Marxism: bad science?

Gregory Claeys is too kind in his assessment of Marx and Marxism ( The Godfather of Revolution, May). Those intellectuals seduced by the latter like to claim that it is based on science. However, as the article admits, Marx claimed that the revolution would by necessity take place in countries with an industrial proletariat, whereas in fact it occurred in the less industrially developed countries of Russia and China. This basic flaw completely undermines the so-called historical materialism of Marx, and justifies those (such as Karl Popper) who described Marxism as pseudo-scientific.

In reality, Marxism is yet another of those all-encompassing schemes emanating from the mainland European intellectual and political classes, along with fascism, Nazism and forced political integration, that attract support from elites but which prove to be a disaster for the ordinary people.

The kind of democratic socialism that emerged in the UK from the chapels and the unions, and which reached its apogee under Attlee – but which is despised by ideologues of the left – offers far more to humanity than the failed nostrums of Marx and his apologists. Colin Bullen, Kent