How Marxists Brought Science to Politics and Politics to Science
From Marx and Engels to the present day, socialists have been deeply engaged with the world of science. With the provision of lifesaving vaccines held hostage by corporate profiteering, the story of this relationship is more important than ever.
The Marx and Engels monument in Berlin. (Getty Images)
The COVID-19 pandemic may have been a disaster for humanity, but it’s been a great boon for the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies. Our reliance on Big Pharma for lifesaving vaccines has reminded us how badly we need to understand the links between science, politics, and commercial interests.
For Marxists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these were some of the most important questions to be addressed in their work. The cross-fertilization between Marxism and science had major implications for the development of both.
Helena Sheehan is an emeritus professor at Dublin City University and the author of Marxism and the Philosophy of Science, a book that traces the history of this encounter.
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