Marx: The Investigation of Society - Essay Example

Can a connection be established between primitiveness as growing pains that affect the whole movement of the world, and Economism, which is one of the currents in World-society? Marx refused to recognize the distinction between what we now label as philosophy and sociology. He believed, like most other ninetieth century thinkers, that philosophy and sociology constituted a single fled of enquiry. On the one hand philosophy provided a conceptual framework for the investigation of society, while on the other sociological enquiry helped to resolve some philosophical problems which would otherwise be intractable for an long as we relied upon what Marx calls ‘speculative reason’. For Marx, the two are inseparable. The investigation of society could never be a uniquely empirical matter of gathering ‘facts’, for ‘facts’ only make sense in relation to the presuppositions made within a body of theory. In other worlds, as in any science, the ‘science of society’ rests upon the sort of concepts that are used, what they mean and how they stand in relation to one another as much as the evidence which we collect. Conversely, Marx believed that as long as questions like, ‘what is human motive?’, and, ‘what is society?’, were dealt with purely speculatively (that is without any empirical substantiation whatsoever) then there would be no solution to them. Marx is insistent (along with other classical sociologists) that a true ‘science of society’ cannot be allowed to descent into mere metaphysics. Marx, of all the nineteenth-century sociologist theorists, was not going to surrender sociology to mere arm-chair theorizing. The considerations which inform Marx’s historical materialism lead him to enunciate his famous distinction between the ‘base’ and the ‘superstructure’ of society. The base is the sum total of what we might loosely call the productive activities of society or the ‘mode of production’. It is, in the broadest possible sense, the sphere of economic relationships. The superstructure consists of the cultural ideas, or ‘ideological’ aspects, of society (including politics and the Law). The superstructure is, in the last analysis, determined by the base1. The so-called ‘humanist’ Marxists tends to deny the importance of the base/superstructure distinction – the most polemical of the humanist Marxists was the Hungarian philosopher and critic George Lukacs, especially in his 1934 work History and Class Consciousness (1971). Others have included Antonio Gramsci, and the historical E.P. Thompson in his essay The Poverty of Theory (1978). They believe that Marx used it as a metaphor and little more. Humanist Marxists tend to emphasize the libertarian aspects of Marx’s writings – specifically Marx’s analysis of dehumanizing consequences of the rise of a capitalist society. They are concerned with Marxism as a method of analyzing and transcending this dehumanization, thereby opening up the possibility of liberating the true productive potential of humanity through political ‘praxis’ (the unity of theory and action). In particular, humanist Marxists pays attention to Marx’s writings on alienation2. What actually constitutes the ‘mode of production’ which forms the base? This also tends to be a vexed issue among Marxists, partly because Marx himself was never entirely clear or consistent in what he meant by it. The term itself comes from Adam Smith and, like him; Marx occasionally used the term very loosely to describe ‘how people make things’. This loose meaning can, however, cause confusion. For example, people make things by using tools or machinery – ‘the instruments of labour’ – which may or may not be defined as their property3. It has become commonplace to remark that while Marx never developed a systematic analysis of class, it is nevertheless central to Marx and to Marxism. As Tom Bottomore has pointed out, all of Marx’s writings were concerned with class, either implicitly or explicitly (1965, p. 17). Frustratingly, however, the manuscript of Capital breaks off at precisely the point at which Marx was beginning to set out in detail his theory of social class. So we are left to infer such a theory from the remainder of Marx’s writings. Thus although the concept of class has become an indispensable component of sociological analysis, the precise meaning which Marx gives to it is by no means unambiguous. What is clear is the place of class, and the struggle between classes, in Marx’s overall theoretical scheme. For classes perform a decisive function in the evolution of human history: it is through the class struggle that society transforms itself. Every significant social change is therefore related in one way or another to the class struggle. It is in this sense that Marx and Engels assert that: “This history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” (1969). Let us be clear first of all that this is a matter which cannot be settled by “positivist” procedures. Most of Marx’s followers would not accept the propositions of historical materialism and theory of capitalist development can be treated as if they were like hypotheses in natural science. It is therefore useless to claim to be “testing”, say, Marx’s predictions about capitalist development. Not only does Marxism set out with a very broad historical perspective – so that “cheap refutations” (Dahrendorf 1959) in a particular place and time cut little ice – but it also sets out from very different philosophical foundations from positivism. This is a problem which results in disputes among Marxists themselves about the appropriate role of empirical enquiry. There is nevertheless a general agreement that empirical investigation of contemporary world cannot be considered as simply redundant – no Marxist sociologist would be willing to argue that the implications of historical materialism consist of simply waiting for the inevitable revolution to occur. There is, as yet, no consensus on how these issues should be resolved, or even on how to go about tackling them. Indeed the analysis of the state illustrates very well the lively debates which are currently characterizing Marxism (Anderson 1980). Thus quite basic questions, such as how “the state” is to be defined, remain unresolved. Some writers see it as what might somewhat vaguely be called the ‘public sector’; others offer a much narrower definition in terms of the administrative apparatus of the government bueeaucracy; still others do not regards the state as a group of people at all, but as a particular fraction of capital with peculiar functions. Here Marx himself is not very helful, having paid little attention to the growth of the state. In a frequently cited passage from The Communist Manifesto (1969, p.44), Marx and Engels refer to the state as ‘but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie’. This suggests that the state possesses an enabling role, administering and coordinating the various spheres of economic activity in order to ensure that the interests of the bourgeoisie are maintained. It assumes a rather direct relationship between the economic interests of the bourgeoisie and the construction of an administrative apparatus – part of the ‘superstructure’ – to organize them, and therefore smacks of an economically deterministic theory of the state. Recent Marxist writers have found this simple formulation not so much false as incomplete: it is difficult to maintain the view that ‘the state’ always and in every way acts in accordance with the immediate interests of the bourgeoisie. Simple inspection will soon reveal that the bourgeoisies, indeed, expends much effort in combating the state’s encroachment on its interests. One can infer from some of Marx’s later writings that he, too, was not entirely satisfied with the formulation contained in The Communist Manifesto. Instead Marx viewed the world as a political institution within which the conflicts between different factions of the ruling class can be represented and fought out. More recently it has been suggested that this can be extended to the class struggle completely – that the institutions and apparatuses of the world reflect the development of the class struggle in ‘civil society’. In this way the analysis of the world’s states becomes microcosm for dealing with general theoretical problems in Marxist sociology. The world as a political institution forms part of the societal superstructure: can, therefore, the state determine the economic activity of the base in an entirely autonomous fashion? Does it make sense to separate ‘the world’ from ‘civil society’ in a manner which regards the state as a detached entity, so to speak, the everyday economic activity of its citizens? How much relative autonomy from the economic base does the state maintain? Is the world merely a politically neutral ‘black box’ which can be captured by any particular class and used to further its own interests? Questions like these address not merely the analysis of the world, but the whole relationship between base and superstructure, for it is difficult at times to ascertain how and in precisely what ways the economic base of society determines, even ‘in the last instance’, the workings of the state. Because the analysis of the state quickly leads to a consideration of fundamental issues in Marxist theory, it is perhaps understandable that the debate has been conducted, for the most part, in highly abstract, theoretical, even speculative, terms. Two parallel sets of issues can be discerned. The first concerns a division between what Wright (1978) calls “instrumentalist’ and ‘structuralist’ conceptions of the world. The instrumentalist view of the state is one in which the ruling class uses the political administrative apparatus of government as an instrument of its own rules and via which the ruling class may maintain the essential political and economic domination (Lenin 1902a; Miliband 1969). The structualist view of the state is one in which the world is one in which the state expresses and reflects the competing and contradictory interests of various classes and class fractions according to their ability to pursue their interests in the political struggle (Poulantzas 1975). In the former view the state is an agent in the historical development of capitalism; in the latter it is a functional structure which cannot be reduced to the actions of particular agents4. It is to be argued that the enduring strength of Marxist sociology lies in its methods of analysis – class analysis – rather than in it ability to offer a narrowly empirical range of predictions. Instead it seeks to discern the underlying dynamic of class relationships in capitalist world and to account for contemporary developments in terms of the contradictions created by such relationships. Consequently, when we come to “apply” – a term which would make most Marxist theorists wince – Marxism to, say, modern Britain. However, the relevance of much the analysis to contemporary economic and political conditions in Britain should hardly need emphasizing. It is not, therefore, surprising that the analysis of the state currently occupies such an important role in Marxist sociology and why the former interest in class consciousness has somewhat subsided. In examining the role of the state not only has Marxist sociology contributed to an understanding of the capitalist crisis of the 1970s; it has also enabled a ‘capitalist logic’ to be illuminated in the transition from laissez-faire to monopoly to state capitalism. Sooner or later the analysis of the state must return to questions surrounding the class struggle and class consciousness. Thus far the opinion that increasing states involvement will ipso facto politicize the consciousness of the proletariat (Castells 1977) remains wishful thinking rather than realistic expectations. Meanwhile the debate rumbles on, accompanied in many cases by a refreshing readiness to reexamine some of the basic assumptions of Marxist theory which the analysis of the world makes unavoidable. Should, for example, the analysis of the world finally lead the base/superstructure distinction to be discarded (Williams 1973) or does it provide an irreducible “conceptual threshold and boundary limit for Marxism (Hall 1977, p. 59)? And what is the alternative? What cannot be denied is the continuing relevance of Marxist concepts and modes of analysis to the phenomen of the modern world. To say this, however, is not to accept the view that Marxism alone can offer us a complete account of it. Too many shortcomings have appeared in the orthodox Marxist account of capitalist development. Some of these are not simply weaknesses of substantive interpretations and prediction. They suggest that we can only go so far in our understanding of social life by using the method of historical materialism – whatever its many strengths. References: Bottomore, T. (1965), Classes in Modern Society, London: Allen & Unwin, p. 17. Anderson, M. (1980) (ed.), ‘The relevance of family history’, in M. Anderson (ed.), Sociology of the Family, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Wright, E.O. (1978). “Class, Crises and The State”, London: New Left Books. Miliband, R. (1969), The State in Capitalist Society, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Poulantzas, N. (1975), Political power and social classes, London: New Left Books. Lenin, V.I. (1902a), The state and Revolution, Moscow: Progress Publishers. Williams, R. (1973b), ‘Base and Superstructure’, New Left Review, no. 82 Hall, S. (1977), ‘The “political” and the “economic” in Marx’s theory of classes”, in A. Hunt (ed.), Class and Class Structure, London: Lawrence & Wishart, pp. 59. Castells, M. (1977), The Urban Question, London: Edward Arnold. Marx, K., and Engels, F. (1970). The Manifesto of the Communist Party, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Dahrendorf, R. (1959), Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Read More