PSIR QUESTION..7. Why is Karl Marx regarded as the founder of scientific socialism? Would you describe him as evolutionary or revolutionary socialist?

Question 7..why is Karl Marx regarded as the founder of scientific socialism? Would you describe him as evolutionary or revolutionary socialist?

Points
●You can start by introducing socialism and briefly explain its emergence and give the place of Marx in socialism.
• You must then describe Marx’s view of earlier socialists and his reason for calling them so.
• The next logical step would be to explain why Marx calls his socialism as scientific to address the first part of the question. You can also give its critical evaluation.
• You should finally deal with the second part of the question, whether Marx should be associated with evolutionary or revolutionary socialism.

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Answer --Socialism is a meta-ideology which C.E.M. Joad accurately described as “a hat that has lost its shape because everyone wears it”. There have been many schools of socialism, among which Marx remains an important “watershed point”. He is one of the few thinkers where ideology is associated with name.
As a political ideology, Socialism emerged as a rival to classical liberalism in the 19th century as a response to the horrific conditions of the work and in the backdrop of neglect of equality. Thus, it has focused on social and economic rights.
Marx despairingly dubbed the socialists who preceded him, like Charles Fourier, Robert Owen, and St. Simon, as “Utopians”, for their emphasis on class harmony and non–revolutionary views. The relationship between early socialists and Marx was similar to the one that Plato shared with the Sophists. Like Marx, Plato disparaged Sophism, but was indebted to its ideas.
But what differentiated Marx’s theorizing from the earlier brand of Socialism was that he was the first to employ systemic analysis in an ambitious attempt to expose capitalism’s contradictions, and showed with ‘scientific precision’, the inevitability of the crisis of capitalism and communist revolution.
Marx described his scientific socialism as ‘praxis’, that is, having unity of thought and action. Its component parts included dialectical materialism taken fromGerman philosophy, Marxist political economy influenced by British economy and the theory and tactics of class struggle, taken from French politics.
However, Marx’s socialism cannot be called as scientific. It is just one of the noble lies, and is simply an ideology. Even KARL POPPER criticized Marx’s claim of his socialism as science since it was not open to falsification.
Moreover, we see the threads of both, revolutionary as well as evolutionary socialism in Marx. The first stage of Marxist socialism would establish ‘dictatorship of proletariat’ to be arrived through communist revolution, in accordance with Marx’s belief that “violence is the midwife of change”, an approach reaffirmed by LEO TROTSKY. This would be followed by the move from communism to socialism, which exhibited peaceful means.