Logical positivism began as an egalitarian political and social program

Evidence

In its early days, the logical positivist movement had a distinctly political flavor. Their unified and scientific world conception provided the philosophical and methodological basis for the integration of everyday life with politics and science, aiming at a comprehensive reform of society along egalitarian lines. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 59

Categorization

• XREF: Reverses the common later framing of logical positivism as apolitical or technocratic-neutral; connects to the Vienna Circle’s socialist members and to Mises’s critique of ‘scientific socialism’ as the other pole of this debate. — connects to: The positivist dispute began as method disputes concealing social-policy controversies.; Early neoliberal philosophers aligned with the right wing of logical empiricism — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 63; Sociology emerged as political science declined under positivist theories — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 914 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Vienna Circle positivism out-competed Critical Theory in America due to philosophical congruence. #expands (0.80) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 243
• Early neoliberal philosophers aligned with the right wing of logical empiricism #expands (0.75) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 63
• Early neoliberalism framed egalitarian socialism as a fallacy traceable to revolutionary rationalism #complicates (0.72) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 63
• Sociology emerged as political science declined under positivist theories #complicates (0.70) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 914
• Gramsci groups Kantianism, Aristotelian-Scholastic thought, and positivism in a shared transcendentalist matrix #corroborates (0.70)
• The metaphysical Ordo ideal resisted translation into concrete postwar political programs #expands (0.70) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 511