MARXISM AS A POSITIVE SCIENCE 65 Marx's critique of political economy does not end by pointing out that it is merely theoretical and does not suggest a practice. Because ofcourse it does. The critique is deeper than that. Marx's point is that since ideas are rooted in the existential condition, theory must itself be seen as a moment in the socio-historical process. Thus until men themselves alter the false reality that is conditioning their consciousness they will never be the possessors of any but false theories. Marx criticized the materialists as much as the idealists for foi getting ^that circumstances are changed by men and the educator himself must be educated95. Further he said that ^the coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-activity can only be comprehended and rationally understood as revolutionary practice".29 In later years the Marxian idiom may have changed. Marx himself jokingly remarked in the preface to the second edition of Capital that he had once ^coquetted' with the modes of expression peculiar to Hegel—but not the basic Marxian presuppositions regarding the true nature of man and his role both conscious and unconscious in the realization of real history. Now one might indeed wish to ask at this point whether given the validity of the interpretation I am proposing, one can still hold that Marx was a scientist. I am not myself primarly interested in assigning labels. What does interest me is to show that Marx was in any case not a positivist; that thus in so far as he believed he was doing a positive science his conception of science differed drastically from that of later positivists; I would go so far as to say that it belpngs to a totally different intellectual tradition; that thus the general bewilderment regarding the status of Marxian theory is baseless. Also (though I cannot go into it here), to do so would involve taking issue with critics such as Popper not only at the methodological level but with their substantive interpretation of Marx. I believe that Marx's theory in so far as it sought to relate all its terms to empirical correlates., in so far as it possesses both predictive and explanatory power, in so far as it seeks to systematise the multifarious phenomena and aspects of human life and provide for them a unified base, a concrete material base, does indeed satisfy the criteria which demarcates science from non-science. Perhaps the ultimate criterion it satisfied is that Marx's theory could be shown, if indeed it has not already been shown, as some claim, to be a false one, which can hardly be said of a philosophical theory. Finally I should like to say what I consider to be the importance of not only accepting my interpretation of Marx's conception of science, but of accepting this conception of science per se. Though Marx did not use the term ecology it appears to me that he was constantly pointing towards such a science in urging the need to see the social reality of nature, the need to see the goal of the natural and social sciences as one. By denying that human goals are relevant to the pursuit of science,