This article examines the five myths that gov political science:that it studies politics;that it is scientific;that one can study politics cut off from the other social sciences and history;that the state is neutral;and that the bulk of the work in the discipline furthers the cause of democracy.Within political science,there have been three main approaches to criticizing these myths:a moderate one that treats the elements in these myths as more or less disconnected;a radical one that sees a systemic connection between these elements but doesn’t bring out what it is and how it works;and a Marxist one that names this system,capitalism, and privileges the role of the capitalist state in explaining both politics and political science.