56 SOCIAL SCIENTIST The latter, against which Weber argued so fiercely, is a methodological postulate; the former is a substantive and explanatory one, relating to the process of social change. Both are inimical to the positivist position and it is well known that in capitulating to the demands of positivism Weber finally even renounced the former. Thus in assessing Marx^s stand on the voluntarism/determinism issue it becomes necessary to examine the claim that Marx either at all or at least in the last stages of his life's work was a positivist. More generally it becomes necessary to look at Marx's conception of science and this is how I propose to stcirt. That Marx saw his woik as a science, even as a positive science, of that there appears to be little doubt: "Where speculation ends—in real life—there real positive science begins: the representation of the practical activity, of the practical process of the development of man". Even so, if it is at all sensible to raise the questions that have been raised, there is room for disagreement regarding the nature of his theory. While commentators such as Hilfer-ding, Althusser, Colletti and Bottomoic to mention only a few, take the view (in Bottomore's words) that ^the cast of Marx's mind was fundamentally scientific" and that ^His whole life and work reveal not only a moral passion, but more strikingly a passion for empirical enquiry and factual knowledge",1 there are others, notably Gramsci, Fromm, Marcuse et al who see Marx's work essentially as philosophy. And then there are those like Aron who seem to suggest that Marx's work falls between two stools. For instance he says: ^In my opinion, he was too scientifically oriented to admit that his interpretation of capitalism was bound up with a moral decision—But he was so thoroughly convinced of the v/orthlessness of the capitalist regime that for him the analysis of reality led inevitably to the desire for a revolution."2 And elsewhere more succinctly of the Marxist system ^It is essentially a sociology;it seeks to be a philosophy".^ Science and the Practical Activity of Men If there is any resolution to this debate it cannot precede an examination of Marx's own conception of a "positive' science. Science for Marx is concerned not with an abstract and theoretical conception of the universe, but with the macro-level empirically observable ^practical activity' of men. Thus the particularised and concrete every day world of men-in-action and not the esoteric world of the theoretical physicist provided for Marx the paradigmatic conceptual framework of science. If so, his claim to have formulated ^the economic law of motion of modern society" need not be regarded as an invocation of the model of physics as Habermas4 suggests. For in view of what else Marx has to say regarding the nature of science even Habermas has to conclude that ^this demand for a natural science of man, with its positivist overtones, is astonishing" (Ibid p 46), The fact is that Marx makes no such demand and Habermas' astonishment is only the result of his own