Grünberg treated Marxism as science by refusing utopian prophecy about socialism’s future form

Evidence

It is found that the driving pressure of the material interests which are systematically at work in economic life, and their collision one with another, produce a regular progression from lesser to greater perfection. And just as, from the point of view of the materialist conception of history, every single expression of the life of society is a reflection of the current form of economic life, so, equally, all historyexcept in primitive conditionsappears to be a series of class struggles. The materialist conception of history considers itself capable of recognizing and demonstrating that socialism is the goal of human development under concrete historical conditionsbut no more than that. How future socialist society will be structured in detail, and how it will function, lies outside the methodological scope of Marxist research and explanation, since it would otherwise lose touch with reality and lose itself in prophecies and utopian fantasies. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 94 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

I need not emphasize the fact that when I speak of Marxism here I do not mean it in a party-political sense, but in a purely scientific one, as a term for an economic system complete in itself, for a particular ideology and for a clearly delineated research methodology … It has long since been shown that the materialist conception of history is not intent on brooding away over eternal categories or on attaining to the thing-in-itself'. Nor does it aim to explore the relation between the mental and the physical world. Real social events, social existence in its never-ending, constantly renewed transformations are the objects of its attention. The ultimate causes of this process of transformation, so far as they can be ascertained, and the laws according to which it developsthese are the objects of its inquiries. — <cite>Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 94</cite> (#expands`, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Grünberg’s historical materialism forbade predicting socialism’s detailed future structure — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 94; Grünberg defined Marxism as a scientific methodology, rejecting both party politics and metaphysics — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 94

Broader Connections

• Grünberg’s historical materialism forbade predicting socialism’s detailed future structure #corroborates (0.95) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 94
• Grünberg defined Marxism as a scientific methodology, rejecting both party politics and metaphysics #expands (0.90) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 94