institutions and Superstitions
“The German state patronized modern capitalism, perverting it to the support of feudal political institutions; and the German philosophers patronized modern science, perverting it to the support of animistic superstition.” ~Max Eastman
Dialectic
Materialistic Religion
“Marx and Engels were defending against scientific materialism–against that attitude which constitutes at least the simple common-sense starting point of science–a materialistic religion.” ~Max Eastman