An interesting observation after traditional Christmas arguments with my right--wing relatives in Poland:
Alt-right is now talking 100% postmodernism.
History made full circle: half-century ago it was mostly far left who ranted about "gender aspect of mathematics" and "science as a social construct", basically denying humans ability to objectively describe reality.
These tools were initially forged by Marx to facilitate his wishful thinking about how societies operate that science did not support.
In 20th century far-left faced the same challenge and picked the same tools as they knew them well due to ideological compatibility and general inspiration by Marx.
Today the same Marx-inspired tools are being picked up by alt-right generation that talks about "evils of cultural Marxism" (a bullshit term on its own).
Sokal Affair was LOL, this is LOL squared.
@kravietz "These tools were initially forged by Marx" as somebody who is studying Marx, I'd like to know what you base this claim on. As far as I know, Marx was radically on the side of considering objective reality to exist and to be something we could understand.
Also, I'd like to point out that "science as a social construct" is not incompatible with a belief in the ability to objectively describe reality. Our descriptions are just prone to be influenced by our biases.
So while modern science has been always to some extent obviously impacted by human bias, the bias is perceived specifically as failure of science, and science has procedures to prevent the bias from happening.
In case of Marxism, the bias was at the heart of the ideology and any non-compliance with its fundamental assumption was immediately labelled as "reactionary" even if observed reality obviously contradicted the ideology.
@kravietz "... modern science... to some extent obviously impacted by human bias, [it] is perceived... as failure of science..."
Isn't individual instances of science supposed to fail? That's what makes it able to progress? But I don't know of anyone, except perhaps the radically religious or -spiritual (quite opposite of Marxists who generally are hardcore materialists), who perceives science in general as a failed because biases can occur.
Who do u refer to specifically that believes this?
@amici Marxist materialism didn't make it immune to bias. Quite the opposite. Marx believed very strongly (as most narcissist people do) that he discovered unique and absolute laws of history and economy. When observation didn't match the "laws", instead of modifying them he adapted his "analytical apparatus" to bend the reality around the laws, and then argued the "bourgeois science" is wrong, thus undermining the very basic assumptions behind scientific approach.
@kravietz My key question remains unanswered: who do you refer to specifically that believes that science generally fails because biases can occur? That believes a social construction of science means we can't objectively describe reality? Because I don't think that characterizes any significant amount of Marxists, and certainly not Marx himself.