Marx and the Politics of Abstraction (Studies in Critical Social Sciences) 9004201378, 9789004201378

Table of contents :
Marx and the Politics of Abstraction
Copyright
Contents
Author’s Foreword
Chapter One Science and Politics
Chapter Two Critique and Method
Chapter Three Inquiry and Abstraction
Chapter Four Relational Sociology and Dialectic
Chapter Five Teleology and Dialectic
Chapter Six Marx’s Political Science
Afterword
References
Index

Citation preview

Marx and the Politics of Abstraction

Studies in Critical Social Sciences Series Editor

David Fasenfest Wayne State University Editorial Board

Chris Chase-Dunn, University of California-Riverside G. William Domhoff, University of California-Santa Cruz Colette Fagan, Manchester University Martha Gimenez, University of Colorado, Boulder Heidi Gottfried, Wayne State University Karin Gottschall, University of Bremen Bob Jessop, Lancaster University Rhonda Levine, Colgate University Jacqueline O’Reilly, University of Brighton Mary Romero, Arizona State University Chizuko Ueno, University of Tokyo

VOLUME 31

Marx and the Politics of Abstraction By

Paul Paolucci

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2011

On the cover: Karl Marx Monument at the entrance of the University of Leipzig at Augustus Platz before it was removed in 2006. Photographer: Lars Göhler. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Paolucci, Paul. Marx and the politics of abstraction / by Paul Paolucci. p. cm. -- (Studies in critical social sciences; 31) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-20137-8 (hbk. : alk. paper) 1. Marx, Karl, 1818-1883. 2. Science--Political aspects. I. Title. HX39.5.P2645 2011 335.4'112--dc22 2010051561

ISSN 1573-4234 ISBN 978 90 04 20137 8 Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change.

CONTENTS Author’s Foreword ................................................................................

vii

Chapter One

Science and Politics ................................................

1

Chapter Two

Critique and Method .............................................

27

Chapter Three

Inquiry and Abstraction ........................................

55

Chapter Four

Relational Sociology and Dialectic ......................

85

Chapter Five

Teleology and Dialectic ......................................... 137

Chapter Six

Marx’s Political Science.......................................... 179

Afterword .............................................................................................. 209 References.............................................................................................. 217 Index ...................................................................................................... 227

AUTHOR’S FOREWORD Midway through the first decade of the twenty-first century, Moishe Postone (2005: 77) wrote the following: Because this dynamic is quasi-independent of its constituting individuals, it has the properties of an intrinsic historical logic. In other words, Marx’s mature theory no longer hypostatized history as a force moving all human societies; it no longer presupposed that a directional dynamic of history in general exists. It did, however, characterize modern society in terms of an ongoing directional dynamic and sought to explain that historical dynamic with reference to the dual character of the social forms expressed by the categories of the commodity and capital. The existence of a historical dynamic is now taken to be a manifestation of heteronomy…. As an aside, it should be noted that, by grounding the contradictory character of the social formation in the dualistic forms expressed by the categories of commodity and capital, Marx historicizes the notion of contradiction. The idea that reality or social relations in general are essentially contradictory and dialectical appears, in light of this analysis, to be one that can only be assumed metaphysically, not explained. This also suggests that any theory that posits an intrinsic developmental logic to history as such, whether dialectical or evolutionary, projects what is the case for capitalism onto history in general. (also see Postone 2004 for a similar argument)

For many people who read, analyze, and write about Marx, Postone’s observation seems accurate, though perhaps unremarkable. Many commonly accept that Marx had a universal theory of history driven by a contradictory metaphysical dynamic. In a reading such as Postone’s, the older Marx discarded the younger Marx’s metaphysical conception of social relations and historical development as he became more scientific. What if this reading is wrong? Not in that the older Marx retained a metaphysical universal theory of history, but the reverse. What if the younger Marx was no metaphysician and the traditional way we learn to read him has us interpreting him in ways he never intended? To the extent this is so, we must ask how many other ways of reading Marx provide us a less-than-clear view of his ideas. Before we can adequately understand Marx’s view of social relations, history, and the logic of capital, we must understand the methodological principles he accepted and rejected and how these inform both his work and our reading of it. Marxist scholars are not finished with this task. This book is the second installment of my research on this issue.

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As this book builds on findings in my Marx’s Scientific Dialectics, readers might find familiarity with that material helpful. Hopefully, this is not a requirement, as this current work discusses several central ideas found there. That having been said, perhaps a brief overview of what returns here is necessary. First, this book revisits Marx’s method of critique, which Marx’s Scientific Dialectics addresses, though in a relatively shorter, less systematic, and less detailed and complete form than here. Second, this book contains a summary of the methods of abstraction and moments of inquiry that Marx’s Scientific Dialectics spends space examining, though only in summary form here. Third, this book returns to Marx’s so-called theory of history, but this time in a discussion of teleology and with additional material brought to bear on the claim that his approach is (still) widely misread. Besides an expanded discussion of critique and a new one on teleology, what else is new? First, several examples of relationships between science and politics, and how we might think about them, open the discussion. Second, extending from the first, there is focus on how Marx’s method of critique provides principles for evaluating standard social science as well as conventional social discourse and practice. Here, I examine how Marx asks us to consider a different and new way of asking questions about science and politics. Marx’s method of critique does not rely on, though he does not deny, traditional criticisms of malformed science, such as corruption of scientists (from political entities as well as of their own doing), debates over objectivity versus subjectivity, and unconscious prejudice. My discussion extracts categories in the philosophy of science that Marx’s method of critique targets and uses these as a point of departure for examining how, unlike conventional moral-ethical-political criticisms that rely on abstract absolutes, Marx’s criticism comes through a form of historical and scientific analysis. Though Marx’s Scientific Dialectics referenced the political in Marx’s work, how this extended from his scientific and dialectical sensibilities is the central focus of analysis here. This issue would benefit from additional elaboration in Marxian scholarship. Third, while the influence of Bertell Ollman’s work on my own should be apparent to those familiar with both, here my discussion offers a more extended involvement with his take on Marx. Though I try to keep repetition of quotations from Ollman found in Marx’s Scientific Dialectics to a minimum, some revisiting is inevitable for a few reasons. First, his work presents complex issues in Marx’s methodology in a manner more easily understood than was Marx very

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often. Second, several of his categories and explanations of the method of abstraction have become ingrained in my own thinking, so much so that it is only proper to acknowledge their source when I use them. At the same time, studying and using his framework sometimes brings one to conclusions Ollman makes elsewhere and thus is often necessary to refer to his work as the source of a particular idea. Though one of the top Marxian theoreticians, Ollman’s influence on other scholars is sometimes unclear. True, one can find instances where others cite him in reference to a particular point they are making but few work in his tradition directly as one might work within Goffman’s dramaturgy, Foucault’s archaeology, or Wallsertein’s worldsystems analysis. Further, his influence on sociology as a whole is not extensive. Ollman refers to how Marx put dialectics “to work.” In showing how Marx through Ollman’s eyes (though not solely his) tells us much about scientific practice in general as well as the social sciences in particular, I wish to similarly put his ideas to work. As sociology’s paradigms and literature are most familiar to me, I have a bias toward asking how Marx and Ollman inform theories and practices there, though my analysis addresses other Marxist traditions as well as other disciplines. As such, one of this book’s goals is to utilize the principles Ollman advocates in interpreting Marx and, by extension, advancing the Marxian research agenda through showing how the internal relations approach informs a myriad of issues in popular, social scientific, and political discourse. These issues include an engagement with the philosophy of science, conceptualizing variables and estimating their associations, theories of religion, class analysis, and models of history. These are not issues just for Marxology but are fit for all social scientists interested in how to study the world and anyone concerned about questions of the political in social life. What is not here? First, the book does not provide an in-depth demonstration of how Marx applies empirical data to each of the principles in the philosophy of science dealt with herein. In order to maintain focus and not get bogged down in extensive examples of how Marx’s specific analyses mobilize the methods he advocates, my narrative strives to present the categories of scientific reasoning Marx ejects and accepts and why he does so in a relatively succinct manner. Though I apply these issues to conceptual frameworks in sociology, Marxist studies, and popular discourse, a goal here is to provide interested readers categories they might need when reading Marx in order to understand his methodology better, as rarely does one find him using

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lengthy dialectical exegesis to analyze and explain historically emerging data of his period, especially true of the journalism done after his younger years. Though the question of the politics of Marx’s abstractions organizes the book’s overall content, it treats his specific strategies for revolution, socialism, and communism generally, as my past work—as well as work of others—treat these issues more thoroughly. Additionally absent is an in-depth political-economic analysis of capitalism (past and present) as well as a theory of the state. The internal relations approach has much to offer these issues in Marxist studies as well as in sociology, though retaining a focus requires that I reserve these inquiries for another time and/or place. I want to make a few comments on this return to the issue of critique in Marx’s work as part of his methodological development, and by implication his understanding of science. It is probable most experienced Marxist scholars have encountered most, if not all, of the terms and concepts in this book in Marx’s writings at some point. Some appear quite often, others only somewhat regularly, and still others often enough to be somewhat familiar. Further, there is no doubt that some of these concepts have come under the microscope of Marx’s students and appear under their published writings, usually in a section or chapter, occasionally an extended essay. What one has a hard time finding, however, is a more comprehensive treatment of the categories of criticism Marx repeatedly deploys and how these, conceptualized as the method of critique, give us insight to the lessons on science Marx’s various analyses provide. Marxist scholars have longed bemoaned Marx’s failure (against his own wishes and plans) to write a systematic treatise on method while at the same time acknowledging that the idea of “critique” is pervasive in his writings and even book titles. Further, almost all readers of Marx know he “criticizes” things, i.e., he does not “like” religion, capital, the rich, trite conversation, and so on. This has little to do with our object of study here. We need to understand how Marx deployed a form of “scientific criticism” in his method of critique, what general principles this critique represents, and what these principles tell us about Marx’s understanding of the interconnections between science, criticism, and political/moral evaluation. I have been one of the writers I referred to above who have sometimes treated the categories of Marx’s method of critique less systematically

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than possible. In one of my early writings on Marx’s method (Paolucci 2000), for instance, my discussion of speculative philosophy as a framework in which not to read Marx offered no satisfactory evidence or explanation of Marx’s critique of speculation, gave no more than a few examples, and failed to place it within the larger framework of Marx’s philosophy of science. My treatment of his method of critique in Marx’s Scientific Dialectics is more thorough in terms of use of Marx’s categories, but there I still ultimately fail in terms of systematization, with several concepts not directly connected together and discussed across 20 or so pages in two different chapters. Of course, in neither work was a systematic explanation of Marx’s method of critique the goal. Nevertheless, to the extent some review here is necessary, these past ruminations fail in completeness, systematization, as well as organizing principles for an extended explanation of Marx’s philosophy of science and its relationship to politics. These failures of mine, I believe, mirror the general weaknesses in the literature. Outline of Book This book engages the considerations above both thematically and empirically. Chapter One examines various relationships between “Science and Politics”, with a concluding focus on how Marx’s approach to the issue varies from conventional views. Chapter Two investigates Marx’s approach to “Critique and Method” as a form of inquiry where his criticism reveals political biases built into putatively scientific models and the alternatives he poses. Chapter Three, “Inquiry and Abstraction”, outlines the central categories of Marx’s methods of abstraction across his moments of inquiry (a general outline of several main threads in Marx’s Scientific Dialectic). Chapter Four, “Relational Sociology and Dialectics”, discusses how to apply Marx’s internal relations philosophy to several issues and debates in mainstream sociology. Chapter Five investigates the issue of “Teleology and Dialectic” in both natural and social science as well as Marx’s work and how his approach helps us understand issues within the sciences and historical events. Finally, Chapter Six, “Marx’s Political Science”, concludes with further thoughts the relation between science and politics in Marx’s thought and the work that remains for both social scientists and laypersons alike.

CHAPTER ONE

SCIENCE AND POLITICS Who is to decide on the limits of scientific research if not scientific research itself? Karl Marx, The Leading Article in No. 179 of the Kölnische Zeitung

Introduction The relationships between science and politics elicit multiple observations and criticisms. Nietzsche raged against forms of knowledge presented as Morality and Truth that dominate and control individuals. Though famously targeting religion, Nietzsche did not need to exaggerate in depicting philosophers and scientists as a collective ascending priesthood—Comte’s proposal for a Parisian cabal of sociologists caretaking humanity was not a metaphor. Later, following Nietzsche’s lead, Foucault traced how medical and psychiatric knowledge emerged as forms of domination from institutional arenas far removed from scientific inquiry, where all manner of violence, superstition, and quackery flourished. For his part, Marx (1991c: 26) had no doubt that there was a “scientific basis for socialism.” The use to which the Soviets put his ideas produced a Marx-in-caricature opposite. Anthropology was the progeny, in part, of the colonial system. The interchange between power relations and scientific knowledge is not one-way. A redeeming Enlightenment principle is society’s and the individual’s right (and responsibility) to demand from institutions of knowledge and power—political, religious, scientific—that they explain and justify themselves. Why do these institutions exist? From where did they come? Are they necessary social relations or just temporary historical phenomena? How can we know what any of them claim is true? Once intellectuals won a realm of public discourse pivoting on such questions, critical inquiry did not overwhelm and negate traditional powers, as each institutional sphere negotiated jurisdictional spaces with the others. And, if anything, institutions of power work to turn back meddlesome inquiries and transform the intelligentsia into a partner.

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Political entities (i.e., actors and institutions) can corrupt knowledge through censoring scientists or courting forms of research that serve their ends. Religious leaders initially repressed scientific endeavors, often violently, and many today continue to deny science’s insights. A tentative and provisional truce exists in some places but the religious are still on the attack in others, as are intellectuals in retort (e.g., Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Richard Dawkins). When religious reactionaries attain state power and when scientific findings challenge dogma, scientists are at greater risk; when scientists’ findings support doctrine, priesthoods court them, as do governments. Many Jewish, Christian, and Islamic fundamentalists reject evolution but embrace powerful armaments that science yields. Scientists help develop medicines for healing and biological weapons for killing, technology for mass communication and political-psychological techniques for audience manipulation, and tools for studying the heavens as well as those of mass surveillance. The German state drafted scientists to help facilitate the Holocaust, and the US Government, in Operation Paperclip, imported Nazi scientists after the war to become crucial figures in the US space program. Stalin supported the pseudo-science of Lycenko and purged dissenters, resulting in massive crop failure, famine, and starvation. George W. Bush’s administration blocked climate scientists from publishing research that did not serve their political-economic ends (Mooney 2005; Grant 2007). Still, social institutions of power often must negotiate the world of knowledge. Past religious leaders who calibrated their doctrines with modernity’s institutional changes survived and their religions became qualitatively new. The Catholic Church long ago jettisoned the Ptolemaic model of the universe, though not without resistance. Today, it accepts evolutionary theory. Perhaps its denial of such new forms of knowledge would make its leaders appear out of touch, dogmatic, and insular (and, it was Georges Lemaître, a Catholic priest, who, after all, proposed the Big Bang Theory). There have been other changes in its doctrines as well. Indulgences and the Latin mass only exist today in minute crevasses. Certified laypersons participate in giving out Holy Communion. In 2007, the Vatican dispatched limbo from accepted teaching, part of it for centuries. These changes make today’s Church unrecognizable to a Christian believer from medieval Europe (whose religious faith would probably be unrecognized by many Christians from the first century). This type of negotiation is not ubiquitous,

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however. In reaction to perceived corruption from liberalizing doctrines, fundamentalists of all sorts stick to their dogmas (e.g., the young Earth, creationism, the Flood, etc.), as they claim a foundation in a past that no empirical research shows ever existed, nor did, in fact, their “tradition”, which is relatively recent. Capital as a new social relation also works to institutionalize its logic and interests. Corporate leaders do not simply wait for scientists to make findings public and then reap the benefits should an opportunity arise. The business class long ago learned to put money into research and development and to fund universities, which is all the more useful when scientists willingly rent out their services. Marx examined how capitalists apply scientifically generated knowledge and technology in the production process to expand output and control labor, none-tooseldom crushing people in the process. He was no doubt hostile to the practice when done for the sake of increasing rates of surplus-value. Fredrick Winslow Taylor later celebrated and advanced his own doctrine of “scientific management.” Engineering, business, and management schools today, though often repudiating Taylor’s open supplication to capital, engage in a similar practice, studying ways to make labor costs and practices as efficient and profitable as possible, with actual human beings a secondary or tertiary concern. In learning such “sciences” one can attain a college degree and often well-paid work while healthcare and pensions are denied to the workers one supervises, and for whom one makes life-changing decisions. When corporations fund research institutions this not something necessarily suspect if capital’s representatives leave scientists alone to do their work, depending on the nature of that work, of course. Nevertheless, a great deal of mischief goes on here. Corporate managers may ask scientists to study a question that might have a practical application for their business enterprise but nothing to do with the public weal (Monsanto’s production of suicide seeds and tobacco companies’ attempts to deny their products’ harmful effects are two ready examples). Sometimes new diseases must be invented and the public induced with concern because a pharmaceutical company has a drug that produces some sort of bodily effect but does not yet have an identifiable illness with which to match it. Corporate executives try to place representatives on advisory and editorial boards of scientific journals, leaving a reasonable conclusion that they do this so that published results turn out how they wish. This corrupting influence of business

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imperatives may occur even without the intervention of corporate agents, where scientists fake or fabricate data to serve commercial interests, something more common in medical research.1 The insertion of scientific practice into the corporate-state-apparatus is not always militaristic, bold, or obvious. To become politically useful, liberal social science harnesses a language of liberation onto a technical discourse integrated with institutions founded in surveillance and control, often in terms of legal justice (jurisprudence, criminology), economic discipline (industrial arts, vocational training, management), and public supervision (social work, public administration). Liberal social science’s goal is a reform of “society” so that all groups might have an “equal opportunity.” To do what? At a basic level, equal opportunity means a chance to learn, express one’s creativity, and earn a living without suffering discrimination. This sounds unobjectionable on its surface, one reason why such disciplines enjoy legitimacy. In our world, however, this also usually means an equal opportunity to participate in capitalism, to work for someone else’s business enterprise, to move up, and to become overseers of capital’s expansion—an equal opportunity for exploitation—or working for some sector of capitalism’s state apparatus—an equal opportunity for administration. An equal opportunity to become unequal, that is, is the liberal ethos (another reason for its institutional legitimacy?).2 1 A recent meta-analysis of 18 prior surveys found that close to two-percent of scientists admitted to scientific misconduct related to faking or fabricating data while a full third admitted to questionable research practices. See Daniele Fanelli, 2009. “How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Survey Data.” PLoS ONE 4 (5): e5738. doi:10.1371/journal.pone .0005738 | URL (consulted 29 June 2010): http://www.plosone.org/article/info% 3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0005738 “A Case Study in Medical Writing.” New York Times (no date given). URL (consulted 29 June 2010): http://documents.nytimes .com/design-write-medical-writing#p=1 Richard Alleyne, “Scientists Faking Results and Omitting Unwanted Findings in Research.” The Telegraph. 4 June 2009. URL (consulted 29 June 2010): http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/ sciencenews/5438844/Scientists-faking-results-and-omitting-unwanted -findings-in-research.html 2 In an article likely to be seen by other Marxists as liberal accommodationism, Erik Olin Wright (2004: 84–85) writes: “The ideal of ‘Equality of opportunity,’ as it is conceived in much liberal egalitarian discussion of justice, involves trying to distinguish between those conditions of life for which people can reasonably be held responsible and those for which they cannot. Social justice requires trying to minimize those inequalities outside of individual control, and redistribution is one way of accomplishing this. Both UBI [Universal Basic Income] and stakeholder grants can be defended as significant steps in the direction of remedying unjust failures of such equality of opportunity. On these grounds, in fact, some people might prefer a generous

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Social administration is not the only way liberal scientists participate in power relations. Take the ethnographer. Once one adopts this epistemological perspective, he or she then observes private lives, extracts people’s memories of their experiences, documents their story, and inserts it into the intellectual stream. Stories are told, but for whom, for what ends, in what institutional moorings, for whose use and interests? Foucault argued that all of our professional discourse is married at the hip with institutions of power. No doubt, the academy, as part of a socio-political complex, intertwines with capital, its state, and all manner of power relations. What institutions do with knowledge scientists produce is, once published, out of their control. If the body of knowledge accumulated in institutions of learning is not separate from the state apparatus, is it then baseless to see a blurred line between ethnography and surveillance? Though one could easily overstate the case, it is worth considering. After all, in the Iraq War, the US military courted anthropologists to assist with those peoples conquered and occupied (and enlisted psychologists to help with “enhanced interrogation”, torture by any other name).3 This call for assistance would be nonsensical if a discursive connection not been present already. Privileges await those who defend, cover over, apologize for, or otherwise support elites and their interests. It would be exceptional if it were any other way. As a result, sciences that prove themselves serviceable to institutions of power enjoy greater prestige, resources, and

stakeholder grant system to UBI insofar as it might be thought as better embodying the responsibility ideal of equal opportunity. In some ways UBI looks like a paternalistic program in which, to avoid the risk of individuals squandering redistributed resources, the state doles out a stipend to people rather than giving them a single, large lump-sum payment. In a UBI program people can still squander their basic incomes, but they can only do so one month at a time. If avoiding paternalism is a high priority within a conception of equality of opportunity, and if equality of opportunity is the central justification for redistribution, then stakeholder grants might be preferred over UBI. “The defense of UBI offered here is not, however, primarily about social justice as such. It is about creating the conditions under which a stable move toward more equal power within class relations can be achieved.” Though Wright would likely retort that his proposal is meant to shift some social power back to working classes in a sort of Gramscian war of position, this proposal does follow the liberal line of thinking of working within the logic of capitalist class relations. 3 Values of candidness and objectivity require that we note here that Marxist scholars engage in a similar practice when they lend advice, services, and other forms of intellectual support to purportedly revolutionary parties and states. The difference, however, is that usually Marxists are open about using their scientific knowledge on behalf of some interest, an explicit goal Marx often stated with clarity and honesty.

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public and governmental support. State and corporate agencies need certain kinds of information, producing an institutional bias towards certain types of research (does not an art history professor has more substantive lessons to offer the human community than one with a degree in advertising?). Historically, this has been the hard sciences, business, management, quantitative sociology, economics, psychology, and political science. The social sciences, for instance, raised their political coin in servicing the rise of the welfare-state. In the United States, during and after the 1980s, liberal discourse faced accusations that welfare-states had failed spectacularly. To the degree to which this was true, it represented a defeat of mainstream sociology’s historical program. For critics on the right, the welfare-state’s failure was the predictable result of an ill-conceived social engineering project, though we must balance this against the degree to which the neo-liberal program attacked the welfare-state and made it lame.4 By contrast, most observers do not see academic advertising, accounting, economics, business, and political science disciplines as social engineering projects in favor of capital’s interests, telling us much about their worldview. In either case, both liberal and conservative academic traditions remain inside the political-economic structure capital has cultivated for them. Working within their socio-political institutional framework, scientists may censor themselves because of disciplinary convention, conformity, fear, cowardice, or self-preservation. Any examination of the leading journals in the social sciences finds a notable lack of attention to the dominant powers of the day, i.e., capital and its state apparatus. Inequalities of race, gender, and sexuality represent salient and significant relations of power, too, and these issues occupy a great deal of space in liberal social science discourse, as they should (though this took much too long to happen and faced significant obstacles from within hierarchical intellectual circles). Perhaps a reason for this lack of attention is that eliminating inequalities of race, gender, and sexuality would do nothing to the position of capital and its state apparatus.

4 As Postone (2005: 70) explains, “the welfare state was expanded in all western industrial countries in the 25 years after the end of World War II and then limited or partially dismantled beginning in the early 1970s. These developments occurred regardless of whether conservative or social democratic (‘liberal’) parties were in power. The general character of such developments indicates that they cannot be explained sufficiently in terms of contingent political decisions, and strongly implies the existence of general structural imperatives and constraints.”

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When social science does target capital and/or its state, there are inducements—in sociology especially—to present this in Weberian terminology (and its descendants) and to leave radical and/or Marxist analyses behind (with exceptions to be sure), to offer a more nuanced version of any critical analysis.5 In the professionalization process, one common accusation is that a sort of bias other approaches lack threatens Marxist analysis (also true for feminist criticism to a lesser extent). Colleagues and journal editors offer new faculty suggestions that “improving” their work means adopting terminology more fit with the American Sociological Review, the American Journal of Sociology, and Social Forces than with New Left Review, Critical Sociology, Historical Materialism, or Monthly Review. A cursory examination of the “top” journals in sociology finds that the nature of capital is “the name that shall not be spoken” default position for the discipline.6 The problem with Marx for professional sociology is not that he was wrong, but if he was right. If he was right, then several sociological traditions, as we shall see, have gone off the tracks. As drawing attention to this is unwelcomed, predictably and understandably so, there is not very much dialogue between these traditions.7

5 Erik Olin Wright’s (1985: 1–3) Preface to his work, Classes, comes to the brink of making this admission, though he leaves himself some room for denial as it clearly seems unflattering to him. 6 In 2008, the American Sociological Review (Volume 73) published six issues containing 43 Articles, one Presidential Address, and one Research Note. The follow list presents the most frequently used terms or subjects in titles and the number of times they appear that year: “gender”, “sex”, “men/women” (10), “ethnic/ity”, “race”, (and derivative usages), (7), “labor”, “worker/s”, “employment” (5), “earnings”, “income”, “wage/s” (4), “education” (4), “inequality”, “inequalities” (4), “identity” (3), “market/s” (3), “corporate”, “corporations” (3), “immigrants”, “migration” (3), “religion”, “religious” (3), “delinquency”, “crime”, “social control” (3). “Capitalism” (1) appears in an examination of debates on transitions in China (issue Number 4). In the same issue, “capital” appears the only time in the whole yearly volume but in reference to “ethnographic capital”, a topic that has nothing to do with capital as such (note: if a term appeared in both the main title and the subtitle, it was only counted once here; this list is not exhaustive of all the terms used in this volume). 7 Marxist scholarship also bears some blame for this. Although some of it is more ideological than scientific, there exist none-too-few legitimate attempts to reconstruct Marx’s science that are less than convincing, i.e., fear, cowardice, politics, ideology, and careerism in the academy from conventional scholars alone do not explain the relative marginalization of Marxist scholarship. This does not mean a vast of array of quality Marxist scholarship does not exist. In fact, the social sciences as a whole are far behind in keeping up with the advances Marxists have made in clarifying Marx’s philosophy of science.

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The number of scientists attracted to a line of thought is not the ultimate measure of its truth-value. No knowledge covers all it targets; there is always more still to learn, errors to uncover, and new and/ or alternative ways of seeing things. How much more remains we cannot know. Sometimes new knowledge displaces old. Other times, new knowledge may offer worthy information and challenge older traditions, but its acceptance may not yet be widely embraced by those who “count” in a discipline. Within scientific disciplines, pecking orders of authority and status develop that can lift paradigms to a status beyond their substantive insights and/or squash troublesome inquiries (the space between these relationships is where Lakatos’s observations about degenerating and progressive research programs, in part, find a home). The scientific community at large embraced neither Darwin’s nor Einstein’s insights when first published. Functionalism rose to prominence in mid-20th century American sociology because of the services its practitioners provided corporate and state policy-makers rather than on its merits alone. Personal, intellectual, and/or professional allegiances—recognized as such or not—can often shape what scientists consider standard disciplinary knowledge. This condition is not without its contradictions. An unintended outcome is that dominance of conservative and conventional social science in the academy provides a support for radical scholarship. Most universities are government-supported institutions and, as such, they must justify the expenditure of public funds on them. The business class spends not insignificant amounts of money and effort in getting politicians elected and having universities support their interests. Politicians, sensitive to such relations of political-economic influence, must maintain confidence that university life serves “the community”, though this understanding is often coterminous with the capitalist economy and state. Should Marxists and other radicals dominate the fields of sociology, economics, anthropology, and political science, among others, it is likely politicians and the business class would exert pressure on university administrators to change this, as it would appear to be money spent on scholastic inquiry unsupportive of the institutions of the day. Though they might loathe admitting it, radicals benefit from the dominance of conventional and conservative intellectuals in their respective disciplines as these groups create an umbrella of institutional legitimacy that provides them a

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space to do their work. At the same time, non-radicals can point to the presence of radicals amidst conventional scientists as evidence of a program’s embrace of inclusiveness and academic freedom. Beyond traditions and structured influence, wider social relations of inequality shape “who counts” in scientific disciplines. Those gravitating upward in scientific institutions tend to be from the same social categories as those dominating other social institutions. Individuals from privileged social strata (e.g., classes) and statuses (e.g., sex and racial categories) enjoy relative over-representation in institutions of learning (a fact undergoing change, no doubt). This is one reason why Sandra Harding (2008, 2003, 2000, 1991) argues that knowledge is a product of, among other things, those in a position to create it. Western/ Northern white men’s control of intellectual institutions results in a conglomeration of knowledge molded and shaped by their social location and interests, she argues.8 Their positions of authority allow them to subjugate knowledge of those whose social location is not as privileged. Traditional objective science is therefore not as objective as supposed. Further, Western science has developed within the project of colonialism, where core sectors harness knowledge that advances imperial oppression (well documented). Harding’s approach to “strong objectivity” is to incorporate into social science views from other social locations, such as gay, female, Third World, etc., therefore providing for more well-rounded knowledge of social reality. Harding’s critique is cogent and necessary; her conclusion is a non-sequitur. Harding’s “standpoint” approach seems akin, at first glance, to what dialecticians (Ollman 2003: 99–111) refer to as “vantage point” abstractions, though the similarity is mainly apparent. Harding argues for incorporating knowledge from the standpoint of members in categories of socially constructed groups into scientific discourse where “a world of sciences” flourishes. There is nothing wrong with this per se. Her objection to Western science has much to do with the uses to which it has been put, who has ruled scientific institutions, and their 8

“An alternative conceptual practice examines how sciences and their societies coconstitute each other as each tries to manage effectively desired interactions with its environment. Many postpositivist philosophers of science engage in just this practice, yet more rarely consider how such overtly political social projects as European expansion, the control of women’s labor, the expansion of bourgeois entitlements, or the commitment to a Liberal political philosophy have coconstituted the cognitive technical core of particular modern Western sciences” (Harding 2003: 55).

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narrow conception of what counts as method and thus valid knowledge. There is much to warrant her observations in these regards. But is it not one of critical sociology’s central points that artificial social conventions oppress people labeled gay, black, Third World, or feminine? What sort of standpoint is it when the directional lens is a social artifice, an idealist one at that? Does scientific knowledge emerge simply from collating subjectivities across geography? Harding seems to conflate formal categories within the philosophy of science (e.g., tautology, induction, and so on) with the content with which scholars fill theories (e.g., male/Western-centric theories of development have had detrimental effects on peripheral regions). Marx’s dialectical vantage point abstractions adopt the view of historico-structural relations of a social system, such as production systems or governing institutions. Individualistic social constructions are less the vantage point here than are structural relationships and processes. Vantage point abstractions can do the work Harding supports without the threat of reifying such social constructions (Harding, one must acknowledge, takes an anti-essentialist stand). Her argument assumes that male-dominated, Western scientific institutions, because power corrupts and/or shapes perceptions, need the perspectives of the powerless as a corrective. This can provide a wider social view and Harding’s call for inclusivity in science is supportable as a political call for institutional empowerment. We should not, however, confuse her position with the basis for judging the validity of scientific claims. Harding conflates the support of an expanding base of discourse with principles in the philosophy of science. Marx never worked in a factory but still told us much about what happens there and why and how to study such things (more on vantage point abstractions in later chapters). Social conditioning shapes our assumptions about social reality. Social scientists tell us that the effects of language on perception and consciousness are paradoxically so massively minute and imperceptibly powerful as to be non-disentangleable—i.e., that what we think and do is always already shaped and/or directed by language. There is a great deal of truth to the observation. Some, however, see language and culture as determining perception so much that we must rely on recourse to individual subjectivity, the personally experiential, and the construction of reality. In this version of sociology, one may survey or interview, but one no longer documents the world beyond individual perceptions, what societal members think and say about it, an

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eschewing of structural investigation for a study of personal or cultural type, opinion, and experience. Such analysts jettison historical analysis because there is no history anymore. And, if there is no history, there is no structure, just subjectivity and, therefore, we must jettison the commitment to producing knowledge in which we can have confidence as well. If anything goes, so does everything. This standpoint abdicates the charge and program Enlightenment scientists handed down. As should require no repetition (but often does), we should not estimate the validity of a unit of scientific knowledge based on cultural values, personal subjectivity, whether it makes us feel good, or if it serves some special interest we favor, a stance similar to confirmation bias but one with a political criterion built into it.9 The considerations above on relationships between science and politics are well-known across many disciplines, perhaps to the point, from a critic’s perspective, of being pedestrian. Be this as it may, these considerations serve as a point of departure for thinking about the relationship between science and politics in a way that does not target agents of corruption, factional commitments, or otherwise suspect intentions. Here we interested in these familiar observations and criticisms about political bias in science not in and of themselves but to the extent that they set in relief often overlooked, unrecognized, and/or under-theorized issues on the relationship between science and politics, a topic to which we now turn. The way one thinks about the world and thus the way one breaks apart that world into thinking units and provides these units meaning (i.e., the processes of abstraction and conceptualization) have significant political implications, whether an analyst recognizes this or not. Some corrupted science does not require intentionality toward endorsing relations of domination or catering to favored groups. Three examples will suffice to demonstrate the point. In good faith, scientists’ work may endorse an institutional framework because their abstractions take this framework for granted and

9 “If from the outset everything that contradicts your faith is error, and has to be treated as error, what distinguishes your claims from those of the Mohammedan or of any other religion? Should philosophy, in order not to contradict the basic tenets of dogma, adopt different principles in each country, in accordance with the saying, ‘every country has its own customs’? Should it believe in one country that 3 × 1 = 1, in another that women have no souls, and in a third that beer is drunk in heaven?” (Marx 1975i: 24).

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go no further, failing to incorporate what makes a system both unique and different from other systems, as well as its origins. When this occurs, that is, when social scientists construct models of specific systems as general abstractions outside of historical development, then one of two things, often both, tend to result. First, the power relations characterizing such a system appear as products of a natural social condition, and thus such scientists tacitly endorse those same power relations, which the language and concepts of traditional objectivity often mask. Second, general abstractions can in fact make the central power relations of a system disappear from the models one constructs, thus also a tacit endorsement of those same relations. For example, consider how functionalist versus Marxist discourse conceptualizes one form of political power, where the former might speak of “a governing system” and the latter “the capitalist state.” The term “a governing system” is pitched as a general abstraction and when applied to a specific form of power it makes that form of power appear as a normal product of institution building any and all societies must do. The Marxist conception, conversely, emphasizes productive and political relationships in terms of capitalism as a specific type of society, where political power is a convergence of class-state dynamics, especially as it is connected to the notion and reality of class struggle. These are very different starting points for inquiry and lead to very different types of analysis and conclusions. On the other hand, even if the researcher does not take the institutional framework for granted, poorly carved abstractions can have political biases built in where an analyst not need be a “partisan hack” to produce knowledge that endorses the powers-that-be. For example, an abstraction may leave out some information entirely, such as conceptualizing social class as a product of household income alone, a method that tells us nothing of the distribution of ownership of productive resources in capitalist society. In such a situation, the central relations of the system—capital and labor—disappear into upper-, middle-, and lower- classes, or worse—in the more common social convention in public discourse—into the rich and the poor, the latter whom the Bible says will always be with us. Here, if traditional categories obscure from view capital and labor as the system’s central class relation, this renders our knowledge of them and all they entail more elusive. In this way, a seemingly “neutral” taxonomy of class based on income has a clear political function in support of both the capitalist system and the class that benefits most from it (more in Chapter Four).

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Finally, one can find putatively scientific discourse that does not take the system for granted and recognizes the central power/class relationships within it in its core concepts. Here, however, the accepted discourse simply accepts these power relationships in an uncritical light and/or sides with the dominant forms of power and control. Though sometimes such analysts are actively and intentionally partisan, they need not necessarily be. One only need internalize the institutional framework that prevails in their society within their own world-view. This is something Peter Berger, directly in-line with Marx’s assumptions, argues is the normal and predictable consequence of living in any society. Many economists, for instance, are under no illusions that capitalists dominate our society, that capitalists have an inordinate ability to direct state policy, and that laboring classes bear a disproportionate amount of burden and brunt in such a system. However, for them, this is the best of all possible worlds, either because it is a product of human nature (the more conservative stance), or now that capitalism is established we must accept it as a matter of pragmatism, even if it needs reform (the more liberal view). Both views share the idea that capitalism is the highest form of social organization and humans are unlikely to produce a system that surpasses it. In all three cases above, when such abstractions become the standard paradigm for a discipline’s practitioners, its political biases become the accepted form of discourse.10 Nevertheless, scholarship done in good faith might be critical of the current framework or at least challenge its assumptions. The list is

10 Though standards require scientists to do better, those purporting to produce scientific knowledge often have endorsed relations of class, racial, and gender inequality of their society. For instance, as Stephen Jay Gould (1981) as well as Joseph Graves (2001) amply document, racists can envelop political views with the aura of science just as can self-identified social progressives and racist conclusions might even unconsciously influence the collection and analysis of data. Many practitioners in the early racial sciences, especially biology, accepted cultural assumptions about European superiority and managed their data to make them fit such assumptions, often, as Gould concludes, unintentionally. The social and natural sciences have slowly emerged from the corrupting influence such social conditions have had on their pursuit of knowledge. Today, with further applications of scientific method, the biological sciences have not only debunked past racist science but fundamentally challenge the assumption that discreet races exist at all. That the scientific method can move back and forth between political alliances should make one wary of making those alliances the determination of scientific validity (the eugenics movement claimed both scientific and progressive mantels, after all).

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long, with some examples more well-known than others. Epicurus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Curie, and Crick and Watson all changed the way we view our relation to the physical world, as did challenging insights from Wollstonecraft, Freud, Kinsey, De Beauvoir, Milgrim, Zimbardo, Friedan, and even Humphries about the social world. Each provoked hostile reactions, as well as praise and support. If the reactionaries got their way, the insights of these scholars would have never made it into their respective canons. Marx’s materialist, historical, and political-economic studies, too, have left indelible marks on the social sciences, though sometimes in ways he might have found perplexing or displeasing. If biological inquiry ceased because of its past errors, by definition, it would no longer be an object of our study, except perhaps as something studied in the history of the sciences. Today, Marxist thought is continuing on a long road of progress, overcoming past errors and missteps while keeping what previous theorists (Marx especially) got right. One thing we need to get right is (what one might call) “Marx’s politics of abstraction”, or his approach to the relationship between science and political relations through methods of criticism, research, and analysis. To do this, we must grasp Marx’s categories of criticism relevant to the philosophy of science (Chapter Two) and how these categories inform his ontological assumptions and epistemological practices (Chapters Three through Five). Additionally, we must investigate the implications these have for forms of scientific and social knowledge. This topic requires additional attention from Marxist scholars. David Harvey’s (1996) Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference, for instance, refers to this concept and addresses Marxian concerns, but he does not systematically reconstruct the categories of critique Marx offers nor does he organize a systematic analysis of science and political relations through these categories.11 He later returns to this idea in 11 “They can either ignore the contradictions, remain within the confines of their own particularist militancies … or they can treat the contradictions as a fecund nexus to create a more transcendental and universal politics.… But any such discourse has to transcend the narrow solidarities and particular affinities shaped in particular places— the preferred milieu of most grass roots environmental activism—and adopt a politics of abstraction capable of reaching out across space, across the multiple environmental and social conditions that constitute the geography of difference in a contemporary world that capitalism has intensely shaped to its own purposes. And it has to do this without abandoning its militant particularist base. “The abstractions cannot rest solely upon a moral politics dedicated to protecting the sanctity of Mother Earth. It has to deal in the material and institutional issues of

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an analysis of Raymond Williams’s approach to the tension between “militant particularism” versus “global ambition” rather than, however, Marx’s philosophy of science (Harvey 2001: 163-187).12 Though not a Marxist tract, Paul Antoine Brink (2005: 161-162) describes “the politics of abstraction” as “an attempt to create an abstract justification that is independent of any and all doctrinal views and that asks participants to confine their deliberations to those terms.” This is closer to the view I want to discuss but lacks the critical component in Marx's approach. Patrick Murray (1988: 82) sums the issue up this way: Marx’s theory of scientific knowledge … rides the wake of Hegel’s radicalization of Kant’s conception of the unity of human reason and the consequent dialectic of theoretical and practical reason. Scientific knowledge encompasses the whole dialectic. This means that Marx’s adoption of Hegelian critiques of various dispositions of moral consciousness, taken with his own sundry critiques of contemporaneous and past practical philosophies and his own positive concept of practical philosophy, are no mere asides to his theory of scientific knowledge. They are coconstitutive of scientific knowledge for Marx. This reading of Marx cuts against the grain of those interpreters who think that Marx had a positivistic conception of science, constituted in utter abstraction from practical reason. (emphasis in the original)

how to organize production and distribution in general, how to confront the realities of global power politics and how to displace the hegemonic powers of capitalism not simply with dispersed, autonomous, localized, and essentially communitarian solutions … but with a rather more complex politics that recognizes how environmental and social justice must be sought by a rational ordering of activities at different scales” (Harvey 1996: 400). 12 In his work, Harvey does address several issues in Marxian thought, though not Marx’s categories of critique in particular. In terms of the politics of abstraction, Harvey (2001: 172–173) explains the issue that concerns him: “Ideals forged out of the affirmative experience of solidarities in one place get generalized and universalized as a working model of a new form of society that will benefit humanity. This is what Williams means by ‘militant particularism’ and he sees it as deeply ingrained in the history of progressive socialism in Britain as well as ‘a most significant part of the history of Wales.’ It is not hard to generalize the point … many, if not all, forms of political engagement have their grounding in a militant particularism based in particular structures of feeling…. The move from tangible solidarities understood as patterns of social life organized in affective and knowable communities to a more abstract set of concepts that would have universal purchase involves a move from one level of abstraction—attached to place—to another level of abstractions capable of reaching out across space. And in that move, something was bound to be lost…. The shift from one conceptual world, from one level of abstraction to another, can threaten that sense of value and common purpose that grounds the militant particularism achieved in particular places.”

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In the decidedly unique critical component of Marx’s abstractions, he faults others’ frameworks not simply or only for their logico-scientific problems but also because of the political biases they build into knowledge. Marx’s abstractions thus direct us toward a sounder and more sophisticated notion of science while at the same time informing our political knowledge through this same process. As Murray (1988: 225) later explains, “The positive way of stating Marx’s critique of transcendent morality is to say that the science of the actual social world is also the critique of that world” and, I hasten to add, a critique of its forms of knowledge and their political biases. This is the politics of abstraction, a theme this book investigates in detail. What is Knowledge? Without delving into a philosophical treatise on this question, I propose that we view knowledge as claims of fact, ideas, and/or concepts people develop to help them understand their experience in and of the world. As such, knowledge must make sense of people’s experience if it is to function socially. Knowledge that is consonant with the givenness of social things we call “commonsense,” which a rough match between appearances and their explanations often marks. This match only need be approximate and need not in fact be either logical or factually accurate (though sometimes it is). Knowledge too unwieldy and complicated to be useful in daily life will not survive for very long or reach only a limited audience. Social knowledge must do practical things, give meaning to life’s events, and inform social action. Such knowledge might be an edible taxonomy (what counts as food), a cookbook (technique and variety), a car repair guide (transportation), a Farmer’s Almanac (when to plant crops), a moral liturgy (how to treat others), a music sheet (dance, art, and creativity), or a totem (a history or universal order). These forms of knowledge develop in the daily (re)creation of social life. As such, they appear neutral and true to their practitioners (and this is not to say they never are). Nevertheless, what we accept with a level of certainty in one period appears as the most obvious of errors in others. Sometimes cultural commonsense—i.e., what everybody knows—fails us. No one believes in Zeus, Hera, Thor, or Bel anymore, but believers worship today’s monotheistic gods with similar conviction. The Devil does not cause mold on bread. Amulets do not ward off disease. Imbalanced humors

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do not cause illness. At the same time, if commonsense needed a science to confirm it before putting it into action, humans would fail in producing useful knowledge alongside the nonsensical. Avoid fruits the animals will not eat, squirrel away supplies for winter, and make hay while the sun shines. Other things only few people observe but others cannot accept their existence because current forms of knowledge (popular and/or scientific) cannot explain them, or at least the proposed explanations are too fantastic. At one time holding the status some accord to UFOs today—i.e., very few see them and those who report them are seen as suspect—for all practical purposes meteorites really are rocks falling from the sky, a fact about which the medieval mind could not fathom a logical explanation, lacking, as they did, an adequate understanding of the cosmos. Knowledge is a product of practice, observation, abstraction, and analysis. To abstract means to carve out a part or parts of reality in order to refine an understanding of the relationships and processes that make up that reality and allow it to occur the way it does. All knowledge production necessarily involves abstracting some things into view and others out. By definition, we cannot know everything about everything in one simple framework. All knowledge units are partial. Scientists must be comfortable with uncertainty, with the assumption that even if we do not or cannot know something today this does not mean such things are forever unknowable. We must not lose either patience or confidence in scientific commitments. Later scientists could not test several of Einstein’s theories until someone invented the requisite technology to do so generations after his death. We must also not resort to the fantastic, the otherworldly, the speculative, and/or the unverifiable when gaps in our knowledge are obdurate and resist our overcoming them.13 The abstractions used to know the world open certain details to investigation but close off access to others (even if only temporarily). Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, for instance, implies that the measurement of an object’s “speed” closes off information to knowledge

13 One fallacy that sometimes arises in both religious and scientific circles is the “god of the gaps” form of reasoning (coined by evangelist Henry Drummond). Here, when a commentator is unable to explain a set of empirical observations, they appeal to “god” (or “satan”) to explain what, as of yet, current scientific models cannot. For physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson’s explanation of this fallacy, see URL (consulted 9 June 2010): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vrpPPV_yPY

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of its exact “location.” The concept of exact location presupposes an object frozen in space/time; to have speed is to move and thus never to be in one location over any interval of time. Neither unit of information—speed or location—is “right” making the other “wrong”, but rather both reveal certain aspects of the whole.14 A Zen tea ceremony, its practitioners claim, can provide one a certain insight about living. However, what one does in the ritual (removal of shoes, bowing, silence, making of the tea, ceremonial passing of the cup, etc.) means that other parts of human reality, knowledge, activity, etc., one abstracts out. One does not learn how to have sex, plant vegetables, or play sport at a tea ceremony; neither do cookbooks instruct one on how to study astronomy, though both are valuable sources of knowledge and both exhibit systematic inquiry. In being systematic about knowledge production, one may wish to combine a variety of methods and approaches and construct a pastiche of cross-cutting discourses, but the more one travels away from systematic, experimental, and causal thinking, the more their discourse leaves the realm of science. What is Science? As I have thrown the word science around, perhaps a few words about what I take it to be are in order. Science involves making a case that an event or set of empirically measurable events happened or happens regularly—debates over nomothetic versus idiographic approaches to history aside—and providing plausible explanations as to how/why, where the criteria are systematic data collection, logical consistency in analytical procedures, the isolation of verifiable causal factors, and soundness of theoretical-explanatory frameworks. Scientific work is empirical in that it makes general statements about systematically observed occurrences and attempts to explain such things by piecing together what made them possible. A scientist’s task is to uncover faulty (misdirected, fallacious, spurious, nonsensical) explanations of observations and to offer more plausible, empirically verifiable, logically consistent explanations of the same, explanations that have not yet 14 I wish to elide the debates physicists have on this issue. Rather, I only intend to point out that—in their colloquial usage at least—“speed” refers to the distance traveled between two points over an interval of time while “location” refers to a specific point in space without regard to distance traveled over time.

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been given (or have been denied, lost, or forgotten) or that confirm prior explanatory attempts. To a considerable degree, science—as the progressive uncovering of valid knowledge via a de facto reduction in error in assertions about relationships in time/space—“works.” Meteorologists tell us that water condensation in the air, given certain other variables such as temperature, barometric pressure, etc. will result in rain. It will also result in other things that are both similar and different: snow, sleet, hail, fog, and so on. By removing guesswork over atmospheric conditions and errors in predicting meteorological activity through studying changing, measured, and observed variables, long-lasting and relatively successful explanations and predictions of daily weather developed. This progress in knowledge production advanced through reducing its errors by matching data up with predictive models developed over a long period of systematic inquiry. The reader may feel incredulous at this example, given the cultural trope of ridiculing meteorology’s imperfect predictive history, evidence of which perhaps currently exists outside his or her window. The point is useful upon inspection. First, meteorologists have uncovered explanatory variables as to the weather’s gyrations and their science has advanced over the last several centuries. As technology grows more sophisticated, so do meteorologists’ predictive successes. Second, when it comes to an appropriate natural science analogy for social science, our level of uncertainty about social relations is similar to that of atmospheric dynamics. Variables in each can be determined and measured as to allow short-, medium-, and long-term estimations. However, these variables are as such that perfect predictability is not possible, or likely. And, the further into the future a prediction the more our confidence in it must reduce. This does not, however, render any such scientific endeavor inert or empty. The principle of precision traditionally requires clearly defining variables and setting down conditions of causality. This leads to testability. Describing basic ranges in observed patterns with few variations in central premises leads to elegance in explanation. A scientist should be able to define and verify each—variables in the abstract and their representative variations in the concrete—through controlling conditions, where repeated applications support or deny central premises. Premises once accepted fade away as they fail to account for new, often anomalous, observations and/or when new premises offer a greater level of

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precision and predictability. As Kuhn (1970) reminded us, new knowledge replaces older knowledge (which likely replaced still older knowledge) and paradigms shift (not always because of gaps in the data and theories available to explain them; sometimes paradigms shift because the number of scientists attracted to new ideas flood into a discipline and/or because of political alignments/realignments in intellectual institutions, two conditions that often influence one another). If new knowledge always and again displaces old, is this not a contradiction at the very heart of science? Scientific knowledge supposedly always progressively builds upon what we knew in the past, and through debate and continued data collection, new and more elegant theories emerge. From the viewpoint of the infinite dynamic in this learning curve, does this leave us with a problematic conclusion based on two interconnected inferences? That is, (1) should we never have confidence in anything we claim to know at any one point in time because (2) we will paradigm shift ad infinitum? The former assumption leads to a dogmatic conservatism where science loses its progressive spirit and stagnates; the latter a nihilistic relativism, equally dogmatic. Is science in fact progressive? The preceding comments do not necessarily lead to agnosticism or relativism, where we ultimately can know nothing given the shifting terrain of knowledge and certainty. We can think of scientific advances and thus our understanding of the world as proceeding on something of an asymptote. In such a configuration, a line symbolizes the growing magnitude of some variable and starts on a slow, barely perceptible but nonetheless incremental rise and, over time, the shape of its curve accelerates steeply as it approaches some outer limit. Though this line gets ever-closer to this limit, it never reaches it as it continues its upward advance. From a distance, it might appear as if the asymptote is closing its gap, and it in fact is. However, upon closer inspection, say the difference between using a magnifying glass versus being across the room, the gap will appear further away than initially—meaning the size of the gap is relative to perspective. Even with this relativity, the distance the asymptote closes remains real. We can think of knowledge production the same way. As science progresses we know ever more. But upon closer inspection, there remains a gap we will never close completely, even if we make advances. It is important to add qualifications to this model of scientific progress. If the asymptote represents those segments of reality we can explain, sometimes new discoveries and shifting paradigms move it

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backward, where we must discard older frameworks and what scientists once thought explained requires rethinking. We do not have to think of this as retrogression, however. Removing faulty theories from a canon is progress, even with a regressing line of explained variance (for discussion on the role of proving hypotheses and theories wrong in scientific progress, see Feynman 1999). Though we sometimes discard prior explanations of empirical data, continual pursuit of a misleading research agenda misplaces time, energy, and resources (this is often the argument against philosopher’s stones and perpetual motion machines; however, this was also the initial argument against germ theories of disease and plate tectonics). As such, a paradigm’s dominance or its shift does not always happen for sound reasons. Marx has been buried an uncountable number of times only to be resurrected again and again as scholars have refuted interpretations and refutations coming from inside and outside the Marxian camp. Though paradigms may shift, if this happens for reasons lacking a sound scientific basis, they may shift back. At the same time, what appears as progress might have retrogressive social outcomes when placed in certain socio-political-economic relations, such as unlocking the secret of the atom or the development of the internal combustion engine. Progress is at the heart of the notion of science as a self-correcting method of closing the gaps in knowledge production as much as possible. Not all science is predictive, however. In its relational moment, in social inquiry at least, scientists build integrated models of innerconnections between empirically observed phenomena and establish which empirical observations correspond to which innerconnections. The use of logical-conceptual frameworks by which one chooses to eliminate other information—where the goal is to build synthesized and unified models that fit with what one takes as facts (the acts of abstraction and analysis)—makes all predictive systems, no matter how well-informed, partial. Though prediction might be possible under a relational science, its goal is describing and explaining real concrete social processes and relationships they contain and those that contain them, i.e., the interactive innerconnections between things that typify a subject matter. The task here is to develop a series of descriptions of a range of action and practice and to develop, through research, a model of the multiple factors that account for observed regularities and their transformations over time and the transformations in which they participate. In this sense, relational science shares

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with conventional-progressive models of science the concern with accounting for change, including causal relationships and processes. In the past several decades, an onslaught of criticism has been directed at the problems of scientific practice, whether these problems be political corruption (e.g., Grant 2007) or criticism of the possibility of whether scientific knowledge is in fact produced in a detached and objective manner (e.g., Latour and Woolgar 1979; Woolgar 1988). Have we reached, as some claim, a postmodern place where we should embrace our inability to produce knowledge worthy of the moniker “true”? One principle of science is that truth-value does not rest on the shores of subjective interpretation. The sun does not orbit an unmovable earth, no matter how it appears, a truth for which Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo risked their safety and comfort. Sociologists tell us that without communicative interaction, there would be no social organization nor would the traits we associate with being human manifest themselves. Observations of feral children leave us no conclusion other than language acquisition (or otherwise some form of symbolic exchange) is essential for developing cognitive and social skills and it is impossible for children to learn their cultural morality without these. And, if there are real events and social relationships that thwart and/or determine the acquisition of cultural morality, then any religion’s purported claim of universal moral-individuality is an impossibility. As a result, both natural and social science de-center “man” and challenge assumptions prevailing for the greater part of human history. No matter how uncomfortable knowledge makes us and regardless of the fact we do not have ready-made answers to all the challenges scientific knowledge presents us, there are things we can know with a level of certainty. This principle we should never abandon. Though we should embrace the dialectic between certainty and uncertainty, a paradox exists in sociological knowledge as a scientific endeavor. Sociology tells us the external world shapes our thoughts and actions often in ways about which we remain unaware. If social forces into which we are born shape our assumptions about life, reality, morality, action, and motive, then what Mills (1975) called social science’s promise is the analytical distance it can provide from these external influences and its assistance in helping us see our place and ideas within a sweeping historical context. Our certainty about our certainty is never the same once we grasp this point of view. As social scientists, as opposed to philosophers or priests, we must be comfortable with this uncertainty. Nevertheless, the curve of scientific

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progress at times overcomes this fluctuating ambiguity. If it did not, there would be no reason to continue to practice science at all. Science and Politics Noam Chomsky (1987) argues that intellectuals have the responsibility to expose lies and tell the truth. Though possible, it is nevertheless debatable whether social science can construct moral and/or ethical rules, as Max Weber long ago argued (and something that today Sam Harris asserts we can in fact do). Is science as a method of selfcorrecting systematic inquiry outside of these areas of human knowledge? To the extent it is, scientists must be cautious and circumspect when speaking on moral and/or ethical issues, though they must not necessarily remain silent either. In fact, staking out political stances has been common. Once the pretense of disinterested inquiry fell away in social science, so did the line between assertions about what does happen or has happened in the world versus assertions about what should or should not happen. Should we evaluate the truth-value of a unit of knowledge based on whether it conforms to our political desires, such as assisting in liberating the working class or women? Placing political aspirations at the forefront of our analytical lens is less unscientific or illogical as it is a-scientific and a-logical. Alternatively, should we separate out in our analytical thinking, even if momentarily, statements about what happens, or has happened, in the world and why, from statements asserting moral claims about these events and/or what should be done about them? Is there a third alternative to these poles between which traditional debates have oscillated? Marx’s embrace of communism, in one account, followed from his scientific conclusions.15 In this view, political criticisms and viewpoints do not have to be products of preference but stem from a systematic study of the world, its history, and the knowledge systems both have contained. Abstractions thus straddle scientific and political discourse,

15 According to Marx’s son-in-law Paul Lafargue (1890–1891: 72), “Although Marx sympathized profoundly with the sufferings of the working classes, it was not sentimental considerations but the study of history and political economy that led him to communist views. He maintained that any unbiased man, free from the influence of private interests and not blinded by class prejudices, must necessarily come to the same conclusions.”

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given that the way one carves out their abstractions has profound political implications, something that Marx saw all too clearly (as we will see). This is why the study of the political requires a science of the social.16 To return to a point made earlier, though commonsense knowledge can adapt to new scientific knowledge, there is no guarantee it will keep up or that there will be a correspondence between them. Marx (1971a: 817) held the view that “all science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided.” To the extent he is correct, any scientific knowledge that contradicts the given appearances of social life is capable of challenging conventions and can have radical political implications (intended or not) for individuals, established social relations such as classes, states, and churches, as well as discourses such as schools of thought, jealously protected paradigms, and political programs. Anthropological data reveals that various cultural explanations for pregnancy include gods or spirits at work, the mixing of semen with menstrual blood, and the growth of the fetus inside the female as if the semen contained a small person (Gregersen 1994). Each of these beliefs service the cultural context in which they are found, but in a society that embraces a scientific framework such beliefs would have to give way to other knowledge once uncovered, killing gods in the process. When scientists toss out old knowledge, it is often because new explanations make better sense of the same observations. One did not need a political program for reform to discover that sex makes babies, that the Earth orbits the Sun not the reverse, or that E = mc2. At the same time, new knowledge may have massive political fallout, profoundly shaping the ruling relations of a culture, often producing a reactionary backlash. Most people do not embrace arguments that many social problems spring from the same institutional framework cultural leaders teach us to celebrate, making modernity’s ruling relation—i.e., capital—into our society’s god.17 A science’s politics thus lies, in part, in 16 “The political relationships of men are of course also social, societal relationships, like all other relations between men and men. All questions that concern the relations of men with each other are therefore also social questions” (Marx 1976b: 321; emphases in the original). 17 Some might read this claim as a metaphor, which is only partially accurate. It is meant here as somewhere between both literal and metaphorical. For real examples of the literalness of treating capital as if a god, examine the history of “Prosperity Theology” and also see the emerging story about “The Family”, a group of US politicians guided by an extreme form of Christianity that explicitly caters to the interests

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the responsive social practices it invites from those exposed to its methods and findings. Knowledge aspiring to a science can confirm, deny, or bring into question assumptions and widely, deeply held beliefs about the human condition, our past no less than our present or future and, as such, knowledge is always political. Though science has political implications, it does not follow that articulated political programs are necessary for a sound scientific analysis. Conversely, lack of attention to power relations is a political bias, not a neutral or objective posture. As conventional sociology does not require that capitalism be a focal point of research, Marxists are correct to criticize analyses that overlook this elephant in the room. Except for very few, our daily lives intertwine with the logic and power of capital, and so it is confounding that mainstream sociologists hurl accusations of bias towards Marxist scholars trained on exposing capital’s social domination and the effects it unleashes. Who we are, what are our conditions of existence, and what possibilities remain open to us are the root of both social scientific questions and political praxis. We cripple ours intellect and action if we ignore what capital has in store for us while also providing the class that serves as its caretaker and beneficiary a powerful cloak. Continually testing and evaluating assumptions, science, in the game of removing error systematically, is both radical and conservative at the same time. Science is radical when it overturns our commonsense notions of reality. Showing Earth not to be the center of the universe knocked down a pillar of Church power. Physics today challenges our commonsense understanding of discreet boundaries between objects and any notion of a singular and objective measure of time. At the same time, one of science’s greatest assets is its conservative care and cautiousness in collecting data and drawing conclusions. Scientists should not overreach. For instance, in Marxist scholarship there is a tendency always to ask if the next crisis capitalism experiences is the crisis that will bring its demise, a practice dating as far back as Marx himself and one that has often moved critics to question the acumen of his and his supporters’ theoretical bases. Be all of this as it may, conventional scientists rarely ask such questions and often

of the very wealthy. See: “ ‘The Family’: Fundamentalism, Friends in High Places”, interview with author Jeff Sharlet on Fresh Air (WHYY/National Public Radio), 1 July 2009. URL (consulted 29 June 2010): http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story .php?storyId=106115324

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rubber-stamp the social relations upon which powerful groups rest, people Frederick Engels (1909: 10) called “mere theorizers on public affairs … only on the side of reactionaries” who “are not even theoretical scientists, but simply apologists of reaction.” Engels’s words retain their resonance in our day no less than his. Cultural managers filter from economics departments and advertising firms into political parties and the corporate media with the explicit goal of manipulating public discourse. Intellectuals often readily admit previous systems contained apologists of class power (e.g., today’s economist looking back at defenders of slavery or feudalism), but in their minds this is certainly not their current role (e.g., economists’ approach to capitalism today). Have we indeed moved that far way from Comte’s vision? Done well, science is both progressive and relational. Done poorly, scientific discourse tends toward narrowly conceived doctrinal rigidity, much like a priesthood’s. If I have caricatured social science above, it was not to dismiss it outright. In fact, many strands of sociology and its cousins are vital sources of insight. This does not mean, however, sociology’s progressive spirit has always remained faithful to the scientific aspirations and principles with which the positivists and radicals of the Enlightenment endowed their project. In fact, it is positivist natural science that has been, more often than not, progressive in terms of building upon the knowledge won in the past. We know more about nature and the physical world than ever. In social science, there has been some progress, but a large amount of time and effort here goes into endless debates, reformulations, rediscovering wheels invented long ago, and even static, radical, and stultifying skepticism. Relational models in the physical sciences are receiving increasing attention, though whether a post-Einstein paradigm shift is underway is unclear. Given their data and concepts, social sciences are arguably now better prepared than before to build relational models. In this, we must follow Marx’s lead, as his relational approach to science still has much to teach us about the political for our own research in at least two respects. First, we may build political bias into our abstractive frameworks, whether we realize this or not. Second, we must create frameworks that respect the conventions of sound science, and these often reveal relations of power in a critical light. Pursuing these issues requires that we understand upon what basis Marx builds his epistemological principles. The first step here is grasping his method of critique of problematic forms of knowledge production, a subject for the next chapter.

CHAPTER TWO

CRITIQUE AND METHOD Marx’s Method of Critique: False and True Criticism Many commentators acknowledge that Marx offered many “critiques” (“critique” appears in many of his works’ titles), though usually in terms of his criticism of traditional political economy, of exploitation, of capital, of modern society, and so on (McCarthy 1988; Murray 1988; Oakley 1983, 1985; D. Sayer 1979). As Postone (2009: 307) astutely observes: “the object of Marx’s critique … has frequently been taken as the standpoint of that critique.” Though Marx’s categories for “scientific criticism” sometime receive attention, it is usually in reference to his criticism of specific theorists’ positions and/or of social conditions (e.g., see Dupré 1983; Arnold 1990) more so than the philosophy of science and its relation to social practice. This question receives attention, no doubt, though too little such that is has yet to be fully investigated. If, as Teeple (1984: 19) points out, “Marx makes no systematic presentation of his method of critique, thereby obliging those interested in his method to ‘uncover’ it”, then we need a systematic analysis of the analytical principles Marx subjects to scientific criticism (and his alternatives) as well as an explanation of how these critiques (and Marx’s alternatives) apply to various social scientific approaches as well as the political fallout to which he points.1 Given that “Reason … [is] not always in a reasonable form” (Marx 1975l: 143), Marx (1975c: 91) tells us to avoid “vulgar” criticism (i.e., dogmatic and thus false) and that “true” criticism examines the “inner” and “specific” logic of theoretical positions. In true criticism, negative (principles to reject) and positive (principles to adopt) critiques assist self-clarification of investigative priorities. Though Marx (1985d: 33) writes that because Proudhon “never grasped really scientific dialectics 1 In the following pages, several elements of Marx’s criticisms toward political economy and other thinkers require attention by necessity. However, the goal here is less to analyze, for example, his criticism of Adam Smith’s theories specifically but more to demonstrate that Marx’s criticism of Smith tells us something about all theories that work with similar assumptions.

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he never got further than sophistry”, we lack a systematic work on “scientific dialectics” from him. Many of his thoughts on criticism’s service to method are scattered across his texts but also, importantly, his letters and essays for less popular works. As piecing together Marx’s moments of critique tells us a great deal about his philosophy of science, locating the categories of critique—i.e., false, true/negative, true/positive—Marx designates in order to organize principles he subjects to criticism is a valuable exercise in reconstructing his research method and clarifying some of the connections he sees between science and politics. True Criticism: Negative Critique Sometimes Marx’s negative critique relates to general scientific practice. In an 1846 letter to Pavel Vasilyevich Annenkov, he warns against “dogmatic” or “doctrinaire” approaches (Marx 1982b: 100, 103). This was equally true for the 1845 critique of the Young Hegelians in The Holy Family. To Weydemeyer, in 1851, Marx (1982a: 402) advises him to estimate a theory based on its “substance” rather than “casting suspicions on [an author’s] civil character.” These principles provide entry into those specific to Marx’s scientific dialectics and his criticisms of other approaches, which include mysticism (as found in metaphysics, ahistoricism, and false universalization), inversion (as found in idealism and reductionism), speculative philosophy and a priori conceptualizations, and imprecision (obscurantism, incommensurability, and tautology). I must note two things before continuing. First, the broadest umbrella under which to couch Marx’s method of critique is as a way for him to distinguish and analyze the differences between appearance and essence, where a proper scientific dialectic allows him to penetrate beyond the former and reach into the latter. Marxian scholarship as a whole generally acknowledges the issue of appearance/essence and thus reinvestigating it here can only be superfluous. The issues that do need elaboration, on the other hand, are the philosophy of science categories Marx mobilizes to accomplish the needed penetration and the alternatives he proposes to standard approaches. Second, the categories examined here at times overlap, as one leads to another or one or more share similar problems. Such analyses result in the occasional repetition of one concept in the elaboration of another

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(suggesting their forward and backward links). Though these categories fall into no natural order, here I organize them where they hang together more or less in line on their shared concerns, placing them in a framework that only partially suggests a hierarchy of importance. Mysticism is perhaps the overriding theme in Marx’s criticisms, so it goes first. Mysticism: Metaphysics and Ahistoricism (including False Universalization) In his 1843 Critique, Marx (1975c: 12) says Hegel’s “stylistic peculiarity” was “a product of mysticism”, i.e., a conceptualization that fundamentally distorts its object(s) of inquiry. Shortly thereafter, in his 1844 piece in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbucher, Marx (1975l: 144) argues for “analysing the mystical consciousness that is unintelligible to itself, whether … in a religious or a political form.” He similarly warns Annenkov (in 1846) against “invent[ing] mystical causes” and “highflown expressions, such as universal reason, God, etc.” and “eternal laws”, things he describes as “phrases in which commonsense is lacking” (Marx 1982b: 96). As mystical knowledge misapprehends how to analyze reality, knowledge starting from here cannot produce valid conclusions except by accident. Therefore, in The German Ideology, Marx and Engels (1976: 28) assert that in Hegel’s tradition, “Not only in its answers, even in its questions there was a mystification.” For Marx, any form of errant reasoning, whether about abstract ideas or concrete conditions of life, distorts the realities we must grasp and thus produces untrustworthy knowledge. Marx rejected metaphysics—i.e., assertions about invisible, intangible, transhistorical, self-acting forces—as one form of mysticism. By definition, transhistorical forces cross all time and space, a necessarily metaphysical construct in that such a force posits “eternal formulas without origin or progress” (Marx 1982b: 102). If a social force has either origin or progress, then it is not truly transhistorical. Further, self-acting forces work on their own logic outside of human agency. Any science built on such an assumption relies on non-falsifiable assertion over data collection and verification for establishing its purported truth-value. Marx objects to metaphysics in many places. In his 1846 letter to Annenkov, he criticizes approaches where “abstractions are themselves

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formulas which have been slumbering in the bosom of God the Father since the beginning of the world” (Marx 1982b: 100). Metaphysics are not restricted to Hegel’s theo-dialectical abstractions. In his critique of political economy, Marx (1992c*: 28), accepts the view that the “old economists misunderstood the nature of economic laws when they likened them to the laws of physics and chemistry”, in that natural science methods have a role in social-dialectical inquiry but assuming a parallel and universal law-like regularity in social processes is not it.2 This view is expressed in his 1877 letter to Otechestvenniye Zapiski, where Marx (1989a: 200) rejected interpretations “that metamorphose my historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe into a historico-philosophical theory of general development, imposed by fate on all peoples, whatever the historical circumstances in which they are placed.” If we include his 1837 letter to his father, this view against metaphysics crosses more than 40 years of Marx’s life. In seeing all of history as unfolding through laws that are timeless self-organizing categories of causation and existence, metaphysical propositions tend toward the ahistorical. Metaphysically, history is one thing, not many events. In a historical materialist outlook, history contains sets of changing social relations with emergent and dissolving causal forces. For example, “The question of property assumes different forms according to the different levels of industry in general and according to its particular level of development in the different countries” (Marx 1976b: 322). In materialism, Marx found common cause with Feuerbach, who he nevertheless criticized because he “never arrives at the actually existing, active men, but stops at the abstraction ‘man’ and gets no further” (Marx and Engels 1976: 41). Because his materialism and historicism do not inform one another, “As far as Feuerbach is a materialist he does not deal with history, and as far as he considers history he is not a materialist” (Marx and Engels 1976: 40–41). When materialism and/or historicism fail to incorporate the other, they end up mystifying their subject matter with abstract metaphysical propositions (more below). These concerns extend from Marx’s criticisms of traditional dialectic to his contemporaries in political economy. Hegelian-idealist views,

2 Citations for Marx 1992c* (with the asterisk) indicate his positive acceptance of a reviewer’s take on his method in Capital, which he reproduced in the Afterword for the 1873 Second German Edition.

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for him, “are and remain uncomprehended, because they are not grasped in their specific essence” (Marx 1975c: 12). Marx (1982b: 97) applied this principle to Proudhon, who “no longer feels any need to speak of the seventeenth, eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, for his history takes place in the nebulous realm of the imagination and soars high above time and place.” Marx (1982b: 100, 102) thus argues that Proudhon and “the bourgeois economists” error in seeing their “economic categories as eternal laws and not as historical laws which are only laws for a given historical development”, given that “categories … no more eternal than the relations they express … are historical and transitory products.” Similarly, in The Poverty of Philosophy, Marx (1847: 116–117) criticizes assumptions about “immutable laws, eternal principles, ideal categories” that have existed “since the beginning of time.” The problem with ahistoricism is more than simply carving one’s abstractions too broadly. There is a political dimension as well. For Marx (1975c: 83), in his 1843 Critique, “the mystery of the Hegelian philosophy” lies in its “uncritical, mystical way of interpreting an old world-view in terms of a new one” (emphases in the original). In a world unfolding in a forward direction, concepts built up on current material realities may not only fail to grasp the past adequately but also mistaking concepts one’s material conditions make possible as eternal categories falsely depicts one’s current historical moment as expressing universal and necessary social relations. The result is a portrayal of modern social relations as metaphysical products of nature, dressing up an ideological justification for contemporary power relations in a scientific garb.3 The political function is thus also more than bias 3 “Owing to the fact, therefore, that Hegel makes the elements of the state idea the subject, and the old forms of existence of the state the predicate, whereas in historical reality the reverse is the case, the state idea being instead the predicate of those forms of existence, he expresses only the general character of the period, its political teleology. It is the same thing as with his philosophical-religious pantheism. By means of it all forms of unreason become forms of reason. But essentially here in religion reason is made the determining factor, while in the state the idea of the state is made the determining factor. This metaphysics is the metaphysical expression of reaction, of the old world as the truth of the new world outlook” (Marx 1975n: 130; emphasis in the original). To J.B. Schweitzer (1865), Marx (1985d: 28) thus explains Proudhon’s failure was “instead of regarding economic categories as theoretical expression of historical relations of production, corresponding to a particular stage of development in material production, he garbles them into pre-existing eternal ideas, and how in this roundabout way he arrives once more at the stand point of bourgeois economy” (emphases in the original).

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built into concepts. It extends into social practice. If one’s present political-economic power relations express a transhistorical social fact, then criticisms of and actions against them are necessarily naïve and quixotic. Inversion: Idealism and Reductionism In the idealist’s approach, social relations are established and history emerges from the perceptions and attitudes of people, where “public consciousness is a mere potpourri of ‘thoughts and opinions of the many’ ”, a view that is just one “illusion of practical consciousness” (Marx 1975c: 61–62). Marx (1975c: 117) thus takes to task any such model built upon collections of individuals added up one at a time into a societal whole: In its essential form the contrast is: individuals all do it, or the individuals do it as a few, as not-all. In both cases the universality remains only as an external multiplicity or totality of the individuals. The universality is no essential, spiritual, actual quality of the individual. It is not something through which he would lose the attribute of abstract individuality; rather the universality is only the full count of individuality. One individuality, many individualities, all individualities. One, many or all— none of these descriptions alters the essence of the subject, individuality. (emphases in the original)

Because “it is precisely this organic unity which Hegel has failed to construct” (Marx 1975c: 58; emphasis in the original), Marx is critical of a method that reduces structural-sociological realities down to a conglomeration of individuals and/or their subjective experiences. For Marx and Engels (1956: 160), “Ideas cannot carry anything out at all. In order to carry out ideas men are needed who dispose of a certain practical force” (emphasis in the original). Thus, Marx (1982b: 96) warns against being one who “confuses ideas and things.” As influenced by metaphysical-theoretical assumptions (recognized or not), idealism is subject to positing invisible subjective forces as causal forces and falsely universalizing this as a historical constant. When this sort of reductionism meets ahistoricism, the result is a false universalization of current individuality for universal human nature. Marx (1973: 83) thus criticizes Smith and Ricardo because, for them, “this eighteenth-century individual—the product on one side of the dissolution of the feudal forms of society, on the other side of the new forces of production developed since the sixteenth

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century—appears as an ideal, whose existence they project into the past. Not as historic result but as history’s point of departure.” Not only is the idealism of abstract individualism a false universalization, so is the Great Man approach, as any “attempt to present … history in terms of psychology, is bad, muddled, and amorphous” (Marx 1985b: 232). Marx’s (1975d: 182) claim that “material force must be overthrown by material force; but theory also becomes material force as soon as it has gripped the masses” is less a course correction than a warning against the belief that ideas have an independent existence outside real social relations, especially materialist and/or political-economic ones. All of this relates to the problem Marx calls “inversion.” For him, idealism, individualism, and traditional political economy invert the relationships between their primary variables. For instance, Hegel’s belief that the material world is “produced by the actual idea” is indicative of his tendency toward the “inversion of subject and predicate” (Marx 1975c: 9, 12). Marx (1975c: 39) writes: “Another consequence of [Hegel’s] mystical speculation is that a particular empirical existent … is regarded as the embodiment of the idea. Again, it makes a deep mystical impression to see a particular empirical existent posited by the idea, and thus to meet at every state an incarnation of God” (emphases in the original). By extension, theorists in the Young Hegelian tradition “change real human beings into abstract standpoints” (Marx and Engels 1956: 256; emphases in the original). Similarly, in political economy, “instead of regarding the politico-economic categories as abstractions of actual social relations that are transitory and historical, [the conventional approach], by a mystic inversion, sees in the real relations only the embodiment of those abstractions” (Marx 1982b: 100). Here, the problem lies in assuming the material world unfolds because of relations in the abstract world (an idealist metaphysic) and subsequent actions of individuals collectively added up (reductionism). Such approaches reverse the relationship between causal forces, an analytical problem and often a political one too, as, Marx (1992a: 29) says, Hegel’s idealism tends “to glorify the existing state of things.” Speculative Philosophy and A Priori Constructions Marx (1975c: 79) tells us “A ‘view’ cannot be concrete when its subjectmatter is abstract” (emphasis in the original). With Marx’s subject matter the real and concrete, the value of the abstract and conceptual rests in the ability to describe and explain the former, not as a causal variable

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or an end in itself.4 Speculative philosophies such as Hegel’s, however, “must transpose all questions from the form of human commonsense to the form of speculative reason and change the real question into a speculative one to be able to answer it” (Marx and Engels 1956: 121; emphasis in the original). In this line of thought, the goal of science is to ever-improve its abstractions and go no further. Marx (1978d: 143) says we must treat “human activity itself as objective activity” (emphasis in the original). The problem, as he sees it, is that speculative approaches such as Hegel’s and Feuerbach’s are mainly concerned with the refinement of ideas rather than a positive knowledge of the real, observable world. Marx (1985d: 29) criticized Proudhon for not understanding “the secret of scientific dialectics” and for sharing “the illusions of speculative philosophy”, a construct suggesting Marx believed in uniting scientific and dialectical reason stripped of philosophical trappings. In Marx’s view, philosophy tends to accept abstract categories as the truth of human existence, rather than that existence making such abstractions possible, i.e., an inversion where the requirement of systematic data collection on material conditions as the ultimate foundation of knowledge tends to get lost. In a critique of Proudhon, speculative philosophy, and metaphysics generally (including both Hegel and Kant), Marx (1847: 106) encapsulates the problem: If we abstract thus from every subject all the alleged accidents, animate or inanimate, men or things, we are right in saying that in the final abstraction, the only substance left is the logical categories. Thus the metaphysicians who, in making these abstractions, think they are making analyses, and who, the more they detach themselves from things, imagine themselves to be getting all the nearer to the point of penetrating to their core—these metaphysicians in turn are right in saying that things here below are embroideries of which the logical categories constitute the canvas.

For Marx (1973: 101), not the invisible and timeless world of the abstract but the material concrete is “the point of departure for observation and conception”, though the latter is also in a process of 4 “Hegel’s conception of history assumes an Abstract or Absolute Spirit which develops in such a way that mankind is a mere mass bearing it with a varying degree of consciousness or unconsciousness. Within empiric, exoteric history he therefore has a speculative, esoteric history develop. The history of mankind becomes the history of the abstract spirit world of mankind, a spirit beyond all man!” (Marx and Engels 1956: 115; emphases in the original).

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historical formation and transformation. When one bases the “truth” of categories on pure logic alone, they abstract categories apart from history and empirical observations. Here, all variations, exceptions, and nuances of the real world are deviations from the absolute category and thus liable for discarding. In an infinite regress, all that is left are abstractions, where “the categories are the motive force” and thus history’s actors rather than “public action” (Marx 1982b: 103). Speculative philosophy is, in this view, fundamentally non-empirical and ultimately ends in metaphysics.5 When Marx (1992a: 28) warned that Capital did not forward “a mere a priori construction” he left a great deal unsaid, especially his engagement with the Kantian philosophy of science. We are not without clues to this great unsaid from Marx. In his letter to his father, Marx (1975k: 12) says that, rather than from some outside (metaphysical) system, an object “has to be put alongside something else, then it assumes other positions, and this diversity added to it gives it different relationships and truths.” This notion of truth is relational, concrete, and uncovered during research, not an a priori deductive system. This critique of Kantian a priori speculative philosophy influenced his use of Hegel. After reading Lassalle’s Heraclitus, Marx (1936a: 105) wrote to Engels in 1858 that Lassalle “will learn to his cost that to bring a science by criticism to the point where it can be dialectically presented is an altogether different thing from applying an abstract, ready-made system of logic to mere inklings of such a system.” In 1861, Engels (1985: 331) wrote to Marx, criticizing Lassalle’s dialectic, which he found guilty of “applying it to every single point—as though it would gain weight in the process.” In reply, Marx (1985a: 333) agreed, adding, “Ideologism permeates everything, and the dialectical method is wrongly applied. Hegel never described as dialectics the subsumption of vast numbers of ‘cases’ under a general principle” (emphases in the 5 In his 1837 letter to his father, Marx (1975k: 15, 17–18) writes: “The concept is indeed the mediating link between form and content…. At the end of the section on material private law, I saw the falsity of the whole thing, the basic plan of which borders on that of Kant, but deviates wholly from it in the execution, and again it became clear to me that there could be no headway without philosophy. So with good conscience I was able once more to throw myself into her embrace, and I drafted a new system of metaphysical principles, but at the conclusion of it I was once again more compelled to recognize that it was wrong, like all my previous efforts…. From the idealism which, by the way, I had compared and nourished with the idealism of Kant and Fichte, I arrived at the point of seeking the idea in reality itself. If previously the gods had dwelt above the earth, now they became its centre.”

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original). Marx here argues against wielding dialectic as an a priori world-philosophy, as a mystical-metaphysical system imposed upon facts, and/or as a framework of universal application. Even if one could make empirical observations that align with a metaphysical outlook, there is simply no way to verify scientifically the validity of such constructs as this procedure is subject to the problem of confirmation bias.6 Imprecision: Obscurantism, Incommensurableness, and Tautology Toward the end of harnessing the precision of scientific inquiry, Marx (1975a: 394) advocated against “vague reasoning” and “magniloquent phrases” and thus warns that a “question … badly formulated … cannot be answered correctly” (Marx 1985d: 27). Additionally, in constructing analytical, interpretative, and/or classificatory frameworks, “arbitrary divisions must not be introduced” (Marx 1975k: 12). Marx’s concerns here relate to problems stemming from imprecision, of which obscurantism, incommensurableness, and tautological formulations are three. Marx criticized two forms of linguistic obscurantism. In the first type, language use undermines an author’s intelligibility. In Capital, Marx (1992b: 95, note 2) sarcastically disparages one author with, “What clearness and precision of ideas and language!” Scientific discourse requires a certain level of care with language, a failure of which can render knowledge opaque, obscure, or even inert. Further, transferring ideas from scientific language to common parlance similarly requires care. When trying to reach a popular audience, “one ought not to overload the minds of the people one is proposing to educate” (Marx 1991a: 366). In the second type of linguistic obscurantism, the analytical framework in-use distorts more than it reveals and thus fails “to strip away the veil of obscurity” (Marx 1983e: 109; for his critique of obscurantism in some forms of mathematical analysis, see Marx 1983e: 91, 94, 97). One failure here is leaving out important elements in one’s framework. For instance, Marx (1973: 248) criticized traditional political economy’s “attempt to stick fast at the simplest economic relations, 6 “By starting with prefabricated logic, Hegel never gets to the logic of the things themselves; rather, he uncritically accepts empirical ‘facts’ in their givenness and shrouds them in a mystical cloak of logic. For Marx this is no way to do science” (Murray 1988: 29).

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which, conceived by themselves, are pure abstractions; but these relations are, in reality, mediated by the deepest antithesis, and represent only one side, in which the full expression of the antitheses is obscured.” Any political economy—e.g., micro-economics—that does not incorporate class analysis necessarily misses the larger picture and is thus fundamentally misguided. A second failure is the opposite, i.e., if the material under analysis does not correspond to a theoretical framework, then in imposing that framework the analyst obscures more than clarifies via inaccurate descriptions and/or invalid explanations.7 In order to generalize conclusions reached at one moment of analysis to other moments and relations, it is important that the researcher have a clear idea about whether the variables in question are commensurable. In his critique, sometimes Marx (1911: 93) is interested in quantitative measures, criticizing Proudhon, for instance, for bringing “into relation the percentage of speed and the percentage of profit and establish[ing] a proportion between two relations which, although measured separately as percentages, are nevertheless incommensurable.” In the Grundrisse, Marx (1973: 613) says “Two things are only commensurable if they are of the same nature” (emphasis in the original). Capital defines commensurable objects as “qualitatively equal” (Marx 1992b: 65). Put a bit less abstractly, if one conflates “two essentially different principles and social conditions” as being “different manifestations of the same principle” (Marx 1975c: 112), they make an error of commensurability (the opposite principle applies to tautology, more below). For instance, within traditional political economy it is common to falsely equate “labour … as producing utilities” with labor “creating value” as similar things rather than as “a distinction between two aspects of the process of production” (Marx 1992b: 191). 7 As Marx’s colleague and intellectual descendant, Engels (2001: 268) cautioned Kautsky on his history of the French Revolution: “I would say a great deal less about the modern mode of production. In every case a yawning gap divides it from the facts you adduce and, thus out of context, it appears as a pure abstraction which, far from throwing light on the subject, renders it still more obscure” (emphases in the original). He elsewhere wrote: “In general the word materialistic serves many of the younger writers in Germany as a mere phrase with which anything and everything is labelled without further study; they stick on this label and then think the question is disposed of. But our conception of history is above all a guide to study, not a lever for construction after the manner of the Hegelians. All history must be studied afresh, the conditions of existence of the different formations of society must be individually examined before an attempt is made to deduce from them the political, civil-legal, aesthetic, philosophic, religious, etc., notions corresponding to them” (Engels 1936a: 473; emphasis in the original).

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Such errors do not just produce flatly incorrect conclusions where one might mistake 1+1 for 3 but, given that qualitative realities are often compared with no common basis to equate them, Marx (1992b: 125, note 1) goes so far to say any conclusion coming from an incommensurable comparison is “incomprehensible.” A cousin of commensurability, in a tautology, two relata in a proposed variable relationship—i.e., a premise and conclusion, or cause and consequence—are the same in essential form, though maybe not in apparent content. This can lead to two interconnected logical problems. First, a tautology’s form alone makes a claim true. Take the syllogism, If A, then B. If B is the same as A, then all one has said is, If A, then A. This proposition has its equivalent in an assertion such as, “If I age 365 days, then I age one year.” In a second form of tautology, the analyst misreads superficial differences as allowing for meaningful knowledge, even though the underlying reality is the same. Rather than a causal chain, the problem here lies in the view “where it succeeds in seeing differences, it does not see unity, and that where it sees unity, it does not see differences” (Marx 1976b: 320; emphases in the original). In such a case, the analyst falsely compares two objects based on superficial appearances when in fact they share basic essential properties. Sometimes tautological problems are, as a result, semantically rooted.8 Tautological formulations often combine both forms, arriving in circular reasoning where external evidence is not required for estimating an assertion’s truth-value.9 8 In a critique of Max Stirner, Marx and Engels (1976: 407) reiterate some of his “moral sayings” and argue, “The basis of all these statements is the great proposition on page 351:

‘Everything that you are able to do [vermagst—inflected form of vermogen] is your wealth [Vermögen].’ “This proposition is either meaningless, i.e., mere tautology, or is nonsense. It is tautology if it means: what you are able to do, you are able to do. It is nonsense if Vermögen No. 2 is meant to denote wealth ‘in the ordinary sense’, commercial wealth, and if the proposition is based, therefore, on the etymological similarity.” 9 Marx (1971b: 25) criticizes Malthus for his claim that “any given quantity of labour must be of the same value as the wages which command it, or for which it actually exchanges” (The Measure of Value Stated and Illustrated, London, 1823, p. 5). He then comments: “The purpose of this phrase is to equate the expressions ‘quantity of labour’ and ‘value of labour’…. This phrase itself is a mere tautology, an absurd truism. Since wages or that ‘for which it’ (i.e., a quantity of labour) ‘exchanges’ constitute the value of this quantity of labour, it is tautologous to say: the value of a certain quantity of labour is equal to the wages or to the amount of money or commodities for which this labor exchanges. In other words, this means nothing more than: the exchange-value of a definite quantity of labour is equal to its exchange-value—otherwise called wages” (emphases in the original).

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Marx and Engels (1976: 41) fault Feuerbach for his failure to engage in “criticism of the present conditions of life.” Marx’s (1975l: 143) critique of tautology thus targeted “the theoretical existence of man … religion, science, etc.” as well as forms of bourgeois ideology such as nationalism and political-economic theory. An early Marx (1975f, Appendix) argued that “The proofs of the existence of God are either mere hollow tautologies” where “the ontological proof … means: ‘that which I conceive for myself in a real way, is a real concept for me’.” The Young Hegelians similarly forwarded tautological arguments, again both linguistically and logically.10 Marx also thought a Kantian philosophy of science could fundamentally distort if social questions conceptualized objects in an a priori absolutist direction. For instance, Proudhon’s political economy (as well as Hegel’s dialectic) shares with the Kantian outlook the idea of social relations as products of abstract forces, the evidence for which lies in other abstract forces, a tautology at the level of ontological conception.11 In this view, concrete life is only a simulacrum of the real, which exists in the abstract world (in these regards, speculative philosophy shares a certain outlook with religion). Such criticisms informed Marx’s approach to political-economic research. Here, too, poor navigation of identity/difference leads to

10 “How infinitely profound ‘Absolute Criticism’ must be to have in face of these intellectual and practical facts, but a one-sided conception of only one aspect of the relationship—the continual foundering of the spirit—and, vexed at this, to seek besides an adversary of the ‘Spirit’ and find it in the ‘Mass.’ In the end all this great Critical discovery comes to a tautology. According to Criticism, the spirit has so far had a limit, an obstacle, in other words, an adversary, because it has had an adversary. Who, then, is the adversary of the Spirit? Spiritlessness. For the mass is defined only as the ‘opposite’ of the spirit, as spiritlessness or to take more precise definitions of spiritlessness, ‘indolence’, ‘superficiality’, ‘self-complacency’. What a fundamental advantage over the communist writers it is not to have traced spiritlessness, indolence, superficiality and self-complacency to their origin but to have branded them morally and exposed them as the opposite of the spirit, of progress! If these qualities are proclaimed qualities of the Mass, as of a subject still distinct from them, that distinction is nothing but a Critical semblance of distinction. Only in appearance has Absolute Criticism a definite concrete subject besides the abstract qualities of spiritlessness, indolence, etc., for the ‘Mass’ in the Critical conception is nothing but those abstract qualities, another word for them, a fantastic personification of them” (Marx and Engels 1956: 113–114; emphases in the original). 11 “To Mr. Proudhon … the prime cause consists in abstractions and categories. According to him it is these and not men which make history. The abstraction, the category regarded as such, i.e., as distinct from man and his material activity, is, of course, immortal, immutable, impassive. It is nothing but an entity of pure reason, which is only another way of saying that an abstraction, regarded as such, is abstract. An admirable tautology!” (Marx 1982b: 102; emphases in the original).

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faulty tautological analyses. For example, as a form of value, “entirely apart from their natural forms and without regard to the specific kind of wants for which they serve as use-values, commodities in certain quantities equal each other, take each other’s place in exchange, pass as equivalents, and in spite of their variegated appearance, represent the same entity” (Marx 1911: 21). As such, many economic statements are tautological to the degree they differentiate equivalents. Combined, the problems of commensurability and tautology explain, in part, why Marx considers the labor theory of value, i.e., most value theories base the source of value in one of value’s other forms. An example of this is where a theorist argues profits (one manifestation of value’s circuit in capitalism) are sourced in capital investment (another manifestation of value’s circuit in capitalism). For Marx (1992b: 57), “labour creates value, but is not itself value. It becomes value only in its congealed state, when embodied in the form of some object.” This formulation avoids the tautology—value is a product of value—and finds its origination in something else, labor (my point is not that Marx’s argument here makes his case for the labor theory of value but rather simply that his criticism, if legitimate, negates the arguments many other theorists make about value’s origin).12 12 Marx revisits this point in several places. In Critique of Political Economy: “Since labor-time is the common measure of gold and commodities, and since gold figures as the measure of value only in so far as all commodities are measured by it, the idea that money makes commodities commensurable, is therefore a mere fiction of the process of circulation. It is rather the commensurability of commodities as incorporated labortime, that turns gold into money” (Marx 1911: 78–79). In the Grundrisse: “But, as mere numerical magnitudes, as amounts of any unit of the same name, they only become comparable to one another, and only express proportions towards one another, when each individual commodity is measured with the one which serves as unit, as measure. But I can only measure them against one another, only make them commensurable, if they have a unit—the latter is the labour time contained in both. The measuring unit must therefore [be] a certain quantity of a commodity in which a quantity of labour is objectified. Since the same quantity of labour is not always expressed in the same quantity of e.g. gold, it follows that the value of this measuring unit itself variable. But, in so far as money is regarded only as measure, this variability is no obstacle” (Marx 1973: 793). In Capital: “It is not money that renders commodities commensurable. Just the contrary. It is because all commodities, as values, are realised human labour, and therefore commensurable, that their values can be measured by one and the same special commodity, and the latter be converted into the common measure of their values, i.e., into money. Money as a measure of value, is the phenomenal form that must of necessity be assumed by that measure of value which is immanent in commodities, labour-time” (Marx 1992b: 97). Also: “Price is the money-name of the labour realised in a commodity. Hence the expression of the equivalence of a commodity with the sum of money constituting its price, is a tautology, just as in general the expression of the relative value of a commodity is a statement of the equivalence of two commodities” (Marx 1992b: 103–104).

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Marx’s critique of tautological reason assisted his preparations for Capital.13 When comparing modes of production, property relations, and our present, it is necessary to sift out identities from differences: All production is appropriation of nature on the part of an individual within and through a specific form of society. In this sense it is a tautology to say that property (appropriation) is a precondition of production. But it is altogether ridiculous to leap from that to a specific form of property, e.g. private property. (Marx 1973: 87)

Bourgeois ideology infects purportedly scientific approaches to political economy when it equates general and social forms of property (such as personal or communal property) with modern forms of private property (ownership of the means of production), leading to the latter’s tautological (and thus false) universalization: “The question whether wealth develops better in this or another form of property is still quite beside the point here. But that there can be no production and hence no society where some form of property does not exist is a tautology. An appropriation which does not make something into property is a contradictio in subjecto” (Marx 1973: 88). Equating bourgeois property with property in general is both imprecise and lends ideological support to bourgeois society’s ruling relations. Most people in most places accept personal possessions as a presupposition of living in a society, e.g., “Thou shall not steal.” If the bourgeoisie’s ownership of the production system is a possession of a similar coin, then this ownership is a requirement for society to continue and criticizing it is tantamount to an unrealistic childish tantrum (which explains Libertarian political philosophy and its adherents) and/or a utopian fantasy.

13 “It is the fashion to preface a work of economics with a general part—and precisely this part figures under the title ‘production’ (see for example J. St. Mill)—treating of the general preconditions of all production. This general part consists or is alleged to consist of (1) the conditions without which production is not possible. I.e. in fact, to indicate nothing more than the essential moments of all production. But, as we will see, this reduces itself in fact to a few very simple characteristics, which are hammered out into flat tautologies; (2) the conditions which promote production to a greater or lesser degree, such as e.g. Adam Smith’s progressive and stagnant state of society. While this is of value in his work as an insight, to elevate it to scientific significance would require investigations into the periodization of degrees of productivity in the development of individual peoples—an investigation which lies outside the proper boundaries of the theme, but, in so far as it does belong there, must be brought in as part of the development of competition, accumulation, etc. In the usual formulation, the answer amounts to the general statement that an industrial people reaches the peak of production at the moment when it arrives at its historical peak” (Marx 1973: 86–87).

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Marx’s critique of poorly formulated dialectic as well as problems in political economy informed his approach to political theory and action. As part of the same ideological framework that treats private property as a personal possession, what Marx called (1971a: 465) “the capitalist mode of conception” posits wage-labor as the general practice of human labor. As “The Manifesto of the Communist Party” states: It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us…. According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything, do not work. The whole of this objection is but another expression of the tautology: that there can no longer be any wage-labour when there is no longer any capital. (Marx and Engels 1978a: 486)

If labor and capital are entailed in each other as classes and as concepts, then the syllogism that posits the causal chain, If capital disappears, then so does wage-labor, is tautological. Though formally true, the claim is specious if the assumption equates wage-labor with labor in general. The ideological construct posits that without capital there can be no society, as this construct sees capital as a universal and eternal relation: “The economists do not conceive capital as a relation. They cannot do so without at the same time conceiving it as a historically transitory, i.e., a relative—not an absolute—form of production” (Marx 1971b: 274).14 Here, traditional political economy’s tautology is more than just illogical analysis but spills over into the question of social criticism. If one pitches their model of capitalism at a universal level, then the problems contained within capitalist society can only be a product of human frailties, vainglory, or bad policies, anything other than the logic of the system itself.15 14 “In the minds of classical political economists capital is reduced to the different moments of simple circulation. It is first money, which is then exchanged for a commodity, i.e., here labor. Labor merely exchanges the product of its activity for money. Marx suggests that the primary source of such misconceptions is the lack of an adequate methodological framework that would enable theorists to conceive of capital not as a thing, but as a relation. Though it at first appears as its different moments of money and commodity, a dialectical exposition demonstrates that it is much more than this” (Meany 2002: 52). 15 “Since the magnitude of the value of the capital, by which the surplus-value is measured, is given as 100, a fall in the proportion of surplus-value to this given magnitude can be only another expression for the decrease of the absolute magnitude of surplus-value and profit. This is, indeed, a tautology. But, as shown, the fact that this decrease occurs at all, arises from the nature of the development of the capitalist process of production” (Marx 1971a: 221; emphasis added).

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True Criticism: Self-Critique through Negative Critique Self-critique assists in improving one’s work and heading-off predictable objections. In his 1837 letter to his father, Marx (1975k: 12) disparaged his own writing on law for its “metaphysical propositions”— which is “characteristic of idealism” and “a serious defect … the source of hopelessly incorrect division of the subject-matter”—his “definitions of concepts, divorced from all actual law”, and his “unscientific form of mathematical dogmatism”, an approach that produced a “shallow classification.” About his Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher article (i.e., the Introduction to his Critique of Hegel), Marx (1988a: 13–14) thought its “intermingling of … various subjects themselves proved utterly unsuitable, hampering the development of the argument and rendering comprehension difficult.” In its first edition, after providing a gentle self-critique of his past political-economic work, Marx (1867b: 21) welcomes “Every opinion based on scientific criticism” of Capital. His Afterword to its Second German Edition notes that this edition has a “clearer arrangement”, with previous topics “only alluded to … now expressly emphasized”, not to mention addressing “occasional slips” (Marx 1992a: 22–23). Liebknecht (1896: 103-104) observed that Marx “has been reproached with trying to squeeze as much content as possible into the minimum space, but that is precisely Marx…. [He] attached extreme importance to purity and correctness of expression.” The results of such efforts, in terms of Marx’s self-critique of his mature political economy, are mixed. Marx (1992a: 26, note 1) was evidently pleased with Capital’s reception by one reviewer, whom he cites as saying its “presentation … is distinguished by its comprehensibility by the general reader, its clearness, and, in spite of the scientific intricacy of the subject, by an usual liveliness” as opposed to the “dry and obscure” language “of German scholars.” At the same time, Marx’s linguistic strategy did often render him obscure, an issue he recognized and hoped to address.16

16 A US journalist, John Swinton (1983: 266–267) reported: “[Marx] said that his German text was often obscure and that it would be found exceedingly difficult to turn into English. ‘But look at the translation into French’, he said as he presented me with a copy of the Paris edition…. ‘That’, he continued, ‘is far clearer and the style better than the German original. It is from this that the translation into English ought to be made.’… A few days ago in taking up the first chapter of Mr. Broadhouse’s translation, my eye fell on a sentence so obscure as to be unintelligible, but in turning to the French version, the meaning of the sentence was plain.”

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Negative critique and self-critique do not stand alone. During the appropriation of texts, ideas, manuscripts, and discourses of others, one learns several lessons on what they need to do in a successfully practiced science. This is Marx’s moment of positive critique. True Criticism: Positive Critique Like negative critique, several principles in Marx’s positive critique— i.e., what one should do in research—have to do with the practice of science in general. As such, “Ruthlessness—the first condition for all criticism” (Marx 1936b: 346)—should accompany skepticism—as one should “distinguish between what a particular author actually says and what he believes he says” (Marx 1979: 324)—and integrity—i.e., one should not be “afraid of the results” or “conflict with the powers that be” (Marx 1975l: 142). Since scientific practice requires “more expert knowledge” than does commonsense (Marx 1975a: 394), evenhandedness both in and out of science means one should respect the inherent “fairness of making yourself at least sufficiently acquainted with the subject of your criticism” (Marx 1992f: 162). As such, true scientific criticism—non-doctrinaire—should “help the dogmatists clarify their propositions for themselves” (Marx 1975l: 142). Anti-dogmatism means incorporating others’ ideas if one can fruitfully do so. Marx agreed with Smith and Mill that the labor theory of value and capitalism’s law-like features required attention, even though they were guilty of atomism and ahistoricism as well other problematic approaches to the issue.17 In April 1858, Marx (1936a: 102) told Engels that he would like to publish a work on “what is rational in the method which Hegel discovered but at the same time enveloped in mysticism” (emphasis in the original). He tells Lassalle that the “Hegelian dialectic” is “the ultimate word in philosophy” but there was a need “to divest it of the mystical aura given it by Hegel” (Marx 1983b: 316). In Capital, he tells us, Hegel’s dialectic is “standing on its head” (Marx 1992a: 29), i.e., inverts subjects and predicates and mystifies its knowledge through atomistic, idealist, and a priori assertions. “Turned right side up again” (Marx 1992a: 29), a non-metaphysical, non-mystical, non-a priori dialectic is a framework to be used during

17 “A. Smith and Ricardo are mistaken in lumping together value and price of production (let alone market prices)” (Marx 1992d: 16; emphases in the original).

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research as necessary. Thus, in an early edition of Capital, Volume II (edited out of later editions), Marx described his “critical attitude” toward Hegel as “disencumbering his dialectic of its mysticism and thus putting it through a profound change, etc.” (cited in Anderson 1992: 68). Here, Marx refers to his use of scientific method, historicism, materialism, and structural analysis while taking from Hegel categories to study political-economic issues demystified and divested from speculation, reductionism, idealism, and metaphysics. Materialist Empiricism Materialism is Marx’s antidote to idealism and speculative philosophy. His 1842 letter to Arnold Ruge emphasizes providing more “definiteness” and “attention to the actual state of affairs” (Marx 1975a: 394). That same year, Marx (1975e: 392) explained to Dagobert Oppenheim that “correct theory must be made clear and developed within the concrete conditions and on the basis of the existing state of things.” In his 1844 Manuscripts, Marx (1988a: 15–16) praises Feuerbach’s Preliminary Theses for the Reform of Philosophy for its premise that “Sense-perception … must be the basis of all science” (Marx 1988a: 111; emphasis in the original). Similarly, Marx’s (1975m: 354) 1844 letter to Feuerbach lauds him for allowing a new “concept of the human species brought down from the heaven of abstraction to the real earth, what is this but the concept of society!” (emphasis in the original). Positive knowledge must start with, and therefore can only be rooted in, what we can observe, measure, or otherwise document in the real world. Marx and Engels (1956: 110) thus criticize Hegel’s and the Young Hegelians’ view as one “according to which in historical actions it is not a matter of the active mass, or empirical action, or of the empiric interest of that action but rather only of ‘an idea’ ‘in them’ ” (emphases in the original). Materialism is not an abstract philosophy for Marx but a research agenda, one focused on relations and processes in the concrete world that indicate class interests and relations of political-economic power— e.g., money, factories, wages, the working-day, the Paris Commune, the Beer Tax, and the bureaucracy—not esoteric, mystical, or otherwise unobservable things. His data set includes an array of scholarship, periodicals and newspapers, and government reports (e.g., the Blue Books). In this approach, with concepts “the material world” expressed in “forms of thought” (Marx 1992a: 29), research needs, “by rigid scientific investigation, to establish … the facts that serve [as] fundamental

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starting points” (Marx 1992c*: 27). The scientist’s goal is to analyze, describe, interpret, and explain the real world and abstractions, built upon these, only service these ends. Structural Analysis Animated by a Sense of Historical Development In his 1846 letter to Annenkov, Marx (1982b: 95–97, 100) says it is important to understand “present social conditions in their [intermeshing]” and not to ignore “the historical development of mankind” but rather study “the real course of history” in order to “see our social institutions as historical products and to understand … their origin and development.” Marx (1982b: 100) thus says we must “grasp the bond linking all forms of bourgeois production” and “understand the historical and transitory nature of the forms of production in any one epoch” (emphases in the original). Sensitive to historical changes in religion, law, state and familial forms, and, of course, modes of production, though rejecting idealist explanations of these movements, Marx (1988a: 149) writes that the “outstanding thing in Hegel’s Phenomenology” is viewing “the dialectic of negativity as the moving and generating principle.”18 As a result of this sensibility, Marx looked for the innerconnections between history in general, the history of class systems, and that of capitalist society. His concern moved from the centrality of labor in social relations in general to the ways different class systems appropriate wealth (including the relations between the classes and forms of state there), and the way class struggle pits bourgeoisie against everyone else in modern society. Realism, Scientific and Political For Marx and Engels (1976: 37), “speculation ends, where real life starts” and “there consequently begins real, positive science.” As Hegel’s speculative philosophy and Kantian things-in-themselves hinder a fuller, positive investigation of real observable life, “To [Proudhon], as to Kant, the resolution of the antimonies is something ‘beyond’ human

18 This was not, however, an embrace of metaphysical dialectic. Rather, this move, explains Beamish (1992: 44), “sensitized him theoretically to contradictions and changes through opposition, to grasp the division of labor more fully as he incorporated more historical material into his knowledge interests.”

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understanding, i.e., something that remains obscure to him himself ’ (Marx 1985d: 27). Marx’s alternative is not simply, or only, relying on the collection and analysis of empirical data prior to category construction. It also rests in the type of data he collects, the models he builds, and the forms of analysis he forwards. As stated in his letter to his father, “the object itself must be studied in its development … the rational character of the object itself must develop as something imbued with contradictions” (Marx 1975k: 12). Marx’s scientific dialectic is committed to several conventional scientific principles— including induction, statistical analysis, and isolating variables and causal relationships through the controlled comparative method of the experimental model, i.e., a form of realism (see A. Sayer 1984, 2000)—while also interested in using dialectics to grasp and portray the processes of change uncovered during research. With criticism’s starting-point the “criticism of politics, participation in politics, and therefore real struggles” (Marx 1975l: 144; emphasis in the original), such realist commitments extended to Marx’s communist views. For instance, Marx (1982b: 104) tells Annenkov that his agreement with Proudhon’s “disgust … for socialist sentimentalising” is complete. Similarly, Marx (1992a: 26) dismissed as speculation those “writing receipts for the cook-shops of the future”, a criticism he extended most notably to utopians such as Owen, Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Comte.19 However, it was not beyond Marx (1978a, 1978b, 1976a) to direct criticism toward those who considered themselves putative allies, often seeing them as either reformist and/or naïve about the prospects for socialism.

19 For Marx (1985d: 29), Proudhon “and the utopians are hunting for a so-called ‘science’ by means of which a formula for the ‘solution of the social question’ is to be devised a priori, instead of deriving science from a critical knowledge of the historical movement.” Erik Olin Wright (2006: 109–110) straddles a line between Marx’s requirement for a critical knowledge of historical movement and an a priori utopian project, writing that “Our task here is not so much to propose blueprints for the realization of social empowerment over economic activity, but rather to elaborate a set of principles that would tell us when we are moving in the right direction. This is the task of a socialist compass…. I call the formulation of such institutional proposals ‘envisioning real utopias’: utopias because they embody emancipatory ideals; real because they attempt to formulate viable institutional designs.” Perhaps sensing possible criticism, he concludes that “The set of real utopian proposals along these five pathways of social empowerment do not constitute a comprehensive blueprint for a society beyond capitalism” (Wright 2006: 121).

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What does this outline of prohibitions and prescriptions in Marx’s philosophy of science tell us about readings of Marx and what he might say about contemporary traditions in philosophy and sociology? Here, I limit my comments to just a few examples, as subsequent chapters elaborate these questions more fully. In Capital’s Second German Edition, Marx (1992a: 26) mocked the Paris Revue Positiviste for interpreting him as a metaphysician while recognizing that “I … imagine!—confine myself to the mere critical analysis of actual facts.” With speculative philosophy influencing scientific (Kant) and dialectical (Hegel) discourse, and absent a comprehensive essay on method on his part, metaphysical readings of Marx became common. The worst metaphysical reading transforms Marx’s dialectic into something with a real existence. The typical reading here sees “the dialectic” as “the motive power for change” and reduces Marx’s outlook to “dialectical materialism” as a self-acting force in “control of man and society” (De Koster 1964: 57, 105). Another metaphysical reading views dialectic as a process where a fact or proposition (thesis) calls its opposite (antithesis) into being, with the resulting tension transforming each into a higher level containing elements of each (synthesis). In these metaphysical readings of Marx, “the dialectic” is something real in the world, doing things, mirroring the speculative philosophies he criticized and no doubt an approach he saw as “mysticism.”20 How are we to reconcile all these interpretations with Marx’s repeated and on-going attacks on metaphysics? Did he secretly accept metaphysics? Did he not see the metaphysics implied in his work? Maybe these interpretations do not reflect Marx’s thinking accurately? Simply put, the views above do not conform to the facts. For Marx and Engels (1956: 125), “History does nothing … ‘history’ is not a 20 Visitors to Marx’s birthplace (Karl Marx Haus, Trier, Germany) and gravesite (Highgate Cemetery, London) have access to pamphlets that repeat this “thesisantithesis-synthesis” myth (see my reproduction of these in, Paolucci 2009: 42). Unfortunately, this reading persists in (past and recent) scholarship on social theory, Marxist and non-Marxist alike (see Popper 1950: 682, 1966: 334; Appelbaum 1988: 59). Other readings respect Marx’s thought at a level at which he wrote it but still find metaphysics in his “assigning to labour a unique power to produce value” (Bonar 1898: 7, in Böhm-Bawerk 1898), his “nineteenth-century … habits of thought” (Joan Robinson 1966: vii), and his “theory of the nature of social reality” (C. Gould 1978: xi). The metaphysical charge against Marx in past scholarship is not universal, however (see Schumpeter 1954: 9–10).

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person apart, using man as a means for its own particular aims” (emphases in the original). Neither Marx nor Hegel used the thesis-antithesissynthesis construction (for discussion, see McLellan 1973: 163; Carver 1982: 46). Marx (1847: 104) accused Proudhon of using this triad “to frighten the French by flinging quasi-Hegelian phrases at them.” Indeed, whole sections of The Holy Family, The Poverty of Philosophy, and The German Ideology scathingly attack any metaphysical view of dialectic. If Marx was a metaphysician, either he intentionally hid this (if so, then such interpreters above call out his deception) or he failed to grasp the metaphysical implications of his ideas. Conversely, can we take him at his word and conclude metaphysical readings are misguided? Alternatively, must we, starting with his stated rejection of metaphysics, inspect his theoretical claims for metaphysical propositions or the lack thereof? Clearly, this latter option is preferable, one that we will later answer by visiting several of Marx’s empirical and historical analyses. Various traditions in philosophy engage Marxist thought, and viceversa. The weight of philosophical abstraction burdens authors ranging from Sartre to Adorno and Horkheimer to Marcuse. Postmodern Marxists such as Hardt and Negri, supposedly non-Marxists such as Deleuze and Guatarri, and especially theorists such as Baudrillard and Derrida also demonstrate this practice. In far too many postmodern works, one finds obscurant language, narratives unconnected to systematic data collection that remain within the orbit of speculative philosophy. Still, it is more often philosophers that seriously address issues in the philosophy of science (Marxian and non-Marxian), something less true of sociologists. Sociologists, for their part, in contrast to philosophers, often focus on methods of data collection and analysis, with issues in the philosophy of science receiving their attention less. Analytical Marxists are one exception. Though Marx agrees with them that categories of dialectics should use a “language of causes, mechanisms and effects, rather than … elusive philosophical principles” (Wright, Levine, and Sober 1992: 6) (viewed here as a criticism of approaches to dialectic that tend toward the metaphysical), Marx rejects their commitment to the “importance accorded to the intentional action of individuals within both explanatory and normative theories” (Wright 1995: 14).21 Marx’s (1992b: 555) assumption is that “competition makes the immanent laws of capitalist production to be 21 In a later work, Wright (2005b: 14, note 11) argues that “methodological individualism” and “rational maximization” models are not necessary for his preferred approach to “class location.”

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felt by each individual capitalist, as external coercive laws.” In this view, we must understand the structures of capitalist society as compelling forces, something that, Marx believes, individualism cannot explain.22 If we assume our contemporary social structure and its associated conditions of life are outcomes of some posited universal human nature and then use that same supposed nature to explain behavior in our society, we offer a tautological argument. Conventional political economy, from Adam Smith to contemporary theorists, treats competitive market behavior, something historically specific, as a transcendent human characteristic and then uses this construct as a cover-all model for human behavior. The explaining variable here—i.e., an a priori conception of universal human nature (rooted, unawares, in historical, material conditions)—is the same thing as the explained behavior—i.e., rationally calculative profit seeking. Conventional political economy is not alone in these regards. For Analytical Marxists such as Elster (1985: 9), “rational-choice explanation of action involves showing that the action was rational and was performed because it was rational. That the action is rational means that given the beliefs of the agent, the action was the best way for him to realize his plans or desires.” Here, Elster carves rationality so broadly at the individual level that it becomes a transhistorical human trait applicable to any form of human activity.23 To describe human action as always rational action (an objective assertion) because actors subjectively weigh means-ends in their decision making is similar “to the tautology that wealth is more easily created where its elements are subjectively and objectively present to a greater degree” (Marx 1973: 87). Such arguments overlook the historical variation in human behavior, action, and motivation, observations that anthropological studies have made clear. Even conservative sociologists have recognized the problem.24

22 Later chapters address the question of Marx’s approach to individuality in terms of sociological explanation. It necessary to point out here that Marx does not eschew the issue of individual agency or action but rather finds it an insufficient starting-point for building sociological models and explanations. 23 For additional (early) criticism of the methodological individualism of Elster (as well as Roemer) see Wolff and Cullenberg (1986). For a more recent critique of Analytical Marxism see Lebowitz (2009). 24 “It should be noted that rationality [in the sense of seeking to maximize meansto-ends efficiency] is institutional” as it is “a part of a normative pattern: it is not a mode of orientation which is simply ‘natural’ to men. On the contrary comparative

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Conclusion Though he presents criteria purportedly in “Marx’s Theory of Truth” not addressed here, McCarthy’s conclusion is applicable to my own. Marx’s categories of negative and positive critique “are not randomly thrown together, nor is Marx’s method an interesting metaphysical construct within a complex philosophical system, but rather, his method is necessitated by the contradictions and dilemmas within traditional philosophy and social science” (McCarthy 1988: 146). Marx is not inventing an approach off the top of his head. His categories of critique are not subjective, arbitrary, or capricious. Marx’s works, letters, those of his correspondents, biographies, and reports from his acquaintances reveal a deep commitment to scientific investigation. His method developed from his understanding of sound, logical, scientific thinking through negative and positive critiques over time. His categories of critique, once settled upon, however, remained relatively consistent. A careful reconstruction of these categories tells us much about what Marx thought we should or should not do in a social science and why. Observers commonly interpret the meaning of “critique” or “criticism” in Marx’s discourse mainly in terms of moral outrage and value judgments or otherwise a mutually contaminating crossbreeding of subjectivity and objectivity, scientifically corrupting and making suspect Marx’s credentials as a trustworthy analyst. Walker’s (2001: 145– 146) skepticism tells us much about this reception of Marx: … it is also clear that Marx subjected capitalism to the most savage critique and indictment. His work seems to incorporate moral judgements throughout. This would still be compatible with the positivist idea of value-freedom if the scientific enquiry could be clearly separated from the moral judgements. If Marx’s account of capitalism could be shown to be neutral, value-free and entirely distinct from his moral judgements then the positivist standard of objectivity would be preserved. However, it is not at all clear that this is the case, or that Marx saw his work in this way. The very language Marx used belies a value-free account.

In this interpretation, Marx’s moral criticisms intertwine with his scientific aspirations in a way that undermines the requirement of an study indicates that the present degree of valuation of rationality as opposed to ‘traditionalism’ is rather ‘unnatural’ in the sense that it is a highly exceptional state. The fact is that we are under continual and subtle social pressures to be rationally critical, particularly of means and ends” (Parsons 1954: 37).

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objective analysis that provides for valid and trustworthy conclusions. In Walker’s stipulations, this moral discourse should and must be separate from scientific discourse. If Marx let his values and subjectivity determine his scientific conclusions, his claims to science irretrievably suffer. What if this is not what Marx is doing and thus not our only alternative in interpreting the relationship between Marx’s method of critique and his moral criticism? Like many commentators, Walker fails to grasp how Marx’s method of critique brings in scientific concerns in a way that allows for several types of evaluation and why Marx feels free to offer what appear to be (and often are) value judgments. In terms of this latter issue, we (Marx, you, anyone), as equal societal members, are free to remark on the moral outrages we observe in the world, though this morality or outrage is not the basis of a scientific method of critique. This moment is simply an application of judgment allowed to any person as a member and observer of the human species. And, this is something Marx normally applies after scientific investigation. Marx is not simply writing to just or only the professors. He tells us that Capital’s “appreciation” by “the working-class is the best reward of my labors” (Marx 1992a: 23). Making a case on behalf of the working class brings his scientific and political concerns together, though to be truly scientific Marx must not let this concern bias his analytical acumen. What types of evaluation does Marx’s method of critique allow? To answer this question we must first answer whether the categories above cover all the forms of critique in his work. The answer is clearly no, this chapter is not exhaustive (for example, Marx addresses the issue of “teleology”, to be discussed in Chapter Five). If one is looking for them, one still can find many intellectual practices, not necessarily categories in the philosophy of science (thus not in the categories above), Marx also criticizes positively and negatively. Marx’s (1992a: 22–23) Afterword to the Second German Edition of Capital tells us that sometimes a presentation should be “more didactic” and we should not allow some subjects to be “treated negligently” or left to “vulgarizing.” Further, to interpret the world in terms of its “petty” representations is a “misinterpretation” and if one has to “touch a subject in reality foreign to them” he or she should not overuse “a parade of literary and historical erudition” or bring in “extraneous material” (Marx 1992a: 23). In the disciplines, there exists those who often present themselves as “disinterested inquirers” engaged in “genuine scientific research” but very often one finds “bad conscience”, “the evil

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intent of apologetic”, “schoolboys”, “sophists and sycophants of the ruling class” and “shallow syncretism” (Marx 1992a: 25). Marx is giving us lessons on what makes for good science and its presentation and what happens when that fails. In this practice, he is criticizing what counts as “science” in conventional approaches but also educating the public while pushing them to elevate their own outrage at the abuses the working class suffers because of from where these abuses come and how intellectuals obscure this reality. His science’s job is to reveal this origin, what forms of putative scientific discourse cover it up, and elicit a social response. Be all this as it may, Marx’s is not writing a system of ethics. He has no essay on hypothetical situations and a litany of possible actions one might take and then make judgments on what is it the right or wrong thing to do. He does not base his vision of communism on a moral system of what would be an ideal utopian world. He is not constructing a set of dictums that allow for a litmus test by which to judge the moral worth of a person or even institution. “From a scientific standpoint”, Engels (1939: 166) writes, any “appeal to morality and justice does not help us an inch further; to economic science, moral indignation, however justifiable, cannot serve as an argument, but only as a symptom. The task of economic science is rather to show the social abuses which are now developing as necessary consequences of the existing mode of production, but at the same time also as the indications of its imminent dissolution.” But Marx is not amoral either. Science cannot be value free because the researcher is not value-less. Marx’s approach seems to be that his scientific conclusions, the way he is revealing the logic of capital and its stewardship class, should lead anyone with a conventional sense of morality to an obvious conclusion about how to judge them and often he has no problem voicing this. We should not confuse objective analysis with the demand that the analyst remain neutral and silent in the face of the data they uncover and the findings to which it brings them. In terms of scientific criticism, Marx rejected Hegel’s idealist metaphysics, Kant’s a priori speculative philosophy, Feuerbach’s ahistorical materialism, Proudhon’s metaphysical political economy, and Smith and Ricardo’s ahistorical atomism. Hegel’s and Kant’s philosophies are not empirically rooted and distort our understanding of real material relations. Feuerbach’s ahistorical materialism is unable to conceptualize processes of change adequately. Traditional political economy and

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speculative philosophy invert the most important relationships in their subject matter, see ideas as primarily structuring the world, and posit unchanged, self-organizing, transcendent forces across time and space. Smith and Ricardo foist their economics upon a theory of abstract human nature, a form of individualistic reductionism and false universalization. In sum, Marx rejects philosophical speculation as nonempirical guesswork, metaphysical dialectics as mystifying, and demands that scientific inquiry should clarify things rather than obscure them. All of these approaches mystify our knowledge of the capitalist present in which we live. If we are to follow his lead, then we should avoid these problems in our work too. On these issues, Marx tells us the problem is more than simply faulty logic or malformed concepts. The problems in scientific practice he targets lead straight to political biases built into theoretical frameworks, biases that support the ruling relations of the modern world, though often unintentionally given many theorists’ pretensions to science. For scientific practice to avoid such political biases, Marx tells us we must be historians, non-metaphysical dialecticians, structuralists, and, crucially, critics both of other theories and our own work. In these tasks, we must understand how Marx views the relations endemic to social systems and the proper ways to study them.

CHAPTER THREE

INQUIRY AND ABSTRACTION Introduction In the last chapter we learned that Marx thought metaphysical, ahistorical, a priori, and speculative approaches to science mystified their subject matter and played an ideological role in support of dominant class-state relations. We saw him explain that, as antidote, a science should be materialist, empirical, inductive, dialectical, and structural, all with a sense of realism and historical development. These proscriptions remain at a broad level of abstraction, i.e., meta-principles of social science as science. Marx translated these assumptions into a framework of inquiry that, presumably, would offer new knowledge about modern society as well as a negative critique of its ruling relations and a positive plan of action. Below I investigate how he purported to do this. At one approximation, Marx’s inquires divide into the following moments: the method of critique (MC), the scientific method (SM), the dialectical method (DM), historical materialism (HM), political economy (PE), and the communist project (CP). These distinct but interconnected discourses constitute Marx’s central investigative themes and appear, combine, and mature in his work at various points. In order to understand the use to which Marx put any one moment of inquiry, or all of them collectively, we must grasp their interrelations while avoiding inaccurately connecting these moments to one another, misinterpreting their empirical targets, and/or missing how they function in Marx’s analyses as a whole. To facilitate such an understanding, this chapter explores how Marx’s approach to thinking about the world shaped his investigation of that world. It does so by showing how a philosophy of internal relations and methods of abstraction (Ollman 2003) animate the ontological assumptions and epistemological practices that guide these inquiries (Paolucci 2009).

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Marx’s Internal Relations Philosophy, Methods of Abstraction (Extension, Level of Generality and Vantage Point), and the Backward Study of History1 Few sociologists would deny social institutions have “interrelationships”, i.e., they interact in mutually conditioning ways. Marx (1992a: 28), however, tells us he is interested in “inner connexions” (hereafter, “innerconnections”), that, while incorporating interrelationships, are something larger, deeper, and qualitatively different. This view assumes social practices, structures, and their historical development—rather than separate “things”—entail each other in an ontological sense. That is, things do not exist prior to their innerconnections with each other and the wholes that contain them. The issue, then, is whether we should think of the world as a collection of parts that, when added up, produce a whole that is larger than the sum of those parts, or, should we first think of the world as a whole that contains mutually defining innerconnections that we must abstract out as the whole’s constitutive parts. This is an important distinction as these are not simply mirror images of one another.2 Sociologists as a group accept the principle, as famously expounded by Durkheim, that when we add the parts of society up they collectively result in a whole that is greater than the sum of these parts. Marx—while he does agree the whole is larger than the sum of its parts—starts with assuming that a whole already exists and then inquires into what sort of parts does empirical evidence allow us to carve. In Durkheim’s approach, and by extension mainstream sociology, parts exist first and the way we put the parts together for study constitutes the whole. For Marx, the whole exists first and it is our job to discover, through research, what parts comprise its most important relations and processes. Even when conventional thought starts with wholes, the parts abstracted tend to stay on the level that apparent reality presents to us.

1

This section relies heavily on the work of Bertell Ollman (1976, 1993, 2003). “[Marx’s] point is really very simple—the subject is the whole. The working class taken as a whole, the capitalist class taken as a whole, capitalism as a whole. To know Marx is to know (1) that the whole is not the sum of the individual parts taken separately and (2) that the way things appear to the individual actors actually involved— even if the events in question occur over and over again—cannot be the basis for our understanding of the whole. There is, in short, a big difference between Appearance and Essence” (Lebowitz 2009: 7). 2

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For Marx, on the other hand, something lurks behind these appearances. There is something else there we might not readily see, something that accounts for them. In fact, upon inspection, this “something else there” has expressions in the real concrete everywhere around us. To use a popular image, we are like fish that rarely, if ever, ponder or even investigate the nature of water. Our cognitive relation to society, history, and especially our capitalist present is similar. As Marx argued in the Grundrisse’s Introduction, if we inquire about the dynamics of population without inquiring into the classes that make it up, the type of system that produces such classes, as well as the issue of historical development, we simply cannot penetrate very far into the question and, in fact, produce misleading answers. Thus, in starting with the parts (the results) rather than the whole (the locale of central relations), we have a harder time coming to an awareness of what accounts for that which exists all around us. As Ollman (2003: 36–37) reads him, Marx views the world as a totality composed of innerconnected parts, which, “because of their special temporal ties with other things”, make the whole and its parts appear and operate just the way they do. In this view, the conditions of existence of any thing “are taken to be part of what it is.” Because parts of wholes attain their function, and thus meaning, through their relations to other parts and to wholes themselves, if we poorly separate parts in thought from their overall context, they obtain a distorted or obscured identity, an incomplete meaning, and therefore our resulting abstractions are subject to mystifying our object(s) of inquiry. Marx thus prioritizes the internal relations between parts and wholes and eschews the notion of a “thing-in-itself ” as an independent reality, given that such a conception severs the connections, both historical and structural, that constitute them. This assumption requires special strategies to relate wholes and their parts to one another conceptually. The concepts of totality and the whole-part relation are central to Marx’s conceptualization approach. Totality has both a broad and a narrow application. Broadly, the idea of totality (or the whole) encompasses all of human reality, understood as a process of continual historical development, as a multitude of interactive innerconnections in constant flux, which precludes any final knowledge of it. Despite the limits it imposes on knowledge, beginning with a totality provides a large enough construct such that it does not require appealing to explanations that lie outside it or outside the abstractions this same totality allows one to carve and that provides empirical material for

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investigation. “I detest the kind of explanation which solves a problem by consigning it to some other locality”, Marx (1991g: 78) explains to Pyotr Lavrov. More narrowly, Marx mentally abstracts units of analysis out from wholes by breaking down wholes into constituent parts (that have their own constituent parts). As such, a totality’s parts can also be conceptualized as totalities themselves, e.g., “production, distribution, exchange and consumption … all form the members of a totality, distinctions within a unity” (Marx 1973: 99). Thus, “Capital is a totality of moments, each of which is a totality” (Meany 2002: 120). When breaking down reality into thinking units and recomposing their innerconnections, carving abstractions as timeless in quality (e.g., god, human nature) or as ontologically separate things (e.g., operational definitions) limits one’s ability to investigate social systems and historical change more fully, as one has carved the former (i.e., timeless abstractions) too broadly and the latter (i.e., static things) too narrowly. The methods of abstraction Marx uses—i.e., extension, level of generality, and vantage point (Ollman 2003)—embody these assumptions about whole/part relations conceptually, providing a necessary corollary to his philosophy of internal relations. After conceiving of reality as a totality of innerconnected parts, Marx’s abstractions of extension (Ollman 2003: 73–86) isolate in thought how sets of parts do or do not extend to others, both spatially (within a system) and temporally (between and within them over time). Human creative laboring activity spans all forms of society, monotheism only some, and capital only one. Finding material relations as the most determinant (but not only) relations involved in social change, Marx views history as the results, primarily, of a series of mutually penetrating material realities congealed into identifiable systems at different temporal moments. His primary examples here are modes of production and their political forms of governance and the various concrete social realities—including real people—associated with them. Marx abstracts the extended relations of history and structure into seven levels of historical generality, ranging from very broad to very narrow in time/space (Ollman 2003: 86-99). The broadest levels (Seven, Six, and Five) are those things humans share with matter (i.e., weight, motion), with animals (i.e., the need for food, sex, etc.), and what is unique to “humans as humans”, including social institutions and society in general. From society in general, Marx abstracts out historical

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systems understood as class-based modes of production, e.g., slavery, Asiatic despotism, feudalism, and capitalism (Level Four). Of class systems in general, Marx is specifically interested in (at Level Three) capitalism in general as a unique system on its own terms, i.e., its origin, structure, and core dynamics. He uses knowledge garnered here to study (at Level Two) capitalism’s recent developments (“recent” depending on the temporal frame of the data). Because abstractions of extension are as much about ontological assumptions as epistemological practices, Marx, in discovering general principles extracted from empirical research, compares the interrelationships between Levels Two and Three (recent capitalism and capitalism in general) with those of Four (class societies as a whole) and Five (society in general) in order to uncover capitalism’s “laws of motion” and “central tendencies.” Finally, Marx (at Level One) directs attention to “whatever is unique about a person and situation” (Ollman 2003: 88), including specific people, places, dates, names, and so on. To help him locate, conceptualize, and mobilize different analytical frameworks across these levels, Marx uses abstractions of vantage point, where a “relation is being viewed from different sides, or the same process from its different moments” (Ollman 2003: 100). In piecing together the internal relations of various parts, “Marx frequently changes both the vantage point (and hence perspective) from which he sets out and the breadth of units (together with the meaning of their covering concepts) that come into his analysis” (Ollman 2003: 144). Such abstractions allow him to begin investigation at any level of generality (e.g., class struggle at Level Four, Three, or Two) or from within a specific set of structural relations (e.g., wage-labor in capitalism at Level Three and/or Two). Used with extension and level of generality, vantage point abstractions reveal multiple features of an object of study and help bring structural and historical innerconnections into better view.3

3 Ollman (2003: 75) writes that “at the same time that abstraction establishes an extension and a level of generality, it also sets up a vantage point or place within the relationship from which to view, think about, and piece together the other components in the relationship; meanwhile, the sum of their ties (as determined by the abstraction of extension) also becomes a vantage point for comprehending the larger system to which it belongs, providing both a beginning for research and analysis and a perspective in which to carry it out. With each new perspective, there are significant differences in what can be perceived, a different ordering of the parts, and a different sense of what is important.”

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This flexibility built into vantage point abstractions assists in studying capitalism’s origins (extending Level Three back to Level Four), provides for analyzing how capitalism’s structure accounts for its most recent developments (extending Levels Four and Three to Level Two or even One), and helps grasp the range of potential futures capitalism contains (projecting Levels Three and Two to what potentials lie beyond). Rather than moral absolutes or subjective opinions, vantage point abstractions also offer a method to evaluate historical systems. From alternating vantage points, historical developments can appear as “progress” (e.g., capitalism as progress over feudalism, communism as progress over capitalism) or forms of exploitation and repression (e.g., feudalism from the vantage point of capitalism, capitalism from the vantage point of communism, slavery from the vantage point of both). This view of the larger whole can then inform both research and action. In the internal relations approach, Ollman (2003: 116–117) writes, social things are “conceived of, in Marx’s words, ‘as they are and happen’, so that the process of their becoming is as much as part of what they are as the qualities associated with how they appear and function at this moment.” He concludes that “investigating how something that exists came to be proceeds from its present form, the result, backward, through its necessary preconditions.” Using the present as his vantage point, Marx’s backward study of history thus investigates “how the past developed into the present by adopting the vantage point of the present to view the conditions that gave rise to it” (Ollman 2003: 115). The present as vantage point helps Marx locate and prioritize what presuppositions and preconditions indicate the interaction, both historical and structural, between systemic parts and how their interactions transform such parts and, because of their internal ties, collective transformations of parts produce entirely new systems (for discussion, see Ollman 2003: 116–125). Presuppositions are those things a system’s structure (i.e., its parts) logically needed to occur or emerge in order for it to develop at all. Preconditions are those things that did in fact occur historically that assisted in a system’s rise. Hypothetically, one could start with any class system, such as feudalism (included in Level of Generality Four), and establish the parts composing its basic relations (e.g., its class structure, forms of political power, and ideological discourse). One would then use this vantage point to look backward to a time before its historical epoch to investigate the presuppositions and preconditions that explain why it developed how it did.

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Marx, primarily, starts with the structure of capitalism in general, examines the operations and innerconnections of its parts (Level of Generality Three), and investigates the past (all that is in Levels of Generality Four and Five) for what presuppositions (e.g., a moneyform, private property, free laborers, among other things) and preconditions (e.g., the colonial system) account for the rise of its general structure and dynamics. Afterward, he can extend his analysis to chart its development in either temporal direction, looking for “necessary” (e.g., struggles between the classes) as well as “contingent” (e.g., those who emerge victorious in such struggles) processes across space and time that tell the fuller story. When successful, this procedure provides a roadmap of priorities for the phenomena one has to explain, what to look for in the past, and what the future might have in store. When one understands the distinctions and intended targets of Marx’s moments of inquiry in terms of an internal relations philosophy (i.e., the world as an evolving totality of innerconnected parts), his methods of abstraction (i.e., extension, level of generality, vantage point), and the backward study of history, then one comes to his work armed with a useful interpretive framework. This approach to historical-structural analysis—including all of Marx’s methods of abstraction—is evident when we investigate how it unfolds across the moments of inquiry in his work. How Abstractions and Moments of Inquiry Unfold in Marx’s Work Marx’s work does not introduce his moments of inquiry—i.e., MC, SM, DM, HM, PE, and CP—in a linear manner. As a result, there is no one place for a beginner to start, though we are not without interpretive guidelines. One approach is to read Marx’s work backward before reading him forward, i.e., use the destination at which Marx arrives in his mature research as a sieve to read his work as it evolved toward its mature form.4 We should also recognize the concerns of each moment

4 It seems perfectly logical to start with Marx’s early work and trace it forward toward his more mature work (e.g., see Oakley 1983). The problem here is that without knowledge of the more mature methodological principles on which Marx settles to develop his most advanced political economic analysis, one is without clues as to what principles he kept over his career and how these informed his best research. Or rather, one might be able to do a chronological reading of Marx but this would mean they would have to read all of his work from his dissertation to Capital first in order to

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of inquiry and not conflate one with another. The method of critique focuses on those principles to reject or adopt in pursuit of methodological self-clarification. Scientific method helps establish objects of study through empirical research, provides a comparative method, and other logical-analytical procedures. Dialectical method is a logic and language to help capture processes change in thought, analysis, and exposition. Historical materialism is a framework for the study of historical social systems with a focus on class societies, productive practices, material-ideal relations, and the origins of the state. Political economy is a study of the rise, structure, and development of the capitalist mode of production and its real relations within other social relations. The communist project is a revolutionary program of action for a classless and stateless future after capitalism. These moments of inquiry inform one another and overlap in significant ways, though they are not an undifferentiated whole, e.g., “Marxism.” A final interpretive guide concerns the relation between science and the dialectical method. All too commonly Marxist scholars attempt to establish in what way Marx’s dialectic is scientific. The problem here stems from the threat of constructing dialectical categories—e.g., contradiction, negation, quantity/quality change, and so on—as scientific laws, which all too easily slips into metaphysical conceptions and/or the hypostatization of concepts. An alternative approach starts with the question, “Without regard to particular disciplines, what do all sciences share at the level of science as science?” In one approximation, all sciences have ontological and epistemological assumptions, analytical procedures, specific forms of language and concepts, and, finally, descriptive and explanatory models appropriate to the object(s) of inquiry. If we divide Marx’s work into these categories and then trace how he uses dialectical reason across them (including historical materialist and political-economic analysis), then we can better uncover what he meant by the term “scientific dialectics.” As such, Marx’s scientific method is dialectical rather than the reverse (for details on these points see Paolucci 2009). As his research unfolds, the method of critique brings Marx to an increasing awareness of his empirical and conceptual problems. discover where he eventually ends up methodologically. Fortunately for contemporary scholars, Marx’s work is ended and there exists a great deal of scholarship to direct us (sometimes misdirect us) as to his method and how he developed it. As such, starting with the mature results of Marx’s method before going back to read his early work is preferable.

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Already committed to scientific values, he comes to materialism and dialectics first, as can be seen in his doctoral dissertation as he examines different approaches to philosophical naturalism. He cultivates his own voice and program through continued research and critique of other scholars (e.g., his early work, letters, and journalism). Over this process, he becomes a communist, a better historian, and a political economist. His vision of history and his understanding of capitalism each become more lucid and the force of material relations becomes clearer to him. As his political-economic studies mature, his structural analyses (in part carried over from his historical materialist analyses) become more sophisticated and he learns to relate such analyses to both materialism and historicism. Finally, his communist project moves from a general political point of view to a strategic program involving organization and action. Below, I trace these relationships and their development in Marx’s intellectual biography. Scientific Method (and Philosophical Naturalism) In his dissertation (1840–1841), Marx (1975f: 68) holds that “Our life does not need speculation and empty hypotheses, but that we should live without confusion” and, therefore, “the study of nature cannot be pursued in accordance with empty axioms and laws”, which for social scientific inquiries include individualistic reductionism and idealism.5 If individualism is historically changing, then one cannot establish a general theory of society on its basis, lest such a theory slip into mystical pseudo-science. In this early work, Marx moves toward an outlook that is materialist and positive, one that views social relations as our subject matter. If Marx’s dissertation reveals materialist roots, it is a materialism that also places humans, in part, among animals. As a result of this internal relation, wholly separate realms of study and knowledge are

5 “If abstract-individual self-consciousness is posited as an absolute principle, then, all true and real science is done away with in as much as individuality does not rule within the nature of things themselves. But then, too, everything collapses that is transcendentally related to human consciousness and therefore belongs to the imaginative mind. On the other hand, if that self-consciousness which knows itself only in the form of abstract universality is raised to an absolute principle, then the door is opened wide to superstitions and unfree mysticism. Stoic philosophy provides the historic proof of this. Abstract-universal self-consciousness has, indeed, the intrinsic urge to affirm itself in the things themselves in which it can only affirm itself by negating them” (Marx 1975f: 72–73).

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unnecessary. As a presage to a materialism that conjoins both natural and human science, Marx’s (1988a: 111) 1844 Manuscripts go so far as to claim that “Natural science will in time subsume itself under the science of man, just as the science of man will subsume under itself natural science; there will be one science” (emphasis in the original). While this comment expresses a commitment to scientific reason, there have been many views on what this means. Here, I will make two observations. First, Marx accepts empirical bases, employs theoretical models, and demands analytical rigor just as any natural scientist does. Just as chemistry uses “reagents” to extract purer forms and as geology demarcates epochs of natural history, Marx (1992k: 19) uses the “force of abstraction” to isolate variables and periodize historical social forms (Marx 1992b: 351). Just as heavenly bodies have laws of motion, so does the capitalist mode of production (Marx 1992k: 20). And, similar to how the human anatomy provides clues to that of the ape, the capitalist economy contains relations within it that aid in studying its evolution from prior forms (Marx 1973: 105). Further, Marx does not limit his use of tools from the sciences to simple analogies. His son-in-law, Paul Lafargue (1890–1891: 75), tells us that Marx “held the view that a science is not really developed until it has learned to make use of mathematics.” As such, his mathematical manuscripts reference “the experimental method” (Marx 1983e: 93) and mobilize other terms that unite mathematical and dialectical reason such as “starting-point”, “moments”, and “limits.” These terms place temporary boundaries around processes of change so that one can study them at various stages of development. These terms and the comparative method also appear in Capital, where one goal is to observe “phenomena where they occur in their most typical form and most free from disturbing influence,” using abstractions to make “experiments under conditions that assure the occurrence of the phenomenon in its normality” (Marx 1992k: 19).6 Second, Marx does not separate the study of humans from the study of nature as distinct and incommensurable realms of knowledge (though differences do exist). As we saw in his use of abstractions of

6

Marx’s (1983e: 3) Mathematical Manuscripts indeed witness a dialectical criticism: “First making the differentiation and then removing it therefore leads literally to nothing. The whole difficulty in understanding the differential operation (as in the negation of the negation generally) lies precisely in seeing how it differs from such a simple procedure and therefore leads to results.”

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extension and historical generality, Marx distinguishes between what humans do and do not share with animals. In addition, he found useful comparisons and connections between Darwinian theory and his approach to history (a topic that returns in Chapter Five on the issue of teleology). As his intellectual partner, Engels’s essay, “The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man” fits nicely between the former and latter concerns. And, written in his later years, Marx’s Ethnological Notebooks reveal his study of historical social life as a part of natural history.7 Thus, what we find is that naturalism (i.e., using both analytical tools and conceptual models from natural science) stayed with Marx throughout his entire intellectual career and extends across both his methods of abstraction and his moments of inquiry. Dialectical Method Marx’s (1975k) dialectical interests extend back at least as far as his 1837 letter to his father. Here, he explains his return to Hegel, expresses skepticism of idealism and metaphysics, and argues that contradictions exist in the real concrete, a condition that calls for a relational conception of truth. Knowledge, whether about abstract ideas or concrete conditions, always exists within relationships that provide meaning to those things that it attempts to capture. In his dissertation, Marx (1975f: 36) thus offers a dialectical approach to the whole-part problem: “What can be demonstrated in the small can even more easily be shown where the relations are considered in larger dimensions, while conversely very general considerations leave doubt whether the result will hold when applied to details.”8 Though Marx assumes a totality and breaks down its parts, abstractions at the level of the whole may not adequately capture the innerconnections of the parts. As a result, the broader we carve an abstraction the less it tells us about specific and concrete details. In his 1843 Critique of Hegel, Marx (1975c: 12) thus argues that “an explanation which does not provide the differentia specifica is no explanation” (emphases in the original).

7 Here, Marx (1972: 109) observes that the development of familial norms—including the “gradual exclusion of own brothers and sisters from the marriage relation”— begins first in “isolated cases, introduced partially at first, then becoming general, and finally universal among the advancing tribes … [which] illustrates the operation of the principle of natural selection.” 8 This represents Marx’s internal relations philosophy and use of extension (i.e., what extends to other relations, what does not).

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Theory, for Marx, must not remain at the general abstract level but should be abstracted from and applied to the specifically real, actual, sensuous world, observable concrete material realities in their development. Marx’s dialectic thus was not a “world philosophy” or a master key for each problem he faced (see Chapter Two). Scientific dialectic for Marx was a way of understanding innerconnections, dynamics, and change in the abstract (flexibility) and capturing them conceptually for the purposes of scientific research and exposition (precision). In addition to familiar terms—e.g., negation, contradiction, interpenetration, and so on—several “conceptual doublets” Marx regularly deploys stem from his dialectical internal relations philosophy: whole/part, essence/appearance, history/structure, abstract/concrete, relations/processes, form/content, time/space, quality/quantity, and necessity/contingency (see Paolucci 2009: 103–223). Such terms help Marx capture capitalism’s processes of change with a level of conceptual precision. However, with no concise essay from Marx on how dialectics serve his science, one must examine his overall moments of inquiry. Historical Materialism Believing we must carve our abstractions from empirical observations, Marx’s (1975f: 63) dissertation criticizes approaches where “Time excluded from the world of essence is transferred into the selfconsciousness of the philosophizing subject but does not make any contact with the world itself.” Social structures are thus a sort of author of behavior patterns such that “we must … recognise the powerful influence of general conditions on the will of the acting persons” where behaviors cannot be “anything but the factual embodiment and obvious manifestation of … general conditions … and compelling forces of that period” (Marx 1975g: 353–354; emphases in the original).9 Though this statement is similar to Durkheim’s (1982) characterization of social facts, Marx goes a step further. His 1845 “Theses on Feuerbach” hold that a social phenomenon such as “ ‘religious sentiment’ is itself a social product, and that the abstract individual whom [Feuerbach] analyses belongs in reality to a particular form of society” (Thesis VII; Marx 1978d: 145). Marx’s, that is, is a historical materialism, not a general sociology. 9

Connecting Levels of Generality Five through Two.

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Engels called the framework he and Marx developed “the materialist conception of history.” The term “historical materialism” was neither Marx’s nor his, though this usage is common and more fitting than the ill-conceived “dialectical materialism” associated with none-too-few formulaic treatments. For the present analysis, what we call “historical materialism” is an examination of the sociological laws found across historical social systems—e.g., the centrality of labor, the role of material forces and class struggle in structural-historical change, basesuperstructure relations, and the origins of the state. Some of these variables apply across levels of human generality (e.g., the centrality of labor at Levels Five through Two) and others apply strictly to the history of class systems (e.g., the origins of the state at Levels Four and Three). Rather than as static a prioris, Marx’s historical materialist principles look for innerconnections between history and structure, the material and ideal, and the individual and society. Though both human history and knowledge intimately intertwine with human labor and the struggle over its terms and products, as the conditions of labor change, so do the qualities of causal variables: “When the social conditions corresponding to a specific stage of production are only just arising, or when they are already dying out, there are, naturally, disturbances in production, although to different degrees and with different effects” (Marx 1973: 88). From this vantage point, one cannot assume variables examined at one moment of inquiry retain all of the same qualities at another; we must take note of their internal changes over time and within systems: “The phenomena are this time singular, in many respects different from what they were in the past, and this—quite apart from other modifying circumstances” (Marx 1991f: 354). Thus, as an extension of his naturalism, Marx’s materialist analyses use controlled comparison of historical social forms. In his Critique of Hegel, for example, we find a historical analysis of “the connection between political constitution and private property amongst the Romans” (Marx 1975c: 110–111) that uses the comparative method to “emphasise two circumstances which differ from those obtaining among the Germans.”10 Marx’s controlled comparison finds that apparent social 10 Marx (1975c: 110) concludes: “It is really the Romans who first developed the law of private property, abstract civil law, the right of the abstract person. Roman civil law is civil law in its classical form. But nowhere do we find among the Romans that the law of private property is mystified, as is the case with the Germans. It nowhere becomes the law of the state either” (emphases in the original).

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forms often contain real concrete historical differences, precluding a universal abstract definition, singular and complete. As a result, how, when, and in what way to control variables are important issues.11 Though Marx never wrote an extended treatise on methodological matters, at this point The German Ideology sets out the historical materialist approach in the most systematic manner yet offered: The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men—the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men at this stage still appear as the direct efflux of their material behavior. The same applies to mental production as expressed in the language of the politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics, etc. of a people. Men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc., that is, real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these, up to its furthest forms…. This manner of approach is not devoid of premises. Its starts out from the real premises and does not abandon them for a moment. Its premises are men, not in any fantastic isolation and fixity, but in their actual, empirically perceptible process of development under definite conditions. (Marx and Engels 1976: 36–37)

While human knowledge has a broad tendency to explain forms of social organization by appealing to ideological motives and/or universal principles, Marx and Engels (1976: 37) begin their inquiries with the “study of the actual life-process and the activity of the individuals of each epoch.” This view requires a minor stipulation. Marx and Engels are not trying to say everything each person thinks, believes, and/or does is simply a reflex of material conditions as if human beings are simply and only automatons their surroundings forge. Marx and Engels are presenting a general sociological law at a broader level. That is, their statement is at a level where the force of the law they propose has greater variations in more specific and concrete details (i.e., a lower level). Stepping back several steps—i.e., at the level of an epoch as an epoch—the general patterns of law, ideas, conceptions, and such, and how material conditions shape them are more discernible. Marx’s research thus starts with the assumption that human beings, not free to choose the conditions into which they are born, are inherently both

11 “Transformations—which to be elaborated did require in England centuries— were [in the United States] realised in a few years. But the observer must look not to the older States on the Atlantic, but to the newer ones (Ohio is a striking example) and the newest (California f.i.)” (Marx 1991e: 344).

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social beings and, to some degree, products. As a result, idealism can only be a secondary (or even tertiary) concern. Marx increasingly mobilizes historical materialist principles for his more focused political-economic analyses, though these latter inquiries do not emerge fully formed in his initial writings. A highly developed political economy would have to wait until after “The Manifesto of the Communist Party”, which can be seen as a transitional piece of a sort, uniting Marx’s scholarly and political activities in its announcement of class struggle as a historic-analytical variable and as an object of political discourse. In Class Struggles in France (1848–1850) and The Eighteenth Brumaire (1851–1852 / 1869), Marx sharpens his historical research skills while mobilizing class analysis as a methodological tool, demonstrating his socio-historical sensibilities, which return with The Civil War in France (Marx 1870–1871). In between, he writes A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, which contains a Preface that pulls his main lines of thought together up to that point. These well-known statements are worth revisiting. Marx argues that human “social production” produces “definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will” and which “correspond to a definite stage of development of their material powers of production.” The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society—the real foundation, on which rise legal and political superstructures and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political and spiritual processes of life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of their development, the material forces of production in society come in conflict with the existing relations of production or— what is but a legal expression for the same thing—with the property relations within which they have been at work before. From forms of development of the forces of production these relations turn into their fetters. Then comes the period of social revolution. With the change in the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations the distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic—in short ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.… [T]his consciousness must rather be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social forces of production and

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While situated at the beginning of a work ostensibly on political economy, Marx’s Preface is not a statement of political-economic principles but, as Engels (1980: 469) explained, “the materialist conception of history” is political economy’s “essential foundation.” As a statement of historical materialism, the Preface contains hypotheses about change within and between systems. The two main principles are: (1) material bases are primary variables that condition ideological superstructures and (2) contradictions between the relations and the forces of production cause societies to change internally, and over time, into new forms. In placing it as a Preface, Marx tells us that lessons learned from his historical materialist research now function in behest of his politicaleconomic studies, of which A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy presents his first systematic public presentation.12 Political Economy Marx’s political-economic research unfolds over time as he engages in criticism of the dominant thinkers of his day (e.g., his Critique of Hegel, The Holy Family, The German Ideology, the Thesis on Feuerbach, the attacks on Proudhon in The Poverty of Philosophy). In this period, he immerses himself in study of the capitalist system (e.g., his Grundrisse, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy), while continuing to use his historical materialist principles (e.g., writing The Civil War in France, his journalism, etc.). Armed with historical and materialist sensibilities and wielding the method of critique, he found conventional political-economic approaches particularly mystifying.13

12 Extending Levels of Generality Five (social relations in general) and Four (class society) to Level Three (capitalism in general). 13 Marx (1982b: 99–100) argues that “all Mr. Proudhon’s other categories are social relations which together go to make up what is now known as property; outside these relations bourgeois property is nothing but a metaphysical or juristic illusion. The property of another epoch, feudal property, developed in a wholly different set of social relations. In establishing property as an independent relation, Mr. Proudhon is guilty of more than a methodological error: he clearly proves his failure to grasp the bond linking all forms of bourgeois production, or to understand the historical and transitory nature of the forms of production in any one epoch…. He fails to see that economic categories are but abstractions of those real relations, that they are truths only

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Explanations that appeal to a transcendent human nature and/or see capitalism as an abstract universal mystify our knowledge of material relations, historical class struggles as causal agents, and how capitalists forged their system into reality. So, in Capital, Marx (1992b: 669) highlights, with empirical detail, how the transformation of “slave, serf, and bondman” into a “free seller of labour-power” was a result of “their expropriation … written in the annals of mankind in letters of blood and fire.” Marx’s (1992k: 21) historical and dialectical sensibilities hold that “the present society is no solid crystal, but an organism capable of change, and is constantly changing.”14 This vantage point provides a view to criticize traditional approaches not only for accepting the modern system as natural and eternal, but also for their class biases.15 In addition, when Marx criticizes Smith and Ricardo (as we saw in Chapter Two) for treating the “eighteenth century individual” as “an ideal, whose existence they project into the past … not arising historically, but posited by nature”, such comments provide a clue for what his criticism is in search of practically speaking, i.e., instances where Levels of Generality Two (recent capitalism) and/or Three (capitalism in general) are conflated with Level Five (humans as humans, or society in general) and/or where Level One (specific individuals and places, conditioned by Levels Two, Three, and/or Four) is seen as indicative of Levels Five and/or Six (humans as humans, humans as animals). This latter problem is common in conventional social thought, regardless of the particular historical system. in so far as those relations continue to exist.” Elsewhere: “When the economists say that present-day relations—the relations of bourgeois production—are natural, they imply that these are the relations in which wealth is created and productive forces developed in conformity with the laws of nature. These relations therefore are themselves natural laws independent of the influence of time. They are eternal laws which must always govern society. Thus there has been history, but there is no longer any. Thus there has been history, since there were the institutions of feudalism, and in these institutions of feudalism we find quite different relations of production from those of bourgeois society, which economists try to pass off as natural and as such, eternal” (Marx 1847: 121). These critiques find Marx pointing out a confusion of Levels of Generality Two (recent capitalism) and Three (capitalism in general) with Level Five (society in general). 14 Connecting dialectical principles to the study of political economy. 15 For Marx (1988a: 59), “it is absurd to conclude, as [Adam] Smith does, that since the landlord exploits every benefit which comes to society, the interest of the landlord is always identical with that of society (Ibid., p. 230). In the economic system, under the rule of private property, the interest which an individual has in society is in precisely inverse proportion to the interest society has in him—just as the interest of the moneylender in the spendthrift is by no means identical with the interest of the spendthrift.”

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Marx (1983c: 354) described A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy as a book where “an important view of social relations is scientifically expounded for the first time.” Marx, however, not satisfied with his Critique, found it unfriendly for a popular audience. The Grundrisse—an unpublished work of the period—better shows the development of his methodological sophistication (e.g., sorting out the interrelation of MC, SM, DM, HM, and PE and the backward study of history across Levels of Generality Five through Two) and how he directed it toward political economy armed with an understanding of what to and not to do. He believed conventional approaches fail to capture sociological complexity and tend to mistake capitalist relations for economic relations in general. In views that have the ideological effect of mystifying the special exploitative relations of capitalism, the problem is not simply theoretical or ideological but also methodological: Some determinations belong to all epochs, others to only a few. [Some] determinations will be shared by the most modern epoch and the most ancient. No production will be thinkable without them: however, even though the most developed languages have laws and characteristics in common with the least developed, nevertheless, just those things which determine their development, i.e. the elements which are not general and common, must be separated out from the determinations valid for production as such, so that in their unity—which arises already from the identity of the subject, humanity and of the object, nature—their essential difference is not forgotten. The whole profundity of those modern economists who demonstrate the eternity and harmoniousness of the existing social relations lies in this forgetting. (Marx 1973: 85)

This statement tells us something about how to relate the method of critique and historical materialism to political economy. In researching historical social structures one will find common elements in many of them but this should not preclude us from identifying their differences. Marx thus warns against constructing concepts fit for one system and generalizing them to all others, an error of extension. Further still, he explains how important it is to weigh identities and differences in offering causal explanations. Sometimes differences are of the greatest importance. Traditional political economy, however, often constructs concepts based on observations of the present and universalizes them backward to prior systems and/or pitches them at the level of society in general. Such forms of knowledge are not only reductionist but also non-dialectical, non-historical, and nonmaterialist:

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As a rule, the most general abstractions arise only in the midst of the richest possible concrete development, where one thing appears common to many, to all. Then it ceases to be thinkable in a particular form alone…. Bourgeois society is the most developed and the most complex historic organization of production…. [Its] categories therefore express forms of being, the characteristics of existence, and often only individual sides of this specific society, this subject, and that therefore this society by no means begins only at the point where one can speak of it as such; this holds for all science as well. (Marx 1973: 104–106; emphases in the original)

In what is essentially a sociology of knowledge, Marx argues that a series of material relations have developed and matured under capitalism in way that makes a more coherent conceptualization of them possible. However, even if previous societies have contained elements that express a mature form (e.g., money), albeit in an under-developed way, this does not mean that the conceptual framework appropriate for capitalism can be used to analyze and interpret events in prior systems with equal cogency (and vice-versa). In his Introduction to the Grundrisse, therefore, Marx explains the methodological principles that help him analyze various class systems in general versus capitalism in particular. Capital presents his results. In Capital, the apex of Marx’s structural and historical studies, the method of critique situates what his work will avoid—i.e., idealism, speculative a prioris, reductionism, ahistoricism, false universalization—and how it will serve as a corrective. Scientific method (i.e., controlled comparison, mathematics, models of structure and causal relationships) and dialectical reason (i.e., essence, contradiction, opposition, negativity, and transformation) set the framework; historical materialist principles animate throughout (i.e., historical-material forces and interests, the struggle between classes, and the shaping of superstructural realities); and the communist project stands as one potential systemic successor (i.e., the expropriation of the expropriators and the program of struggle for a classless and stateless society). Unfortunately, Marx’s meditations on method in the Grundrisse (not published in English until 1973) do not make it into either his Preface or his Afterword to Capital, leaving interpreters with an incomplete record of his most important work’s methodological principles. His most succinct and systematic—but still incomplete—statement on method was in his reproduction of a reviewer’s comments about the first edition, which he took to be fair representation of “the dialectical

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method” (Marx 1992a: 28). Below, I summarize this lengthy excerpt from Capital’s 1873 Afterword. Marx’s method is interested “to find the law … which governs … phenomena, in so far as they have a definite form and mutual connexion within a given historical period.” Also of interest is “the law of their variation, of their development, i.e., of their transition from one form into another, from one series of connexions into a different one.” This approach determines “by rigid scientific investigation, the necessity of successive determining orders of social conditions, and to establish, as impartially as possible, the facts that serve … for fundamental starting-points.” Here, it is important that one “treats the social movement as a process … governed by laws not only independent of human will, consciousness and intelligence, but rather, on the contrary, determining that will, consciousness and intelligence.” Therefore, “not the idea, but the material phenomenon alone can serve as its-startingpoint. Such an inquiry will confine itself to the confrontation and the comparison of a fact, not with ideas, but with another fact.” In bringing historical concerns to political economy, “most important of all is the rigid analysis of the series of successions, of the sequences and concatenations in which the different stages of such an evolution present themselves.” Since “every historical period has laws of its own … one and the same phenomenon falls under quite different laws in consequence of the different structure of those organisms as a whole, of the variations of their individual organs, of the different conditions in which those organs function, &c.” Additionally, “With the varying degree of development of productive power, social conditions and the laws governing them vary too.” “The scientific value of such an inquiry lies in the disclosing of the special laws that regulate the origin, existence, development, death of a given social organism and its replacement by another and higher one” (Marx 1992c*: 27–28). All of these considerations at the heart of Marx’s political economy— induction, a synthesis of historical and structural analysis, use of the comparative method, and the search for law-like regularities within systemic relationships, as well as those results that are the outcome of laws of variation and difference—require traditional scientific tools. For example, in political economy, Marx (1992b: 581) examines the interrelationships between independent and dependent variables as well as constants (also see 1992b: 291, 296). Indeed, in Capital, different sections, chapters, and even volumes hold certain variables constant with these increasing or decreasing in number as the narrative unfolds.

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Marx (1973: 108) foretells this in his Introduction to the Grundrisse, i.e., his larger project will move from “the general, abstract determinants which obtain in more or less all forms of society” (Level of Generality Five), to “the inner structure of bourgeois society” (Level Three) as well as their “interrelation”, including the classes, forms of property, town and country, the credit system, the state, international relations of production, division of labor, exchange, and the world market and its crises (Marx, of course, never finished this work). The implication is that Marx intended the volumes of Capital to approximate a larger and extended experimental model within the framework of a historical-structural dialectic. Though it is important to note that Marx’s conclusions in political economy are their own level of discourse, historical materialism and political economy do share some congruent concerns. Both examine class relations, the issue of appropriation, the state, the question of labor, and ideology. As informed by Marx’s dialectical thinking, both historical materialist and political-economic analyses extend backward as well as forward in time, though not to the same temporal or conceptual degree. Where class systems are no longer existent (ancient communal societies and the potential future communist one), historical materialism’s categories of class, class struggle, and the state lose their efficacy, though in pre-class and post-class societies the issues of basematerial relations as well as conflicts between forces and relations of production may still find relevance. At the same time, political economic analyses do not extend back before capitalism but do extend forward up to the point of its dissolution. As a result, we should not conflate historical materialist principles with those of political economy, where the former serves the latter without subsuming it as simply a logical and/or deductive extension.16

16 In examining the material-ideal relations indicative of modernity’s social structure, Marx (1992b: 83), using controlled comparison with a vantage point where historical materialism services his political economy, writes:

The religious world is but the reflex of the real world. And for a society based upon the production of commodities, in which the producers in general enter into social relations with one another by treating their products as commodities and values, whereby they reduce their individual private labour to the standard of homogenous human labour—for such a society, Christianity with its cultus of abstract man, more especially in its bourgeois developments, Protestantism, Deism, &c., is the most fitting form of religion. In the ancient Asiatic and other ancient modes of production, we find that the conversion of men into producers

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Marx studies capitalism in its historical development (Levels Two and Three extended backward to Level Four), on its own terms (Level of Generality Three alone), and its recent development (Level Two informed by Three).17 To abstract capitalism out from the history of all class systems, Marx (1992b: 209) mobilizes a controlled comparison: “The essential difference between the various economic forms of society, between, for instance a society based on slave-labour, and one based on wage-labour, lies only in the mode in which … surplus-labour is in each case extracted from the actual producer, the labourer.” Having isolated what justifies a study of capitalism as a unique class system— i.e., its specific mode of appropriating wealth, including its property relation—Marx is in a better position to locate and describe its basic structure. However, Marx’s description of its basic structure in Capital appears before he explains how and why he isolates it. It is important to understand why: Of course the method of presentation must differ in form from that of inquiry. That latter has to appropriate the material in detail, to analyse its different forms of development, to trace out their inner connexion. Only after this work is done, can the actual movement be adequately described. If this is done successfully, if the life of the subject-matter is ideally reflected as in a mirror, then it may appear as if we had before us a mere a priori construction. (Marx 1992a: 28)

Just as with the principles announced in the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx’s discovery of the capitalist mode of production’s laws of motion was a product of long research,

of commodities, holds a subordinate place, which, however, increases in importance as the primitive communities approach nearer and nearer to their dissolution. If Marx held that the ideal is simply and only a reflex of the material, then he would not situate the relation of Christianity to capitalism in the way that he does here. Christianity extends from the past into the present but now within a new historico-structural relation. Christianity contains a theology of the abstract human just as capitalism contains a productive relation of abstract labor, making it compatible with capitalism’s material basis and its associated superstructural forms, i.e., both posit abstract individuality as a universal condition, making the material foundations of one compatible with the ideal suppositions of the other. 17 Capital, Volume I, contains sections where Marx depicts capitalism’s historical rise as well as its continuing development, where structural and historical models are synthesized. Capital, Volume III shows Marx analyzing the logic of capital mainly on its own terms, historical dynamics a secondary concern, often abstracted out of view altogether.

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not a preconceived deductive theory. Marx introduces these laws and empirical demonstrations across Capital’s volumes. In Volume I, Marx (1992b: 163) lays out capital’s essential logic— e.g., M-C-M’ … M’-C-M” … ad infinitum—and then explains that there exist “Contradictions in the Formula of Capital”: Our friend, Moneybags, who as yet is only an embryo capitalist, must buy his commodities at their value, must sell them at their value, and yet at the end of the process must withdraw more value from circulation than he threw into it at starting. His development into a full-grown capitalist must take place, both within the sphere of circulation and without it. These are the conditions of the problem.

Capitalists invest money to produce commodities to sell for profits, part of which they re-invest back into the production of more commodities. The logic of such a system assumes infinite expansion. However, Marx (1992b: 500), abstracting the totality of capital into its parts, finds that “All surplus-value, whatever particular form (profit, interest, or rent), it may subsequently crystallise into, is in substance the materialisation of unpaid labour.” A system predicated on infinite expansion—which is itself predicated on the appropriation of surplusvalue from the working class in the wage system, the same group that capitalists rely on for purchases—is a contradictory one.18 Capitalists as a whole cannot indefinitely achieve this expansion if it requires a growing number of purchasers but simultaneously increases the concentration of wealth. When combined with increases in the organic composition of capital (Marx 1992b: 289–291), there is a tendency for the rate of profit to fall (Marx 1971a: 211–231), a central contradiction within the system (Marx 1971a: 241–266) upon which—as informed by historical materialism—Marx constructs his theory of crises. In Theories of Surplus Value, Part II, Marx’s (1968b: 534) grasp of crises leads him back to the whole-part problem: “In world market crises, all the contradictions of bourgeois production erupt collectively; in particular crises (particular in their content and in extent) the eruptions are only sporadical, isolated and one-sided.” In Capital, Volume III, he thus tempers the tendencies he attributes to capitalism as his analyses extend the number of variables and shows how “countervailing tendencies”—including increasing the intensity of exploitation, depressing wages below the value of labor-power, cheapening the cost 18

Dialectics and historical materialism informing political economy.

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of constant capital, relative overpopulation, and foreign trade—can counteract the general law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall (Marx 1971a: 232–240). Marx’s laws, then, are never absolutes once additional variables are recognized as contingencies, some structural, some historical, and some a combination of both. Between his presentation of the general formula of capital and his consideration of its crisis tendencies, Marx (1992b: 145) discusses the historical roots of the system: The circulation of commodities is the starting-point of capital. The production of commodities, their circulation, and that more developed form of their circulation called commerce, these form the historical groundwork from which it rises. The modern history of capital dates from the creation in the 16th century of a world-embracing commerce and a world-embracing market.19

He concludes that the “treasures captured outside Europe by undisguised looting, enslavement, and murder, floated back to the mothercountry and were turned into capital. Holland, which first fully developed the colonial system, in 1648 stood already in the acme of its commercial greatness” (Marx 1992b: 705).20 Counteracting individualistic reductionism, Marx’s unification of historical materialist principles with political-economic analysis locates and connects both specific historical facts and structural components i.e., preconditions and presuppositions. After discovering capitalism’s basic structure and locating the historical forces in its rise, Marx projects capitalism forward in its potentialities to inform his political action. The Communist Project In carving reality into levels of generality, abstractions of extension help Marx trace the interrelations of history and structure, examine their internal dynamics, and discover the ways of social change, all of which inform his political activity. Marx makes connections between Levels of Generality Six (humans as a species), Five (the earliest societies were primitive communist), Four (the vantage point of class history

19

Connecting Level of Generality Three (capitalism in general) backward to Level Four (class history). 20 Here, Marx carves out a period of capitalist development (Level of Generality Two) and connects it, backward, to the transition from feudalism to capitalism (Levels Four and Three, also connecting historical materialism and political economy).

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pinpoints how the present emerged as well as what is unique about it), Three (unlike other class systems, the general structure of capitalism provides for an opportunity to permanently eliminate class antagonisms), and Two (how recent capitalist history increases or decreases the potential for social transformation and what strategies are or are not likely to succeed). In uniting these concerns with political-economic analysis, Marx looks for capitalism’s short-term (crises), medium-range (revolutions), and long-term possibilities (socialism and communism, or barbarism) as way of integrating his (and others’) action into the course of the historical development of the present.21 Rather than an inevitable and necessary outcome, a socialist revolution is among several potential ones, each contingent on emergent historical realities, success or failure of class struggles, the emergence of class consciousness, and tactics that facilitate a transition out of capitalism.22 All of the levels of generality and moments of inquiry thus inform Marx’s communist project, which is based not on a romanticutopianism but the belief that capitalism contains the presuppositions (democratic practice, production of material surplus, advanced technology) and preconditions (crises and class struggles) that allow for a classless, stateless future. Marx thus gears his politics toward furthering one particular outcome among capitalism’s totality of possibilities. Let us examine how this view unfolds across his work. Though Marx mobilizes the lessons from previous levels of generality (i.e., Six through Two) and their associated moments of inquiry (i.e., MC, SM, DM, HM, PE) to inform his communist project (CP), in his early period we do not yet find him convinced about socialist and communist thought. By the time of the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx had adopted a communist outlook. His vision of communism is one of a material reality contained within capitalism that, if and when unleashed, can provide for the full development of humans as individuals and as a species. Rather than reforming

21 Crises can create politically advantageous periods. “Here, as in America and on the European Continent, there is a business crisis which in my view has yet to reach its peak. After that point has been reached, we shall enter the most favourable period of all for the launching of new business” (Marx 1991d: 212). 22 “If you say that you do not share the view of my party for England I can only reply that that party considers an English revolution not necessary, but—according to historic precedents—possible. If the unavoidable evolution turns into revolution, it would not only be the fault of the ruling classes, but also of the working class” (Marx 1992h: 49; emphases in the original).

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consciousness, Marx’s (1978d: 144) task is to complete Feuerbach’s materialist-theoretical revolution: The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of other circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that it is essential to educate the educator himself. Hence, this doctrine necessarily arrives at dividing society into two parts, one of which is superior to society. The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionising practice.

“The Manifesto of the Communist Party” returns to the communist theme but now as a more fully formed program geared toward transforming the capitalist political economy in a particular direction via practice, i.e., political struggle requiring tactics and action over philosophical reflection and/or simple advocacy. Unlike the utopians he criticizes (e.g., Fourier, Owen, Comte, SaintSimon), communism was not an abstract theory in Marx’s head and there was no simple formula for achieving it, nor would it simply emerge metaphysically as capitalism’s successor. For Marx (1968a: 61–62), in The Civil War in France (1870–1871), revolutionary politics “will have to pass through long struggles, through a series of historic processes, transforming circumstances and men. They have no ideals to realize, but to set free the elements of the new society with which old collapsing bourgeois society itself is pregnant.” Though there was no sure-fire politic, the term “scientific socialism” was and has been interpreted as Marx’s ironclad metaphysical prediction and/or a dogmatic set of strategies. Marx (1978a: 546), however, claimed this term was “used only in opposition to utopian socialism, which tries to impose new hallucinations and illusions on the people instead of confining the scope of its knowledge to the study of the social movement of the people itself.” Marx here expresses scientific-realist commitments rather than utopian sentimentalizing, where socialist politics must be rooted in actual concrete conditions and build upon them. Marx’s and Engels’s politic involved a revolutionary program, a socialist intermediate period—including the dictatorship of the proletariat and other strategies he referred to as “transitional measures” (Marx 1992e: 99)—and the early stages of communism as well as its later and maturing stages (Ollman 1979; Paolucci 2009: 227–237, 2004). The goal was for the working class to come to a revolutionary

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and class-conscious sense of both their common lot and capitalism’s potential for change. As revolutionary tactics unfolded, the working class would seize the means of production, expropriate the expropriators, redistribute wealth, dismantle the state, and move society toward a classless and stateless future. Historical materialism again informs Marx’s political economy as well as his communist project on this issue of how capitalism’s economic crises can turn into political crises. Given its class character, capitalism’s relations of production come into conflict with its forces of production, thus revolution, an inherent possibility in all class systems, is one potential future for capitalism too, though this principle does not dictate the character of that revolution itself.23 Only capitalism, further, is set up to provide the sort of revolutionary presuppositions from which socialism and communism can emerge. In his critique of Bakunin, for instance, Marx (1978a: 544) claims that he… …understands absolutely nothing about social revolution; all he knows are its political phrases. For him its economic requisites do not exist. Since all hitherto existing economic formations … have included the enslavement of the working person (whether in the form of the wage worker, the peasant, etc.), he thinks that a radical revolution is possible under all these formations. Not only that! He wants a European social revolution, resting on the economic foundation of capitalist production, to take place on the level of the Russian or Slavic agricultural and pastoral peoples and not to overstep that level; although he does see that navigation creates a difference between the brothers, but only navigation, for that is a difference all politicians know about! Will power and not economic conditions is the basis of his social revolution. (emphases in the original)

Though the revolutionary potential of capitalism is inherent to it, any such revolution within capitalism is not necessarily preordained to be socialist in character. Capitalism may produce all manner of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary consciousness, Bakunin and his anarchist followers being one example and the utopians another.24 In a later letter to Vera Zasulich, he admits that though there indeed may

23 Extending Level of Generality Four (class society) to Levels Three (capitalism in general), Two (recent capitalism) and One (specific individuals, places, events, etc.) and combining these with the issue of contingency. 24 “Utopianism which bore within itself the seeds of critical and materialist socialism, before the advent of the latter, can now, post festum, only seem silly, stale, and thoroughly reactionary” (Marx 1991b: 284; emphasis in the original).

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be a revolution in Russia, a specifically socialist revolution is less likely to emerge from its agrarian-feudalist system; only capitalist regions contain the necessary presuppositions most likely to lead to communism (Marx 1992j).25 Discussion Marx accounts for historical change as the outcome of the interaction of various structural parts (including humans as agents), often existing in contradictory relations with one another. To do this, he has to (1) relate the innerconnections of history and structure to one another, but to do that he has to (2) relate the parts of structures to one another. However, because in social change from one total structure to another there are (most commonly in history) no clean breaks between a system and its progeny, Marx also has to (3) relate how parts of one structure may (or may not) carry over to others. To these three innerconnections Marx responds with his assumption of the centrality of labor as an ontological tie (more in the next chapter), the backward study of history, and his abstractions of extension, level of generality, and vantage point. The question is whether Marx has chosen the most salient determinations and properly conceptualized their innerconnections.26 To speak of a particular time in history is to isolate a moment and place in the transformation of our shared whole. This assumption about history and structure forces Marx’s ontology to be an internally related one, though he is not a general historian. Other scholars often study history for the lessons it teaches, i.e., those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. While Marx (1978c: 594) accepts the value of this lesson—e.g., “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce”—he also treats history

25 Extending Levels of Generality Three (capitalism in general) and Two (recent capitalism) to Level One (specific individuals, places, events, etc.). 26 Ollman (2003: 74) observes that Marx’s “abstractions do not substitute for the facts but give them a form, an order, and a relative value, just as frequently changing his abstractions does not take the place of empirical research but does determine, albeit in a weak sense, what he will look for, even see, and of course emphasize. What counts as an explanation is likewise determined by the framework of possible relationships imposed by Marx’s initial abstractions.” Lebowitz (2009: 351–352) similarly says, “As we should know from Marx, our variables, our assumptions, the way in which we express formulae, direct our attention to what is important to understand.”

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ontologically. The fact that many presuppositions carry over to subsequent systems forces his understanding of any social structure to be internally related with its past, which is the same thing as saying its future will be internally related to its present. Deciphering historical realities is, therefore, heuristic, ontological, and political in that uncovering sociological factors in the unfolding of history helps us make sense of it and to project a collective future. Marx wants to understand—and help us understand along with him—the history of the present and the various potentials it contains. So, looking backward, he selects the present as his vantage point to begin his abstractions. This provides him the material he needs to decide on what to prioritize in his empirical inquiries and to extend them both backward and forward in time. All of these things become easier to handle once he has an understanding of the interrelations and extensions between levels of historical generality, i.e., an internally related model of history and structure. With these tools, Marx can use a particular vantage point to present his empirical data, while later changing perspective to emphasize additional data. To do this his concepts must reflect the same internally related character as the assumptions of his ontology and the material used for empirical inquiry. Critical criticism, scientific method, and dialectical abstractions of extension therefore are not only ways of thinking about sociological realities in their innerconnections but also are ways of connecting one analytical idea to another as well as to factual observations. Grounded as such, they form a basis for political critique and social action. Marx’s levels of generality inform each other, each has its own associated moments of inquiry, and each moment of inquiry connects with the others in specifiable ways. Forms of criticism within the dialectical method also inform historical materialism, political economy, and the communist project, i.e., the former are contained and assumed in the latter. Thus, the relationship of criticism to the dialectical method is applicable to the relationship of criticism to historical materialism, and both of these are thus applicable to criticism of political economy. Even if sorting out Marx’s ideas in this way may bring them a new coherence, we still must answer the question of whether Marx is sociologically sound in carving up reality in the way he does, including what he emphasizes as it most important relations and processes. If we remember that Marx’s approach is not a general and complete theory of all world history but rather a set of methodological tools with which to begin thinking about the central sociological realities that

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encompass our present along with its internal relations to the past, then we have a more accurate way of dealing with the ideas he forwards. Additionally, unlike religion, Marx does not carve out abstractions such as “sin,” “good versus evil,” or “human nature” with which to reach his conclusions. Rather, ever-the-sociological-thinker, Marx believes that modern society contains both unique properties that set it off from other forms of social organization while recognizing the properties it shares with them. As a relation of identity, capitalism shares characteristics with other class systems—e.g., a mode of appropriating wealth—and as a relation of difference, the class system in capitalism is qualitatively new—i.e., based on private ownership of the means of production, abstract labor, production for profits, and an unending quest for capital accumulation. Comparing class societies with capitalism provides Marx a material basis for discovering the social forces shaping both history and the present (with grasping the latter being the service the former plays) without falling victim to overly broad and untestable abstractions that fail to capture the requisite specificity. The properties unique to modernity are such as to provide an opportunity for human agency to capture the social relations that have up until now ruled them. The communist program is thus a re-inverting political project just as the dialectical method, historical materialism, and political economy are collectively a re-inverting analytical project. The flexibility built into Marx’s ideas similarly provides a way to get an intellectual handle on our present and its relation to both our past and the potential futures it contains. His work offers us a set of guidelines for navigating the difficult terrain of the modern world and researching the central relations of wealth, power, and exploitation inherent in its mode of production. Rather than a place to end our studies, Marx provides us a place for them to begin. In the next chapters, I further explore the question of the justification for Marx’s abstractions, how these might inform sociological inquiry, and the political implications of each.

CHAPTER FOUR

RELATIONAL SOCIOLOGY AND DIALECTIC Introduction I previously considered the political outcome(s) from corrupted science or otherwise malformed practices in producing knowledge (the latter being our primary concern) as well as Marx’s prescriptions on what to do and what not to do in our methodological-analytical frameworks. In this chapter, I consider sociology from the vantage point of relational analysis. Though traditional sociology is not really within Marx’s framework, overlaps do exist, as do grounds for criticism. For a critique of sociology, it is not only or simply that its traditions sometimes echo the faulty reasoning for which Marx criticized classical political economy, i.e., metaphysics, reductionism, idealism, and so on. The issue for sociology centers on how to think about social relations as subject matter in a consistent, systematic, and research generative way. If a sociologist endeavors to do this but begins with an onto-epistemological conception of the world ill-suited to set a relational approach in motion, then its results will misfire. Sociologists sometimes take pause to reconsider the discipline’s prevailing assumptions and offer relational alternatives. Emirbayer (1997: 281) proposes and summarizes the implications of relational thinking for sociology as follows: Sociologists today are faced with a fundamental dilemma: whether to conceive of the social world as consisting primarily in substances or in processes, in static “things” or in dynamic, unfolding relations. Large segments of the sociological community continue implicitly or explicitly to prefer the former point of view. Rational-actor and norm-based models, diverse holisms and structuralisms, and statistical “variable” analyses—all of them beholden to the idea that it is entities that come first and relations among them only subsequently—hold sway throughout much of the discipline. But increasingly, researchers are searching for viable analytic alternatives, approaches that reverse these basic assumptions and depict social reality instead in dynamic, continuous, and processual terms.

Emirbayer (1997: 282) argues that relational approaches not only push the boundaries of conventional sociology, but, as he claims, also

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“present an overarching challenge to reigning assumptions.” Though for this alone we should applaud his effort, he does not push the boundaries far enough. While his essay “focuses throughout upon ontology, largely—but certainly not exclusively—bracketing associated questions regarding epistemology” (Emirbayer 1997: 282), the ontology he adopts does not elegantly translate into a relational epistemological practice as his framework fractures and inverts the relation between the two. Though he argues in favor of treating objects relationally, he straps his framework with an external relations ontology that he does not seem to recognize as leading to epistemological problems he does recognize. Among the issues Emirbayer (1997: 303) acknowledges for any relational sociology, there is, first, the “problem of boundary specification, of moving from flows of transactions to clearly demarcated units of study, from continuity to discontinuity.” Second, there are “questions of an ontological nature. Once one defines the boundaries around a given matrix of transactions, how does one characterize what obtains inside those boundaries?” (Emirbayer 1997: 304). And, third, “relational sociology has the greatest difficulty in analyzing, not the structural features of static networks, whether these be cultural, social structural, or social psychological, but rather, the dynamic processes that transform those matrices of transactions in some fashion” (Emirbayer 1997: 305). Though an internal relations approach addresses such questions, his article leaves the Marxist view mentioned in passing and largely under-developed and internal relations theorists not addressed at all. This chapter uses his essay as a point of departure to show how a dialectical approach can advance the quest for a relational sociology through offering answers to his questions. It does so, first, by distinguishing external from internal relations approaches to social reality. It then presents the ontological foundations of Marx’s approach to social scientific inquiry, explaining their utility for Emirbayer’s questions. Finally, it examines how the case made by internal relations theorists informs several epistemological issues in the social sciences. External versus Internal Relations One may choose between two broad approaches to analyzing social phenomena. One, an external relations approach, views the world as a conglomeration of separate but interacting parts—most often

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institutions (e.g., normative rules, familial relations, economic organization, religious practice, and so on) with functions (e.g., socialization, production of goods and services, moral education, and the like) and individuals with traits (e.g., income, attitudes, skills, values, and so on). This approach interprets such parts as things that come into contingent relationships with one another as conglomerations of social facts in different social locations (i.e., micro, meso, and macro levels— interaction, households, professions, networks, nations, and so on). Causation here is the outcome of some social facts “bumping” into others. As social facts “interact,” the researcher measures their extent and rate of change (often statistically) and recomposes these interactions into causal chains. This view resembles something like a dice roll, where the sides of (two or more) dice represent an institution (e.g., the family, religion, economics, and so on), time (e.g., months, years, sequences, and so on), space (e.g., face-to-face interaction, neighborhoods, regions, nations, and so on), and/or institutionalized behaviors (e.g., interaction rules, gender roles, militarism, likelihood democracy, authoritarianism, and so on). Causal relations are outcomes as varied as the number of possible rolls (this depiction is not implying that all outcomes are equally random as might occur with dice; social life is not a crapshoot and sociology in general does tend to recognize this). As more variables (sides of dice) and their associations (bumps and their interactive outcomes) are located, the researcher conceptualizes parts and their ideal typical effects into abstract terminology (e.g., mobility, conflict, political affiliation, marital satisfaction, and so on) and examines empirical cases while arranging their variable-concepts into descriptive, explanatory, and/or taxonomic frameworks. An internal relations approach may examine similar empirical domains as the external relations approach but prioritizes the relations and processes between and within social realities as variables. While the external relations approach sees conglomerations of separate parts, when added up, as constituting reality, the internal relations approach first assumes reality as a totality that requires us to break it apart mentally into parts for study (see Chapter Three). In this view, parts do not exist as things first and thus the social whole emerges from their interactions. Rather, one begins with the assumption that our conceptualized variables are the product of our mental act of abstracting parts out of a totality. Thus, instead of starting with parts of social reality as

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things-in-themselves and recomposing them into interactive causal chains, the internal relations approach breaks reality down into the relationships between history and the social structures it has contained, seeing each as part of the other as innerconnected temporal and systematic movements. Not treating outcomes as contingent on the composition of external and separate things, the internal relations view sees micro, meso, and macro systems as composing intertwined, emerging, and maturing relationships, where such innerconnections transform systemic relationships because of powerful forces within and between them and even larger systems. As systems change within themselves, and from one to another, the result is what we call “history”, something driven by real struggles of real people caught up in contradictory social relations. Why is it preferable to prioritize relations and processes instead of things as primary variables? To start with assuming reality is a conglomeration of things requires the researcher start with the world as it is apparent around them, where connections between social realities come to consciousness piecemeal. If the question at the heart of social inquiry is the correct grasp of real human existence in its concrete expressions, then human historical development and its range of forms is just as or more important than what exists at the immediately apparent level. Starting with the assumption of human existence as a totality immediately brings questions of history and its range of social forms into view. Though one does not end their abstractions and inquiries at such a broad level, prioritizing relationships and processes as primary variables helps the researcher better grasp the innerconnections between history and the systems it has contained. The external and internal relations approaches are less contrary or diametrically opposed as they are competitors for the greatest explanatory elegance and range. Not mutually exclusive, their differences are nonetheless significant. While the internal relations approach does not prioritize things, it acknowledges their existence while seeking to understand the historical and structural relationships between wholes and parts and the asymmetrical determinations among them, while recognizing, in Engels’s (1980: 476) words, “relations … are always bound to things and appear as things” (emphases in the original). When the researcher accepts the level of appearance, that is, when relations are grasped as things, the view of the whole is rendered less complete, even distorted. One way this happens, in sociology at least, is that “things” assume clear boundaries. When this is imported into an understanding of the

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institutional world, then these too appear as separate and discreet, e.g., the Family, the Economy, Governance, Education, etc. However, as Marx (1973: 278) explains… This organic system itself, as a totality, has its presuppositions, and its development to its totality consists precisely in subordinating all elements of society to itself, or in creating out of it the organs which it still lacks. This is historically how it becomes a totality. The process of becoming this totality forms a moment of its process, of its development.

Marx here argues against viewing social realities within the same system as (ontologically) separate and static things apart from their historical development. The apparent separation of institutional spheres is a product of modern development, an evolving historical process, though sociologists often treat institutions as disembodied things, as if “Religion”, “the Economy”, “Government”, and “The Family” have existed as independent (even if interacting) institutions since time immemorial (a tactic common to very many if not most writing in sociology). If today’s apparent, formal separation of institutional spheres is not a product of nature, such as bees in a hive, beavers in a damn, or fish in a stream, then one should not erect a general sociology upon such an assumption. If, epistemologically, this assumption translates into drawing discreet boundaries between variables, then such an approach reshapes our view actual reality more than is necessary, often to the point of encouraging malformed concepts. Marx’s view sees the separation of institutional spheres as a historical development and assumes no stability or compatibility within and between these spheres (the latter view not in-and-of-itself opposed to many traditions in sociology). Further, for him, contradictions are not simply logical puzzles. Marx (1988a: 99) says we must think of a relation “in its active connection, its internal relation … grasped as a contradiction” (emphases in the original). A contradiction exists when two objects in a relation both produce a relation of interdependence in their normal functioning and result in antagonisms, conflicts, and negations at the same time. When conventional sociologists conceive of parts and wholes that contain them as separate things, then contradictions, to the extent they see them, exist outside their variables, even if they understand such variables as interacting. Marx places social relations inside each other, where changes—often driven by contradictions in the relation—are necessary to the internal ties of the relational parts and not contingent on their external bumps. Marx also presupposes inequality among causal forces, where, if one relation

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determines outcomes more so than others, it takes priority in research, modeling building, and theory construction. Marx’s approach thus prioritizes and interiorizes the asymmetrical and contradictory internal relations between core relationships within systems, across history, and their innerconnections into his concepts. A concrete expression of capital, such as a firm, because of its internal relations with other essential parts of the system, contains, at least in embryo, the major relations of the capitalist production process as a whole, e.g., private property, commodity production, a division of labor, exploitative relations, wages, forms of labor discipline, trade patterns, and legal regulations and relationships. Further, these relationships within capital extend to other social relations, institutions, and practices: “As with the division of labour in the interior of the manufacturing workshops, so it is with the division of labor in the interior of society” (Marx 1992b: 456). Marx’s view, then, sees internal relations between parts and the wholes in which they exist. One is not required to focus on such things to uncover patterned sociological realities but a failure to do so limits what comes into view. The epistemological problem for any social scientist, then, is how to carve units of analysis out of social reality, what to include and what to exclude, and on what basis to decide. Ideally, procedures in boundary drawing should bring congruence between the operative ontological assumptions and the resulting epistemological framework, producing an internal relation between ontology and epistemology, a point of emphasis that one cannot stress enough in reference to Marx’s approach. A tension in Emirbayer’s essay stems from being situated between the external and internal relations approaches. On the one hand, he clearly problematizes one version of external relations outlined above: “What is distinct about the transactional approach is that it sees relations between terms or units as preeminently dynamic in nature, as unfolding, ongoing processes rather than as static ties among inert substances” (Emirbayer 1997: 289). On the other hand, his counterpoint is to simply fill up models with assumptions of dynamics and change between parts that are nevertheless conceptualized as ontologically apart from one another, i.e., as external entities with (simply) interactive relationships. While this approximates reality better than a static approach, it fails to interiorize social objects within one another conceptually but simply replaces static external relations with dynamic external relations, something that moves the processes of change into closer view but it does not alter the fundamental nature of the conceptualized objects themselves.

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Additionally important, Emirbayer inquires about ontology separate from epistemology, leaving the question of contradictions outside the conceptualization of object-boundaries. We study any social reality by pulling it apart from its context, however briefly, through the process of abstraction. This very act is a tacit recognition that social realities attain their full meaning from their place within time (history) and space (structure). This means that any social reality necessarily has internal ties to other social realities. If social realities possess a contradictory character, then both ontology and epistemology must be able to handle them when and where they exist. As favorable as it may be, prioritizing “dynamics”, “flux”, or “change” as a foundational ontology is not going far enough. It is simply a choice between allowing notions of stasis or change lead the analysis that takes place after conceptualization. But why should one choose one or the other? While one could make the case that prioritizing stasis or change captures reality better (this will be true depending on one’s temporal frame), it is preferable to found ontology on the basic nature of core social relations, i.e., those relations and processes at the center of social realities. By accepting labor as the most determinative feature of social relations, Marx’s approach provides an answer to the problems external relations approaches encounter, problems that import themselves into the framework Emirbayer advocates and result in the epistemological questions with which he struggles.

Marx’s Ontology: The Centrality of Labor Given its character interior to individuals as members of a species, the historical development of systems, and the social relations upon which both rest, the centrality of labor was one of Marx’s core ontological assumptions (for discussion, see Paolucci 2005, 2009: 84–96). Marx (1988a: 149) applauds Hegel’s view of “objective man … as the outcome of man’s own labor.” As their (what Marx calls) species-activity, labor is purposefully guided productive action where a later stage preserves an earlier one, thus setting material conditions for constructing ideas about past-present-future relationships by bringing things into being and connecting one to another through time (for discussion, see: C. Gould 1978; Postone 1993). Labor, its products, and the social relations involved in producing each not only bind parts together but also place one part inside the other. From hunting and gathering, horticulture, agriculture and pastoralism, and industry, to birthing, art,

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literature, etc., and even forms of leisure—each and all forms of human creative activity—labor produces society. These real historical relations call for a social ontology to begin here.1 Given that human creativity produces cultural objects, when nonproducers control the objects of labor and the conditions in which it is undertaken, social relations have a division and a struggle between individuals and classes structured into them, producing an alienated existence and distorted knowledge. The subsequent appearance of external relations shapes our view of the world just as the alienation of laborers from their labor and its products and the ensuing struggle shape social relations. A society marked by such alienation suffers a condition that severs the connection between their species activity (i.e., labor) and the world it builds (i.e., objects and social relations). This separation of a species’ connection to its activity amidst contradictory social relations produces forms of knowledge that distort the understanding any such society’s members have of the internal relation between the material and ideal structures under which they live. Social science is no less threatened than is popular knowledge. To pull objects apart mentally from wholes necessarily distorts their real conditions of existence in thought. We must do this, nonetheless. The question is what we pull out from reality and the place we give it in our analytical practice. For the Marxist view, the social relations 1 Postone (1993, 2004, 2005) argues that the mature Marx had jettisoned the notion of labor as a cross-historical social foundation and that it was primarily a category relevant to capitalism. Though it is accurate to say that Marx sees labor as taking on a new form in capitalism, it is not accurate to say that his notion substantively changes from his early to his mature work. That is, as he discusses in the Grundrisse as well as in Capital, capitalism brings labor new characteristics. Nevertheless, human labor is a core feature of all social systems. At Level of Generality Five, or society in general, for Marx (1988a: 76) “labour, life-activity, productive life itself … is the life of the species. It is life-engendering life” (emphases in the original). Thus, at the social level, the “first historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy … needs, the production of material life itself ” (Marx and Engels 1976: 42; also see Marx 1992b: 175–176). Labor in general produces what Marx (1992b: 72) terms the “general value-form.” Marx (1992b: 176) subdivides the general value-form into “use-value, Nature’s material adapted by a change of form to the wants of man.” Use-value acquires the property of exchange-value within and between social systems, or Levels of Generality Five through Three (see Marx 1992b: 332). As the general value-form, use- and exchangevalue connect nature with humans as animals and communities, so does surpluslabor: “the natural conditions … of surplus-value in general, are plainly clear. The direct producer must 1) possess enough labour-power and 2) the natural conditions of his labor, above all the soil cultivated by him, must be productive enough to give him the possibility of retaining some surplus-labour over and above that required for the satisfaction of his indispensable needs” (Marx 1971a: 792; also see Marx 1971a : 632).

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involved in human labor, how and why these relations change, and the innerconnections between all of these are essential relations to understand, in two ways. They are (1) “essential” foundations of society (no society exists without them) and, therefore, (2) it is essential we incorporate this assumption into our analytical framework. If one accepts these premises, then research must root ontological assumptions in productive relations to some extent. If social objects’ connection through labor is an ontological foundation, then, if we want ontology innerconnected to epistemology, our conceptualization practice should incorporate the internal relations of history and structure, the centrality of labor, the existence of classes within systems, and struggles between them over the products and conditions of labor, plus the alienated existence that results. When a conceptual framework does not interiorize such core social relations, including all the contradictions they entail, the researcher is liable to produce misshapen questions and thus offer misshapen answers. These onto-epistemological assumptions direct us on how to proceed in research. Emirbayer’s approach pulls objects apart from their innerconnections, then names them (boundary drawing) and fills them with meaning (characterization). Afterward, he says that one chooses what ontological principles to use (stasis or change) and tries to explain how changes inside one boundary create changes inside others (accounting for transformations). There are two problems here. First, the ontology and the epistemology are as separated as the object-boundaries themselves, i.e., an a priori conceptualization of ontology and epistemology that is externally, not internally, related. While the content Emirbayer provides his ontology shifts from an assumption of stasis to one of dynamism, our assumptions must grasp and incorporate what is fundamental to the social reality that justifies our concepts, not the reverse. In bringing ontology into consideration after settling on epistemological issues, their internal tie is broken. Emirbayer seems to know something is else there but without tools such as those the internal relations approach offers he cannot make the necessary connection. Second, the external relations approach tacitly acknowledges the reality of internal relations but either does not recognize this, chooses to ignore it, or fails to treat it seriously, almost as if it were a nuisance. If we define objects as separate from one another, though in social reality we know these boundaries are artificial mental constructs, then how can we account for how one social object changes another without supposing they have an innerconnection? When a person hits a cue

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ball with a pool stick into the other balls on the table, we can clearly see this as one separate object (the stick) changing the speed and direction of others (the balls). However, when we make a sociological claim such as, “increasing education leads to higher standards of living”, how can we say these are not innerconnected? Education intertwines with intellect, familial background, values and resources, personal initiative, costs, availability of funding, geography, among other things, while standards of living intertwine with not only these but also the opportunity structure (including whether an economy is expanding or contracting), availability of other forms of social capital, and so on. True, if defined and measured as separate things, valid statistical correlations can be found but we should not mistake these for a “reality” of separate social objects. If they are truly separate things with clear boundaries, then how do changes in one account for changes in others? In fact, they cannot, as they are not completely separate things that simply interact and, as such, the whole principle of statistical correlations presupposes social objects must have innerconnections. If this is an assumption (tacit or otherwise), then the philosophy of science a researcher uses should consciously incorporate it, as mixing external and internal relations approaches leads to imprecision and, thus often, confusion. An ontology of labor’s centrality not only shapes conceptual development but also the study of change itself. Because labor (i.e., creative human activity) and productive relations (i.e., classes, gender divisions of labor, forms of technology [or dead labor], state policies, and the like) are central to social change, and because the categories of “labor” and “productive relations” each contain the other, changes in either shape the social relations that prevail. However, since labor, its conditions, terms, and products and the social relations the struggle over each produces are not singular, transhistorical realities, “Marx’s object … is not production in general, but the specific social forms in which, in any given instance, productive phenomena manifest themselves to our experience” (D. Sayer 1987: 131). As the conditions of human labor find different expressions in different modes of production (the same is true, by extension, for most other social relations), the nature of causality changes across various social systems (this is also true of development within a system itself). There are types of social relations with features unique to them. The existence of various types of social relations requires that we categorize or taxonomize them and weigh the force of each of their causal agents in turn. Even if a military apparatus or a priesthood proves decisive in some systems, periods, and/or

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events, Marx holds that, given a broad enough view, the most powerful determining historical force is the production of material life. Marx’s dice, then, are decidedly weighted, where some relations and processes, especially those rooted in class structures and economic practices (and associated state forms), are more influential than others. A failure to incorporate the special relations of different systems into one’s conceptual framework when the data examined emerges in that context unnecessarily weakens one’s epistemological practice by fracturing it from the internal ontological relations interior to society in general, its history, class systems, and especially those of capitalism. Capturing these internal relations requires an appropriate method of abstraction.

Abstracting Internal Relations How researchers define objects of study and collect relevant data influences what relationships they find, how they analyze them, and the conclusions to which they come. If changing, asymmetrical, and contradictory internal relations within and between objects of study are assumed, then abstractive, conceptual, and analytical practices must achieve a requisite level of both precision and flexibility. Conceptual categories are therefore “not free-floating analytic devices, innocent of historical content…. For Marx, our categories of analysis inescapably partake of the social reality they seek to depict” (D. Sayer 1987: 126). To give us insight into how Marx tackles such issues, Ollman (2003: 74) focuses on “the boundary setting and bringing into focus that lies at the core” of Marx’s methods of abstraction (discussed in Chapter Three as abstractions of extension, level of generality, and vantage point). These considerations help us handle the issues that Emirbayer’s proposal for a relational sociology addresses. Emirbayer’s first question is about boundary specification, i.e., as seen above, “of moving from flows of transactions to clearly demarcated units of study, from continuity to discontinuity.” In the internal relations view, any thing “includes as aspects of what it is all those other elements with which it interacts and without which it could neither appear nor function as it does … so that the conditions of [their] existence are taken to be part of what” they are in an ontological sense (Ollman 2003: 116, 139). As a result of this conception, Marx’s abstractions of extension fix, for purposes of analysis, the practical extent of

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any particular relation or cluster of interacting relations, where “In abstracting boundaries in space, limits are set in the mutual interaction that occurs at a given point in time. While in abstracting boundaries in time, limits are set in the distinctive history and potential development of any part, in what it once was and is yet to become” (Ollman 2003: 74). Such boundary drawing through abstractions of extension helps Marx respect the innerconnections (ontology) within and between social relations and to connect them to one another in a conceptual way (epistemology). For example, the concepts of “mode of production” and “labor” share in each other’s meaning and apply across all historical formations. However, in different modes of production such as those based on class relations—e.g., slavery, feudalism, capitalism—labor and associated forms of wealth appropriation take different forms. Things such as appropriation not only direct us toward class relations but also indicate the processes that mark them and thus internal relations apply to them as well. Treating capitalism on its own terms within the relations between levels of generality and the backward study of history provides a vantage point from which to compare wage-labor (capitalism’s dominant form) and profits with those forms of labor and wealth dominant in slavery and feudalism without fracturing the historical relation between them and respecting the dialectical issue of identity/ difference. Marx therefore places capitalism’s processes within the core meanings of his conceptualization of relations, including class struggles, the appropriation of surplus-value, the origin of private property in the form of ownership of productive resources, the practices of the state, among other things. Not to do so would be to misconceptualize a “theory of capital, that is the modern order of society” (Marx 1979: 324). Because historical social relations make concepts possible, one must carve concepts in a way appropriate to their temporal and spatial features. While broader abstractions allow for a more adequate grasp of history, capitalism, and the temporal moments of both, if abstractions are too broad they can overextend themselves and miss what is unique and thus crucial to understand about data rooted in a specific system. If abstractions are too narrow, then they are unable to connect with wider historical realities and even run the risk of falsely historicizing specific social circumstances as representing universal relations (see Chapter Two). Marx (1975c: 16), for example, faults Hegel because his “abstractions will be applicable to anything and everything actual.” In respect

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to abstractions that are too broad—i.e., human nature, god, sin, good vs. evil, rationality, etc.—“Marx makes clear … that such transhistorical categories … do not in themselves immediately or adequately describe any empirical realities” (D. Sayer 1987: 128). Here, Emirbayer (1997: 287) sees the problem: “Relational theorists reject the notion that one can posit discrete, pre-given units such as the individual or society as ultimate starting points of sociological analysis.” The sociological corollary is that Marx carves only a few abstractions at the level of society in general (and when he does it is usually for a point of comparison) and more often strives to study systems on their own terms. Nevertheless, if what one wants (and needs) to understand about an empirical reality involves important innerconnections between historical conditions and structures and their changing relations over time, then sufficiently broad units of analysis still must be carved and connected conceptually. And these units entail, by definition, other units when carved from specific vantage points. For example, rather than as independent groups or simple structural locations, the most important classes Marx sees in capitalism—capital and labor as real classes and as conceptual class categories—are mutually dependent extensions of one another within a system.2 Thus, when Marx discusses labor or capital, other relations/processes such as commodity production, relations of exploitation, processes of appropriation, dynamics of struggles, and so on, are all assumed, i.e., they are within the concepts of labor and capital themselves, as well as the contradictions contained therein. From one vantage point, capital and labor have opposed interests in how wealth is produced whereby labor is exploited and capital enriched. From another vantage point, their interests in wealth production coincide, as ample profits keep both employed. However, these interests are contradictory, i.e., as keeping profit rates high relies on an increasing rate of exploitation, conditions that allow for both long-term employment and long-term profits become undermined, the former by an

2

In opposition to the view of the classical political economists where “Capital and labor are mistakenly conceived of as things, and in fact appear a such … Hegel’s exposition provided Marx with a methodological framework that allows him to present the difference as a specific difference. The fact that one is different and/or alien from the other is in reality a function of opposition … they are two opposed moments of one negative unity. Capital is capital only insofar as it is related to labor; exchange value is as such only in relation to use-value. Likewise, labor is labor only in relation to capital; use-value is as such only in relation to exchange value” (Meany 2002: 53).

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increasing organic composition of capital and the latter by the threat of crises. As such, separating the labor-capital relation leads to confusion. For example, news programs and economists regularly describe “the economy” as doing well when profits, GNP, productivity, and/or stock market values are up, only to have corresponding unemployment numbers, lower standards of living, shrinking middle classes, etc., flummox them. Conventional thought thus estimates the “health of the economy” based upon conditions experienced by capitalists while those of workers do not serve as similar indicators.3 The real innerconnections are difficult to grasp without the sort of tools Marx offers, e.g., sensitivity to contradictory forces related to class exploitation. In the Marxist view, profits represent appropriation of labor’s expenditure; GNP productivity can increase because of higher rates of exploitation; and, stock market values may increase after mergers and mass layoffs, which concentrate wealth. In each case, having class relations interiorized into variables assists in clarifying what seems as a confusing paradox when viewed from the conventional lens. Returning to Emirbayer’s problem of boundary specification, Ollman (2003: 74) explains that while “every act of abstraction establishes an extension, it also sets a boundary around and brings into focus a particular level of generality for treating not only the part but the whole system to which it belongs. The movement is from the most specific, or that which sets it apart from everything else, to its most general characteristics, or what makes it similar to other entities.” In real time/space, history and structure are not ontologically separate things but, in analysis, we must abstract them apart, even if momentarily, so that we can study one in relation to the other. To review, the levels of historical generality operative in Marx’s work, according to Ollman, include what humans share with matter (Level Seven), with animals (Level Six), humans as humans, which includes “society” in general (Level Five), class systems (Level Four), capitalism in general (Level Three), recent capitalism (Level Two), and specific names, dates, places, etc. (Level One) (see Chapter Three for discussion and

3 At times, knowledge constructed as such arrives in the media in an explicit way. On 15 September 2009, US Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, declared that the “recession is very likely over” though “unemployment will be slow to come down.” See: Greg Robb, “Bernanke Declares ‘Recession very likely over’ ”, Wall Street Journal | Market Watch, 15 September 2009. URL (consulted 29 June 2010): http://www .marketwatch.com/story/bernanke-declares-the-recession-over-2009-09-15

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citations). Making abstractions of extension within and between levels of generality enables Marx to link a given social phenomenon to its relevant historical context and to avoid looking for an explanation (and therefore connections) for a phenomenon found on one stage of history (capitalism, for example) in the conditions of other stages (society in general, feudalism, slavery, or primitive communism) when uncalled for. At the same time, he can locate general processes and relations that exist across levels of generality while examining how their specific form may change from one level to another, e.g., private labor. A “mode of appropriation” is a necessary process in class systems (all that is in Level of Generality Four), though in society in general (Level Five) it is a contingent process, i.e., not all forms of “society” have a mode of appropriation, specifically non-class societies. Comparing forms of appropriation in various class systems—e.g., slavery, feudalism, and capitalism—and shifting analysis from one level of generality to another, helps Marx not mistake what happens in class systems (capitalism included) for a condition of society in general. This technique helps him avoid overly broad abstractions that distort an understanding of historically specific social relations. It also allows him to isolate and examine a historically specific system’s internal structure and the central relations and processes it contains, all connected ontologically by internal relations and constructed conceptually through abstractions of extension and generality. Because such relations and their connections are not rigid or static, a requisite method of analyzing them is needed. Vantage point abstractions offer just this. Vantage point abstractions (see Chapter Three for discussion) provide the angle or perspective from which Marx examines processes and/or relations. In combination with abstractions of extension and generality, abstracting from various vantage points provides Marx the flexibility needed for studying complex changing realities and, in the process, undermines the stasis of concepts. Allowing one to approach a relation or process from any one or a combination (depending on the abstraction of extension) of its many sides, vantage point abstractions put us in touch with an object’s historical as well as structural moments. While analysts might in fact do this in practice, if they are unaware that they are examining different sides of the same relation and instead assume they are examining different things, then this lack of reflexivity transforms vantage point abstractions into their distorting opposites, often tautologies (see Chapter Two and more below).

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chapter four Social Science and the Internal Relations Perspective

The internal relations approach helps us address Emirbayer’s concerns over demarcating units of study, characterizing what obtains inside their boundaries, and how to conceptualize and analyze transformative processes within and between these boundaries. The remainder of this chapter examines these concerns further by comparing conventional approaches in social science with the alternatives the internal relations perspective poses on the following issues: (1) ontology and taxonomy, (2) “society” versus “capitalism”, (3) forms of class analysis, and (4) operational definitions (and statistical analysis) versus essentialism. Ontology and Taxonomy Internal and external relations approaches lead in different directions as regards to questions asked, techniques of data collection, and emphasis in explanation. For example, traditional psychology, rationalchoice theories, and several forms of conventional sociology rest upon an ontology of abstract individuality, about which Marx (1973: 84) observed the following: The more deeply we go back into history, the more does the individual, and hence also the producing individual, appear as dependent, as belonging to a greater whole…. Only in the eighteenth century, in “civil society”, do the various forms of social connectedness confront the individual as a mere means toward his private purposes, as external necessity. But the epoch which produces this standpoint, that of the isolated individual, is also precisely that of the hitherto most developed social (from this standpoint, general) relations.

If individuality is something that has changed, then knowledge pitched at the level of an abstract, universal individualistic ontology distorts our knowledge of both our real social relations as well as history. Traditional psychology, for example, works with a general model of mental characteristics while underplaying the historical and material forces that shape and even produce forms of individuality, leaving valuable insights to human development, cognitive capacity, and variation out of view.4 This is not to say that the human mind is infinitely

4 “Not only do the objective conditions change in the act of reproduction, e.g. the village becomes a town, the wilderness a cleared field, etc., but the producers

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malleable or that psychology is fundamentally misguided. Rather, though our minds do have some basic properties of cognition that psychology can uncover, there are forms and contents that are historically specific, an issue a materialist and historical approach can inform (Sève 1978). Rational-choice theories are sociology’s equivalent to psychology’s object-boundary. Coleman (1988: 95–96), for instance, “accepts the principle of rational or purposive action”, which he believes can account “for the development of social organization.” This approach constructs the abstract individual in an abstract world who constructs a real concrete world through individual actions collectively added up. Not only is “rationality” such a broad concept that it can apply to most people at any time or place (as we saw Marx state earlier, “These abstractions will be applicable to anything and everything actual”), but no individuals have ever existed where forms of social organization did not already exist. Marx’s (1992k: 21) “standpoint … can less than any other make the individual responsible for relations whose creature he socially remains.” Approaches such as Coleman’s, not only static and reductionist, are liable to conflate the individuality capitalism makes predominant—i.e., a historical accomplishment—as representative of a natural form, a false universalization. Further, and worse still, models such as Coleman’s posit that social systems emerge from the bottom through individual decision-making collectively added up, an inverted causal model. In truth, social systems predate and shape individuals born into them, a fact that marks the vast preponderance of history, where “Minds are always connected by invisible threads with the body of the people” (Marx 1989d: 105).5 Some macro-sociologists rightly focus on broader structured social realities into which individuals are born. Lenksi (1970; also see Nolan

themselves change, too, in that they bring out new qualities in themselves, develop themselves in production, transform themselves, develop new powers and ideas, new modes of intercourse, new needs and new language” (Marx 1973: 494). 5 An individualistic ontology runs into additional problems when we turn to macro-sociology. If universalistic traits function as foundations of wider social relations, then we cannot adequately account for the varieties of social forms. If such universalistic traits exist and are the foundation of social relations, then there would be more similarity in social-structural relations across history than is found, unless, of course, the sociologist assumes all action is “rational” based on specific values of a culture, which is a tautological formulation (see Chapter Two). However, this view dilutes the concept so much as to make it almost useless at worst, irrelevant and empty at best.

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and Lenski 2006) attempts to show how societies with different “levels of technological development” and “modes of subsistence” (i.e., huntergatherer, simple and advanced horticultural, simple and advanced agrarian, and industrial societies) in relation to their ecological conditions (i.e., herding, fishing, and maritime societies) produce different social arrangements, such as sexual and familial norms, levels of stratification, and forms of governance. Rather than basing his model on the abstract individual, Lenski uses technological complexity in relation to ecological conditions as mutually exogenous variables to account for observed social diversity. Just as some totals are more likely in rolling dice (e.g., seven more than twelve or two), this method produces a typology where materially based categories correlate with identifiable socio-political outcomes. Two questions arise. First, in synthesizing these considerations with evolutionary models, does not Lenski court a materialist-technological determinism? Second, and related to the first, that his model’s priorities capture the most important social relations related to why and how societies function and change is by no means assured. Marx also recognizes the influence of technology, methods of production, and ecological realities on social forms. When examining the centrality of labor from the vantage point of humans as humans (including social relations in general), Marx (1992b: 175–176) says that “It is not the articles made, but how they are made, and by what instruments, that enables us to distinguish different economic epochs. Instruments of labour not only supply a standard of the degree of development to which human labour has attained, but they are also indicators of the social conditions under which labour is carried on.” However, when turning to class analysis (as seen in Chapter Three), Marx’s (1992b: 209) vantage point prioritizes “the mode in which … surpluslabour is in each case extracted from the actual producer, the labourer” as the criterion to distinguish different class systems. Technological complexity is insufficient and/or limited for a social taxonomy for several reasons. Both slavery and capitalism can exist whether based on exploiting agricultural or industrial technology. Further, while changes in technology influence changes in productive relations, this is but one element in a larger set of variables: A cotton-spinning jenny is a machine for spinning cotton. It becomes capital only in certain relations. Torn from these relations it is no more capital than gold is in itself money or sugar the price of sugar…. [S]ocial relations between the producers, and the conditions under which they exchange their activities and share in the total act of production, will

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naturally vary according to the character of the means of production…. We thus see that the social relations within which individuals produce, the social relations of production, are altered, transformed, with the change and development of the material means of production, of the forces of production. The relations of production in their totality constitute what is called the social relations, society, and, moreover, a society at a definite stage of historic development, a society with peculiar, distinctive characteristics. Ancient society, feudal society, bourgeois (or capitalist) society, are such totalities of relations of production, each of which denotes a particular stage of development in the history of mankind…. Capital consists not only of means of subsistence, instruments of labour, and raw materials, not only of material products; it consists just as much of exchange values. All products of which it consists are commodities. Capital, consequently, is not only a sum of material products, it is a sum of commodities, of exchange values, of social magnitudes. Capital remains the same whether we put cotton in the place of wool, rice in the place of wheat, steamships in the place of railroads…. The bodily form of capital may transform itself continually, while capital does not suffer the least alteration. (Marx 1976c: 28–29; emphases in the original)

Because technology—one element in the means of production—is not so much a social relation as productive relations are and because technology is internally related to other social realities—e.g., modes of production, class relations, etc.—it is insufficient as the marker of social forms.6 Using technological complexity to categorize social systems is problematic because technological change often originates in social conditions: “Up till 1825—when the first general crisis occurred—it might be said that the requirements of consumption as a whole were growing more rapidly than production, and that the development of machinery was the necessary consequence of the needs of the market. Since 1825, the invention and use of machinery resulted solely from the war between masters and workmen” (Marx 1982b: 99). Here, for Marx, technological change is a necessary result of capitalism’s relations and forces of production (for discussion see Ricoy 2003).7 Technology, that is, is not the cause of a mode of production but its outcome. Lenski’s 6 “Machinery is no more an economic category than the ox who draws the plough. The present use of machinery is one of the relations of our present economic system, but the way in which machinery is exploited is quite distinct from the machinery itself. Powder is still power, whether you use it to wound a man or to dress his wounds” (Marx 1982b: 99; emphasis in the original). 7 Feudalism experienced technological change, too. One instance occurred with a labor shortage after the Black Plague receded. However, Marx is at pains to stress how technological change is an inherent necessity within the logic of capitalist development, not a contingency based on realities external to it.

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model inverts the relationship Marx sees as existing between social structure and technological complexity (similar to Emirbayer’s inverting of the relation between boundary drawing and filling boundaries up with meaning). The relationship between the meanings we attribute to boundaries and how we abstract them from wholes is important for both precision and avoiding tacit political biases in one’s concepts. Marx (1975c: 96) faults methods of category construction that omit the most important relations they contain: “But in its own definition the political-estates element contains these distinctions only by canceling them, annulling them within itself, abstracting from them.” By not placing class relations within the interior of his typology, Lenski posits class dynamics and corresponding forms of political power as external things only correlated with technological complexity. In fact, Lenski (1970: 372) has capitalism emerging after industry: “By the end of the nineteenth century, it looked as if every industrial society would soon have an almost pure market economy. These societies were coming increasingly under the control of political parties dominated by businessmen committed to the philosophy of laissez-faire capitalism or free enterprise.” By interiorizing class relations, Marx reveals industry as a product of capital, not the other way around, as Lenski seems to do. There are thus several problems with Lenski’s approach, though his is relatively accepted in sociology and it informs taxonomic representations across the discipline, from introductory texts up to graduate training. By using technological complexity as his taxonomic criterion, Lenski places capitalism’s birth much later than it actually was. Perspectives such as world-systems analysis convincingly date capitalism’s birth much earlier. As Lenski’s model sees the bourgeoisie as only coming to dominate during the late 1800s, this is an inaccurate reading and depiction of actual history. This inaccuracy is not merely academic, as it were. It greatly shortens the period that the bourgeoisie have ruled. In actual fact, the bourgeoisie is no longer a new ruling class; they have been at the helm of capitalist development for close to 500 years (depending on exact dating). The system’s problems and abuses are not kinks to work out, i.e., mismanagement of a new system that is simply unwieldy until its proper functioning is understood and then instituted (this is the basic issue standard economic theory wrings its hands over as if it is just a theoretical dilemma to discover how to make capitalism work just right).

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By using an ecological-evolutionary model, Lenski posits a forward theory of social change, a relation of necessity. He goes so far as to posit “common paths of evolutionary development” in a rough linear progression (Lenski 1970: 124). Even with acknowledging “limited branching”, Lenski’s model suggests a universal self-organizing evolution of technological complexity without a satisfactory explanation of what drives it, a (Kantian) metaphysical argument. Marx reveals technology as the product of modes of production and, by interiorizing class relations, capital as the outcome of class struggles past (Level of Generality Three traced backward to Level Four), again a non-metaphysical view. As Marx’s class struggle model applies to capitalism, there is an explanation of growing technological complexity—a necessary process of competitive markets and the search for efficient and profitable sources of surplus-value extraction—and of capitalism’s historical appearance as the outcome of struggles under the feudal period, whose results— the rise of capitalism being one—were contingent. The contrast is not just matter of emphasis: “Ignoring such essential differences leads to implicitly teleological approaches to history” (D. Sayer 1987: 128). Lenski’s model, by contrast, makes capitalism appear as a product of normal social evolution, a teleological argument and a political justification for capitalism (and its class relations) presented in scientific terms (more on teleology in Chapter Five). Even with such problems, we can synthesize these two models in a particular way. First, Marx and Lenksi agree on the issue of material conditions (including technology) taking priority over idealism or reductionism, given how material conditions shape generations born into systems at levels of productive development. Marx (1982b: 96) sums up this principle as such: Needless to say, man is not free to choose his productive forces—upon which his whole history is based—for every productive force is an acquired force, the product of previous activity. Thus the productive forces are the result of man’s practical energy, but that energy is in turn circumscribed by the conditions in which man is placed by the productive forces already acquired, by the form of society which exists before him, which he does not create, which is the product of the preceding generation. The simple fact that every succeeding generation finds productive forces acquired by the preceding generation and which serve it as the raw material for further production, engenders a relatedness in the history of mankind, which is all the more a history of mankind as man’s productive forces, and hence his social relations have expanded. From this it can only be concluded that the social history of man is never

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chapter four anything else than the history of his individual development, whether he is conscious of this or not. His material relations form the basis of all his relations. These material relations are but the necessary forms in which his material and individual activity is realised. (emphasis in the original)

But Marx adds more to this stipulation. Once we accept the ontology of labor, its products, and the struggle over their control as fundamental social relations, then we must make technology, modes of production, and class relations (including associated ideological discourse and forms of governance) central questions when studying social change within and between systems. Next, we must distinguish between a taxonomy of social forms and historically sensitive explanations of social change. Within his differentiation of social forms, Marx interiorizes class relations using modes of appropriation as his categorical criterion when and where he finds them. While Marx uses class relations (including class struggles in both productive activities and at the level of the state) for categorizing systems, it is their internal relation with forces of production (which include labor and the material means of production), as well as contradictions within and between relations, that help him account for social change. If technological complexity and class relations are both interiorized within “modes of production” (where “forces of production” cross all modes and the existence of classes is contingent upon the nature of those modes), and if the qualities of variables’ causal forces change over time, then we must consider two conclusions (not mutually exclusive). In Lenski’s favor, it is possible that technology and ecological conditions explain more about social forms with a less polarized class structure or those with no class structure at all (Marx’s primitive communism and tribal societies; Lenski’s hunter-gatherer and simple horticultural and pastoral systems) more than does class struggle. Over time and in different systems, from the vantage point of Marx’s backward study of history, class struggle overtakes technology and ecology in force of influence. This means that in studying the earliest societies, Lenski’s model retains as much or more relevance than Marx’s (though aspects of his are still relevant and recognize technological influences). Beginning with capitalism and looking backward, class relations and struggle become the most important ordering mechanisms for analysis (though Lenski’s concerns are still relevant but now contained within Marx’s model). Several things emerge in this Lenski-Marx comparison and synthesis. First, we see in Lenski’s model a categorical variable—technology,

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which, while it changes in complexity over time—frozen or static in its interior, and in Marx’s model a categorical variable—modes of production with contradictory class relations interiorized, which, because of the internal relation modes of production have with the realities of labor and the struggle over its conditions and products—dynamic in its interior. The point is less that Lenski’s approach is “wrong” (though it is flawed) but rather when it comes to understanding the emergence and processes of the capitalist present (i.e., the backward study of history), it is structural relations, their contradictions, and class struggle that provide the greatest explanatory vantage point in terms of what we need to know about the historical conditions of possibility of today. It is in such a way that Marx’s approach carves out a realm of inquiry where both the scientific and the political share a space. Second, if one traces Lenski’s model forward while tracing Marx’s backward, they will inevitably find real historical conditions and events that express an innerconnection between the two, or even situations (less often) where other considerations, even idealist ones such as religion, might take priority (bound to be temporary as we move forward in time).8 While we may strain the applicability of the concept when using class struggle for an explanation of change in hunter-gatherer and simple horticultural societies, as Lenski’s socio-historical categories move forward in time Marx’s models grow with increasing relevance. Each model fills in for the other, making them complementary rather than competing, which, of course, is the goal of vantage point 8

Marx (1986: 178), in the New York Daily Tribune (14 February 1857), attributed conflicts between Afghans and Persians to “political antagonism,” “diversity of race,” and “religious antagonisms.” In Capital, Volume I, Marx (1992b: 85–86, note 2) writes, “my view that each special mode of production and the social relations corresponding to it, in short, that the economic structure of society, is the real basis on which the juridical and political superstructure is raised, and to which definite social forms of thought correspond; that the mode of production determines the character of the social, political, and intellectual life generally, all this is very true for our own times, in which material interests preponderate, but not for the middle ages, in which Catholicism, nor for Athens and Rome, where politics, reigned supreme. In the first place it strikes one as an odd thing for any one to suppose that these well-worn phrases about the middle ages and the ancient world are unknown to anyone else. This much, however, is clear, that the middle ages could not live on Catholicism, nor the ancient world on politics. On the contrary, it is the mode in which they gained a livelihood that explains why here politics, and there Catholicism, played the chief part. For the rest, it requires but a slight acquaintance with the history of the Roman republic, for example, to be aware that its secret history is the history of its landed property. On the other hand, Don Quixote long ago paid the penalty for wrongly imagining that knight errantry was compatible with all economic forms of society.”

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abstractions. Though such a conjecture requires additional research and theoretical development, one thing is clear—piecing these two models together is no simple matter and any effort to do so will only founder should it adopt universalistic, reductionist, and/or static ontological assumptions and concept boundaries. Uniting Marx’s and Lenski’s models also must take into account other stipulations. While Marx sees much of history as a history of class struggles, the force of this variable, interior to modes of production with modes of appropriation, has increased in scope, growing more powerful from feudalism’s collapse through capitalism’s rise. The same is true of capitalism’s own contradictory structural relations, where class dynamics wax, wane, mature, shift, etc.9 While he finds coherence in human history, Marx does not posit a forward social evolution based on technology and places class struggle at the center of analysis of material and technological change as well as social dynamics generally. Lenski’s model, on the other hand, sacrifices a central explanatory variable through annulling the existence of class struggle as a necessary characteristic in production systems in using technological complexity as its categorical criterion. In Lenski’s model, all the attendant outcomes associated with class dynamics become externally related contingencies in the societies that correspond to this or that category. In Marx’s approach, class struggle is a necessary component of all modes of production that have a class structure, though what actually happens in that struggle is contingent. Contingent variables, one must note, do not imply the necessity of this or that outcome (e.g., intensity of conflict, rate of wealth appropriation, rate of technological change). In any case, Lenski’s model does not interiorize the idea of classes in struggle into its categories, and Marx’s model does. Class struggle as a contingent phenomenon, as in Lenski’s approach, thus makes it seem abnormal to modes of production, external to their logic rather than an internal part of what makes them what they are. The political bias built into such an approach is that without class relations, including their forms of exploitation and governance, interiorized into the categories of social systems, things like war, poverty, conflict, and the like appear as external to systems rather internal, predictable, and thus “normal” outcomes of their functioning.

9 “Now, in the United States bourgeois society is still far too immature for the class struggle to be made perceptible and comprehensible” (Marx 1983d: 62).

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The discussion above informs Emirbayer’s question of how to conceptualize transformations within and between objects. The conventional approach conceptualizes social facts and their real histories, even if correlated, as things apart from one another. Social relations, however, are not things like billiard balls whereby neat and tidy divisions exist between them and they cannot “bump” into one another. All boundaries we draw are artificial and temporary. Social reality is messy, fluid, and social institutions are innerconnected by such things as labor, knowledge, exchange relations, rituals, norms, laws, geography, overlapping organizations and structures, the continual emergence of new generations, migrations, and so on. We must adequately conceptualize the contradictory relations and processes history and its structures contain. This point is larger than simply one of emphasis; such distinctions lie at the heart of sociological explanation. When Emirbayer poses his ontological questions after boundary specification—i.e., define boundaries first and then characterize their interior—he reverses Marx’s approach—i.e., discover what social relations are fundamental and then interiorize them into conceptboundaries.10 Emirbayer’s separation of ontology and epistemology through drawing externally related boundaries (e.g., “network analysis”) renders his relational model unable to achieve a flexible level of conceptualization. Both static and externally related concepts undermine our ability to know if the object in question retains enough qualities through its changes in order for us to refer to it under the same conceptual rubric and/or whether its powers of transformation have grown or receded. By seeing social relations as internally related, their connections can be more adequately conceptualized and the changes within and between social forms can be better incorporated into our knowledge of them. While conventional studies often tell us about market dynamics and their influences on social relations, without interiorizing capitalism into their core concepts (including its class relations, forms of value and its appropriation, etc.), conventional approaches obscure, overlook, and/or misconceptualize key processes in the system they strive to describe and explain. When we interiorize the conditions

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“In the first place, I do not start out from ‘concepts,’ hence I do not start out from ‘the concept of value,’ and I do not have ‘to divide’ these in anyway. What I start out from is the simplest social form in which the labour-product is presented in contemporary society, and this is the ‘commodity.’ I analyse it, and right from the beginning, in the form in which it appears” (Marx 1975h: 198).

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accounting for change inside concepts, we can better understand change through examining the internal dynamics of the conglomeration of social relations making concepts possible rather than attributing such changes to outside intangible agencies that must be constructed and hypothesized as having firm boundaries that bump into one another. Emirbayer’s approach, conversely, with externally related boundaries bumping into one other, confuses prioritizing their interacting dynamics for an ontology of change, two very different things. Society versus Capitalism Emirbayer (1997: 294–295) argues for reconsidering one of sociology’s core constructs, that of “society,” which he sees as too static: At the macroscopic level, for example, society is often interpreted as an autonomous, internally organized, self-sustaining “system.” Sociological thinkers often assume that inquiry ought to begin with such naturally bounded, integrated, sovereign entities as national states or countries…. Yet boundaries of national states do overlap unevenly with populations, territories, production and consumption patterns, cultural identities, collective emotional commitments, and so on, while “interstitial interactions,” both within and across these bounded units, also repeatedly belie visions of the latter as unproblematic, unitary entities.

The Marxist view—especially world systems theory—is in general agreement with Emirbayer’s assessment but, again, he does not push this issue far enough. While Marx does employ a concept of “society” as a general abstraction (at Level of Generality Five), it is never as a mode of explanation for observations better contextualized at a lower level of generality. His usage is two-fold. Marx’s first usage is as a way to recognize those social activities that occur in any particular system that are not unique to that system but rather are general necessities required for social production/reproduction in any given form. For instance, “eating and drinking, housing, clothing and various other things” (Marx and Engels 1976: 41–42) are all required for social life, whether this be in primitive communalism, slavery, feudalism, or capitalism. Marx’s second use of “society”, extending from the first, is as a model for contrasting general social relations with specific historico-structural observations in order to extract the unique features of the latter. For example, Marx often juxtaposes and compares productive activity in general with the production of commodities—or, labor in general versus wage-labor. This allows him to extract what forms of labor are necessary to individuals,

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social relations, and the species-being as a whole and evaluate them as compared to capitalist wage-labor.11 Conceptualizing concrete social realities only under the rubric of “society” has a fundamentally obscuring influence on research, one with definite political implications. When sociologists speak of “society” they offer a construct that submerges a whole range of social forms into a coverall notion that masks the differences between their context of origin. We need to understand both similarities and differences across social forms and we can only do so if we have tools that allow us to focus on each in turn rather than overly general concepts that miss important differences. Marx (1973: 85) states: “Whenever we speak of production, then, what is meant is always production at a definite stage of social development.” By conflating capitalism with “society” and using equally general abstractions to describe what is specifically capitalist, “the historicity of the phenomenon is totally obliterated” (D. Sayer 1987: 130), albeit usually without conscious intention (though we cannot rule this out either). Marx (1975c: 111) thus criticizes Hegel for offering constructs that are “presented as the antithesis of space and time” (i.e., structure and history) and for the way he deals “with the corporations, etc., Hegel has turned the mobile part of society also into a static one.” A similar thing happens if we equate capitalism with “society”, “modern society”, or even “the economy”, conceptualizations that dilute capitalism’s core features into broader (often ahistorical) abstractions. This problem is located in the researcher’s choice of methods of abstraction as well as a product of the social conditions in which they work. In the Marxist view, capitalism presents itself as an abstract universal and many forms of knowledge rooted in this material relation pitch themselves at this level of generality. If, in using the concept “society”, researchers do not interiorize contradictory and exploitative relations within their understanding of modern economic relations,

11 Marx (1987b: 407) held one of the “best points” in Capital and “fundamental to all understanding of the facts” was its stress on “the two-fold character of labour, according to whether it is expressed in use-value or exchange-value.” His examination of the labor-process there first “began by treating it in the abstract, apart from its historical forms” (Marx 1992b: 476). He explains that his analysis of “productive labour, is by no means directly applicable to the case of the capitalist process of production” (Marx 1992b: 176, n 1). This contrast allows for a comparison of “different kinds of labour”— peasant families producing use-values in Marx’s example—with labor in “a society based on the production of commodities” (Marx 1992b: 82).

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then when they encounter these relations they do not have the tools to understand them adequately. As a result, when researchers conflate capitalism with society and ground their concept of society in an individualistic ontology, then, for instance, the history of modern imperialism and wage-slavery do not appear as products of capitalism but as the result of policy blunders or the “morality” (or, “immorality”) of the system’s leading actors. However, a member of the business class, where “the appropriation of ever more and more wealth in the abstract becomes the sole motive of his operations”, acts as “capital personified” (Marx 1992b: 151). Individuals operate within an institutional framework that shapes and guides their behavior and this framework is what social science must understand. To lay the blame for modern slavery at the feet of deficient moral agents is similar to criticizing abuses of feudal royalty by pointing to the faults of individual kings rather than the system of royal authority itself (though this is not to say those who engage in slavery are not morally culpable). The use of child-labor and even slavery continually re-emerge where capital is left relatively unimpeded, e.g., sweatshops in India, Indonesia, China, and El Salvador and in the cocoa industry in the Ivory Coast as well as global markets for sex-slaves.12 Even in places with stronger states but relatively weak working-class organization, such as the United States, there arise high levels of labor exploitation, especially of immigrants, where wages as a whole remain stagnant and sweatshops and the illegal sex-trade (often involving children) are on the rise. In conventional approaches, “The extreme forms of this system, its abuse in the ‘cruel and incredible’ extension of the working-day are naturally passed over in silence. Capital only speaks of the system in its ‘normal’ form” (Marx 1992b: 248). Unless other forces also interior to capitalism, such as working class organization and/or mobilization of state forces, impede sweatshops, poverty wages, child-labor, and slavery,

12 The period of neo-liberalism, increased free trade, and the dismantling of state regulatory apparatuses also saw the growth of slavery worldwide. See: Terrence McNally. “There Are More Slaves Today Than at Any Time in Human History.” Alternet.org, 24 August 2009. URL (consulted 29 June 2010): http://www.alternet.org/ rights/142171/there_are_more_slaves_today_than_at_any_time_in_human_history/ Also see: Farron Cousins. “There are More People in Slavery Today Than Any Point in History.” Air America, 1 July 2009. URL (consulted 24 August 2009): http://airamerica .com/ringoffire/blog/2009/jul/01/human-trafficking-and-global-recession

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then these are necessary outcomes of capitalist class relations, i.e., exploitation. While such forces and counteracting forces are interior to capitalism, their configuration, strength and influence at any one time are contingent. It is in this way that choosing between an external versus internal relations approach has decisive consequences for how we see and evaluate the realities we study, a point equally true of class analysis. Class Analysis Conventional sociological approaches often view class as a conglomeration, a location, and/or the result of monied-interests. This approach makes it difficult to capture how class is an evolving relationship in modern capitalist society. For example, Erik Olin Wright, maybe the most prominent self-described Marxist in mainstream American sociology, aligns with “Analytical Marxism”, a tradition Lebowitz (2009) questions if it is Marxism at all. Though one might examine Wright’s (1976, 1979, 1982, 1985, 1997) works to evaluate this claim, he recently provided an overview of his and other (non-Marxist) approaches to class (Wright 2005a). This project asked each writer for “a kind of theoretical manifesto for a particular kind of class analysis” where the “goal is to clarify the theoretical foundations of their preferred approach” and “elaborate the analytical foundations of the conceptualization of class within each author’s body of work” (Wright 2005b: 2–3). For present purposes, I will make five points of critique of his approach: (1) Wright does little to ground his analysis in Marx’s actual writing; (2) his approach to how and why to study classes as classes is inconsistent with Marx’s concerns and ultimately incoherent; (3) Wright’s conceptualization of “contradiction” is incongruent with Marx’s dialectical notion of contradiction; (4) the units of analysis Wright chooses to demonstrate his conceptual models are limiting and outside a Marxist approach; and (5) Wright’s approach is weak in helping us bring the question of historical analysis to class analysis in the manner Marx’s approach requires. (1) Wright does little explicit analysis of Marx’s and/or Marxists’ writings on class outside his own school. In this 2005 piece, Wright warns that his essay is not meant as a comprehensive review of either classical statements made by foundational figures or a review of the dominant schools of thought on class analysis. Nevertheless, in

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examining his central books on class, one finds sparse references to Marx’s actual works and ideas.13 Instead, Wright consistently references G.A. Cohen, John Roemer, and Jon Elster, in addition to others in the tradition of Analytical Marxism. The approach these authors offer has by now received extensive criticism from other Marxist scholars, though Analytical Marxists, by and large, ignore such critics. Though this is the more minor of the five points I will argue, it is nevertheless important to recognize that Wright (2005c: 5) asserts that his approach is “broadly consistent with the Marxist tradition.” If the four other points below are legitimate criticisms, then this claim seems hard to defend. (2) Is Wright’s approach to how to study classes and why we should consistent with Marx’s approach as well as internally coherent? First, let us examine the latter issue. He says he wants to analyze “class locations within capitalist class relations” where “class relations” and “class structure” are “pivotal concepts” (Wright 2005c: 8). In terms of class relations, he tells us that “rights and powers over resources are attributes of social relations, not descriptions of the relationship of people to things as such” (Wright 2005c: 10).14 Wright (2005c: 18) later, however, says “class locations are defined by the rights and powers people have with respect to productive resources and economic activities.” He says earlier that rights and powers define class relations and the individual people’s traits are not his concern. But here he tells us that rights and powers over resources and economic activities (also) define class locations, a category one purpose of which we learn (2005c: 17) is 13 Wright’s (1979) Class Structure and Income Determination references Marx’s Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Capital (Volume I), and he and Engels’s, Ireland and the Irish Question. In Classes, where Wright (1985: 1) tells us in his Preface that he “had a significant change in … the circle of people whose opinions and evaluations are in the back of [his] mind as [he types] away on [his] word processor,” he cites only Capital (Volume III). Finally, in the more recent Class Counts (published under Cambridge University Press’s Studies in Marxism and Social Theory), Wright (1997) does not include Marx in his references at all. 14 When some people have greater rights/powers over “specific kinds of productive resources” than others “these relations can be described as class relations” when these “rights and powers in question are not defined with respect to the ownership or control of things in general, but only of resources or assets insofar as they are deployed in production. A capitalist is not someone who simply owns machines, but someone who owns machines, deploys those machines in a production process, hires owners of labor-power to use them, directs the process by which the machines are used to produce things, and appropriates the profits from the use of those machines” (Wright 2005c: 10; emphasis in the original).

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“allocating people to class locations.” Wright’s distinction between class relations and class locations is ambiguous. In analytical philosophy, central concepts should have clear and separate meanings or, at least, one should not define separate concepts via the same characteristics. Wright’s class relations and class locations above have nearly identical meanings though he wants to use them to categorize and describe different things. This is ultimately incoherent. Why should we study class in the first place? Wright (2005c: 14) explains that since it is “important to be able to locate the individual within the social structure” for purposes of empirical research, the concept of a “ ‘Social relation’ is a way of talking about the inherently structured interactive quality of human action” and thus “To talk about a ‘location’ within a class relation … is to situate individuals within such structured patterns of interaction” (Wright 2005c: 14). Being systematic in such an endeavor, Wright (2005c: 16) tells us, requires “trying to figure out the principles through which complexity is generated and then specifying the implications of these principles for the problem of locating people within class relations.” Here, Wright is concerned with slotting individual people who possess characteristics into a framework.15 For Marx’s class analysis, classes—or, more accurately, class relations—are often treated as irreducible units of analysis, not simply categories for plotting individuals. Analyzing class relations with observations carved at the individual level is illsuited for explaining historic-structural-causal properties on their own terms and thus mystifies and obscures capitalism’s most important social relationships, i.e., the classes and their mutual struggle as classes.16 15 Because of individual traits such as different life experiences, different levels of professional skills and authority, and complex dynamics between material conditions and political coalitions, “a polarized model of class relations is unlikely to tell us everything we want to know” (Wright 2005c: 15). Wright says he prefers to prioritize the idea that “variations in ‘working conditions’ are actually variations in the concrete ways in which people are located within class relations” which, he says, allows him to “incorporate a considerable amount of complexity directly into the account of class locations” (Wright 2005c: 15). He justifies this stance on grounds that his models reflect the “complexities in the concrete ways in which rights and powers over economic resources and activities are distributed across locations within relations” (Wright 2005c: 16). 16 For Marx (1992b: 550), “since sales and purchases are negotiated solely between individuals, it is not admissible to seek here for relations between whole social classes” (also see Marx 1992b: 332).

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If this is the case, we must ask, Does Wright’s concept of “class locations” tell us anything about “class relations” at the level of how classes relate to one another as classes? Class locations are contingent on historical and structural changes as well as the emergence of additional classes within the main classes (capitalists and workers), the latter of which are necessary relations. Wright makes little distinctions between necessity and contingency in his model here, which seems more a categorization of the division of labor in advanced capitalist societies. It strains our interpretive knowledge of Marx to see this—i.e., a general taxonomy for slotting individuals into a schematic—as his goal in class analysis. A “location” is a place in a structure that individuals occupy, i.e., managers, wage workers, professionals, owners, and so on. True, Marx discusses workers as workers, but as individual expressions of class relations. Wright does the reverse (his occasional protestations otherwise notwithstanding), treating class locations as the result of individuals who have traits in relationship to productive activity, using such traits to plot them into categorical models of the economic system. For Marx, the political-economic framework produces workers, managers, owners, and so on, an approach that does not lose sight of the idea of analyzing classes as classes and not as conglomerations of individuals. Further, does not capital target all potential labor-power regardless of its class location? At a broad social level there are less “capitalists” and “workers” but “capital” and everyone else (Marx’s magnum opus, after all, is titled Capital, not Class). What is Wright’s goal? If it is to specify the places in the occupational structure as a whole, his approach might tell us something. If his goal is to tell us something about the essential logic of capital and the classes it locks in struggle, his approach does not illuminate very much, something apparent when turning to his use of contradiction (3) Is Wright’s use of “contradiction” consistent with Marx’s approach? Wright (2005c: 16) posits “contradictory locations within class relations” in modern capitalist societies (again, with both terms nearly identically defined, Wright is somewhat incoherent here, but we shall press on). In “allocating people to class locations”, he tells us managers “can be viewed as exercising some of the powers of capital—hiring and firing workers” and so on, which is the “capitalist location within the class relations of capitalism”, though, at the same time, “they cannot sell a factory and convert the value of its assets into personal consumption, and they can be fired from their jobs if the owners are unhappy”, conditions that “occupy the working-class location within class relations” (Wright 2005c: 16). Similarly, a person might have one

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job as a worker and be self-employed at another job, or sometimes workers own stocks in companies. In both cases, such individuals have traits as workers and owners. Wright appears to be discussing locations that are “paradoxical” rather than contradictory. A paradox would be being a member of both working and owning classes at the same time, having interests shared with both workers and capitalists. A contradiction would be where the laboring activity (mental or physical) involved in one’s work both supports and undermines one’s interests as a member of a class while serving the interests of another. In Wright’s construction, an individual who can be slotted into one class based on one set of traits and another class based on other traits is a contradiction. Not only is this notion of contradiction simply a logical paradox—such as being a square and a circle at the same time (e.g., normal use of taxonomic principles requires that each case fits into one and only one category and that the categories are mutually exclusive)—this is clearly not how Marx used the concept. We can say several things about Marx’s approach to contradiction. A contradiction is immanent in a relation, internal to its logic. Further, Marx’s concept of a relation is one where each member of the relation is only possible with the other(s); each is an extension of the other as a necessary tie, e.g., capital and labor. In a dialectical contradiction, the tendencies in each side of a relation are necessary for their full development but at the same time such tendencies undermine either the other side of the relation or the internal ties between both sides. As a result, neither side of a contradictory relation can reach its full development inside that relation without negating the other side—e.g., capital’s growth posits an infinite absorption of labor-power and surplus-value, a condition unachievable as this would destroy the working class and its spending power, things upon which capital’s expansion depends. As we have seen, Marx positively evaluated Hegel for seeing in dialectical contradiction a generating and moving principle. We saw Marx also say that we must conceptualize things in terms of their contradictory character. One of Wright’s examples of a contradictory class location, where a person is a worker part-time and self-employed other times, fulfills none of these conditions. The position of a manager might have necessary relations with both labor on one side and capital on another, but Wright tells us nothing of how this location has relations with other locations that both support and undermine it in such a way that it irretrievably changes over time. There is no motion here.

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By contrast, what would a Marxist-dialectical understanding of contradictory class locations look like? In pursuit of capital expansion, capitalists may be successful in accruing adequate levels of profit, some of which they put back into production and their business enterprise expands. This expansion requires hiring more workers. Having more workers requires supervisory and other administrative strata. Further, competition means finding more outlets for sales, developing new goods, and cheaper methods of production. As a result, capitalists introduce new departments into their expenditures and production (e.g., research and development, marketing, sales, human resources, and so on). Now, capitalists have brought in a greater amount of labor into their operations, i.e., workers, managers, engineers, and so on. The latter groups, however, are given some duties previously reserved for the individual capitalist—e.g., hiring and firing, managing budgets, and so on. Capitalists have to control the workers, of course, but also must now discover ways to make sure managers and engineers do not identify too closely with the waged workforce. Management techniques, engineering success, and expanding sales increase levels of productive efficiency and profits. Over time, workers may achieve productivity levels under management discipline only to find the profits they make possible allow their company to reach an economy-of-scale whereby capitalists now have new powers they did not have before. For example, high levels of technology and great stocks of capital provide capitalists more geographical mobility, which is a great advantage in their class struggle. Once an economy-of-scale is reached, capitalists might find it in their interest—or, at the least the central interest that concerns their daily operations the most, i.e., accruing a higher rate of surplus-value extraction—to export productive investment (and thus jobs) overseas. Workers, given the productive relations enforced by management and engineering, have worked themselves out of a job. And, by extension, so have a number of managers and engineers. Professional and bureaucratic classes rely on both their own labor and the labor (and wages) of working classes, which makes them equally dependent on the decisions of capitalists, though they rarely see their interests among those of the working class (though sometimes they do). In the face of such dilemmas, workers and/or management may decide to collectively bargain and demand more secure terms of employment and/or higher wages. Again, once capital has reached an economy-of-scale, it becomes potentially mobile and can simply threaten to shut down production where labor costs grow

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too high (here, these costs include management and other white collar workers). Individual capitalists might find that profits temporarily soar with expansion toward cheaper resource and labor markets. However, as more and more capitalists pursue profitability through this same process, capitalists as a class may ultimately find that they have reduced the purchasing power of working classes beyond the point where they can sell commodities at a tolerable profit rate. Profit rates fall and some businesses go bankrupt. Here, capitalists too have worked themselves out of a job. What can we say about such an analysis? First, the central locations—capital and labor—are contradictory. Labor’s full development (in a capitalist society) requires better pay and job security. Capital’s full development is an unending quest for surplus-value extraction, most often at labor’s expense. Both sides of this relation cannot fully develop in the trajectory naturally fitted for their structural conditions of existence. Even if capital grows and workers’ conditions improve in some instances, overtime these trajectories undermine one another, inducing change to the conditions of each. Management and engineering, located between the capital-labor relation (thus sharing traits of each) do not escape the contradiction. Ostensibly hired to serve the needs of capital, to the extent they do this successfully they undermine their condition as workers, i.e., the more they help capital develop, the more likely capital’s spatial mobility undermines management’s social and economic security. These are not “paradoxes” but rather contradictory relations. One does not get this sort of explanation of contradiction from Wright. (4) What units of analysis does Wright choose to demonstrate his conceptual model and what sort of limits does this place on his approach? His model is dual, set at both macro and micro levels. After he explains that, at the macro-level, “class structure” is the “basic concept” defined by the “sum total of the class relations in a given unit of analysis”—which might include a firm, city, country, “perhaps of the world”—he nevertheless tells us that “the nation-state has been the favored unit of analysis for the specification of class structure” (Wright 2005c: 19). World-system analysts have long argued that nation-states are products of the world-economy, not the reverse, a point Wright fails to address. Further, classes cross state boundaries, either through immigration at the level of the working class and through capitalistclass links in international organizations (governments, think tanks, regional organizations, and so on) at the level of the world market as a

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whole. Analyzing classes at the level of the nation-state limits our view of how capital shapes the behavior of classes at the level of the world-economy and the reverse, i.e., how the world-economy impinges on the conditions and actions of classes at the level of individual countries. What relationship does Wright see between macro and micro levels? Wright (2005c: 20) says macro and micro “levels of class analysis are linked in complex ways. On the one hand, class structures are not disembodied wholes generating macro-level effects independently of the actions and choices of individuals: macro-processes have microfoundations. On the other hand, the micro-processes through which a person’s location in class relations shapes their opportunities, consciousness and actions occur in macro-contexts which deeply affect the ways in which these micro-processes operate: micro-processes are mediated by macro-contexts.” Notice this model posits dual processes of mutual influence, though one does not seem to take priority over the other (or, if one does take priority, it is individual choices influencing the directions of structures). For Marx, capital is the point of view from which analysis proceeds, with classes secondary and individuals sometimes abstracted out of view altogether. Further, saying macromicro levels interact in both directions suggests an equality of force, though this is just an assertion. Which has more force, individuals or structures? This is not simply an academic point but a core point of contention between Analytical Marxism and others. Where Wright settles is not satisfactory for presuppositions in either camp. Though he says rational choice models are not necessary, he also does not construct his models from the point of view of capital’s dynamics. The idea that there are sociological laws as extensions of capital’s logic does not receive priority from Wright’s form of class analysis. Clearly, this is not Marx’s approach. (5) To what extent does Wright’s approach help us bring the question of historical analysis to class analysis in the manner Marx requires? First, it is obvious that Wright intends his categories to be applicable to capitalism once established. This criticism is minor for present purposes, one that need not concern us beyond mentioning in passing. The central issue is what is lost from his framework with an inadequate (i.e., non-dialectical) notion of contradiction. As bears little repeating, Marx placed a considerable amount of theoretical investment in the idea that capital and labor were locked into contradictory relations

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that produced a dynamic that thrust upon capitalism an inherent tendency to change within itself. While Wright acknowledges that the class structure in advanced capitalism has changed from Marx’s day, his notion of “class location” is largely as a static thing, lacking an adequate depiction of capital and labor as having dynamic internal though contradictory ties and how such contradictions account for historical developments. Wright (2005c: 19) tells us that “A class ‘location’ is not ‘a class’; it is a location-within relations. The number of such locations within an analysis of class structure, then, depends upon how fine-grained an account is needed for purposes at hand” (emphasis in the original). What are these purposes? It is not clear, though in his past work Wright discusses distribution of income, gender inequality in the occupational structure, among other things. What about capitalism’s history, what drives it to change internally, and/or the “essence” of the classes locked in mutual struggle? Wright accepts that “Marxist class analysis is ultimately about the conditions and processes of social change.” How should we study this change? He says “we need a set of categories in terms of which the actions of people that reproduce and transform these social relations can be understood” (Wright 2005c: 20; emphasis added). What about the nature of capital? Wright again offers us an approach that moves from the bottom up, where capitalism is an ongoing set of relations people produce from their daily actions, as if they had a menu of alternatives and it is such that macro processes provide the list of choices. Instead, Marx asks us to grasp the external and coercive nature of capital, its structure, and of historical change upon the range of action and choices available to people, both conscious and unconscious. Here, Wright again offers us the inverse of Marx. Wright’s approach is not without merit. It allows one to explore a range of concrete realities in terms of divisions within labor markets, details he fills with empirical demonstrations. Further, his work helps us recognize real changes in the opportunity and occupational structure in the more advanced capitalist sectors and organize them into analytical frameworks. However, Wright is not really doing Marxist analysis per se, but rather a general sociology that adopts several of Marx’s concerns. Still, Wright does not adopt all of them and, arguably, where he departs from Marx combined with the frameworks he brings in produces a decidedly un-Marxist analysis. For example, though he discusses exploitation as a central concern, he really does

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not elaborate a Marxist political-economic framework in conjunction with his models of class.17 In terms of exploitation, Wright acknowledges Marx’s views on the lack of need for moral premises for the method of critique but embraces an opposite view of Marx’s, an inversion and rejection that seems to mark most of Wright’s edifice.18 Marx directed a great deal of his critique toward neoclassical economics and its model of individualism, ahistorical theories of both humans and systems, as well as malformed notions of dialectic and analyses that exclude the dynamics of the world market. Wright’s model embraces a form of individualism, rejects dialectics, does not offer a useful framework to bring in historical analysis, and cannot adequately depict class dynamics at a global level.19 Finally, Wright’s substitution

17 Though Wright (2005c: 23) sees similarities between Marxist and Weberian analysis of the distribution of income and how it is acquired (e.g., class location versus life chances), he argues that “What makes class analysis distinctively Marxist is the account of specific mechanisms that are seen as generating [what you get and what you have to do to get it] … the concept of exploitation” (emphasis in the original). 18 “At its core, class analysis within the Marxist tradition is rooted in a set of normative commitments to a form of radical egalitarianism. Historically, Marxists have generally been reluctant to systematically argue for these moral commitments. Marx himself felt that talk about ‘justice’ and ‘morality’ was unnecessary and perhaps even pernicious, believing that ideas about morality really just reflected material conditions and interests of actors. Rather than defend socialism on grounds of social justice or other normative principles, Marx preferred to simply argue that socialism was in the interests of the working class and that it was, in any case, the historical destiny of capitalism. Nevertheless, Marx’s own writing is filled with moral judgment, moral outrage and moral vision. More significantly for present purposes, the Marxist tradition of class analysis gets much of its distinctive thrust from its link to a radical egalitarian normative agenda” (Wright 2005c: 6). And, he concludes, “the most fundamental payoff of these conceptual foundations is that way it infuses class analysis with moral critique. The characterization of the mechanisms underlying class relations in terms of exploitation and domination focuses attention on the moral implications of class analysis. Exploitation and domination identify ways in which these relations are oppressive and create harms, not simply inequalities. Class analysis can thus function not simply as part of a scientific theory of interests and conflicts, but of an emancipator theory of alternatives and social justice as well. Even if socialism is off the historical agenda, the idea of countering the exploitative logic of capitalism is not” (Wright 2005c: 30). 19 Wright (2005c: 30) addresses “historical/comparative analysis” with the following: “As originally conceived, Marxist class analysis was an integral part of a sweeping theory of the epochal structure and historical trajectory of social change. But even if one rejects historical materialism, the Marxist exploitation-centered strategy of class analysis still provides a rich menu of concepts for historical and comparative analysis. Different kinds of class relations are defined by the specific mechanisms through which exploitation is accomplished, and these differences in turn imply different problems faced by exploiting classes for the reproduction of their class advantage and different opportunities for exploited classes to resist. Variations in these mechanisms and in the specific ways in which they are combined in concrete societies provide an analytically

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of Marx’s notion of contradiction with analytical philosophy’s notion of contradiction (or, really, paradox) sheds no light on the subject matter. Yes, individuals have traits and occupy locations that fit in both working class and capitalist class categories. However, this observation requires no introduction of “contradiction” for the observations Wright makes. Previously, this chapter took note of the need to locate contradictions in social relations to account for change. Survey analysis, common among sociologists, relies on a framework that has problems conceptualizing the relations among the parts they measure within the wholes that contain them. Reductionism occurs in class analysis when researchers survey individuals and/or households on their income against variables such as education levels, professional affiliation, number of children, geographical region, and/or marital status (among other common measures). Here, differences between income earners are often established by a series of lines in the “sand” (i.e., money) at $10,000, $25,000, $50,000, $100,000, and so on (i.e., boundary drawing). Ordinal measures produce statistical correlations between this variable and things such as quality of life, life expectancy, criminal convictions, life satisfaction and happiness, voting patterns, and so on. Though we can gain useful information in such an approach, three problems exist here, given “that the way in which a formula presents a relation … can conceal the specific nature of [a] relation” (Lebowitz 2009: 352).20 First, there is no logical reason for the breaks in the scale, violating Marx’s rule that “arbitrary divisions must not be introduced.” Further, second, by ignoring the prevailing property relations—with their

powerful road map for comparative research.” As we will see in Chapter Five, the traditional interpretation of Marx’s theory of history is widely misread, so it is probably this misreading Wright accepts as an accurate depiction of Marx’s views but rejects. Also, the sort of historical/comparative analysis he seems to propose seems fit more for approaches such as Skocpol’s, which only makes up one facet of Marx’s concerns with historical studies. 20 Lebowitz (2009: 352) elaborates: “As we know, the treatment of the workday as a given (and, thus, its disappearance as variable) meant that, for classical political economy (and, unfortunately, for some late interpreters of Marx), the coercive nature of the capitalist workday disappeared. With the obscuring of the compulsion to perform surplus-labour so apparent in absolute surplus-value, the source of the surplus was mystified—leaving the exploitation of workers no more compelling an explanation of the surplus than the exploitation of corn, steel or peanuts.”

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methods of appropriation interiorized—that determine how we make our money, as well as what—broadly speaking—we earn, this method does not place capitalist class relations within the analyst’s core concepts. In doing so, this method loses sight of contradictions within capitalism’s core relations and reduces the magnitude of the measure of inequality capitalist society experiences. If a researcher measures wealth using the earner’s relation to the mode of production—i.e., ownership of capital versus wage labor—the classes are fewer and the distance between them greater, while a taxonomy of classes based on income obliterates how this income is related to appropriation methods according to class. Measures of income levels can estimate the end result of the appropriation process at a temporal moment, but they do not have the processes that account for this result—and thus leads for additional research—incorporated into the conceptualization of classes. Economics as a whole tends to be guilty of this. Without Marx’s method of class determination, a researcher is not lead to the question of how capital’s enrichment leads to labor’s privation in a theoretical manner but only as a contingency and/or as a spark of insight. Marx’s method, on the other hand, leads investigation about the relative wealth of the classes directly toward the question of their antagonistic relationship. This contrast offers an excellent example of how the choice of methods of abstraction and attendant concept construction and measurement can obscure and even annul capitalist property relations in thought and discourse, a very political result. A third analytical-political problem arises from establishing class categories through income. In none-too-few measurements, the upper class begins at the $100,000 income level (though sometimes categories end at $250,000 and above). Those in the $100,000 or even $250,000 category are not even close to the lifestyle, wealth, and power of the top 1% and .5% of income and/or wealth holders. Lumping them together distorts the actual composition of the class structure by making it look as if wealth distribution is much more even than it is and that the top levels are not nearly as high and distant from average citizens’ life as they are. Those at the top wield extensive levels of power and influence over funding political campaigns, forming policy through think tanks, funding endowments, participation in policy-making, and relationships with foreign elites. Census takers and sociologists often defend their use of the categories above by claiming that so few belong to the upper echelons of income and wealth it only makes sense to measure income/class in the current way. The obfuscating function and the

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political cover should be obvious, but often are not. If so few have so much wealth and influence, saying they are unimportant makes no sense whatsoever. While various sociological methods can address this problem, the random sampling of survey methods may be worse than being of little help. Certainly, elites’ choices have tremendous influence on untold numbers of people as compared to average, everyday wage-workers. To treat elites as unimportant plays a powerful covering role for their political activities and place of influence in capitalist society.21 Here, the obscuring function is a direct product of what appears on the surface as a neutral and non-political method. It is anything but that.22 Operational Variables (and Statistical Analysis) versus Essentialism A scientist’s analysis and presentation should try to avoid oversimplification as well as unnecessary complexity, i.e., unnecessary as a function of the difficulty of revealing the mechanisms that one is trying to

21

For discussion see Michael Parenti’s (1978: 72–75) Power and the Powerless; also see Michael Parenti (2000), “The Super Rich Are Out of Sight”, Michael Parenti Political Archive, URL (consulted 29 June 2010): http://www.michaelparenti.org/Superrich .html 22 Not all statistical measures fail the tests of utility and applicability for the internal relations framework and class analysis. In just one example, the well-known GINI Index can be used to measure the distance in both income and wealth inequality at a point in time in capitalism’s history but also over the years in its historical development, without drawing arbitrary lines between the classes. In respect to distinctions in measuring income versus wealth inequality, data from 1995 indicate an American GINI of .45 for the former and .87 for the latter (Kerbo 2006: 31; see citation therein), a significant difference. The latter measure captures a much greater amount of inequality, where wealth is even more concentrated than is income. In measuring changes over time, a GINI Index allows us to pair levels of social inequality with historical conditions and various policy initiatives: the Great Depression (GINI goes up between 1929–1933), the New Deal (GINI declines after 1933), World War II (GINI goes down with [somewhat] full employment during the war economy), the post-war expansion of US industry (GINI continues to decline between 1945 and the 1960s), and the Vietnam War and Great Society programs (GINI goes down further still). This measurement also provides insight into the reaction of the capitalist class to the economic conditions under US President Carter (a lower and stagnant GINI Index). Elites provided extensive political and economic support for the efforts of the Thatcher-ReaganBush (I) regimes to dismantle Keynesian policies and transfer wealth upward in the class structure, a policy, though actually initiated in Carter’s last years, followed by every administration since (GINI goes up and continues to go up through Presidents Clinton, Bush II, and Obama). The GINI measurement thus allows us to combine time/space in a statistical measure of the concentration of wealth in a way that does not have to annul capitalist class relations in the concept, especially as it targets wealth in conjunction with class antagonisms.

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penetrate. An effective scientific analysis simplifies the complex but not so much that the result is avoidably distorting, misleading, or caricature (what this means on any given occasion, of course, is a matter for debate). If a presentation is as or more complex than its subject matter, then readers new to a topic have little chance to acquire a foothold and therefore grasp all a writer wishes to convey. At the same time, there must be some fidelity to a subject’s complexity, lest one mystify it through obscuring its core relations from view. If we assume internal relations between historical change and social structures and use broad enough abstractions to place these realities into our analytical vantage point, then flux and dynamics are more readily seen as the norm, and stability, whatever the appearance, becomes a mere exception. Depicting a world made up of multiple, reciprocally interactive parts where mutual innerconnections define a dynamic whole raises a problem with dual features. On the one hand, the variables targeted should reflect the operative ontological assumptions. An internal relations ontology, on the other hand, makes defining variables problematic. Engels (1909: 24), in fact, warned we should not “look into Marx’s work at all for fixed and universally applicable definitions” and that, for him, respecting the dynamics of social change requires that our concepts are “subject to change and transformation; that they cannot be sealed up in rigid definitions, but must be developed in the historical and logical process of their formation.” Mainstream sociology relies on operational definitions that, without abstractions of extension, level of generality, and alternating vantage points, freeze observations into bounded sets of concepts. Though this approach has the advantage of simplifying the complex, it also reduces one’s flexibility in capturing change and dynamics within core concepts. Further, beginning with operationally defined concepts increases the likelihood that a researcher (or their reader) hypostatizes in thought such a priori carved parts as things-in-themselves rather than products of abstraction.23 Any conceptual framework that transforms

23

“It is only to be expected that a living, natural being equipped and endowed with objective (i.e., material) essential powers should have real natural objects of his essence; as is the fact that his self-alienation should lead to the establishing of a real, objective world—but a world in the form of externality—a world, therefore, not belonging to his own essential being, and an overpowering world. There is nothing incomprehensible or mysterious about this. It would be mysterious, rather, if it were otherwise. But it is equally clear that a self-consciousness—can only establish thinghood through its alienation—i.e., establish something which itself is only an abstract thing, a thing of

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dynamics into stasis and presents internally related variables as externally related things pitched at the level of society in general does not have the tools to penetrate sufficiently the innerconnections between historical-structural relations. That is, operational definitions can simplify the complex but left at this level alone such variables can be too simple, imprecise, and even obfuscating in ways of which the researcher may remain unaware. Sociologists often analyze co-variation using correlational statistics in their search for causal relationships. The conventional approach takes two (or more) operationally defined and quantitatively measured variables and allows these units to fluctuate through a series of mathematical formulas. The analyst examines changes in one variable to see if they correspond to changes in the other: If X changes by a unit of 1, then how many units does Y tend to change? The resulting mathematical expression, ranging from −1 to +1, represents the statistical strength of the relationship between them. Once tests—spuriousness, time order, and significance—are passed, confidence in the probability of a causal relationship increases. This well-known method provides for locating and estimating the level of influence and mutual association between different objects and, as such, it is an indispensable tool in the sociological kit. This method also has a built-in logic that brings it problems (though it must be stressed, this is only a problem with some approaches to variable and model construction). One result is that here internal relations appear as externally related separate things, a formulation necessarily possessing a degree of tautology, an issue from Chapter Two and to which we now return.24 Marx’s internal relations approach assumes that within the whole/ part totality, relations between variables (or, relations between relations) possess varying degrees of internal ties with others (or, the abstraction and not a real thing. It is clear, further, that thinghood is therefore utterly without any independence, any essentiality vis-à-vis self-consciousness; that on the contrary it is a mere creature—something posited by self-consciousness. And what is posited, instead of confirming itself, is but a confirmation of the act of positing in which is concentrated for a moment the energy of the act as its product, seeming to give the de-posit—but only for a moment—the character of an independent, real substance” (Marx 1988a: 153; emphases in the original). 24 The discerning and skeptical reader might object that a tautology exists or does not exist, though never as a matter of degree. I beg the reader to suspend their judgment until the end of this particular section before deciding that I have made an obvious blunder. Here, I propose to show how, in a dialectical conception, a tautology can in fact exist in elements of degree and that conventional analytical philosophy cannot bring a logic internal to it to this issue.

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dialectical term, interpenetrations). If the whole is the basic reality in question (at a broad level), when pulled apart, each part will contain relations of the whole and thus share internal relations (some stronger, some weaker) with others.25 Mainstream sociology’s operational definitions of variables delineate social practices into separate boundaries, each of which share and contain forms of structured knowledge shaping practices within their boundaries, such as religiosity, political attitudes, male dominance, racial and ethnic prejudices, etc. Conceived as separate and externally related, then operationally defined, and subsequently tested statistically for correlations, their internal relations nevertheless overlap and interpenetrate. As a result, when we conceptualize innerconnections as external relations we will necessarily find statistical correlations because, even if operationally defined as separate things, the realities in question are not, in fact, clearly discreet and wholly separate in reality. To the extent that operational definitions fail to capture shared identities and only settle on differences—and thus fail to recognize the innerconnections between the phenomena measured—then resulting correlations contain a degree of self-referentiality. Tests of spuriousness cannot account for this as the external relations approach obscures and obliterates their internal lies in its method of conceptualization and measurement. For instance, perfect correlations are inherently tautological, found only when a variable is correlated with itself, i.e., where both the independent and the dependent variable are the same thing.26

25 “Hegel states that universality is the whole of the concept itself as well as one moment within it. The concept is thus defined as universal, because it is the organizing principle of the whole. But universality is also merely one of its constituent moments. Universality is the most abstract moment that characterizes the whole, and it differentiates itself into particular moments. The particular moments are the universal in a more concrete determination. Each particular moment is the universal, and therefore the whole, but each is also a particular aspect or moment of the whole. Each moment thus manifests the whole as self-differentiating. Since each particular moment contains within itself the universal, it is likewise a self-identity, or an individual. Individuality is both a concretization of the universal and a specific characteristic of the organic system” (Meany 2002: 115). 26 “The two columns (see p. 3) given by Darimon, i.e. the bank’s metallic assets from April to September on the one side, the movement of its portfolio on the other, express nothing but the tautological fact, which requires no display of statistical illustration, that the bank’s portfolio filled up with bills of exchange and its vaults emptied of metal in proportion as bills of exchange were presented to it for the purpose of withdrawing metal. And the table which Darimon offers to prove this tautology does not even demonstrate it in a pure form” (Marx 1973:116).

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Though the problem of tautology awaits correlational analysis, statisticians sometimes do not explain it as a problem inherent in the approach: One way to determine how strongly two variables covary is to measure how closely the values of the observations come to the regression line. In the ideal situation where all observations fall exactly on the regression line, the N Yi scores predicted from Xi would have no errors…. But perfect prediction simply is not possible with actual social data. Greater or lesser amounts of error are always present in any regression. Our realistic goal is to determine the relative contributions of both prediction and error to the variation that we observe in the dependent variable. (Knoke and Bohrnstedt 1994: 205)

This formulation is problematic. First, as a correlation increases then when “all observations fall exactly on the regression line” the possibility grows that one has correlated a variable with itself. How is this ideal? Second, the explanation for imperfect regressions is reduced to “error.” While measurement error does occur, limits to operational variables here go unrecognized. If a researcher defines variables as mutually exclusive and externally related phenomena, if such variables, each pulled out from a totality, overlap and interpenetrate in important ways, then the form of the independent and the content of the dependent variable may contain significant elements of the same realities. The result is an asymptotic tendency toward diminishing returns; correlations increase to a point where the cogency of their numeral expression loses its explanatory power. Tests for spuriousness—where introducing new variables nullifies some of the variance initially explained—are not the same thing as tautological variable formation and may not fix the problem at all. For example, a researcher finds a significant correlation between enjoying playing basketball and enjoyment of hockey. He or she might note the different gear, use of a ball versus a puck, different types and rates of scoring, etc. and then theorize what it is about basketball that leads to also liking hockey. However, both are expressions of the general activity of sport and so the measurements of each variable include things like athleticism, competition, camaraderie, endurance, not to mention cultural and geographical overlap, historical popularity, and so on and thus each shares dimensions and meanings with the other. Though the tautology is not 100%, the formulation approaches a degree of self-reference and, importantly, this is different from instances where the introduction of a third variable shows the original correlation to be

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spurious. Rather, each variable measures something similar that is not contained in its operational definition and, as a result, the method itself introduces an element tautological reasoning. In a sociological example, a researcher could operationally define variables such as religious fundamentalism, political conservatism, support for the “traditional family” (nuclear, one-household, opposite sexed parents, monogamy, children, sexual division of labor, and male authority), and support for compulsory heterosexuality and controlled virginity (with male bias) as different and separate attitudes. Analyzed as such, these variables will have, no doubt, significant statistical associations both (1) because one may have a “causal” force as traditionally understood on the others but moreover for this discussion (2) because they have necessary innerconnections. Religious fundamentalism and right-wing political outlooks, for example, both adopt a strict reading and adherence to the official institutional discourse of the system that contains them. Religious fundamentalists believe in the inerrant word of holy texts and, in the United States, originalist legal theory similarly purports to interpret the Constitution through its written word as stated on the page, both thus eschewing interpretative and/or reformist approaches. Both religious fundamentalists and political conservatives in the United States tend to gravitate toward the Republican Party and all share in a wider social discourse whose participants internalize its ideological prerogatives to varying degrees. Again, though religious and political views are not exactly the same, they do share in each other’s meaning to a significant degree as each is a distilled ideological expression of a material set of institutional relations.27 If these “attitudes” are but individual personifications of the material and institutional relationships that make up the modern system as a whole, then some degree of each variable are parts of the same thing, not separate causal forces. Though sociologists can pretend to ignore shared realities through their method of variable construction, operational definitions, statistics, and tests for spuriousness have no way to satisfactorily measure and estimate the entire range and nature of these internal relationships. Here, Emirbayer’s second question returns, i.e., With what do we fill up our concepts? 27

“However, philosophers do not spring up like mushrooms out of the ground; they are products of their time, of their nation, whose most subtle, valuable and invisible juices flow in the ideas of philosophy. The same spirit that constructs railways with the hands of workers, constructs philosophical systems in the brains of philosophers” (Marx 1975i: 28).

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In comparison to Marx’s approach, Emirbayer asks his question in an inverted way: “Once one defines the boundaries around a given matrix of transactions, how does one characterize what obtains inside those boundaries?” When Emirbayer advocates drawing boundaries first, defining their interior second, and then proceeding to research third, he reverses the approach Marx advocates. Operational definitions, by definition, are to be constructed as mutually exclusive. Set up as externally related things by definition, answers to questions of objects’ innerconnections are hard to come by without encroaching on the problem of speculative theorizing. There is another way to pose the question: “Once one has uncovered empirical data indicative of the central relations and processes that mark a social system, what boundaries do these observations allow us to draw?” Marx’s conceptualization approach, that is, proceeds inductively, after research has begun and strives for reflexivity—i.e., consciously changing definitions and meanings when vantage point and level of generality change—to inspect innerconnections.28 Un-reflexive abstractions may, on occasion, allow for useful knowledge and concepts, though where this occurs it is accidental. In addition, if a framework pitches operational definitions at the level of society in general when in fact the data’s observational context is the relations of capitalist society, then the central political-economic relations and processes of the modern world disappear. Marx (1975c: 114), for his part, criticizes analyses where “matter is not dealt with in its own terms” (emphasis in the original) and refers to “hypostatised abstractions” as a situation where the “concrete content, the actual definition, appears as something formal; the wholly abstract formal definition appears as the concrete content … in their most abstract form they can be regarded as logical-metaphysical definitions” (Marx 1975c: 15, 17). For Marx (1975c: 84), conceptualization of the real should proceed “from its own character” instead of being “derived from consideration for an existence which lies outside its essential character” (emphasis in the original). An object’s “own character” is internally related to the character of other objects and relations with which it shares essential ties. While one can use operational definitions for uncovering evidence of important relationships and processes, 28 In Marx’s approach, Derek Sayer (1979: 112) explains, the “starting-point of the analysis lies not in abstraction (‘simple’ or otherwise) but in a concrete social form … as … it presents itself phenomenally.”

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such an approach distorts and obscures if taken as an adequate conceptualization of real world processes, especially when fluctuating historical-structural internal relations comprise that world. While Emirbayer problematizes using variable/statistical analysis, he shares with statistical sociology the practice of drawing up boundaries prior to data collection. Marx’s conception of social reality and his relational methodology, interestingly, does not preclude him from examining variable relationships in the manner statisticians do while at the same time not using static operational definitions. Because real concrete social relations contain variable relations and processes, Marx sometimes uses constants in conjunction with independent and dependent variables when appropriate to the realities under study, i.e., to capture how changes in a set of relations and/or processes cause changes in others.29 These temporary models of interacting relations, however, he then “unfreezes” and allows them to fluctuate with more variables added as his exposition unfolds.30 One can follow the volumes of Capital as Marx adds to and subtracts from various components of variable relationships as he introduces complicating factors, later retracts them, and later again adds them back with new variables also brought to bear as he expands his analysis from the production process, to relations of class and trade, all the way up to the world market. Each time, the meaning of concepts, variables, and even the laws Marx deduces from his material may change. Marx’s concepts thus play a role in each other’s meaning as they grow (and contract) in different analytical moments, gaining or losing previous meaning in the process, an approach that makes fixed operational definitions impractical and even distorting. This flexible precision is Marx’s alternative.

29 “Very different combinations are clearly possible, according as one of the three factors is constant and two variable, or two constant and one variable, or lastly, all three simultaneously variable. And the number of these combinations is augmented by the fact that, when these factors simultaneously vary, the amount and direction of their respective variations may differ” (Marx 1992b: 487). 30 “I. Capital. First section: Capital in general. (Throughout this section wages are invariably assumed to be at their minimum. Movements in wages themselves and the rise and fall of that minimum will be considered under wage labour. Further, landed property is assumed to be zero, i.e. landed property as a special economic relation is of no relevance as yet. Only by this procedure is it possible to discuss one relation without discussing all the rest.)” (Marx 1983a: 298; also see Marx 1992b: 296, 327, 574, 581, 593).

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When Emirbayer acknowledges the need to establish what is inside concept-boundaries, he sides with the anti-essentialist view, where singular identities for social categories (i.e., gender, sexuality, race, nationality) are rejected as reifications (and, in the view here, perhaps problems found in a priori constructs in general). While this position is agreeable, it differs with the dialectical category of essentialism. Essentialism is the internal relations approach’s alternative to operational definitions, though Marx’s use of “essence” does not denote individual people, assumed “natural” categories, pre-set operational definitions, or timeless constructs. “Essence is an exposition of relational properties of things, rather than an exposition of the external relations between things”, explains Meany (2002: 180; emphases in the original; see citation therein). As such, we can think of essence in both philosophical and sociological terms. More philosophically and related to Hegel’s influence on Marx, essence is the idea that social objects have an inner reality, something not apparent in their immediate appearance. Capital may seem like simply accumulated profits, but for Marx capital is also self-expanding value, alienated labor, and a social organizing relation, among other things not immediately apparent from surface presentation. Socialscientifically, Marx’s use of essence refers to specifiable relations and processes one must have available in order to analyze a social system or set of relations as such. This problem reduces to the issue, where after an analyst constructs a concept upon observations of concrete patterns, of what characteristics must be available in additional observations to justify the application of that concept to them? For instance, to study a system as a “capitalist system” requires the existence of private property, bourgeoisie and proletariat as classes, abstract labor and wage-labor, a money form, commodities at prices, and production for profits, among other things. Though one could putatively demonstrate the characteristics of capital’s essence as a philosophical construct with empirical observations—i.e., “this is an example of alienated labor”— at the level of sociological research, the essential components of capital’s development are things we can directly and empirically study, erect descriptive and causal models upon, and use in taxonomic and comparative frameworks. This approach constructs concepts a posteriori and these have a range of application, depending on empirical observation, level of generality, vantage point, and the manner in which abstractions of extension interiorize them within one another.

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By demonstrating how and why Marx abstracts parts out of wholes the way he does, how his variables unite both time and space relations, and how and why he frequently shifts his vantage point, the internal relations approach fills in the gap between the world Marx investigates and the theories he uses to comprehend it. If internal relations theorists are correct, then central theories and even paradigms in both mainstream Marxism and social science require re-thinking. Traditional approaches to social taxonomy, variable construction, measuring class, and examining social change all are affected. Some of these we can place in complementary comparisons with Marx’s approach. For example, comparing taxonomies of societies based on technology versus class relations provides a way to shift vantage points in explanatory and classificatory frameworks by showing what each reveals, allowing both forms of inquiry to play analytical and heuristic roles. Some frameworks may require amending, e.g., Marx’s multidimensional approach to class adds complexity to simpler notions of class location and income measurement, methods that reveal capitalism’s interior less well. Other approaches we can place in their overall relation to a more complete methodological strategy, e.g., Marx’s approach to historical change is the inverse to traditional approaches, though one might mobilize similar data. Additionally, we can incorporate traditional statistical analyses in sociology as capturing frozen moments within the development of the whole and thus use them to inform specific temporal conditions and relations, though we would need to unfreeze these models and open them up to considerations that are more dynamic. A priori operational variables, in this view, can make capitalism disappear. Or, capitalism may change history in ways that make operational definitions constructed for period A obsolete with the passage of time to period B—e.g., labor and money. We can address the problems Emirbayer outlines for relational sociology—i.e., drawing boundaries, filling them up with meaning, and analyzing transformations of social matrices—better within a philosophy of internal relations. This view imports the assumption of labor’s centrality (and the changing nature of its causal powers within and between different systems), abstracts reality as containing extended and asymmetrical relations of history and structure, and uses vantage point abstractions to gain the flexibility needed to analyze a complex

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and changing world at different temporal and structural moments. With these methods kept in mind, research interiorizes the essential social relations within systems, especially those whose contradictory relations interpenetrate one another. By placing focus here, the processes and mechanisms of change come into better view. However, all of these procedures are made anywhere from difficult to impossible if we conceive of social relations as external to one another. We must push the shift to relational thinking Emirbayer forwards even further and Marx’s internal relations philosophy and methods of abstraction and analysis can help do that work.

CHAPTER FIVE

TELEOLOGY AND DIALECTIC Introduction: Teleology and Natural Science We have seen how Marx addresses several issues in the philosophy of science on his way to constructing his research principles which, in turn, lead him to theoretical conclusions. Several issues he addresses are shared with natural science, including conceptualizing variables, looking for their interrelations, and accounting for causal dynamics. Teleological explanation is one philosophy of science category that directs attention toward the temporal relationship between variables and their causal properties. In this chapter, I inquire into the logic of teleological explanation in natural and social science and how Marx’s approach addresses this issue as well as its political implications. Teleological reasoning comes up in the works of classical philosophers, Christian theologians, and modern philosophers of science. As expressed by Aristotle and Kant, teleological arguments depict things as existing or coming to exist because of the purpose or role they play in the world.1 It is a seductive way of thinking. Things are here because of what they do for us and/or for other things. Teleological reason, however, at its traditional rudimentary level at least, does not go beyond speculative reason as it simply rests on argument, not on testable empirical demonstration. As these sorts of explanations are subject to misleading us, we need to clarify teleology’s logic and root out 1 “Philosophers as divergent in their perspectives as Aristotle and Kant have accorded teleology a central place in their understanding of organic nature. Aristotle writes, ‘action for an end is present in things which come to be and are by nature.’ And, one of his senses of cause is ‘The end; i.e., that for the sake of which a thing is;’ Kant, in the Critique of Judgement, argues that organized beings ‘can be thought as possible only as purposes of nature.’ They are those things which, he says are ‘self-organizing’ wherein ‘parts should so combine in the unity of a whole that they are reciprocally cause and effect of each other’s form.’ Of course, Aristotle’s attribution of teleology is ‘realistic’ while Kant’s is a consequence of a regulative principle of reason, in his special sense of that expression. But there is an important point of affinity between their views; viz., that it is a necessary feature of organisms that they have a teleological form” (Jacobs 1986: 50; see citations therein; also see: Kant 1861, 1987; Perlman 2004; Mayr 1998).

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its reason (or unreason). We also need to consider if there is ever room for teleological explanations in any satisfactory scientific explanation of the world. Many early natural scientists assumed that, in reference to species variation, “God had designed them that way…. Teleology … attests to a thinking Creator…. Darwin’s great evolutionary work … changed all that” (Ruse 1986: 57–58). As Foster (2000: 14) explains, “Darwin’s … account … derived from his fundamental, uncompromising (with respect to the natural world) materialism … represented at one and the same time the ‘death of teleology’ (as Marx stressed) and the growth of an anti-anthropocentric viewpoint.” As natural science progressed, teleological-theological reasoning increasingly lost favor, challenging fundamentals of several traditional Christian doctrines. In this process, biological sciences threw off the yoke of pseudo-science and flourished, similar to how “Bacon of Verulam said that theological physics was a virgin dedicated to God and barren, he emancipated physics from theology and it became fertile” (Marx 1975i: 35). Darwin did not really settle the issue once and for all, however. Some continued to argue (as some still do) that natural selection and theology are compatible, where evolution is a metaphysic in-line with God’s law and humanity its purpose (for discussion, see England 2001). Appeals to teleological explanation continue to arise, often bridging religious and scientific discourse. According to Woodfield (1976: 2), for “some Christians … God does nothing in vain. If God has created a thing, He must have had a reason, and His reason gives the thing a purpose.” Recent attempts to substitute Creationism with “intelligent design” against Darwinian principles are similar expressions of teleological thinking, which even some philosophers and biologists accept (Manson 2003; for a Marxist take on this issue, see Clark, Foster, and York 2007; Foster, Clark, and York 2008a, 2008b; for a general overview of the history of creationism versus evolution, see Bleckman 2006). According to Ruse (1986: 59), teleological thinking about nature likely “is drawn metaphorically from the human teleological experience of creating artifacts with purposes.” As humans act purposefully, nature’s action, in this view, similarly implies a creator (for discussion, see Gale 1986). Rather than revisiting the commonly repeated dictum about a watch implying a watching maker, let us consider birds’ ability to fly. In a theological-teleology, the flight of birds is God’s plan; in a nontheological teleology, wings evolved to facilitate flight. The former

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assertion cannot be verified (faith is all that is needed) and the latter argument is problematic because such “teleological explanation is taken to give causal efficacy to the future” (Bechtel 1986: 27). Arguing that the future ability to fly caused the prior evolutionary development of wings attributes causation to an unseen and immeasurable force occurring later than the effect, a metaphysical and also unverifiable argument. Evolution moves forward, leaving the future forms and/or functions of today’s organic structures unforeseeable, given a long enough temporal lens. The future benefits of flight for birds as a whole could not have caused genetic alterations in individual birds in the past. We cannot test either of these teleological constructs—god or this particular (backward) causal chain—in anyway and thus they are nonscientific, speculative forms of knowledge. Is there room for teleological reason in science or is it a fallacy tout court? Though “Modern science is on the whole hostile to teleological explanations” (Woodfield 1976: 3), some scientists accept that, stripped of metaphysics, teleological-like “goal directed processes” do occur— such as the migration of birds or the development of a zygote—leading Nagel (1979: 316) to conclude that “teleological explanations do not constitute a species of intellectual constructions that are inherently obscure and therefore should be regarded with suspicion.” Though there are instances where future ends direct action at a prior time in nature, goal-directed explanations must be qualified on whether they apply to processes at the group level—e.g., the migration of a flock of birds—versus the development of traits at the genetic-individual level in relation to a species as a whole—e.g., the emergence of wings. Thus, teleological explanations do not answer the question of how and/or why specific parts emerge and may fail on the question of how they come to play the functional roles in a system that they do over time. “Evolutionary biologists know, better perhaps than members of any other profession,” Stephen Jay Gould (1995: 180) tells us, “that historical origin and current utility represent different facets of a biological object, and that one need not be correlated with the other.” Gould’s observation is tempered. Current utility sometimes may correlate with historical origins, even if only in part, but this is not necessarily always, or even often, the case. Natural scientists thus distinguish between “teleologies of self-direction” (where a future goal directs prior causal action) versus “teleologies of finalism” (where causal action occurs to fulfill a needed function or role in a system) (Wood Sellars 1970: 49). Teleologies of self-direction and finalism, still and problematically, do

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not separate out the dynamics of behavior, temporal order, and change at the individual versus the group or species level. Since respecting temporal order in a dynamic causal chain is crucial for any valid scientific explanation, additional qualifications are needed for teleology in natural science, three specifically. First, organic systems do not evolve parts in order to fulfill functional needs absent at an earlier stage, i.e., “Genes do not mutate in response to the needs an organism may acquire because of environmental changes” (Nagel 1979: 301). Second, future ends do not create causal interactions in the present, i.e., “natural selection has no eye to the future. [Things] are eliminated by natural selection … because they are not adapted to their present environment” (Nagel 1979: 303). Third, evolution does not contain any forward-looking goal, i.e., “Humans are not the end result of predictable evolutionary progress”, in Gould’s (1995: 329) words. If both a causal force’s effect(s) and the function(s) emergent parts play in a system do not explain the origins of these forces themselves, and given the concern with accounting for causation it shares with natural science, it stands to ask how social science should approach teleology, including those of finalism and self-direction. Teleology and Social Questions In discourses sitting between natural and social science, questions of sex, sexuality, and sex/reproductive organs have been contentious issues, especially for those working with evolutionary theory. As a stand-in representative, Desmond Morris’s work, The Naked Ape, observes that female primates offered their buttocks, which would turn red and inflated when they went into heat, to prospective mates. The emergence of human upright posture resulted in the disappearance of rear-entry intercourse as the norm, he argues, and this resulted in the rise of frontal-entry sex. The human female developed permanently enlarged breasts in order to provide a constant source of “sexual signaling” (Morris 1967: 70–76). If it is true that, as we saw above, “natural selection has no eye to the future” (Nagel), then it is anywhere from difficult to impossible to conceive how a future socio-biological result can cause evolutionary changes in the development of genotypes and phenotypes at a prior time. Morris argues from genetic levels to changes in social meanings of body parts and sexual norms in the future, giving causal primacy for the former to the latter, a difficult and problematic teleology.

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Moving from natural-biological questions to social-structural ones, Daniel Little (1991: 92) holds that “explaining a circumstance in terms of its future effects” is not acceptable with social relationships because in such an approach the… …explanans specifies the function of the explanandum within the larger system and the benefits that the feature confers upon the smooth working of this system. The explanandum is to be explained, that is, in terms of the beneficial consequences it confers upon the system as a whole. (Such an explanation can be described as a consequence explanation; it explains the occurrence of the explanandum in terms of its consequences).

If the difficulty is that a “cause cannot occur later in time than its effects” (Little 1991: 92), then claims about goal-directed processes are susceptible to fallacious teleological formulations in respect to social relationships, which would be a metaphysical argument, correct? Several conventional forms of knowledge do just this. Teleology and Religion A theological-teleology sees the human and natural worlds as the intentional products of a purposeful design of Providence (Manson 2003; Wynn 1996). As Ruse (1986: 59) puts it, “God, like humans, is supposed to have started with an idea or plan, and then to have set about executing that plan, creating objects where the parts would serve some overall purpose.” Here, nature and social relations have an intended state, about which religion purports insights and itself as a necessary guide to belief and action. As one of several institutionalized world religions, Christianity’s fundamental theology is rooted in metaphysics of self-direction and finalism, as scholars frequently have read teleological meanings into the Bible (Eslinger 1998). The goal-directed teleology is that the purpose of the world’s evolution is as a platform for a Judeo-Christian present (“present” being the time period of the believer). The idea that after the ministry of Jesus no other religious faith is necessary is a teleological finalism. Thus, like Judaism and Islam, Christian theology posits its founding doctrine as the cosmos’s raison d’être, a claim that suffers for consistency of facts and coherence in logic.2 2 Religions diversify and persist, in part, because of new interpretations and doctrines from “prophets.” For Judaism, universe’s purpose is for God’s chosen people,

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A century after the crucifixion diverse Christian sects and texts spread, as did disputes and debates. How many gods exist, one, two, twelve, or 365? Was Jesus human and/or divine? What is the status of Jewish law for Christians? Was Mary a virgin? Was Jesus God? In the internecine purges and schisms in the search for correct belief, a “proto-orthodoxy” emerged “as one group of believers acquired more converts than all the others and decided which books should be included in the canon” (Ehrman 2005: 153). As “proto-orthodox” Christians won converts, weeded out heresy, and determined proper scripture, their views became orthodox, a process relatively complete by the late fourth-century (the material above and below on Christianity’s origins comes from Ehrman 2003, 2005, 2009). The historical Jesus “was a Jew who worshiped the Jewish God, kept Jewish customs, interpreted the Jewish law, and acquired Jewish disciples” (Ehrman 2005: 187). This apocalyptic preacher prophesized that the corrupt world’s end was near, encouraged people to leave their families and follow him, and foretold of a heaven made on Earth coming with the new kingdom of God. Later orthodox Christianity turned antagonistic toward Judaism, Jesus became God (not simply a “Messiah” or anointed one), his ministry a creed for all, and faith in the meaning of his crucifixion necessary to enter into a celestial heaven above rather than a hell of eternal punishment below. How did this transformation happen? The first Christians, illiterate peasants, spread their good news orally. Many accepted Hebrew scripture as authoritative and kept the law; they also viewed Jesus’s teachings about Jewish law as scriptural and increasingly saw the apostles’ writings this way. Though such views were orthodox for some (e.g., the Ebionites), others deemed them heretical. Christians also confronted intractable facts. Looking backward, they retold the Jesus story to align it with Hebrew scriptural prophesies to give him some heft. However, Judaism’s Messiah was to be a king, rule over men, forge armies, and defeat oppressors. This was not Jesus (and why most Jews were unmoved). Looking forward, Jesus failed to return as promised and suffering did not end. Instead of disbanding, Christian leaders busied themselves with establishing new news brought to them from Abraham to Moses. For orthodox Christianity, God intervened in this plan with Jesus, a new universal covenant. For Islam, the divine hand that guided these events inspired Mohammed as God’s final messenger. Such revealed wisdom is, depending on religious vantage point, restored lost knowledge, God’s unfolding plan, or heretical errors.

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churches, organizing authority structures, and reinterpreting doctrines. In the new story, keeping Jewish law was irrelevant to salvation and Jews were a people who had rejected their own Messiah. John, the last gospel written after most of the original disciples had died, finds believers’ future not to be on Earth with their immortal bodies living with a corporeal Jesus but in a heaven above where souls live in eternal paradise with God.3 Still, some continuity was necessary. As “Paul correlated the events of Christ’s death and resurrection with his interpretation of key passages of the Jewish Bible” (Ehrman 2005: 21), he argued that salvation came alone from faith in Jesus Christ—now both God’s only sent Son and also God—and this faith was relevant for everyone. The Bible’s murky evolution introduced doctrinal inconsistencies. The first Christian documents (written 25–65 years after the crucifixion by people who did not know Jesus) are lost to scholars and the earliest ones known were written many years later in Greek (not Aramaic, the language of Jesus and the earliest Christians). These early copies contain discrepancies and changes, some intentional, some not (similar changes likely also occurred in the oral tradition). As canonical debates unfolded, winners pronounced many once mainstream books as heretical.4 With Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John settled on as Gospel by the second century’s end, the proto-orthodox was becoming orthodox. Who wrote these Gospels is unknown; these names were attached to lend them authority.5 This and other incentives encouraged forgeries and several made it into the canon (only eight books in the New Testament can be positively attributed with relatively high certainty). Additionally, scribes often altered older texts to align them with the emerging orthodoxy, producing new texts with new meanings now passed down as tradition. 3

There were also differing opinions on doctrinal matters: Was Jesus sent by God as a messenger, did he become God’s messenger at his baptism, or was he in fact God’s son or even God himself? Was he sent as the Messiah or did he become the Messiah after his crucifixion? Did the relevant events as to his divinity happen with his conception or birth or baptism or crucifixion or was this an eternal condition? 4 Marcion’s is the first known list of scripture proposed as appropriate for the Christian canon, though his doctrine was thought heretical by proto-orthodox authorities. The earliest record of a list for the twenty-seven books now in the New Testament comes from a pastoral letter from the bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius, in 367 C.E. 5 The Gospels differ from one another in several significant respects. When was Jesus crucified? What was his demeanor during the events in question, fear and trepidation or calm and in control? What did he say on the cross (there are two very different versions)? Who first came to the tomb, who did they find there, and what did they do afterward?

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In about 312 C.E., Roman emperor Constantine converted to (protoorthodox) Christianity. During his reign, persecutions declined, mass conversions rose, and resources were allotted for professional scriptoria and book production. Scripture was translated from Greek into Latin (the Latin Vulgate)—changing it yet again—and disseminated to urban centers of the empire. About fifty years later, the empire adopted Constantine’s faith as its official religion, firmly establishing Western Christianity’s roots. In the early 1500s, Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus translated the Latin Vulgate back into Greek, producing new textual readings not in the early Greek manuscripts. Almost a century later, Erasmus’s New Testament, considered by modern scholars as one of the poorest Greek translations, was used as the source material for the King James Bible, on which much of contemporary Western Christianity bases its discourse. The Bible—with its secondhand testimony and corrupting translations—lacks the internal integrity historians require of documentary records. Its religious doctrine was also subject to external forces, given that “with every great historical upheaval of social conditions the outlooks and ideas of men, and consequently their religious ideas, are revolutionized” (Marx and Engels 1978b: 244). It follows that comparing Christian doctrine at temporal/spatial moments carved sufficiently broad should reveal incommensurable practices. Indeed that is the case, as many early Christians “adhered to beliefs and practices that most Christians today would insist were not Christian at all” (Ehrman 2005: 152). Christianity today differs from medieval Christianity just as both differ from its ancient forms. Take usury, a practice that degrades society’s weakest members.6 Christian leaders no longer prohibit it, even though the Bible does. The Old Testament compares usurers with adulterers and those who shed blood. Later Christians forbade it until the historically recent. Chased out of Rome by hostile militaries on more than one occasion, Christian leaders no doubt understood that, as capitalism transformed Europe, condemning usury would antagonize the new ruling class. Usury-as-sin faded into the past and today it is as if this ban never existed. If part of religious discourse is that its 6 “Mutual dissimulation, hypocrisy and sanctimoniousness are carried to extreme lengths, so that on the man without credit is pronounced not only the simple judgment that he is poor, but in addition a pejorative moral judgment that he possesses no trust, no recognition, and therefore is a social pariah, a bad man, and in addition to his privation, the poor man undergoes this humiliation and the humiliating necessity of having to ask the rich man for credit” (Marx 1975b: 216; emphasis in the original).

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doctrine is as the creator meant it to be (a teleology), then at least more than one version of Christianity—ancient versus medieval versus modern—must be faulty. If either ancient or medieval Christianity is corrupted, then today’s Christianity required centuries of errors before believers could be born into a world of proper Truth. If modern Christianity is astray, then ignoring biblical prohibitions on usury puts believers in eternal peril, as such omissions from leaders’ sermons is no excuse for ignoring instructions in their holy text. Rather than a continuous ministry based in its origins, today’s Christian faith did not exist until much later in the discourse with which it shares a name. After the crucifixion, followers of Jesus survived as disparate cults and grew into sects, became established churches, and matured as competing denominations, purging other traditions in the process (e.g., the Ebionites, Marcionites, the Gnostics). After Rome fell, surviving denominations saw schisms and the rise of new sects and even other religions (e.g., Islamic movements).7 The Eastern Orthodox Church and Christians in Syria and Ethiopia settled on different canons. Medieval Europe produced Protestantism and its spinoffs (e.g., Calvinism). Capitalist society has given us Southern Baptists, Pentecostals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, the Unification Church, and today a “prosperity gospel.” Doctrinal changes (e.g., “hell”, “purgatory”, being “born again”) and/or institutional crimes (e.g., the Crusades, the Inquisition, support of slavery and genocide, appeasing Nazism, sex and financial scandals) are “Truth” restored or past “mistakes.” For the faithful, a religion’s truth is hypothetically pure in the abstract more so than materially and historically real in the concrete, i.e., it is faith in faith. But Christianity at any time in its history is not a teleological event entailed in its origins. If this were so, then god intended religious faith to be a long history of misinterpretations and revisions, heresies and orthodoxies, and for religious practice to be a history of schisms and purges. However, faith is a form of knowledge with selective use of logic. At any point in time a believer can counter-argue, “We have it right today.” What sort of god requires a long period of false practice in order for a future “correct” version of Truth to emerge? Thus explained is the close historical connection between theology and teleology. 7 Historically, “It was not the downfall of the old religions that caused the downfall of the ancient states, but the downfall of the ancient states that caused the downfall of the old religions” (Marx 1975i: 22).

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From the conservative believer’s viewpoint, his or her religion today exists literally as intended in their holy text, a teleological of finalism (occasional internal critics aside). From the liberal believer’s point of view, embracing debate (something recent for the monotheisms, and certainly not universal, even today) leads to ever-improved Truth, a supposition Jewish, Christian, and Islamic liberals share. Further, liberals and conservatives of all institutionalized faiths share the implicit teleological premise that (a divine?) metaphysic is at work in weeding out heretics, defeating competing doctrines, and excluding the various cults and sects that once thrived, a teleology of self-direction. If “debate” leads to better Truth, however, then that truth does not exist in a metaphysical netherworld but is a human product. If this is the case, then there is no basis for any religious faith at all, as it is all a human invention grounded in their material existence and thus has no cosmological imperative. Seen in this way, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic adherents are theological Darwinists with an added Hegelian metaphysic. The vision in the religious mind is fundamentally not only a teleological form of thinking and one on which religious powers have relied but is also inherently tautological, where religious faith is a nonlogical mind set from any framework except a religious one, as religious claims do not square with analytical logic, dialectical reason, or historical facts. Teleology and Sociological Discourse on Religion Positing religion as a sociological universal—i.e., Religion—Durkheim (1915) attempted to trace the sociological geneses of religious rituals back in time by examining their rudimentary expressions in “primitive” society. His approach was to establish religion’s social basis by examining its origins and then tracing this forward as an explanation of its overall social role and function in our present, now treated as Religion, a general pan-social institution. This approach has been influential, as contemporary sociologists often offer aprioristic definitions of Religion first and then trace concrete expressions representing this definition forward in time (e.g., see Momen 1999). Doing this, however, not only distorts the object of inquiry but also is a teleological form of argumentation. Returning to Marx’s backward study of history helps us understand why. Marx explained that money reaches a mature form of development in modernity in such a way that a fully formed conceptualization of it is possible, i.e., Money. However, he added, applying this term in

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equivalent ways to the past is problematic. It is useful to revisit his comments: … simple categories are the expressions of relations within which the less developed concrete may have already realized itself before having posited the more many-sided connection or relation which is mentally expressed in the more concrete category; while the more developed concrete preserves the same category as a subordinate relation. Money may exist, and did exist historically, before capital existed, before banks existed, before wage labour existed, etc. Thus in this respect it may be said that the simpler category can express the dominant relations of a less developed whole, or else those subordinate relations of a more developed whole which already had a historic existence before this whole developed in the direction expressed by a more concrete category. To that extent the path of abstract thought, rising from simple to the combined, would correspond to the real historical process…. It may be said on the other hand that there are very developed but nevertheless historically less mature forms of society, in which the highest forms of economy, e.g. cooperation, a developed division of labour, etc. are found, even though there is no kind of money, e.g. Peru…. [Money] originally appears, rather, in the connection of the different communities with one another, not in the relations between different members of a single community. Further, although money everywhere plays a role from very early on, it is nevertheless a pre-dominant element, in antiquity, only within the confines of certain one-sidedly developed nations, trading nations…. This very simple category, then, makes a historic appearance in its full intensity only in the most developed conditions of society. By no means does it wade its way through all economic relations. (Marx 1973: 102–103)

Marx says much here conceptually and analytically but leaves out elaborative details that would make for an audience’s better understanding. Let us unpack what he is saying. Small tribes sometimes engage in the potlatch, using tools, food, cattle, and so on as gifts of exchange, whose function is to (1) acquire goods they might not otherwise possess and (2) to build ties with other groups. In pastoral societies, cattle or even carved stones are sometimes a main medium of exchange, where some gifts offered in smaller tribes will not suffice. In mass agriculture (e.g., Rome, feudal Europe), though forms of barter may still exist, metallic coins (with images of leaders stamped on them) evolved as a form of exchange alongside the acceptance of cattle or other products as forms of tribute. Here, the quality of the metal—purity and weight—established, in part, the value of the medium (in addition to the political authority of the issuer). In capitalist society today, monetary forms of exchange are detached from the value of metal and gravitate toward symbolic mediums, e.g., paper

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money, bonds, and even digital accounts. Though exchange is the function across these systems, other functions fall away—e.g., individuals do not make long-term political bonds with the cashier at the drugstore (though at the national level, such as China’s providing credit to the United States, this does occur)—while new functions develop—i.e., in capitalism, production as a whole is based on accumulating money in the form of profits. Nevertheless, we cannot transfer the form and function of money today backward with conceptual commensurability. In the earliest systems, people do not do what they do in order to accumulate capital in a personally rational and calculative manner (even if we can observe some people that do hoard wealth in such societies, this is not the basis of their system of production and exchange). Marx’s point is that many social forms are more extensively developed in our present than in their past, so much so that concepts become historically possible as their material conditions mature. But reading such concepts backward with conceptual commensurability risks a false universalization. Though it is a form of exchange and thus shares characteristics with other things we might call “money”, the potlatch is not “Money.” If a social relation is in an embryonic form in one period, should this form survive, historical development may bring it new characteristics, functions, and/or causal properties, often resulting in a qualitatively new reality, though one can find several of its features in its earlier, less mature forms.8 Modern society’s increasing separation of institutional spheres creates new forms of social organization and thus new forms of knowledge. It is true that we can find elements of a developed social relation at prior points in history in such a way that their comparison might appear to juxtapose identical relations. Marx (1994: 390–391) describes the faulty logic as such: … hence because capital—in so far as it is expressed in objective conditions of labour—consists from the point of view of use value of means of production, raw materials, accessory materials and means of labour, tools, buildings, machines, etc., the conclusion is drawn from this that all means of production are [potentially] and, in so far as they function as means of production, actu capital. Capital is therefore regarded as a

8 Thus, in an 1879 letter to Nikolai Danielson, Marx (1991f: 354) explains that “It is therefore necessary to watch the present course of things until their maturity before you can ‘consume’ them ‘productively’, I mean ‘theoretically’. ”

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necessary moment of the human labour process in general, irrespective of any historical form this process may assume, and is therefore seen as something eternal, something conditioned by the nature of human labour. Similarly, it is assumed that because the production process of capital in general is a labour process, the labour process as such, the labour process in all social forms, is necessarily a labour process of capital. Capital is thus regarded as a thing, which plays a certain thing-like role, a role appertaining to it as a thing, in the production process. This is the same logic which concludes that because money is gold, gold is in and for itself money, that because wage labour is labour, all labour is necessarily wage labour. An identity is thus proved by concentrating on what is identical in all production processes, as opposed to the specific differences between production processes. Identity is proved by abstracting from difference … [a] point, which is of decisive importance. (emphases in the original)

Because important, often qualitative, differences exist between a social formation in-embryo versus its more historically developed form, we cannot assume that the concept we construct in the present applies equally and consistently backward in time for its earlier and lessdeveloped expressions. The converse is true as well, i.e., concepts that apply to material conditions of the past do not necessarily fit elegantly for descriptions and explanations of similar social relations of the present. Marx’s historical dialectic makes us sensitive to this issue. This problem of commensurability is a political issue in addition to being an analytical concern. Political discourse is about how we should go about building a world in which to live. A common theme in such discourse is what sort of limits and necessities are part of the human condition, a condition that we must build within? We are limited in what we can do by the limits of human nature, in one line of thought. We cannot go beyond these limits lest we court disaster. In another line of thought, this same human condition necessitates those things we must have in any society we build. In each case, it is often heard that we can point to those practices over history (i.e., tradition) and across different societies (i.e., supposed universal social practices) to locate both limits and necessities. Thus, if we find a practice that seems to be here from time immemorial and/or one that is found in all societies, we have a clue to our limits and necessities. Though there is reason to consider such a logical set of propositions as useful, we must handle them with care, for several reasons. First, there are practices we treat as necessities that may in fact be historically contingent events that can become unnecessary under

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other social conditions. For example, the use of dowry is understandable under forms of patriarchal authority and property in some agriculturally based societies, though in modern market conditions it really makes little sense and thus it tends to fade away. Second, a tradition may have no reason for its continued existence except for that it is tradition and invigorates social ties. As such, any tradition could easily have its functions replaced by other practices. “Just because we have always done it” is not a satisfactory justification for it to continue. To remain with the above example, in Western societies the dowry has been replaced with the act of the bride’s parents paying for the wedding, something that is morphing into a more shared practice between both sets of parents. And friends and extended families are additionally responsible for the gifts that a dowry once represented. Though the social bonds forged through such ritual giving are produced still in the modern form of the marriage ritual, its older, traditional content has gone by the wayside. Third, and crucial for this discussion, our forms of social knowledge based on material practices are liable to treat such things as institutions rooted in human nature, god, genes, the perquisites of society or nature, or what have you. For instance, take the rise of states as a method of allocating authority, decision-making, war-making, and so on. Once we make several observations about this form of political power, conceptualize it into analytical frameworks, and then apply this conceptual framework to chiefdoms, empires, authoritarian regimes, and liberal democracies, we are liable to see “the state” as a universal and thus a limit and a necessity for all social formations. The issue is whether the concept of “the state” applies commensurably both backward and forward with the same content and meaning. Marx (1975c: 32), in fact, argues that “The abstraction of the state as such belongs only to modern times, because the abstraction of private life belongs only to modern times. The abstraction of the political state is a modern product.” If we assume the concept of “the state” does apply equally backward to all social formations (and there is ample reason to assume it does not), then we place limits on what we can say and do about the nature and existence of states, especially the idea that the state is a necessary social relation we must have in both our current and any future society. “Religion”, as a concept whose conditions of possibility have coalesced increasingly over time, is a similar reality, one we cannot read retrospectively backward with consonant and constant equivalence across its potential applications. If we assume we can account for the

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role Religion-as-an-institution plays today through tracing its earliest origins, we make an incommensurable and teleological argument, i.e., the existence of Religion and its functional role today (finalism) is the reason why religious practices emerged in the first place and evolved the way they did (self-direction). This fallacy (a Hegelian argument, really) is common in assertions that the near-universalistic and crosshistorical reality of ritualistic practice is a justification for not only our current religious institutions but also the presence and explicit need for Religion in general. There is no satisfactory or convincing evidence for this assumption whatsoever. While practices laying the bases for modern religious institutions predate them, it is in modern society that the concrete set of practices of Religion became increasingly separate and identifiable institutions. What we understand as “religious rituals” in the past were more overlapping and integrated into practices such as birthing, rites of passage, medicine, planting, harvesting, hunting, governing, etc. While, historically, ritualistic practices have intersected with the family, economics, politics, and art (and in many ways still do), the connections between these forms, through time and social change, have become increasingly separate and are no longer necessary connections with secularization under modernity. This separation creates a new material foundation in institutional configurations, where “the separation of religion from all profane content makes it abstract, absolute religion” (Marx and Engels 1956: 130; emphasis in the original). Marx and Engels (1956: 156, 158) explain the presupposition of this development: As industrial activity is not abolished by the abolition of the privileges of the trades, guilds and corporations, but, on the contrary, real industry begins only after the abolition of these privileges … so religion develops in its practical universality only where there is no privileged religion (cf. the North American States)…. The [modern] state declares that religion, like the other elements of civil life, only begins to exist in its full scope when the state declares it to be non-political and thus leaves it to itself. To the dissolution of the political existence of these elements, for example, the dissolution of property by the abolition of the property qualification for electors, the dissolution of religion by the abolition of the state church, to this very proclamation of their civil death corresponds their most vigorous life, which henceforth obeys its own laws undisturbed and develops to its full scope. (emphases in the original)

Modernity’s secularization and the previous untying of religion from relations of state and allowing it an independent existence set the conditions of possibility for “Religion” as a social institution, and so too set

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were the conditions of possibility of “Religion” as a form of social knowledge and as a sociological concept. It thus is a new object of study rather than an old or timeless one. Because of the filtering and transformative quality of modernity, some past institutional frameworks survive and become qualitatively new and, therefore, we would be remiss to see these as representing natural or universal institutions. The “essence” of religion has changed from its origins into our present, as its inner ties to other social relations are not interiorized into it as they were before. “Religion” today versus its earliest expressions are incommensurable social realities, i.e., though they share some traits and they are not qualitatively equal. Understanding all historical ritualistic practices as representatives of Religion is, therefore, misleading, at best; at worst, this view posits and reifies Religion as a sociological universal, making its present configuration appear to be representative of a transhistorical social fact. Falsely universalizing Religion as an institution augments the power of religious leaders—over both individuals and social relations—with a cloak of respectable and inevitable necessity. Social scientists are often as guilty of this as any priesthood. Teleology and Bourgeois Discourse In this they [i.e., classical bourgeois economists] resemble the theologians, who likewise establish two kinds of religion. Every religion which is not theirs is an invention of men, while their own is an emanation from God. Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, p. 121

For Marx (1973: 83), the depiction of the history and institutional framework of a home culture in a form of social knowledge as natural, God-given, or otherwise something meant to be has been an “illusion … common to each new epoch to this day.”9 Neo-classical economics, a stand-in intellectual expression for bourgeois thought in general, often linguistically equates capitalism with “the economy” and conceptually sees capitalism as arising to produce and distribute goods and services, the function of any Economy (at the level of society in general). By modeling capitalism at the level of an a priori general abstract system outside of its real historical development, conventional 9 According to anthropologist David Tracer (University of Colorado, Boulder), the Au of Papua New Guinea believe that, rather than crawling, scooting on the ground via their bottoms is the universal pre-walking stage of humans, the former probably just as fervently believed in the modern West (in Wong 2009: 20).

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bourgeois thought thus tends to view capitalism as the goal of history and overlooks the non-market methods used to put market economies in place and required to keep them there.10 Modeling capitalism on micro-foundations—i.e., Adam Smith’s (1937) supposed human propensity to truck, barter and trade, a homo economicus with capitalism a product of human nature—substitutes theoretical constructs such as acquisitive self-interest and entrepreneurial initiative for class exploitation and struggle in the account of capitalism’s most salient explanatory facts. This view, according to Hill (2001: 1), also has a hidden theological argument “that is manifestly teleological.” With his a priori forward sequential stage theory of history, “Smith implies that commercial society is the end of history … [the result of a] divine ‘plan’ … the plan of nature” (Alvey 2003: 1, 3, 5). Smith did not pluck this view from thin-air. “It is important to remember that teleology and the argument from design were still intellectual staples in Smith’s time”, and that he “agreed with Isaac Newton that God has ordained Nature to operate by second causes and thus to know the laws of Nature is to know the decrees of God’s will,” a god, who in Smith’s mind, “governs the whole by general laws” (Hill 2001: 3, 5; see citations therein). If capitalism is God’s Plan, then humans should not interfere with it, much less criticize it, an obvious conclusion (thus the promotion of laissez-faire ideology). However, from a vantage point that grasps capitalism’s class-based and transformative character, several questions about Smith’s and his intellectual descendants’ accounts arise. If modern political-economic development is the product of human nature, why did it take so long for capitalism to emerge where and when it did and why not earlier? If capitalism is consonant with human nature, why is it so chaotic? Why so many wars with core against core, core against periphery, and peripheries against each other? These questions have uncomfortable answers for bourgeois apologists. Other questions they rarely ask: What composition of class relations makes capitalism unique? How does the struggle between them unfold? What is the role of the state in this struggle? What, including this struggle, 10 There are exceptions, of course: Thomas Friedman (2000: 373) writes: “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist…. McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.” Also see the excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC. See URL (consulted 29 June 2010): http://www.fas.org/man/ smedley.htm

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limits this system and what causes it to change? Where is capitalism taking the world? Though some may address such questions, the assumptions they begin with lead to very problematic answers. There are at least three related and problematic aspects of conventional accounts of capitalism’s historical rise and evolution, one at the level of conceptualization and two at the level of historical fact. Conventional (and some Marxist) accounts often treat the history that brought us capitalism as a metaphysical product of some universal agent, capitalism as human nature finally coming to its realization in the former and capitalism as an outcome of a universal and inevitable social evolution in different versions of both (more below). However, just as in the natural sciences where “selection, allegedly, produces nothing new and merely removes from the population degenerate variants and malformations” (Mayr 1974: 98; cited in Nagel 1979: 302), the present ruling class and its economic system emerged by defeating competitors (similar to how dominant religions become dominant). Human agency and the outcome of real struggles within and between ruling groups and other social classes account for capitalism’s emergence more so than theories about homo economicus or inevitable historical evolution. Such latter models overlook the fact that in reference to capitalist development and its “actual history it is notorious that conquest, enslavement, robbery, murder, briefly force, play the great part” (Marx 1992b: 668). The entrepreneurial initiative capital’s spokespersons celebrate required the creation of a social structure of accumulation. Entrepreneurial initiative itself did not create this structure; it was its product. Theft, violence, and defeat of competitors, things that would be unnecessary were capitalism the essence of human nature, produced the initial foundations of its structure. The violence used represents four real forms: destroying a previous system (the bourgeoisie’s attacks against the feudal system); overcoming resistance from old ruling classes (class struggles, as are all of these); removing troublesome populations from the land (expropriation of original producers); and forms of controlling the new working class (exploitation and discipline). Rational-choice or competitive market models do little to explain these events, though rationalizations for them have played a covering role. As Munoz-Rubio (2003: 318, 322) explains: … the Darwinian idea of progress could have played an important role in legitimizing and naturalizing an image of the world in which it could be measured according to the standards of capitalist industrialization,

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maintaining itself within a specific teleological and determinist vision…. Mechanisms of laissez-faire and the “invisible hand” underlie the living world’s behavior and no longer require explanation. They explain the true order of nature.

Conventional bourgeois practice thus struggles between two poles, i.e., ideological apologia for capitalism and the real violence needed for its historical development, past and present. If capitalism is a product of a universal human nature, why did it not emerge sooner? Western intellectuals have sometimes answered such questions within racialized assumptions, though often somewhat implicitly. A general assumption, one Max Weber (1958) held, is that European society contained a special proclivity for capitalist development, i.e., initiative, saving, work ethic, and so on. While Weber’s explanation lies (predominantly) in religious doctrine (Calvinism specifically), social and political thought in his time and ours were/are steeped in a racial discourse rooted in both Christian and Darwinian ideas.11 One outcome of this tension has been the use of racist and religious rhetoric in explanations of the conquering and transformation of non-capitalist societies—i.e., Christianizing savages, the civilization project, the white man’s burden, or, more recently, US President Bush’s (II) “crusade for democracy.” During the period of American independence and ascendance, theological-teleological ideas merged in intellectual discourse. In Europe, as Munoz-Rubio (2003: 311) explains, “Darwin’s discourse … [had] a conservative character in which evolutionary principles [were] adjusted to the hegemonic Victorian social and moral values of his time.” With Europe seen as the highest form of civilization, and with Darwinian ideas gaining growing acceptance, the attendant theologically-rooted conclusion was that Europeans must be the most advanced on the evolutionary scale, at both the level of the human group as a species and society as a whole in moral and spiritual terms. Eugenics was one crystallized representative of this course of thought. Nazism was its apex, though not outside its logical bounds.12

11 For a discussion of Weber’s ethnocentrism, including nationalistic and racial thinking, see Zimmerman (2006). 12 So that there is no misunderstanding, I must note here that I am not saying eugenics and/or Nazism were logical, predictable, and necessary outcomes of Darwin’s theory. Rather, eugenics and Nazism pulled from a variety of intellectual discourses, the Darwinian concept of “survival of the fittest” (actually, Darwin appropriated this

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Such conceptual problems lead to dilemmas in political theory and our understanding of class relationships. For example, a reviewer of contemporary histories of America finds many of them deficient because of their “teleology of the modern,” where the “twin and linked teleologies of ‘modern’ and ‘American’ produce a distorting and dehistoricizing synthesis … [where] the process and complexity of development is obscured” (Bender 2002: 135–136). At any point in time, America, just as in the view the Christian has of his or her religion, is meant to be.13 One version of this form of thought is an American “civil religion” that mixes forms of Christianity, racism, market ideology, and nationalism (Bellah 1970). In this ideological frame, problems of teleological reason are underplayed, faith in symbolism and a pure abstract community are elevated, and contradictions or inconvenient facts rarely threaten the believer. The founding documents of representative democracy contradict one another in a teleological manner. The Declaration of Independence, announced by the colonial elite, reads in part: When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

In short, God’s order provides for a people—so poorly ruled that they no longer feel continued association with the ruling group is in their best interest—the right to separate and change the political powers to which they are subject. As history demonstrates, these authors accomplished this change through gaining support for this doctrine, a statement of theo-political philosophy and praxis. However, from the vantage point of the British Empire, this was a treasonous and even blasphemous domestic rebellion. After Britain failed to quash this rebellion, the elites of the winning side formed a new state to rule their concept from Herbert Spencer) being just one of them. There is no necessary step from evolutionary theory to Nazism, regardless of what some very misguided creationists wish to believe. 13 A similar qualification here is necessary. One internal contradiction in the American mythos/ethos lies in how conservatives and liberals constantly debate over what “America” means and how current policies or events are or are not serving this principle. This is similar to the disagreements between religious conservatives and liberals discussed earlier in this chapter.

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social structure of accumulation, to protect them from each other, and to protect them from both the market and the turbulent masses. The Constitution of the United States nullifies the fundamental political principle of the Declaration. In addition to ensconcing a new ruling class in the state (e.g., property qualifications, male-only voting, legal slavery, a Senate elected by state elites, the exclusive right to make treaties), the US Constitution (Article I, Section 8, Clause 15) gives Congress the power to “provide for calling forth the Militia to,” among other things, “suppress Insurrections” and mobilize “against domestic Violence” (Article IV, Section 4). The US state, that is, retains the right to use military force against future declarations of independence, especially those threatening prevailing property and power relations. This new legal doctrine made access to violence a legal option in the class struggle for the ruling group’s state only. The theory informing this political doctrine assumes there is no longer a legitimate reason for domestic insurrection or rebellion, i.e., revolution. Thus rescinded was the Declaration’s inalienable right of the people to extricate themselves from those political relations no longer serving their interests (for discussion, see Wolfe 1973; Parenti 2008).14 Why is this teleological? The US Constitution in effect declares that the colonial elite’s revolution, now ordained by “Nature’s God”, was such a fundamental change in social relations that domestic rebellion would be a violation of a natural order. If God ordained every public the right to overthrow tyranny, and God also ordained this new republic, then history thus finally developed a God-respectful plan and, therefore, a society whereby revolution would never be needed again. America, afterward, became a profoundly religious program: The God of the civil religion … is actively interested and involved in history, with a special concern for America. Here the analogy has much less to do with natural law than with ancient Israel; the equation of America with Israel in the idea of the “American Israel” is not infrequent … Europe is Egypt; America, the promised land. God has led his people to establish a new sort of social order that shall be a light unto all the nations. (Bellah 1970: 175)

The theology of the US civil religion would be mobilized to defend all manner of policies and actions, from slavery to war. It found its 14 In a previous paper, I discuss this issue but there under Marx’s concept of the “camera obscura”, which encompasses a backward understanding of social relations and/or the reversal of causal forces in capitalist society (see Paolucci 2001).

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nationalist-ideological fruition in “Manifest Destiny” as the mantra for the push westward, i.e., the civil religion in the United States depicts its full development into 50 states as a quasi-religious experience and as the unfolding of Divine plans entailed in the founding of the Republic (ergo, “God Bless America”). With its rise, the American civil religion made state sponsored genocide Holy, often stated openly in political and religious pulpits (see the recent controversy over proposed changes to US high school history books coming from the Texas Board of Education). However, mantras such as “Manifest Destiny” and its associated initiatives suggest that sometimes God’s plan of self-direction requires help from planners and policymakers as cracks in His finalism appear when elites discover new arenas in which to pursue their interests. Here, the distinction between foreign policy and a Crusade is blurred or even collapses. The so-called “neo-conservatives” in the United States, like traditional liberals and conservatives, see the American project as an unfolding history entailed in its origins, i.e., representatives of each often point to the Constitution and its Bill of Rights to support conflicting political positions. Today’s neo-conservatives, true ruling class radicals, rather than preserve some finalistic endpoint, believe that certain groups interfere with the progress of God’s plan, e.g., terrorists, dictators, and others ill-placed on the resources so necessary to their class interests. Like conservative radicals of the past who saw communists, liberals and others of their ilk as heretics and/or lacking enthusiasm for the faith, neo-conservatives see themselves as class-conscious prophets of a “New American Century” who must intervene in human affairs and push through the obstacles to initiate a new world order. This they divine from a special knowledge of a moralorder that they must either restore and/or newly animate.15 These are often the same thing—old wine, new bottles—e.g., unilateral US dominance in economic, political, and military matters, a goal they openly state (see the document, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses”, from the

15 For a disturbing account, see how President Bush (II) explained to French President, Jacques Chirac, that invading Iraq was a way to fight against Gog and Magog, two biblically prophesized creatures out to destroy Israel. See URL (consulted 29 June 2010): http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page= haught_29_5; also see URL (consulted 29 June 2010): http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article22698.htm. And, URL (consulted 29 June 2010): http://www .dailykos.com/story/2009/5/27/735904/-Gog-and-Magog-Story-Confirmed-by-Chirac

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neo-conservative group, Project for a New American Century). The neo-conservative moment has, through the Republican Party, united with religious fundamentalists in the United States who strive to strike down the separation of church and state.16 It is possible that we are now witnessing the early stages of regression to a neo-feudal order rather than progress to a more rational future.17 As of 2010, US President, Barack Obama, had done little to reverse this trend but rather only further aided and abetted it, i.e., the bailout of Wall Street, keeping records of the previous administration secret, refusal to prosecute lawbreakers from the Bush White House, continued use of indefinite detention, expanding the war in Afghanistan, keeping military bases in Iraq, deployment of Predator Drones and mercenaries in the AfghanPakistan border region, on-going domestic surveillance, and so on. Teleology and Marxian Theory Integrating historical and structural analyses, each targeting causal forces, is the central locale of teleological issues for Marxist theory. There are places in Marx’s writings that contribute to reading him as holding teleological views of history, especially as his work is available retrospectively to subsequent interpreters who reconstruct it and students then receive the standard interpretation. “The Manifesto of the Communist Party” states that the bourgeoisie’s “fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable” (Marx and Engels 1978a: 483). In the Preface to Volume I of Capital, Marx (1992k: 19) claims that the

16 For example, see the documentary, Jesus Camp, which explores the social movement in the United States that aligns fundamentalism and rightwing ideology through indoctrinating children into the cause. See URL (consulted 29 June 2010): http: //www .jesuscampthemovie.com/ 17 “Vice President Dick Cheney drew the ire of the anti-imperialist crowd with, of all things, his 2003 Christmas card. Quoting Benjamin Franklin, it read, ‘And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can arise without His aid?’ “For many, this reference to God and empire simply proved how pervasive Christian fundamentalist ideology was within the White House—one that reeked with archaic themes of manifest destiny and, it would seem, the divine right of kings. To the cynical observer, Cheney’s card, whose text spread virally across the Net, had the feel of a taunt. A well-positioned bit of psychological warfare, deliberately created to simultaneously confuse his critics and enrage the Muslim world. For the rest, it was yet another example of the administration’s latent flirtation with the notion of empire … and with the role of imperial architect” (Lappe and Marshall 2004: 122–123).

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“country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future.” So, when readers encounter Marx’s (1911: 13) Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy where he writes… In broad outlines we can designate the Asiatic, the ancient, the feudal and the modern bourgeois methods of production as so many epochs in the progress of the economic formation of society. The bourgeois relations of production are the last antagonistic form of the social process of production—antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism, but of one arising from conditions surrounding the life of individuals in society; at the same time the productive forces developing in the womb of bourgeois society create the material conditions for the solution of that antagonism. This social formation constitutes, therefore, the closing chapter of the prehistoric stage of human society.

…it is not unexpected that many might weave these claims together. When read through a Kantian philosophy of science—which was not Marx’s—what emerges here is a seemingly linear, universal, and selforganizing—i.e., teleological—forward-evolutionary view. This is the long-time and generally accepted reading…and it is wrong. Perhaps the most pervasive reading of Marx’s Preface is “as a metaphysical theory” (Jordan 1967: 299). To wit, for many theorists, Marx’s Preface presents a “doctrine … indeed … a theory of social evolution” (Habermas 1979: 130) where “society evolves through a series of stages” (Walker 1989: 105), a “sequence of economic stages” (Morrison 1995: 40) “ascending through various stages of class society towards a new order that finally creates a ‘truly human’ society” (Giddens 1995: 235). Even luminaries such as Immanuel Wallerstein (2004: 13, 90) forward this interpretation: “Marx had, quite briefly, outlined a set of stages of economic structures through which humanity had evolved”, which he says Marx posited as a set of “inevitable stages of development” and “a universal progressive sequence of successive ‘modes of production.’ ”18 The accuracy of this interpretation, no matter how commonly held, is misguided. These views mirror forms of thought Marx criticized, are out of line with those with which he aligned himself, and conflict with his statements on method and history elsewhere. To avoid leaving this claim at the level of assertion, I want to show three things. First, Marx’s understanding of the causal powers of

18

Also see Postone (2004, 2005).

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material forces was not metaphysical or invariable. Second, his Preface does not forward a sequential, universal, and therefore metaphysical theory of history. Third, the movement toward communism, for Marx, was not inevitable because of this metaphysic. First, let us look at what Marx had to say about teleology, evolutionary models, and alternative interpretations of his approach to history. One of the earliest references Marx makes to teleology comes in The Holy Family. Here, Marx and Engels (1956: 106–107) attack Hegelian idealism and its associated metaphysics: For Herr Bauer as for Hegel, truth is an automaton that proves itself. Man must follow it. As in Hegel, the result of real development is nothing but the truth proven, i.e., brought to consciousness…. Just as according to old teleologists plants exist to be eaten by animals and animals by men, history exists in order to serve as the act of consumption of theoretical eating—proving. Man exists so that history may exist and history exists so that the proof of truths may exist…. [Thus, in the Hegelian philosophy,] history, like truth, becomes a person apart, a metaphysical subject of which real human individuals are but the bearers. (emphases in the original)

Marx and Engels criticize the idea that concrete reality is only an approximation of what is true in the invisible, abstract, and timeless world, and social questions are thus philosophical ones.19 Further, in the Young Hegelian view, if the abstract world uses the concrete world to do its bidding, then anything real has as its raison d’être the fulfilling of pre-existing functions and goals, a teleology harking back to Aristotle as well as Marx’s and our own contemporaries. After Engels wrote to him that Darwin’s Origin of Species finished off the issue of teleology, Marx (1985b: 232) replied that “Darwin’s book on Natural Selection … developed in the crude English fashion … is the book which, in the field of natural history, provides the basis for our views.” Marx (1985c: 246–247) also says that “Darwin’s work is most important and suits my purpose in that it provides a basis in natural science for the historical class struggle.… [I]t is here that, for the first time, ‘teleology’ in natural science is not only dealt a mortal blow but its rational meaning is empirically explained.” What did Marx

19 “Yet Absolute Criticism has learnt from Hegel’s Phenomenology at least the art of changing real objective chains that exist outside me into mere ideal, mere subjective chains existing in me, and thus to change all exterior palpable struggles into pure struggles of thought” (Marx and Engels 1956: 111; emphases in the original).

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mean here?20 Though Marx did not specify exactly what he meant, his letters do tell us two interpretations sometimes attributed him—a univariable theory and Social Darwinism—are incorrect.21 Gerratana (1973: 64) argues that “Marx was already not only taking for granted the principle of historical evolution of animal species and of nature in general, which found little favor in the science of the time, but also tending to exclude from that evolution any finalist assumption.” According to this view, Marx did not posit a teleology of finalism. Does evidence exist for Marx holding a non-a priori, non-metaphysical, non-teleological view of history? Marx’s Preface has lead to confusion over his meaning. First, many readers often interpret it as a finished a priori theory of history into which he forced his findings. However, we have already seen that Marx rejects a priori approaches to social research and here he clearly states that over his studies he arrived at a “general conclusion” that he then used as a “leading thread” in subsequent research. In fact, Engels (1980: 469) noted that Marx’s achievement was “a scientific task requiring years of quiet research,” apparently an effort to stave off claims it was a pre-conceived philosophical system. If Marx’s Preface does not reflect an a priori theory, how are we to interpret the categories—Asiatic, ancient, feudal, and modern bourgeois methods of production—it offers? A close reading is necessary. 20 As Foster (2000: 200) points out, “the fact that Marx emphasized that Darwin’s theory provided the ‘basis’ in natural history for his own analysis has presented a serious enigma, since Marx did not actually specify in his letters what he meant by this, leading to all sorts of speculations about the relation of natural selection and ‘survival of the fittest’ to the class struggle.” 21 “Mr Lange (On the workers’ question, etc., 2nd edition) pays me great compliments, but with the object of increasing his own importance. Mr Lange, you see, has made a great discovery. All history may be subsumed in one single great natural law. This natural law is the phrase (–the Darwinian expression becomes, in this application, just a phrase—) ‘struggle for life’, and the content of this phrase is the Malthusian law of population, or rather over-population. Thus, instead of analysing this ‘struggle for life’ as it manifests itself historically in various specific forms of society, all that need be done is to transpose every given struggle into the phrase ‘struggle for life’, and then this phrase into the Malthusian ‘population fantasy’. It must be admitted that this is a very rewarding method—for stilted, mock-scientific, highfaluting ignorance and intellectual laziness” (Marx 1988c: 527). “As to Paul’s lively narration of his adventure with Mlle Royer, it has tickled Engels and my humble self. I was not at all astonished at his failure. He will remember that, having read her preface to Drawin, I told him at once she was a bourgeois. Darwin was led by the struggle for life in English society—the competition of all with all, [the war of all against all]—to discover competition to […] as the ruling law of ‘bestial’ and vegetative life. The [Social] Darwinism, conversely, considers this a conclusive reason for human society never to emancipate itself from its bestiality” (Marx 1988d: 217).

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Marx uses different “modes of production” to distinguish “so many” historical epochs, not all of them. Further, not only does Marx nowhere say that all societies move through these modes, the categories to which he points he only says one “can designate” as representing “progress in the economic formation of society” (emphasis added). Considering this is an introduction to a political-economic analysis of capitalism, and if we understand Marx’s “backward” study of history, then it is easier to see that his vantage point is the present and the forms he lists serve as markers representing past progress. Rather than starting with an a priori theory and using it to trace all of history forward, Marx presents us with the road map he uses to piece together what happened in the past that either informs a knowledge of class history and/or the emergence of the present. In Europe, ancient and feudal modes of production set the background for capitalism’s rise. Elsewhere, the Asiatic mode also represents progress in productive history, though it is not an ancestor to capitalism in the same way as the other two. In both cases, Marx offers no universal forward theory. An examination of Marx’s statements on methodological principles supports this interpretation. If Marx nowhere claims that the modes of production his Preface outlines represent a universal model of history, one wonders why the standard interpretation is in fact standard given that a metaphysical, universal, and teleological theory of history is totally out of Marx’s character. In their critique of Hegelian thought, Marx and Engels (1956: 112) argue that “In spite of progress’s pretensions, continual retrogressions and circular movements are to be observed” (emphases in the original). In The Poverty of Philosophy, Marx (1847: 127–128), after chiding Proudhon’s view of the “division of labor” as “an eternal law”, argues that “History does not proceed so categorically.” The same year he published The Poverty of Philosophy, Marx (1976b: 317) wrote: Any development, whatever its substance may be, can be represented as a series of different stages of development that are connected in such a way that one forms the negation of the other. If, for example, a people develops from absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy, it negates its former political being. In no sphere can one undergo a development without negating one’s previous mode of existence (emphases in the original).

Marx’s Preface, conforming to this logic, orders categories that tell us something about capitalism. Rather than seeing history as a series of foretold, predictable, and sequential stages, he selects epochs leading

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up to the present that represent progress in economic history, not a theory of history in general. Marx (1973: 105–107) stated in the Grundrisse that… …categories which express [bourgeois society’s] relations, the comprehension of its structure, thereby also allow insights into the structure and relations of production of all the vanished social formations out of which whose ruins and elements it built itself up.… The so-called historical presentation of development is founded, as a rule, on the fact that the latest form regards the previous ones as steps leading up to itself… In the succession of the economic categories, as in any other historical, social science, it must not be forgotten that their subject—here, modern bourgeois society—is always what is given, in the head as well as in reality…. This is to be kept in mind because it will shortly be decisive for the order and sequence of the categories…. It would … be unfeasible and wrong to let the economic categories follow one another in the same sequence as that in which they were historically decisive. Their sequence is determined, rather, by their relation to one another in modern bourgeois society, which is precisely the opposite of that which seems to be their natural order or which corresponds to historical development.

Marx does not, in any of these statements, say that all societies move through the same stages. Rather, if one begins with the economic structure of the present (i.e., part) as the vantage point within the totality of human history (i.e., whole), then those parts in the past that account for the present can be abstracted and thought of as representing progressive epochs in human economic development. This is something quite different from a universal theory of history. If the Preface and the Grundrisse seem to contradict one another, or at least to reveal Marx changing his mind over time, this is only apparent. Rubel’s (1980: 41–49) chronology of Marx’s life and works reveals that he worked on both the Introduction and the chapter on capital in the Grundrisse during 1857 and 1858. He published his Critique of Political Economy, including its Preface, in 1859. According to Rubel (1980: 43), in August 1857, “Marx writes a General Introduction to his work on economics, in which for the first time he outlines the general plan, the logical and historical structure and the method of exposition of his ‘Economics’. Anxious not to ‘anticipate results he has not yet obtained’, Marx puts this Introduction aside in 1859 and substitutes for it the preface to the Critique of Political Economy.” Marx formulated his statements on method in the Grundrisse during the period he worked on his Critique of Political Economy and originally meant the

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Grundrisse’s Introduction as the introduction to the Critique. As a result, we should read Marx’s Preface to the Critique of Political Economy in conjunction with the Introduction to the Grundrisse, a tack that provides a reading very different from the conventional one, as seen above. Other observations undermine conventional interpretations of Marx’s supposed universal theory of history. When he examines economic history for progress, his Preface includes Asiatic, ancient, feudal and modern bourgeois forms of production. When he examines the history of all modes of production, he includes primitive communism and slave societies as well. If we assume his categories in the Preface present his general theory of all historical systems (using modes of production as his ordering criterion), then how are we to account for the fact that his Preface leaves out other economic forms of which he was aware and discusses? A more plausible interpretation—and one that accounts for these observations better than simply assuming he was careless or contradicts himself—is that Marx’s Preface posits no theory of a forward universal-evolution nor a comprehensive list of economic forms. The implication is that Marx does not see primitive communism (often viewed as “savage” in 19th century European eyes but also, for Marx, the starting point for human history) and slavery as progressive epochs in economic history and, as such, systems that do not represent progress in economic history are superfluous for his theoretical ends (in the Preface at least). Additionally supporting this argument against the standard interpretation is the fact that in Marx’s historical research he does not posit metaphysical properties to either history or class struggles. In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, written a few years before the Critique of Political Economy, Marx (1978c: 597–598) says: Bourgeois revolutions, like those of the eighteenth century, storm more swiftly from success to success; their dramatic effects outdo each other; men and things seem set in sparkling brilliants; ecstasy is the everyday spirit; but they are short-lived; soon they have attained their zenith, and a long depression lays hold of society before it learns soberly to assimilate the results of its storm and stress period. Proletarian revolutions, on the other hand, like those of the nineteenth century, criticize themselves constantly, interrupt themselves continually in their own course, come back to the apparently accomplished in order to begin it afresh, deride with unmerciful thoroughness the inadequacies, weaknesses and paltriness of their first attempts, seem to throw down their adversary only in order that he may draw new strength from the

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chapter five earth and rise again more gigantic before them, recoil ever and anon from the indefinite prodigiousness of their own aims, until a situation has been created which makes all turning back impossible…

Marx’s take on historical change here is not determinist, linear, or teleological. Agency, struggle, progress, regress, and more struggle inform his analysis. Further, he (and Engels) sometimes referred to “accidents” in history that account for subsequent social developments.22 Marx’s observation is that, while they may exist, social laws are neither absolute nor remain unaffected by unforeseen forces. Class struggle is both real and concrete and forces not contained directly within it may shape, direct, or supplant its effects. While Marx assumes change, what form that change might take is something that one cannot foretell with perfect accuracy, though we can explain changes in the past with more acumen. From the vantage point of the past looking forward, one could not presume the rise of the capitalist mode of production from observations made at the level of early feudalism, while from the vantage point of the present looking backward, we can today see how

22 “World history … would … be of a very mystical nature, if ‘accidents’ played no part. These accidents themselves fall naturally into the general course of development and are compensated again by other accidents. But acceleration and delay are very dependent upon such ‘accidents’, which include the ‘accident’ of the character of those who first stand at the head of the movement” (Marx 1989b: 136–137). “According to the materialist conception of history, the determining element in history is ultimately the production and reproduction in real life. More than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted.… The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure—political forms of the class struggle and its consequences, constitutions established by the victorious class after a successful battle, etc.—forms of law— and then even the reflexes of all these struggles in the brains of the combatants: political, legal, philosophical theories, religious ideas and their further development into systems of dogma—also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form. There is an interaction of all these elements, in which, amid all the endless host of accidents (i.e., of things and events whose inner connection is so remote or so impossible to prove that we can regard it as absent and neglect it), the economic movement finally asserts itself as necessary. Otherwise the application of the theory to any period of history one chose would be easier than the solution of a simple equation of the first degree…. [H]istory makes itself in such a way that the final result always rises from conflicts between many individual wills, of which each again has been made what it is by a host of particular conditions of life. Thus there are innumerable intersecting forces, an infinite series of parallelograms of forces which give rise to one resultant—the historical event…. Marx and I are ourselves partly to blame for the fact that younger writers sometimes lay more stress on the economic side than is due to it. We had to emphasize the main principle in opposition to our adversaries, who denied it, and we had not always the time, the place or the opportunity to allow the other elements involved in the interaction to come into their rights” (Engels 1936b: 475–477; emphases in the original).

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capitalism’s rise in Europe provided for the “accident” that later stood as one basis of its dominion, e.g., the rise of white-supremacy as the root of racism, something that emerged as a modern and qualitatively new form of xenophobia (so much for eugenics!).23 This leaves the question of how to interpret Marx’s claim that the “country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future.” Two problems exist against interpreting this as a universal theorem, one stemming from information culled from what Marx writes on the page and another from a wider view of his works. First, in the paragraphs both before and after this claim, Marx (1992k: 19) references the relation of Germany to England. In the prior paragraph, he explains that he uses England as his main demonstration as it is capitalism’s most developed region and if someone believes that his analysis does not bear on conditions in Germany, they will be disappointed because once a country sets out on capitalist development, its laws of development will operate in a fashion similar to that found in England. In the subsequent paragraph, he says that since England has the Factory Acts (i.e., state regulation), capitalist development in Germany might even be worse for the working class. Second, Marx’s claim about one country showing another its future appears in the edition of Capital to which the English-speaking audience is primarily exposed. However, the French edition (the one that Marx often favored for a variety of reasons and provided editorial guidance) phrases this claim, “The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to those which follow it on the industrial path, the image of its own future.” As Anderson (1998: 134) rightly observes, “the notion of one country following the pathway of another is explicitly limited to countries which are moving toward industrialization. Non-industrial societies of Marx’s time such as Russia and India are 23

A note on racism, xenophobia, and commensurability. It common to see all forms of ethnic conflict across time and space as forms of racism. However, as a concept, “racism” only becomes possible when a notion of “race” is a pervasive element in social discourse. The idea that the world contained many “races” is a modern idea, where “race” assumes discreet, biologically based categories ranked in some hierarchical fashion. Prior to modernity, people distinguished each other on religion, region, culture, political bonds, and so on. Notions of biologically unique subcategories of humans did not exist. Thus, xenophobia dominates human history and racism is a modern form of prejudice and discrimination. As such, we cannot read racism backward in time as if societal knowledge and human intercourse have always had the modern features of racism in them. Racism as a concept meant to reflect a reality, that is, is not perfectly commensurable with what we find in the past and call xenophobia.

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now seemingly bracketed out, leaving open the notion of alternative roads for them” (emphasis in the original). From the evidence discussed above, it is doubtful Marx re-wrote this passage because his views changed between Capital’s first publication and its later French edition. Not only did Marx early on hold that “History does not proceed so categorically” (a metaphysic), when later asked about the role of evolution in social systems in his theory in 1881, Marx (1992j: 71) explained that “the ‘historical inevitability’ of this process is expressly limited to the countries of Western Europe” (emphasis in the original). Thus, it is more likely that Marx recognized that the original phrasing in Capital’s first Edition could easily be misinterpreted. In such a case, evidence for a universal stage theory in Marx’s approach to history is again lacking. Finally, is Marx’s vision of communism a metaphysical teleology of self-direction and/or finalism? Contrary to some Marxist’s claims (e.g., see Elster 1985), Marx did not see communism as the only possible outcome entailed in capitalism nor did he see history as having a final goal pulling it along. “Communism”, Marx (1988a: 114) writes, “is the position as the negation of the negation, and is hence the actual phase necessary for the next stage of historical development in the process of human emancipation and recovery. Communism is the necessary pattern and the dynamic of the immediate future, but communism as such is not the goal of human development—the structure of human society” (emphases in the original). For Marx, here, communism is not a force in the future causing changes in its historical past. True, he claimed communism was the solution to history’s riddle, but it was not something toward which history necessarily moves with intention as a metaphysic. Marx (1982b: 97) believed that “the economic forms in which man produces, consumes, and exchanges are transitory and historical”, though “it is men who change circumstances” (Marx 1978d: 144). Thus, the achievement of communism would require active struggle, strategic planning, and purposeful revolutionary action, none of which imply a metaphysical—i.e., teleological—inevitability. Why educate and organize workers if it were otherwise?24

24 “Nor did Marx see history merely as a straight line of predetermined modes of production, each brought into being and governed by economic forces. He objected forcefully to attempts in his own time to reduce his analysis to a set of rigid abstractions and mechanical formulae that could be substituted for genuine historical inquiry…. Regression as well as progress was therefore conceivable, though Marx and

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It is not unreasonable to conclude that had Marx adopted a universal forward theory, he would have been more explicit about it and we would find him consistently forcing data into this framework. Neither of these is the case. The conventional interpretation of Marx’s Preface is not a necessary conclusion from what he actually argues, though an interpretive frame gravitating toward a Kantian philosophy of science and unarmed with the backward study of history and a wider view of his writings makes this conclusion more likely. Additionally, the traditional reading inherently conflicts with Marx’s repeated rejection of metaphysics and his historical account of capitalism’s rise, forged in “blood and fire.” From the material reviewed above, we must conclude that teleological charges against Marx’s supposed “stage” theory of historical development and his vision of communism do not hold up. One cannot say the same for none-too-few instances of mainstream social thought. Based in a linear-progressive world-view, social theory has often seen capitalist society not only as progress over feudalism (a view Marx shared), but also as the apex of historical development (a view he did not share). For example, with the fall of Soviet Communism, Fukuyama (1992) famously declared the end of history and that liberal-democratic free-market systems were the inevitable trend of the world’s future, a view that was not as novel as some observers at the time supposed. Decades earlier, Rostow’s (1960) theory of economic development hypothesized that all social systems—carved as “societies”—go through the same stages: traditional, transitional, take off, drive to maturity, and mass consumption. This theory starts in the past and posits a teleological, universal-forward evolution, ending with the arrival of capitalism, though (like Lenski’s model) not called that by name. As Wallerstein (2000: 73) explains, Rostow’s approach leads us to “reify a misreading of British history into a set of universal ‘stages’ ” (why Wallerstein years later attributes a universal stage theory to Marx I do not know). For Marx, though not all historical modes of production are or have been destined to evolve into capitalism, feudalism did, as have contemporary sectors of the world. What is the connection? The internal structure of the capitalist system inherently expands outward and absorbs other socio-economic systems and afterward, as we saw above,

Engels (like most revolutionaries) were optimists, and hence frequently wrote as if genuine human progress were inevitable” (Foster 1996: 21).

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their “partly still unconquered remains are carried along with it, whose mere nuances have developed explicit significance with it.” Capitalism, that is, transforms adjacent economic systems and forces them through the filter of the capitalist present.25 Marx sees capitalism as progress over feudalism and as a potentially progressive evolutionary system as its double movement pushes it forward (ergo, Marxist theory provides for conjectures on periodizing capital’s epochs as agricultural, entrepreneurial, monopoly, industrial, and global capitalisms) and absorbs older modes of production from behind (thus some of Marx’s views on rural life and that in India and capitalism’s potential for progress). We should not, therefore, subsume concepts used to understand capitalism’s forward motion into a general theory of evolution of other modes of production in general. Capitalism’s tendency to expand and absorb pre-capitalist economic formations in part explains the appearance of history as a linear-evolutionary development, one of the most misleading appearances inherent in capitalism’s material influence on social knowledge. Marx’s evolutionary model in his study of capitalism neither applies in reverse nor starts in an abstract past and moves forward. Rostow’s linear model does just this and it has had, just like several misreadings of Marx, substantial political fallout in the real world. Once institutions such as the United Nations, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund embraced Rostow’s model, it had disastrous effects in the real world through “development” policies. A parallel disaster was expressed when the Soviets embraced the interpretation of Marx’s model as universal, linear, and teleological. Their official ideology, a metaphysical “dialectical materialism” (or “Diamat”), adopted the standard reading of Marx’s categories and posited their Communist

25 “So long as, in a given branch of industry, the factory system extends itself at the expense of the old handicrafts or of manufacture, the result is as sure as is the result of an encounter between an army furnished with breach-loaders, and one armed with bows and arrows. This first period, during which machinery conquers its field of action, is of decisive importance owing to the extraordinary profits that it helps to produce…. Along with the development of the factory system and of the revolution in agriculture that accompanies it, production in all the other branches of industry not only extends, but alters its character. The principle, carried out in the factory system, of analysing the process of production into its constituent phases, and of solving the problems thus proposed by the application of mechanics, of chemistry, and of the whole range of the sciences, becomes the determining principle everywhere” (Marx 1992b: 424, 434).

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state as representing history’s foretold outcome, an obviously selfserving view. To suggest that Marx shared a similar linear-forward model as Rostow’s “development paradigm” or as Soviet ideology’s universal historical evolution (the latter has ever since served as the basis for false refutations of Marx’s understanding of both history and capitalism) transforms his view into something he never forwarded but in fact argued against. Marx’s Dialectical Explanation and Teleology: Individual, Class, and Society Though Marx was aware of problems in teleological arguments, it does not necessarily follow that he rejected all teleological explanations or failed to navigate their waters successfully. While Marx both did and did not forward arguments that can and have been associated with teleological thinking, the way that he did so is not the way his critics and supporters both often suppose.26 Even if we reject the traditional interpretation of historical teleology in his thinking, there nevertheless remain elements in his work that do forward self-directed and finalist forms of causal reasoning. We must specify how this is so and how this relates to traditional approaches to teleology if we are to more fully understand Marx’s approach to this issue. Causal frameworks of self-direction and finalism can perhaps be useful, if stripped of theology and metaphysics. Many often assume that Marx’s usage does not pass this test. The most common view—that Marx depicts history and the emergence of communism as a metaphysical and inevitable teleology—is not the only teleological interpretation of his ideas. Lukács (1970: 162) previously explained that… …through labor, a teleological goal becomes realized in material reality, thereby forming a new objectivity. Thus, labor becomes in one respect the model of all social praxis. In the final analysis, labor always materially realizes teleological projects—even if it does so through the broadest mediations…. [Thus] labor can serve as the model for understanding other social and teleological projects, since labor constitutes essentially their basic form. 26 Foster, Clark, and York (2008) assume Marx rejected all forms of teleology, which is true if we assume all forms of teleology include metaphysical approaches. However, as we have seen above in natural science, teleological explanations do not necessarily require metaphysical or theological suppositions.

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In distinguishing Marx’s from Darwin’s vision, Ball (1979: 471, 474) similarly argues that “Marx’s humanism is radical in a … teleological sense: Men transform nature—and thereby, indirectly, themselves— according to their own designs and purposes…. Human history is therefore teleological in a way that natural history cannot be…. Darwin’s theory of natural selection applies, at best, only to prehuman, preconscious natural history; it does not apply to the epoch of human history in which men consciously transform nature and themselves.” Finally, Mészáros (1998: 420) also sees a form of teleology animating Marx’s ideas: Indeed, human history is not intelligible without some kind of teleology. But the only teleology consistent with the materialist conception of history is the objective and dialectically open-ended teleology of labor itself. At the fundamental ontological level such teleology is concerned with the way in which the human being—this unique “self-mediating being of nature”—creates and develops itself through its purposeful productive activity.

Lukács, Ball, and Mészáros are correct that processes of labor and social praxis intertwine and thus are bound to questions of selfdirection and finalism. Though they point in a direction inquiry should proceed, these formulations remain problematic. While Marx does not subsume all of his analyses of labor into an undifferentiated conceptual framework about “history”, “society”, or “man”, something unique happens to causation in human social relations around the issue of labor. Recognizing this, Marx’s causal reasoning changed depending on whether his vantage point involved labor at the level of the individual, struggles over labor at the level of social class, or historical development at the level of society in general. This differentiation is similar to those that natural scientists make on teleology depending whether one applies it to the level of the individual organism, a mating group, or a species as a whole. Though she (problematically) accepts a metaphysic in Marx, Carol Gould (1978) explains that, for Marx, individual human labor is a process where both self-direction and finalism are involved. In the laboring process, individuals conjure up an image in the mind of some desired result and transform natural objects toward this preconceived end. The goal directs the process to a final point. However, at the social level, material facts and class struggles explain the accumulation of labor’s objects and any resulting division of labor and/or total social formation more so than any general movement, metaphysical or

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otherwise universalistic. In the process of social development, a later functional role of the institutional or structural configuration that results from the struggles over labor and its products may not be the reason why a practice, institution, and/or one of their functions in the present first emerged, e.g., money did not arise in the past for capital accumulation in the future. It is the real struggles over the terms and products of labor that offer insight into the nature of class dynamics, politics, history, and mechanisms of social change. Labor, as a fundamental human social need, thus provides an initial assumption for the researcher about the shape of the human agents social relations contain. As such, labor is a necessary causation at the level of the individual involving real forms (rather than metaphysical) of self-direction and finalism, issues that are increasingly contingent at the level of class and class struggle. As a way to resolve the class struggle entailed in capitalism, Marx wants communism’s potentiality to be self-directed at the level of class in the same way that labor is self-directed at the level of the individual. That is, the working class should transform the capitalist system into a communist society all the while using a vision of and allegiance to this future goal as a directional signpost for political struggles in the present. In the politics of class struggle, Marx believed that revolutionary ideals—and a socialist transition to communism— should guide action, itself shaped by a scientific analysis of the present and a vision of how a potential future might or can look. There is no guarantee that the struggles the working class engages in (though inevitable) will assume a form Marx characterizes as revolutionary. Communism, rather than inevitable, is contingent on a politicaleconomic conversion of the working class, i.e., Marx and Engels write “The Manifesto” because workers do not become class-conscious simply as a reflex of material forces alone (a metaphysical stance). Organization, education, and action, each animated by visions of a possible future, are all required. On these two issues—human labor and class struggles—Marx adopts a goal-directed form of discourse. His dialectical manner of usage, however, is tempered and qualified where the former is a necessary relation and the latter is a contingent process, and neither is metaphysical. Self-directed and finalistic frameworks do not extend to broader abstractions such as history or society as a whole. Though Marx thought the tendencies in capitalism’s structure will force an evolutionary change upon it, one cannot foresee its exact future. Because of the

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creative and intentional aspects of human action, in conjunction with “accidents”, history is not something whose contours into the future one can predict with the accuracy of a predictive natural science. Proletarian revolution and a transition to communism are only one set of possibilities. The thesis-antithesis-synthesis misinterpretation of dialectic leads some to believe that Marx saw communism as an inevitability, given the assumption that capitalists (thesis) will call their opposite (proletarians) into being, resulting in a synthesis or change (revolution and communism). Marx, who criticizes this formulation (as we saw in Chapter Two) with the remark, “Nothing is easier than to invent mystical causes”, sees no supra-human teleological process that automatically transforms theses into antitheses and then into a synthesis. Teleological models both at the level of history and society in general are antithetical to Marx’s thinking, as each expresses a speculative and/or metaphysical approach and therefore are non-scientific. Does Ollman Offer a Metaphysical Teleology? Are the internal relations philosophy and methods of abstraction Ollman attributes to Marx teleological? Walker (2001: 97) disagrees with the view that “A thing’s development or history includes its future development, its history that has yet to happen. So when Ollman says that the identity of a thing includes its history, he includes its future as well as its past in that ‘history’.” Walker (2001: 97), questioning this line of reasoning, claims Ollman’s approach is flawed: An analysis of a thing’s past and present will allow us to draw inferences about its future; we can identify the potential contained within it, and then include that projected future in its identity. Two objections come to mind: first, is it warranted to include a thing’s possible future (one possible future) in our understanding of what that thing is; and secondly, is Ollman not introducing an element of teleology here?… If the future could be deduced in a priori fashion then there would exist the warrant for including it as part of the identity of things existing now. But if that were the case then dialectical Marxism would be deterministic and teleological. The collapse of capitalism and advent of socialism would be inevitable and would be the end or goal towards which we are moving.

Is Walker correct that Ollman’s approach to the innerconnections of past-present-future is teleological? This interpretation that a socialist future is the necessary outcome of the capitalist present—an iron-clad

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determinist, and perhaps metaphysical, argument made through a lens closer to Kant rather than Marx’s materialist and dialectical logic— makes it appear that for Ollman we can deduce whatever future arises from observations of the present and socialism is its necessary outcome. The concept of the “interpenetration of opposites” assists in clarifying his view. In terms of pure analytical logic, it is nonsensical to say that what, in part, defines today is that which will be found tomorrow—i.e., forces existing in the future are not in a definition of the present. In analytical philosophy’s dictum of the “excluded middle”, the present and its future are separate things. However, in real life, this is plainly untrue. Barring a cataclysmic event, 24 hours after I write this sentence, or the reader reads it, the world will contain very much the same relationships and processes as it did the day before. The present contains elements of the past just as the future contains elements contained in the present, i.e., these opposites interpenetrate each other. This is not simply a philosophical abstraction. Marx (1978b: 529) states: “What we have to deal with here is communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birth marks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.” No doubt, the future cannot cause changes in the present. However, in a dialectical view, social-systemic elements prior to the future make possible what emerges in that future. Thus, on the one hand, the structure of the society that follows capitalism cannot be the agent that causes capitalism’s fundamental change, while, on the other hand, forces within capitalism, such as class struggle and forces that survive its demise, will play a crucial part in building any future. In “The Manifesto of the Communist Party” and Capital Marx notes how the rise of global markets and commodities accelerated feudalism’s decline. In these instances, the causal force sits both before and after the change—i.e., the force is in a process of development, its fruition not inevitable or complete. The truth-value of the statement that the present contains elements of the future, nevertheless, diminishes the further into the future one extends their temporal frame. Ollman (1979) thus depicts Marx’s vision of a communist future as falling on three temporal frames: short-, middle-, and long-term. The farther one is from a hypothesized future, the less likely the structural features found there are agents in the present system undergoing change.

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Using the vantage point of a mentally constructed, abstract, and hypothetical future looking backward at what presupposed it allows one to pinpoint those structural elements in play that are the most likely to participate in building that future or any potential one. It is one thing to claim, as Ollman does, that elements in one of many possible futures are contained in the present, and quite another to conclude, as Walker interprets him, that the “collapse of capitalism and advent of socialism would be inevitable and would be the end or goal towards which we are moving.” Ollman does not deduce socialism as a necessary result from the dynamics of the present, though the present does contain socialism as one of its potential futures. Walker connects these two ideas as necessarily related when in fact they are contingent. All potential futures will necessarily contain a mixture of the present with emergent things, many of which are the result of social struggles yet to occur, newly emerging structures, and/or “accidents” that can hasten, impede, or even redirect the change.

Summary and Discussion Marx rejects teleological-metaphysical explanations and a linear, predetermined historical movement forward. When Marx does address self-directed and finalist processes, his reasoning falls on three distinct levels—labor at the level of the individual, struggle within (and between) class relationships, and the historical development of social structures as a whole. At the level of the individual, labor is a process of self-direction and finalism, though later unintended functions of material objects may arise. Marx’s politics strove to make revolution and socialism processes of self-direction at the level of social class, but there is no guarantee this will occur. Agency, education, organization, and struggle play primary roles. This is not a teleology of finalism either. For Marx, communism is when real history begins. At the level of society as a whole, Marx is opposed to any metaphysical teleology that depicts social change as moved by transcendental self-directed forces “without origin or progress.” Simultaneously, both geographical and temporal relations disperse other social relations containing individuals, classes, and social systems and, therefore, capitalism’s movement is neither universal nor even. In his time, Marx saw evolutionary models as best applied to the dynamics found in Western Europe and thought the likelihood of successful class struggles leading to a socialist-communist future were greatest there.

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This potentiality must be interpreted and read across three temporal frames—short-term, middle-term, and long-term futures. The result is an analytical framework containing a matrix-like set of relations that include a range of social, temporal, and spatial innerconnections, a depiction that challenges widely accepted assertions about teleology in Marx’s approach. The examples in this chapter show how conventional thought, social and scientific, exhibit problems inherent in teleological explanations. In social thought, the issue of teleology extends beyond the problems of social scientific knowledge and moves into questions of the political. Just as we have falsely universalized religion as Religion in social and scientific thought, Marx believes a similar illogic functions in our understanding of political power. If, as speculative philosophy—here, both Hegel and Kant—assumes, reality is the unfolding of absolute principles in the abstract world, then historical trial and error leads to an ever-improved society. Like Money and Religion, this form of thinking sees the State as an expression of a universally necessary and timeless institution and that in its modern expression this institution is ever-improved to the point of being superior, even sacred. In modernity, the state becomes religious in a way unlike we have seen before. States represent abstract Truth whereas kings represent concrete Truth, God’s will in action in a person. The state is not religious because its leaders are gods or descended from them. Rather, modern ideology sees the state is an expression of “the people” and its will. Thus explained are the close ties between nationalism, religion, politics, and wealth in capitalist society. Poorly formulated or misconstrued constructions of history, social structure, and social change influence power relationships in a society. For example, if modern society reflects human nature then all preceding history is a teleology of the present, human nature overcoming its past alienation, a self-serving and flattering view. Within such a framework, to criticize the institutional framework this supposed human nature spawned seems as a form of bitter misanthropy and criticism of the ruling class becomes immoral, unrealistic, and fatally flawed. Conventional thought thus augments the power and privilege of those who benefit from our social arrangements through shielding them from critical inquiry, the main bulwark of which is cultivating forms of knowledge that depict any such critical inquiry as misguided and unreasonable. Radical thought in the form Marx offers provides a scientific basis for rejecting conventional explanations of modernity, its state, its forms of knowledge, and the political inertia these conceptual

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frameworks cultivate. It is the scientist’s duty not to accept official explanations of social arrangements at face value but rather to subject them to critical inquiry. The analysis of teleological reason offered here demonstrates how, very often, official justificatory ideologies in fact fall apart upon inspection.

CHAPTER SIX

MARX’S POLITICAL SCIENCE As intellectual discourse participates in a series of exchanges across time and space, this chapter is this book’s final salvo left for any audience it might enjoy. True scientific criticism, Marx tells us, must focus on the inner and specific logic of theoretical positions. This is a stance certainly all scientists can accept and one I hope my critics embrace. It is nevertheless perhaps proper to review and defend the positions this book has taken before my cross-examiners put my theses on the witness stand. Evaluating claims about reality through systematic empirical analysis is one way science strives to overcome obstacles in producing valid knowledge. In systematically evaluating claims, a scientist should settle on and incorporate a set of logical analytical principles, concerns formal and dialectical logicians each endorse. The built-in limits to any knowledge in which we may have a level of certainty include its conceptual appropriateness for its subject matter and the extent that other forms of knowledge surpass it, e.g., Einsteinian physics encompassed and surpassed Newtonian models. With a concern over formal logic’s limits (rather than inappropriateness) for social questions, dialecticians consider ways to positively supplement it (more than simply negate it) and thus advance our understanding of the world. Material and historical social relations produce observable, regular results, knowledge of which must root our ontological assumptions and epistemological practices. Thus far in history social structure has been more determinative than individual or collective agency: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted from the past” (Marx 1978c: 595). Sociology’s subject matter diminishes greatly were this untrue, an issue larger than only its object of study. This issue goes to the heart of the innerconnection between science and praxis. For Marx (and Engels), capitalism provides the first-best chance for individuals and, more importantly, working classes to break free from the determining forces over them, reverse the relationship, and create

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their own history based on volition, reason, and knowledge.1 Marx’s 11th Thesis on Feuerbach attains its core meaning here: we do and must act in the world but, in doing so, we need sound knowledge upon which to base our actions. When Marx’s (1978d: 145) 11th Thesis on Feuerbach—which claims that “philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it” (emphases in the original)—receives attention, scholars focus mostly on the latter clause. What is the role of philosophy in his statement? Is Marx saying that philosophy is fundamentally not up to the task of informing action? When Marx criticizes “speculative philosophy” does he subsume all philosophy under a similar form of criticism? Though this is possible, even maybe probable, he clearly questions whether philosophy can provide the positive knowledge that true scientific investigation of real concrete conditions can. To the extent that philosophy does not require empirical inquiry to lead investigation, and to the extent it gravitates toward speculative, idealist, metaphysical, and/or a priori abstractions, it, in Marx’s view, is not a sound basis upon which to ground knowledge and political action.2 Nevertheless, it is true that all too often “Marxism” has become

1 Postone (2009: 316–317) argues that “people create structures that dominate them. The form of domination underlying capitalism is reflexive, according to this analysis. Domination in capitalism, then, is not ultimately rooted in institutions of property and/or the state—as important as they are. Rather, it is rooted in quasi-objective structures of compulsion constituted by determinate modes of practice, expressed by the categories of commodity and capital. This form of domination is expressed most clearly by the dynamic of capital, by the existence of a dynamic that has properties of a historical logic. That is, when we talk about history in capitalism, we are actually talking about a very different process than if we are talking about historical developments in the ancient Mediterranean world, ancient South Asia, China, or anywhere else. “Increasingly, this logic has become tighter and more global. It is, of course, very, very different from any notion of historical progress (although it provides the basis for the idea of historical progress), because to the degree to which a dynamic exists, to that degree agency is circumscribed and constrained. The greater the degree of human agency, the less one can speak of a historical logic. It seems to me that Marx analyzes capitalism as a society in which there is a great deal of individual agency and a great deal of historical structural constraint. The dynamic of capitalism, however, opens up the possibility of historical agency, even as it constrains its realization. I would argue that understanding this can help avoid some unexpected consequences of political action, that the consequences of political action are not completely random, and that not having an understanding of the constraints of capital dooms a lot of political projects to an unforeseen kind of failure or to becoming part of that which they themselves wanted to overcome.” 2 Marx (1975l: 142) says, “we do not dogmatically anticipate the world, but only want to find the new world through criticism of the old one. Hitherto philosophers

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a “theory” or world philosophy. But Marx’s path is not so much an exercise in theorizing as it is a use of scientific critique and empirical research to inform praxis. If we are to adopt Marx’s practice, we must grasp his method. Not a “theoretician” per se, Marx’s political conclusions about what to do in the world come from his scientific investigations, a place from which his moral criticisms do not originate, i.e., Marx may offer “scientific socialism” but he offers neither “scientific morality” nor a socialism built on a perfected moral system, a utopian principle he rejected.3 There are times Marx’s work presents analyses that appear to have a goal of knowledge for knowledge’s sake, a study of a system’s relations only in abstract structural terms, a discourse pitched in cold, hard analysis. But Marx is not writing from the standpoint of how a science of capital would look from the perspective of a positivist bourgeois scientist trying to cast a veil of neutrality. He is examining the problematic aspects of the system, based on its real results and the contradictions in its inner logic. Once he has extracted the logic of the system scientifically, he has no problem speaking of capital’s orgies, satanic mills, or the avariciousness of the bourgeoisie. But these are descriptions of effects, not analytical statements about causes. And Marx is not offering us a new ethical code. Though ample instances exist where he makes moral judgments on authors, political authorities, capitalists, and/or social conditions, commentators struggle to find a consistent or coherent set of abstract moral principles upon which Marx bases his criticisms (see Kain 1988; Kamenka 1972; for a discussion that hardly cites Marx at all and simply speculates on the issue of ethics in radical thought, see Martin 2008). Rather than providing a coherent ethical model in his writings, Marx applies conventional morality to his unconventional findings. Marx shows how capitalism produces slavery, child labor, early death, degradation of working conditions, poverty, and so have had the solution of all riddles lying in their writing-desks, and the stupid, exoteric world had only to open its mouth for the roast pigeons of absolute knowledge to fly into it.” 3 “In Germany a corrupt spirit is asserting itself in our party, not so much among the masses as among the leaders (upper class and ‘workers’). The compromise with the Lassalleans has led to further compromise with other waverers; in Berlin (via Most) with Dühring and his ‘admirers’, not to mention a whole swarm of immature undergraduates and over-wise graduates who want to give socialism a ‘higher, idealistic’ orientation, i.e. substitute for the materialist basis (which calls for serious, objective study if one is to operate thereon) a modern mythology with its goddesses of Justice, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternité” (Marx 1991b: 283).

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on and, not inventing a new ethical system, he relies on the ethics most people have. And he is not asking about the nature of “good” or “evil”, how many angels can dance on the head of the pin, or what behaviors will violate rules about resting on the Sabbath. There is no theology here. In revealing the political biases in social knowledge as well as the problematic aspects of certain social relations, Marx (1992c*: 27) is not arguing for a value free form of discourse but for “scientific investigation” that proceeds “as impartially as possible.” After presenting a critique of a theory or a social practice and analyzing it in-depth through scientific principles, Marx lays bare its essential logic before us. Afterward, he can then declare—sometimes using popular terminology—something to be false, a sign of vanity, a practice of cowardice, a policy of cruelty, hypocrisy, or what have you. Objectivity does not mean neutrality, except in ideological thought that does not want to be offended, contradicted, or shown its own inconsistencies and limitations.4 As some historical analysis is required as political economy’s steward, Marx (1992a: 24) describes investigations that remain “within the bounds of the bourgeois horizon” as those where “the capitalist regime is looked upon as the absolutely final form of production” and, as such, have “reached the limits beyond which [they cannot] pass.” Historical analysis reveals power relations as products of struggles, violence, coercion, though most power relations present themselves as natural, normal, necessary, and/or the will of Providence or the People. Marx, however, does not accept classes and states as necessary social relations. They are not products of nature and did not exist in the earliest societies. As such, there is no requirement that classes and states must exist in a set of assumptions about social relations. States emerge with the rise of class systems, showing both to have historical origins but also showing that humans as a species are not required to have states and classes in order to have forms of social organization. Because of 4 “[A]ll good bourgeois … maintain that competition, monopoly, etc., are, in principle—i.e. regarded as abstract thoughts—the only basis for existence, but leave a great deal to be desired in practice. What they all want is competition without the pernicious consequences of competition. They all want the impossible, i.e. the conditions of bourgeois existence without the necessary consequences of those conditions. They all fail to understand that the bourgeois form of production is a historical and transitory form, just as was the feudal form. This mistake is due to the fact that, to them, bourgeois man is the only possible basis for any society, and that they cannot envisage a state of society in which man will have ceased to be bourgeois” (Marx 1982b: 103).

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how societies grew and their classes and divisions of labor evolved, the question of humans reorganizing upon the bases of classlessness and statelessness could only have been a utopian discourse or an otherwise cult movement prior to modernity. It is not until capitalism that it is possible to rid ourselves of these once-absent now-dominant social relations of class and state. The political question is whether we should work to do so? Marx wants to convince us the answer is yes. But there is more, a place where his scientific and political analyses meet. Marx chooses multiple vantage points—e.g., both a distant past and a future where states and classes do not exist, with their rise and fall in between—to evaluate what sort of influence classes have on our society. He asks this question from both the perspective of class history, where examining the real class struggles in feudalism helps him (and us) understand something about the rise of capitalism—i.e., from where it came and how it works—and from the perspective of a future technologically advanced classless and stateless society. This allows him to make analytical conclusions—e.g., what sort of practices in capitalism exist on account of its classes—and political conclusions— why we need to target capital and its transcendence as a solution to our social problems. Knowledge entails power, including the power to challenge relations of social domination. Bourgeois revolutionaries understood this in their struggles with feudal monarchs. Many American Revolutionaries concluded that aristocratic privileges ensconced in Divine Right and unchallenged Church authority lacked legitimate foundations (the same was true for many in the French Revolution). Such struggles— which harnessed both scientific reason and political practice—are not a matter only for history past. History is not over and powers—both ruling classes and impersonal social structures—over society continue. Scientific thinking must remain a pillar of our knowledge and, until we overcome superstition and alienation, what Marx and Engels called a revolution in permanence should be the center of our action. What does this mean? Organized revolt and no more? True, classconscious revolt is one aspect of its rubric, though it also means constant criticism, uncovering of lies and discovering truths through scientific inquiry, alignments and re-alignments of the masses against capital, strategic initiatives, and all manner of resistance. If the persistence of relations of domination whose legitimacy rests in historical, ideological, and political-economic forces—rather than products of god or a natural order—still marks our present, then social science’s

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revolutionary character is its exposing of such false forms of knowledge that have ruled human social relations hitherto and continue to do so. If one clear value position comes from Marx’s understanding of the relationship between real life, science, and politics, it is that, in Marx’s words according to Lafargue (1890–1891: 72), “Those who have the good fortune to be able to devote themselves to scientific pursuits must be the first to place their knowledge at the service of humanity.” Marx and Engels (1956: 171) refer to metaphysics in natural science as “magic formulae” and philosophical speculation as “the last prop of theology.” With the rise of the disciplines, the search for transcendent forces continued outside of religious debate, reproducing similar obscuring problems in scientific discourse. Kant’s aprioristic philosophy results in a search for Truth, looking backward to establish universal properties in the perfect world of abstractions, the arena of the really real. In this sense, Kant and philosophy in general share an outlook with the religious. Marx, on the other hand, is not on a search for Truth, but rather truths in their historical development and decline, where we do not have to posit an unobservable world outside of us that contains ultimate knowledge. Marx’s search for knowledge is positive and practical, meant to inform actual living conditions, and not a world of fantastic phantasms. In this criticism, he shares much with Nietzsche.5 Many of Marx’s criticisms intertwine with his theory of alienation. Alienation is a general social condition that shapes our social institutions, distorts our forms of knowledge, and thus produces malformed minds. One form of alienated knowledge in liberal democratic societies sees the state as a representation of a people, expressing its will and ethos. It is not the state, rather “it is natural necessity, essential human properties, however alienated they may seem to be, and interest that

5 “The social principles of Christianity justified the slavery of antiquity, glorified serfdom of the Middle Ages and are capable, in case of need, of defending the oppression of the proletariat, even if with somewhat doleful grimaces.… The social principles of Christianity preach the necessity of a ruling and an oppressed class, and for the latter all they have to offer is the pious wish that the former may be charitable…. The social principles of Christianity declare all the vile acts of the oppressors against the oppressed to be either a just punishment for original sin and other sins, or trials which the Lord, in his infinite wisdom, ordains for the redeemed…. The social principles of Christianity preach cowardice, self-contempt, abasement, submissiveness and humbleness…. The social principles of Christianity are sneaking and hypocritical, and the proletariat is revolutionary” (Marx 1976a: 231).

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hold the members of civil society together: civil, not political life is their real tie” (Marx and Engels 1956: 163; emphases in the original). A personal identification with that of the state is a profoundly alienated condition, where a viewpoint of personal subjectivity is in fact a ruling relation of domination, e.g., “the filth of German nationalism” (Marx and Engels 1956: 205). As a hallmark ideology of modernity, nationalism obscures people’s real ties while their identities as “American,” “French”, “Czech”, or “Bolivian” divide them (the level of colonialism experienced significantly shapes the level of nationalism in peripheral regions of the world system, where bonds of tribe, family, clan, and so on still exist with greater strength than in core regions). Social scientists regularly criticize sexism, racism, and heterosexism, but rarely address nationalism as a similar form of domination of mind and action, a highly political stance by its absence. Marx’s (1975d: 182) radical science strives “to grasp the root of the matter.” The root of human individuality is materially grounded in our creative activity, itself a changing historical reality. The theological image of humanity—singular, constant, universal—denies this dynamic reality and impedes a true grasping of our human existence. But theology itself emerges from and is shaped by material relations in a sociohistorical context.6 A young Marx (1975d: 175) proclaimed that criticism must begin with religion because religion “is the fantastic realisation of the human essence because the human essence has no true reality” (emphases in the original). Religious Truth exists in a world outside of us, one that we are supposed to look toward and never mind the morrow. In order not to slip into its logical errors, “religion, and next to it, politics … [w]e must take these, in whatever form they exist, as our point of departure, and not confront them with some ready-made system”, Marx (1975l: 143) tells readers of the DeutschFranzösische Jahrbucher. Marx (1975b: 216–217) believes that “the real, conscious and true mode of existence” for human “species-activity and

6 “Christianity was preceded by the total collapse of the ancient ‘world conditions’ of which Christianity was the mere expression…. [‘C]ompletely new world conditions’ arose not internally through Christianity but only when the Huns and the Germans fell ‘externally’ on the corpse of the Roman Empire…. [A]fter the Germanic invasion the ‘new world conditions’ did not adapt themselves to Christianity but [rather] Christianity itself changed with every new phase of these world conditions. [We cannot think of] an example of the old world conditions changing with a new religion without the mightiest ‘external’ and abstract political convulsions setting in at the same time” (Marx and Engels 1978b: 244).

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species-spirit … is social activity and social enjoyment” (emphases in the original). Religion, an alienated and inverted social relation, is thus one of our social problems, not a source of their ultimate solution. Given such views and criticisms, Marx is not putting himself forward as a prophet revealing hitherto secret spiritual knowledge: “Party programs ought to keep free of any apparent dependence upon individual authors or books” (Marx 1992g: 103). Religion is an abstraction of the mind. Its reality is an unreal abstract abstraction. Capital is abstract too, but it is real. That is, capital is not a product of the mind but it is not concrete either. It is a material social relation that “is the organizing principle of the whole as a concrete, organic unity” (Meany 2002: 115). As a product of alienated labor, capital’s expressions are seen and unseen. Capital (as a cause) is invisible, unlike its expressions in alienated value forms—money, commodities, or profits. Because it presents us with its effects concretely and experientially, we tend to mistake its results for it. Though capital is not a visible thing, the class relation upon which it depends—capitalists and laborers—is an observable and concrete though differentiated relation, too. Capitalists must accumulate profits if they are to maintain themselves as a class, not so labor. The movement of capital nevertheless shapes and directs capitalists and labor as a force we cannot readily or always see. That is, we see the results more than the presuppositions and, therefore, both being material realities and not subjectivities, for Marx, a revolution in material conditions is necessary, not simply or only a revolution in ideas. Marx’s form of inquiry promises to make sense of that which thus far has seemed too complex, confusing, hidden, or chaotic for many to understand, a tension between appearance and essence. Just as biology uncovered the microscopic world once it had tools to do so, Marx, similar to what proposals for “public sociology” advocate, harnesses tools conventional public discourse lacks and offers his findings to the human community in order to improve its knowledge and inform its action. However, in joining him in this process, very much unlike proposals for “public sociology”, he says we should not “substitute ideological catch-phrases such as ‘justice’, etc., for materialist knowledge” (Marx 1991h: 285). One reason Marx argues this way is because the results we see in social life, the appearances they present to us, are what we have available for moral criticism. Fighting for justice is only a treatment of symptoms (similar to giving aspirin to treat influenza), which is problematic because capitalism’s results are products of

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essential and often hidden relations, the disease. Thus, remaining at the level of appearance is to stop short of the root of the problem. In Marx’s approach, historical analysis functions as a form of critical criticism and this leads to praxis, against both intellectual mystifications and illegitimate ruling relations. Historical analysis reveals capitalism as a product of class struggles past (and present), not as a reflection of a propensity to truck, barter, and trade. Opponents of the struggles Marx urges upon us often describe and defend bourgeois social relations in moral terms, which explains why Marx (1992b: 77) depicts the ideal-knowledge developed under capitalist material relations as a “fetish” and compares this to the “mist-enveloped regions of the religious world.” Capitalism is not a God-given order but its material reality makes it appear this way. De-mystification of bourgeois knowledge and social relations is thus Marx’s goal and this makes his science a political one. Mainstream social thought on politics and science has oscillated between two poles. On the one side is the support for objectivity in analytical practice with individual biases removed as much as possible. There is much in favor of this position. Without an effort to evaluate truth-claims based on the careful observation and analysis of evidence, then all sorts of fantasy, quackery, and arbitrary prejudice may rule social thought and life. However, seemingly neutral concepts, especially moral-philosophical ones, may misinform, distort, or otherwise obscure what we need to know. In one malformed view, for instance, “all classes melt away before the solemn concept of ‘humanity’ ” (Marx 1976b: 330), an abstraction that combines significant antagonistic differences into a homogenous, harmonious whole. On the other side is a revolt against the assumption of abstract objectivity, where personal preferences and values lead inquiry and the researcher must interpret facts and give them meaning. As Marx (1992i: 31) says, one “important part for the public in general … [is] the interpretation of the facts which [data] imply” (emphasis in the original). In favor of this position is the idea that we cannot separate ourselves, and thus our analytical thoughts, from our experiences in the world. Personal experiences and values, at the very minimum, shape what we view as issues of importance and how we evaluate them. What does the type of inquiry Marx urges upon us tells us about this traditional debate? Marx and Engels (1956: 201) criticize any mode of thought that “separates thinking from the senses.” Our minds do not exist over on the one side and a true objective reality on the other.

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They join in as parts of one reality. “Thinking and being are thus no doubt distinct, but at the same time they are in unity with each other”, Marx (1988a: 105–106) writes in his 1844 Manuscripts (emphases in the original). A similar relationship exists between scientific reason, critical evaluation of social forms, and political action. Each has arenas specific to them while at the same time each shares in the others’ meaning. This interrelationship, however, is not arbitrary or anything goes. Scientific method can be a Machiavellian tool wielded in the service of political goals, but this would do little for the humanist validity of either. Conversely, sound criticism exposes faulty knowledge while sound conceptual frameworks—products of our innate ability to think abstractly, systematically, empirically, and logically—can reveal biases in both knowledge and social relations. We can begin here, as both— faulty knowledge and sound scientific abstractions—have political implications for reigning paradigms and for social praxis. Solutions to our social problems are hard to come by if we act on bad information. And, if certain types of power relations distort our understanding of our conditions of existence, then science must target those power relations in order to develop a sound basis for our knowledge. As a result of these premises, challenging unfounded relations of domination is the call Marx’s dialectical science asks us to answer. With the shift from labor in general to “abstract labor” as its capitalist form, labor relations and class struggles grow in importance, as “The worker will be transformed from an ‘abstract form,’ or possible value-positing activity, to real productive activity upon contact with capital” (Meany 2002: 58). In result of this contact, Capital’s relation to Labor becomes calculable in a myriad of ways. A “labor market” emerges, where capitalists estimate the cost of keeping enough people alive and at work as a part of their investment strategy (capitalists, on economic considerations alone, are only concerned with producing and reproducing a workforce, not the population as a whole).7 7 For many economists, the relationship between “unemployment” and the wider “economy” only refers to those actively in the “labor force”, i.e., those looking for work. As such, the “economy” (i.e., capitalism) at any temporal moment may be unable to provide jobs for a large percentage of the population, but if such individuals are not actively looking for work, they are not seen as relevant for measuring unemployment. By extension, then, narrow models economists use abstract out of view the relationship between the wider variety of social relations that are real and relevant to the structure and functioning of a social system as a whole. This leads to peculiar conclusions, such as a situation where millions may be unemployed but are simply uncounted in the official numbers relevant to economic models, which then obscures the wider

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Capitalists evaluate the “risk” involved in overseas investments, not only in terms of labor prices but also in terms of the “instability” (from workers as well as from the “surplus population”) that often results from economic imperialism in peripheral regions of the world-economy. Business owners calculate how much profit they can and/or should reinvest into machinery versus techniques of employee surveillance to ensure labor productivity and discipline (if these can be combined, all the better for the capitalist). Labor, today, is an object of social knowledge, measured, calculated, and placed on a ledger, a spreadsheet, or a set of mathematical formulas. Labor “productivity”, “structural underemployment”, “population growth”, and “security issues” are key concerns economists, capitalists, and politicians discuss at regional meetings and global summits (e.g., APEC, the G20, and Bilderberg Conferences). Given that the laws of political economy, set in motion through global competition, force capitalists to act in accordance with such laws, moral reform is no solution to the problems the system produces for its inhabitants.8 Liberal/moral critiques of capitalism based on condemning greed or the heartless character of business assume that capitalists can behave in ways other than they do and thus the system’s problems are simply the result of the dysfunctional character of capital management. A society that has “abstract labor” structured into it is a society suffering an alienated existence, where members of one class’s real concrete life (i.e., bodies and physical labor) is sacrificed at the altar of another class’s pursuit of abstract value (i.e., capital). Abstract labor as a general social condition presupposes that a fundamental human need and quality underwent a transformation into a quantified standard unit, fungible with other forms of labor and its product, value. Bought and sold for a price, abstract labor is a condition whereby all other forms of real individual existence are less important than the quality of possessing labor-power for potential sale. Abstract labor

“health” of the social relations that prevail. See: Chris Thompson. “Meet the Economist Who Says the Government’s Economic Numbers are Lies.” East Bay Express. Reproduced at alternet.org, 8 May 2010. URL (consulted 29 June 2010): http://www .alternet.org/economy/146784/meet_the_economist_who_says_the_government %27s_economic_numbers_are_lies 8 As Dupré (1983: 17–18) observes, “Marx had to criticize economic activity, the dominant one in a capitalist society, on its own terms rather than through some extrinsic authority…. [A]ll attempts at moral and political reform must remain inadequate for remedying economically induced misery.”

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attracts abstract value—i.e., capital—and in capital’s real expressions real bodies are the trough at which it feeds. As a material relation, abstract labor posits human beings as things, and they—human beings—posit each other likewise. When no forces exist to impede this thing-like existence, social relations grow increasingly estranged and religious and political radicalism are more likely to flourish. Abstract labor thus produces abstract knowledge, abstract in the bad sense… malformed, distorted, unclear, false, and destructive.9 We—scientists and laypersons alike—must understand capitalism’s material and class dynamics in general, both historically and structurally. Capitalism tends to commodify increasingly more of social and natural life. During the transition from feudalism to capitalism, not all social institutions in all countries experienced an immediate and equal transformation. At Marx’s time, the European population experienced lower levels of proletarianization than do world societies today. In the mid-twentieth century, capital availability supplied enough social value to sustain a middle-class in the core centers of capitalist development, albeit temporarily. Today, there is an increasing polarization of the class structure. Worldwide, free-trade economic policies, usually on the heels of intense military discipline, broke open labor and resource markets in places such as Latin America and much of Africa. Today, for all practical purposes, no society remains untouched (e.g., see Nauru Island). The social institutions that congealed in modernity subordinated other social organs to their realm, shaping them toward the institutional ends we observe today.10 Unfortunately,

9 “Within the framework of this interpretation, then, what fundamentally characterizes capitalism is a historically specific form of social mediation, constituted by labor, that is dualistic—both abstract and concrete. Although this historically specific form of mediation is constituted by determinate forms of social practice, it becomes quasi-independent of the people engaged in those practices. “The result is a historically new form of social domination—one that subjects people to impersonal, increasingly rationalized, structural imperatives and constraints that cannot adequately be grasped in terms of class domination, or, more generally, in terms of the concrete domination of social groupings or of institutional agencies of the state and/or the economy. It has no determinate locus and, although constituted by determinate forms of social practice, appears not to be social at all” (Postone 2005: 75). 10 Meany (2002: 78) writes in his study of the Grundrisse: “The ‘law of capital’ is realized only gradually and as a consequence of acting on and shaping successive generations of laborers. The population of society must increasingly reflect capital’s ‘ceaseless striving’ (rastlose Streben) toward the general form of wealth. The many use values that issue from the production process will increasingly be a result of surplus labor.

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accepting the separation of institutional spheres as a general ahistorical social condition is sociology’s norm, i.e., its core paradigm, though its practitioners largely deny its apologetic function for the politicaleconomic relations that today prevail. In modern Western societies, the family and religion have emerged as separating spheres, and states positively sanction them with inducements. Familial and economic activities have separated spatially, with more economic functions secured through the wage-bill and work outside the household than in the past. Religion and economics, too, once intertwined with the family, where religious doctrine discussed rules of planting, birthing, marrying, killing, and eating (today, nevertheless, most people still learn religion from their parents and wider kinship ties). And, while the close connection between religion and sexuality are still with us, they are slowly separating too, in some places more quickly than in others. Given these waxing and waning innerconnections, to view institutions today as simply or only rooted in either universal functions and/or their origins is theoretically, analytically, and factually inaccurate. The political function is a mystifying false universalization when we provide today’s institutions a conceptual gloss that reads them backward into all time and place. When the institutional framework capitalism has forged into place—The Family, the State, Religion, and so on—is seen as the product of general sociological laws, then the researcher has set out with a malformed set of assumptions. Answers from inquiry that begins here will be similarly malformed. Social scientists should strive for clarity in capturing the complex in thought and in word but they also should do so without oversimplification, mystification, or obscurantism. Even if we acknowledge the dilemma of whether or not Marx succeeds in straddling this fence, he nevertheless gives us tools we have to have in order to appreciate fully the conditions in which we find ourselves. Had Marx been striving for a general theory of all historical developments, his analytical strategy of placing technology and class as extensions of capital’s dynamics would prove only partially useful. However, once he grasped capitalism’s dual macro-processes—its inherent tendency of outward expansion and its absorption of other social relations into it (i.e., institutions within capitalist society and whole societies on capitalism’s outskirts)—then This ‘ceaseless striving’ continues until capital has created and molded a world according to its own needs.”

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all previous social histories increasingly lose their independent appearance as they are incorporated into the capitalist present. As a result, capitalism becomes a priority for understanding how our institutions and other societies move toward capital’s logic as its “social gravity” brings more of social life into its orbit (York and Clark 2006). While scholars might find that particular conclusions Marx makes are worthy of debate, actual world history from Marx’s time to our own has vindicated this framework. An interesting implication emerges from this outlook. Marx, as we have seen, objected to a social science that studies the capitalist present under the rubric of society in general. However, should the capitalist system be revolutionized in a way he envisioned, with private property abolished, the state dismantled, and class exploitation eliminated, then his political-economic models will be obsolete. It would not follow, however, that general sociological processes would cease to exist. Should a new system no longer have class relations and if (a rather large if) internal contradictions were non-existent, several tools of Marx’s historical materialist analysis would also lose their cogency— i.e., the role of contradictions between forces and relations of production in social change, including class struggles—while others would retain their utility—e.g., the centrality of labor, how economics and technology shape social relations, including base-superstructure relations. Further, if conventional approaches today suffer from failing to interiorize what is unique about capitalist class relations into their models, then once capitalist class relations no longer exist, presumably, a sociology pitched at the level of society in general would be on better ground. This, of course, would not be uniform across all potential competing frameworks or potential futures. Those frameworks that incorporate capitalist relations but annul them in their concepts would experience nullification too with the passing of capitalism. Those that neither annul capitalist relations in their concepts nor focus on realities specifically capitalist may remain as worthy sociological knowledge (e.g., Simmel’s formal sociology, Goffman’s dramaturgy). The implications are worth noting. Conventional theories that make capitalism disappear under a model of society in general are guilty of depicting capitalism as the utopia they often foist upon Marx’s vision of communism, as are, by extension, those that see capitalism as history’s final stage. Hegel’s idealism, Smith’s homo economicus, Parsons’s abstract theory outside real historical social relations, Rostow’s universal teleology of the present, and Fukuyama’s end of history thesis,

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are the theories of utopia; as is most of the field of modern economics, with their models of perfect market equilibrium and so on. Sociology is often a utopian discourse too, where the modern world simply needs some “reform” to reach a state where all significant social inequalities based on biased opinions or policies no longer exist. To the extent intellectual discourses do not target the fundamental problems built into our socio-political-economic structures, they too become end-ofhistory theories of utopia. This outcome is one that Marx’s realism strives to resist. Marx’s realism is not a form of inquiry where one begins with political goals and conclusions and simply fits in data to satisfy such stipulations. As he says, “if from the outset you recognize as the result of scientific research only that which agrees with your own view, it is easy to pose as a prophet” (Marx 1975i: 23). A positive knowledge of the real is necessary without abstractions that obfuscate actual systemic power relations. As such, the theorists addressed in this book are not the only ones whose ideas are conducive to an internal relations philosophy of science. Immanuel Wallerstein’s work fits nicely within this framework. His central concepts interiorize the special relations indicative of his objects of study, especially their mutual ties and their spatial and temporal moments (e.g., world-empires and world-systems, core-periphery relations, the interstate system, commodity chains, etc.). However, he does not directly address specific issues in the philosophy of internal relations. Michel Foucault is one thinker who comes closer.11 Throughout Foucault’s texts one finds analyses of relations, mutual connections, transformations, clusters and connections across history and social structures, and all the relations in between.12 11 Though Emirbayer (discussed in Chapter Four) recognizes him as a relational thinker, his effort to note Foucault’s work is marked by the same problems with which his general framework is strapped, i.e., the lack of engagement with the internal relations approach. 12 Foucault’s analyses of knowledge, sex, and power all reveal an internal relations sensibility. In his archaeology of the human sciences, he argues that “There is no statement that does not presuppose others; there is no statement that is not surrounded by a field of coexistences, effects of series and succession, a distribution of functions and roles” (Foucault 1972: 99). Statements always “play roles in relation to one another,” “must have a material existence,” and “must have a substance, a support, a place, and a date. And when these requisites change, it too changes identity … its identity varies with a complex set of material institutions” (Foucault 1972: 100–101, 103). Foucault’s theory of knowledge here is relational, historical, as well as material (at least in part). In The History of Sexuality, rather than cataloging human behaviors over long periods of time, Foucault (1980a) produces a backward study of history, starting with (what he

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Foucault argued that power and knowledge intimately innerconnect. And, contrary to conventional readings of his work, he does not deny the concerns Marxists have with political economy. For Marx (1976b: 318), “Property, at all events, is also a kind of power. Economists call capital, for instance, ‘power over the labour of others’.” Likewise for Foucault (1980b: 100–102), we should “investigate … how mechanisms of power … have begun to become economically advantageous and politically useful … in a given context for specific reasons”, and, therefore, “we should … base our analysis of power on the study of the techniques and tactics of domination.” Power, as the product of domination, both represses individuals and produces them as types of subjects. And, as knowledge intertwines with power, it is a form of power in many ways. Those who establish what counts as knowledge dominate public discourse and produce outcomes. Productive power, then, just as repressive power, suggests causality. As power shapes outcomes, it must take a central place in sociological investigations, including its sources, how it enacts a series of events, toward what ends, the networks with which it shares ties, and the rippling results it unleashes. Such concerns bring Foucault’s view of innerconnections together with similar concerns in form, if not content, with Marx, Wallerstein, and other theorists conducive to a philosophy of internal relations. This notwithstanding, what Engels (1934: 62) called “the science of inter-connections” still remains to be developed more fully.13 As a science of innerconnections, “A dialectical exposition must begin with the way in which a subject matter first appears to consciousness” (Meany 2002: 15). But it must not remain there.14 What appears

takes to be) the essential features of modern sexual codes and knowledge about them. He then sorts through those past institutional sites that were “all highly articulated around a cluster of power relations” (Foucault 1980a: 30)—e.g., religion, the state, biological sciences—and which functioned to produce the modern discourse of individual sexuality. In “The Subject and Power,” Foucault (1983: 222) holds that “power relations are rooted deep in the social nexus, not reconstituted ‘above’ society as a supplementary structure.” The internally related result is “types of relationships which in fact always overlap one another, support one another reciprocally, and use each other mutually as means to an end” (Foucault 1983: 218; for further discussion of Foucault’s encounter with Marxism, see Paolucci 2003). 13 A qualification here is necessary to avoid misunderstanding. I am not arguing that Marxist studies should be subsumed under Foucaultian terms. Rather, Foucault’s concerns are a logical adjunct to Marxian studies as a critique of modern forms of knowledge and practice. 14 “Here it will be shown how the philistines’ and vulgar economists’ manner of conceiving things arises, namely, because the only thing that is ever reflected in their

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to our consciousness forms the basis of our practical cognition and thus our social knowledge, but this does not mean we can glean all we need to know about the world from observations of that which strikes us most readily. For instance, the view of human nature as a competitive and self-interested animal seems confirmed should one examine market behavior in capitalist society. A deeper historical-comparative view reveals this as untrue. Thus, to study innerconnections, a social science must have the requisite tools, several of which are an appropriate grasp of history, knowledge of various social structures, a philosophy of internal relations, and an understanding of how to use an experimental model at a broader structural level. In addition, such a science requires a dialectical combination of precision and flexibility in shifting vantage points with an analytical strategy that interiorizes the innerconnections between social relations into its concepts. Without such methodological tools, a social science is unable to penetrate very deeply into the social processes that lie behind the appearances reality presents to us. Economists tend to elevate the law of supply and demand to a law of nature, something which human organization (and thus policies) must accommodate. This sort of reification is a regular practice in economics (just as is sociology’s elevating of modernity’s institutional framework into a universal, ahistorical social condition). For instance, an extension of conventional economic theory is the ideological trope that equates private property—a product of bourgeois society—with personal possessions—something common to many societies across time and space. When official knowledge equates these, when both law and social convention sees ownership of a book as a form of property equivalent to ownership of a factory or a bank, then criticism of the rule of capital appears as a quixotic struggle against the human condition. This is a common reaction from students and their professors exposed to Marxist thought. As a result, insights relative to the inherent contradictions of capital often struggle for a fair hearing. Alternatively, when audiences do receive these ideas, their reaction often is that humanity simply must suffer these conditions, much like a plague for which there is no cure.

minds is the immediate form of appearance of relations, and not their inner connection. Incidentally, if the latter were the case, we would surely have no need of science at all” (Marx 1987a: 390; emphases in the original).

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Rarely heard in public are other forms of Marxian analysis. Sociology students and economists often do not readily identify with the Marxist claim that capitalism inherently produces a concentration of wealth that leads to both economic crises and ideological forms that mask the sources of both. For instance, mainstream economists do not have notions of class exploitation and surplus-value appropriation in their models. This, in addition to their rejection of the labor theory of value, renders them incapable of seeing bubbles and crises as natural products of capital accumulation but instead they see these as simply the result of “speculation” and/or otherwise distortions in the market.15 Rather than embracing Marxian insights, economists tend to gravitate toward a “best of all possible worlds” vision of human rationality and “self-correcting” markets (this view marks most non-Marxist commentaries on the current crisis, with few exceptions).16 Should the fact that a capitalist economy cannot be stable and its natural operations concentrate wealth while its state tends to wield policy towards the interests of capitalists be admitted, so must the claim that much of our public discourse is misleading and must be rethought or abandoned.17

15 This is not to deny the existence of speculation in financial markets. Instead, the point is that the capitalist system gravitates toward a financially top-heavy distribution of wealth which produces crises, whether or not speculation goes on at all. Speculation’s role here is to bring crises on more quickly and/or with more severe repercussions. 16 For a discussion of how the financial crisis of 2007–2009 took economists by surprise (except perhaps those in the Minsky school) because their models disallowed them from seeing it coming, see Paul Krugman’s article, “How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?”, New York Times Magazine, 2 September 2009. URL (consulted 29 June 2010): http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/magazine/06Economic-t.html?_r=1. Krugman, however, does not discuss how mainstream economic models are filled with tautologies accepted at a level of faith, nor how class relations and the questions of labor, value, and fictitious capital are absent from such models, issues Marxist theory addresses. 17 The public must rely on economists—some governmental, others employed in universities, think tanks, etc.—to report on the overall state of the economy. A crucial measure for the working person is the unemployment rate. However, its standard measure from government economists (US Department of Labor) significantly undercounts the actual number, and therefore rate, of the unemployed. Whether this is intentional or not is less the point than is the fact that the standard, regularly repeated rate of unemployment is fundamentally misleading in a direction that undergirds the stature, station, and legitimacy of politicians and capitalists. For discussion, see: Paul Solomon, “Many Left Uncounted in Nation’s Official Jobless Rate” (transcript), PBS Online NewsHour, 2 July 2009. URL (consulted 29 June 2010): http://www.pbs.org/ newshour/bb/business/july-dec09/undercounted_07-02.html Frank Arhens, “Actual US Unemployment: 15.8”, The Ticker, The Washington Post, 8 May 2009. URL (consulted 29 June 2010): http://voices.washingtonpost.com/economy-watch/2009/05/ actual_us_unemployment_158.html

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As such, it is no wonder that the forces of bourgeois reaction have attacked critical sociological thinking since its inception and continue to do so.18 Right-wing conservatives are not alone in reacting against critical thought. The so-called “liberal media” does so as well. Pundits and commentators, not to mention editors and owners, are sensitive to criticism of ruling class interests. In one typical scenario, the allowable frame is where individual capitalists or politicians are subject to criticism for “blunders” or “mistakes” usually rooted in “greed” or otherwise intents narrow, ignorant, and/or venal. Outside the business pages, television news and newspapers rarely mention the word “capitalism” except in crises periods (such as the 2007-present financial crisis). In such periods, the rule of capital is too hard to ignore and becomes an object of discourse, an occurrence with lessons to teach us, both analytical and political. In another case, when official enemies criticize a leading hegemonic state for imperialism (e.g., Hugo Chavez on the United States), news commentators smirk as they say “imperialism” as if such a claim is beyond the pale, hardly worth dignifying; any empirical evidence accusers provide is simply ignored. In a final example, in the United States especially, tagging a point of view as “Marxist” immediately delegitimizes it as outside the bounds worthy of discussion. As a result, Marxist scholarship and its lessons for those living in capitalist society are essentially invisible in popular culture. Problems in communicating Marxian ideas make this condition doubly difficult. One difficulty in relating Marx’s view to the wider community of social scientists is that Hegel’s overall view, if even recognized at all, has been notoriously unclear and widely interpreted. And, if common consciousness very often has little understanding of conventions of accepted social science, what sort of hurdle does coming to a Marxian understanding of scientific dialectics, much less a Marxist approach to capitalism, present? Given the inability of those in the social sciences 18 Human Events (31 May 2005), a conservative journal favored by Ronald Reagan and others on the right, listed the “ten most harmful books of the 19th and 20th centuries.” The list included (in order): The Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx), Mein Kampf (Adolf Hilter), Quotations of Chairman Mao (Mao Zedong), The Kinsey Report (Alfred Kinsey), Democracy and Education (John Dewey), Das Kapital (Karl Marx), The Feminine Mystique (Betty Friedan), The Course of Positive Philosophy (Auguste Comte), Beyond Good and Evil (Friedrich Nietzsche), The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (John Maynard Keynes). URL (consulted 29 June 2010): http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=7591

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to agree on the basic principles of either scientific practice and/or dialectical reason, how can we translate the synthesis of the sociological outlook, dialectics, scientific method, and Marx’s political economy into everyday language? Marxists and socialists have seemed to be somewhat naïve in relation to this issue given the general dearth of work that attempts to solve this problem (the current one included). An additional problem in moving sociological and Marxist ideas from scholarly research into public discourse is the transformations that happen on the way. As mentioned in Chapter One, too often the “top” ranked journals gravitate toward a decidedly non-Marxian set of interests, concepts, and language. The point is not that the standard methods of the discipline have nothing of value for Marxist research. Statistical measures on corporate and managerial networks, the influence of such networks on policies, the relationship between income inequality and life expectancy, among other issues, should be of interest to Marxist scholars as data points and evidence of outcomes in capital’s matrix of relationships. Sociologists, and others, working with traditional statistical methods study such things. At the same time, for an analysis congruent with Marx’s/Marxists’ concerns to make it into the top journals, authors are typically required to lose a great deal of Marxian terminology, adopt operational definitions, stay confined within traditional statistical measures, move from dialectical to analytical philosophies of science, etc. On the way, Marx’s critical project often loses its teeth. What Marx called the “capitalist mode of conception” sees—like Hegel—capitalism as an overcoming of alienation, where society and human nature finally come to coincide.19 In this view, as all past 19 “[H]uman nature is the true community of men…. Men, not as an abstraction, but as real, living, particular individuals, are this entity. Hence, as they are, so is this entity itself. To say that man is estranged from himself, therefore, is the same thing as saying that the society of this estranged man is a caricature of his real community, of his true species-life, that his activity therefore appears to him as a torment, his own creation as an alien power, his wealth as poverty, the essential bond linking him with other men as an unessential bond, and separation from his fellow men, on the other hand, as his true mode of existence, his life as sacrifice of his life, the realisation of his nature as making his life unreal, his production as the production of his nullity, his power over an object as the power of the object over him, and he himself, the lord of his creation, as the servant of his creation. “The community of men, or the manifestation of the nature of men, their mutually complementing the result of which is species-life, truly human life—this community is conceived by political economy in the form of exchange and trade. Society, says Destutt de Tracy, is a series of mutual exchanges. It is precisely this process of mutual

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societies were alienated from humanity’s natural condition, capitalism serves as their savior. This is why bourgeois ideology is essentially religious and thus explained is the close connection between religious (i.e., Christian) and market fundamentalisms. However, for Marx (1975b: 212), “private property … is the alienated species activity of man” (emphasis in the original). All that goes into our species activity and, by extension, those things with which it has internal relations suffer an alienated existence in bourgeois society, an inverted view compared to the bourgeois mode of conception. Included in our species activity are our relations with nature, our productive activity, the physical world we build, our exchange-relationships, and our relationships with each other as individuals and as a species as a whole. Further, all manner of knowledge-forms extend from these relations, including nationalism, gender norms, racist beliefs, religious doctrine, accepted science, and psychological and cognitive capacities. To grasp this issue, we do not have to posit a hypothetically real or possible pure state from which we are alienated (a Kantian view, one which Foucault criticized). Instead, we should investigate all the ways in which capital’s material relations shape our social relations and associated forms of knowledge. This can be, and is being, done in an empirical rather than speculative way by many Marxist scholars. It is on this issue of some hypothetical pure state from which humans are alienated that part of postmodern discourse took root. Prior Marxist discourse had already created several false petards upon which critics could foist Marx. The presumed metaphysical theory of universal history with communism as its final state was perhaps the primary one. This was the objection Lyotard and others made about “grand narratives”, a significant distortion of Marx’s view. Not understanding Marx’s relational approach to science, objecting to positivism’s supposed value-objectivity, and fearing the heavy hand of the ethnocentric colonialist, many in the post-WWII generation drifted into nihilistic relativism, bringing subsequent generations along with them. As, they assumed, the concept of “totality” leads into totalitarian politics, Marx deserved vilification along with the regimes holding his

integration. Society, says Adam Smith, is a commercial society. Each of its members is a merchant. “It is seen that political economy defines the estranged form of social intercourse as the essential and original form corresponding to man’s nature” (Marx 1975b: 217; emphases in the original).

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name hostage. As it was for the conservatives, the Soviet Union’s rise demonstrated the authoritarian nature of Marx’s thought for postmodernists, a complete misreading. Consequently, the fall of communist states for liberals, conservatives, and postmodernists (and even some Marxists) confirmed Marx’s demise. The non-sequitur is obvious. Unsure what Marx meant by “species-being” and rejecting essentialism, postmodernists celebrated difference, transgression, and deconstruction, though taking little time to show how such concepts could be systematic, scientific, and critical beyond speculative philosophy and simple objections on political grounds. Marx does not ask us to float freely, uninterested in what or who we are, or that we should quit asking about all that we can be, as if all in the world and all that we can know are simply relative. Marx’s answer to who we are is much more interesting: What and/or who we “are” is only possible to know at history’s end for that is who we will have become. History’s full sweep is what we are once we have come and gone. One feature of alienation is our inability to see ourselves this way and instead look for a settled, permanent, and absolute definition or none at all (thus postmodernists’ embrace of nihilism). Religion, philosophy, legal theory, and much of science remain trapped within this seductive pull. Though Marx views bourgeois society as the height of alienation, we must not ignore other characteristics with which he invests it. It is wellknown by now that “The Manifesto of the Communist Party” praises the bourgeoisie for their revolutionary and progressive spirit and the manner in which they defeated the feudal order and ushered in a new era. The Holy Family prefaced this view, where, after the fall of the French feudal order, Marx and Engels (1956: 165) describe how bourgeois society “broke out in powerful streams of life…. A storm and stress of commercial enterprise, a passion for enrichment, the frenzy of the new bourgeois life whose first self-enjoyment is pert, lighthearted, frivolous and intoxicating.” Something new, unique, and revolutionary develops in capitalist society, where old bonds are broke and social life teems with possibilities never seen before. This is likely one reason why those outside the system (and, less often, those newly brought in) often embrace it. Capitalism does create great wealth and produce some social freedom. It erodes (many) past superstitions. It creates a lively market where people engage and mingle. It allows individuals to travel wider distances, weakening the stifling effects of traditional community and kinship ties. Its technological drive can help us overcome individual-biological and social limits nature once imposed

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on us. Those interested in Marxist criticism, scholarship, and activism should not ignore these realities. Marx (1988a: 26) also believed that “When society is in a state of decline, the worker suffers most severely. The specific severity of his burden he owes to his position as a worker, but the burden as such to the position of society.” Marx’s political-economic critique is sensitive to how the vast majority of people in capitalism participate as workhorses for industry, while none-too-few experience the fate of falling through the cracks with the system’s gyrations. Moreover, a mediaeducational bubble obscures the view people deep within core capitalist centers have of what the world-system entails for those in the periphery. When conditions of hunger, violence, disease, and slavery in the system’s colonial suburbs and ghettos do make it into the news, the posture of such reports is as if people there either simply cannot manage running a society or have fallen victim to some external force, e.g., weather, crop failure, dictators, unscrupulous human traffickers, among others. No doubt, these occur, but within the context of systemic relationships. For instance, the mainstream media discussed the rice shortages of 2008—which resulted in riots, privation, and graft—in terms of rising demand from India and China, the rising cost of fuel for shipping crops, and the diversion of some crops to production of synthetic fuels for heating and transportation. What the media did not discuss, however, was that these prior facts created a situation for merchants and other commodity traders where shipping rice to the poorest countries—countries more likely to depend on rice for feeding large populations—was less profitable (or not profitable at all) than shipping elsewhere. Many crucial facts—e.g., that food as a commodity must cost money (a general ideological construct in bourgeois society), that many countries under IMF/World Bank discipline are/were required to shift to exporting local agricultural goods to repay debts and thus become dependent on food imports, and that during a tight global market the poorest countries are the least profitable—did not make it into the story’s popular frame.20 One cannot help but wonder if this is

20 Something similar happened in mass media reports of Somali “pirates” in the 2007–2009 period. The tenor of stories gave the impression that unscrupulous pirates overran the country and were holding shipping lanes hostage for personal again. Though ships were seized and crews threatened with violence (sometimes suffering it), several key features were consistently omitted. Somalia is a failed state since the US

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because these facts—not at all new—tell us something about the antihumanism of the market, capitalist behavior, and the logic of the system as a whole.21 From the observation of a social formation’s present configuration, it is tempting to assume its existence, its historical development, and its current resulting “functional” relationships were/are inherent in its origins. Like evolution in the natural world, social change usually happens at such a pace that is hard to observe its qualitative changes within normal human cognitive frames. If social change appears to have stopped, then it appears as if the end it has produced explains human social and biological evolution. It is with such teleological reasoning that prevailing social ideologies justify their dominance over the individual, as they depict the current configuration of their host society as somehow part of God’s Will, normal, or otherwise necessary. Growing up in any society makes that society appear as natural and relatively timeless, its conditions of existence a product of its appearances. “But there is also something else behind it. Once interconnection has been revealed, all theoretical belief in the perpetual necessity of the existing conditions collapses, before the collapse takes place in practice” (Marx 1988b: 69). Thus, the view that Marx’s materialist and historical dialectic—i.e., a wider historical lens that brings processes and relationships of change into one’s field of vision—facilitates makes faith in

invasion of Mogadishu (1992–1993) left the infrastructure in ruins. Somalia’s coastline has become the destination of trash and waste that European industry and international shipping dump in the seas. As a result, local peoples have increasingly lost their ability to feed the population through traditional fishing industries. Those seizing ships claim their ransom amounts to “taxing” international freighters using their shipping lanes (no doubt, their motives are not simply such altruism and they enjoy a share of the boodle higher than anyone they might distribute it to). The point here is that media reports depicted the situation as the product of the immorality of the pirates while overlooking what socio-historical conditions created their motivations. 21 “Generally, the railways gave of course an immense impulse to the development of Foreign Commerce, but this commerce in countries which export principally raw produce increased the misery of the masses. Not only that the new indebtedness, contracted by the governments on account of the railways, increased the bulk of imposts weighing upon them, but from the moment every local production could be converted into cosmopolitan gold, many articles formerly cheap, because of invendible to a great degree, such as fruit, wine, fish, deer, etc., became dear and were withdrawn from the consumption of the people, while, on the other hand, the production itself, I mean the special sort of produce, was changed according to its greater or minor suitableness for exportation, while formerly it was principally adopted to its consumption in loco” (Marx 1991f: 357; emphases in the original).

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any Religion’s god or belief in the necessity of an elite’s rule both more easily questioned and politically threatening. In a historically rooted, materialist and scientific outlook, shamans, chiefs, popes, kings, and presidents all receive notice of their termination, not by Marxist dogma, but rather by history’s movement when grasped dialectically. This is probably why Marx (1992a: 29) declared dialectical reason “a scandal” to ruling class outlooks, given that it is “in its essence critical and revolutionary” as “it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence.” For Marx (1989c: 344), the need for Capital to be “accessible to the working class” was the “consideration [that] outweighs any other”, though this does not mean he was uninterested in its reception from the scholarly community. The certainty he gained from scientific thinking (in the relational sense) formed many of his views, social and political. Opinions—his or any others—about social relations are useful for social action if we can transform them into changed material relations. This is one reason why Marx’s political views are conflated with Idealism, i.e., as a general abstract philosophical theory. Marx believed that humans, in structuring their social life, should construct a set of relations as to maximize their freedom to create in accordance with their needs—physical, intellectual, emotional, and species-wide— and to guide this transformation toward collectively desired ends. This view provides another basis for the social critique in his work. Marx concluded that capitalism set the stage for the potential for humans to reclaim and control their own destiny whereby those on the margins of power and subject to it could escape domination and exploitation and exercise their creativity freely. Marx based this conclusion on the idea that our species—as a species—does not require classes or states as a social foundation to keep our biological existence going. However, though capitalism brings more of the working class into common contact and common social conditions, there is no surefire guarantee they will respond in the way Marx proposes they will.22 What does this mean for mass society? Did Marx reach the wrong conclusions? 22 As Lebowitz (2009: 350) writes, “We know that capital has the tendency to stimulate co-operation in production among workers. In choosing the forms of cooperation, though, how likely is it for capital to introduce changes in the labour process that strengthen the unity and self-consciousness of workers? Capital encourages the development of the collective worker in itself but has no interest in the emergence of the collective worker for itself ” (emphasis in the original).

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That is, even if capitalism creates such possibilities, why would a people suffering an alienated existence act in the revolutionary way Marx thinks they will? This is an issue Marxist scholarship has insufficiently addressed and for which this book has no ready answers. A separation remains in public discourse between science’s conclusions and what we do with them—i.e., the multi-sited struggle over what we should do in human life to human life (including nature). Humans necessarily base their action, in part, on a conscious knowledge or vision that things can be and should be a certain way. An imaginative leap allows us to see what the present is making possible. Political discourse is always about making cognitive leaps and animating a politics of the present with a vision of the future generated by such leaps. Praxis involves locating within the present its potential outcomes, projecting them into the future in a form whose development one wants to assist, and then using this vision of the future to animate political social action in the present. This is true of all politics, whether conservative, liberal, or radical. In Marx’s radical and revolutionary vision of one possible future, the gap between appearance and essence dissolves and “religion”—in the institutional sense—disappears (as is well-known, so do classes and states). Will symbolic ritualistic practice disappear and/or new ones fail to emerge? I cannot say. What Marx’s views do point to is the probably that given that the slow but perceptive institutionalization of religion—in alienated social conditions—has thus far been the official arbiter of things holy/god related, as the institutionalization of religious organization no longer has its material conditions of existence, so too will conceptions of god, morality, spirituality, etc. change. Will these disappear? Any definite conclusions necessarily venture into speculation. What is a “predictable” sociological inference is that such ideas as we have known them will undergo unalterable change and will less likely take forms of institutional control. The dialectical view conceives of social forms as transitory, which is why Marx (1992a: 29) calls it an “abomination to bourgeoisdom.” Mainstream social science is at its most politically conservative when it constructs historically dislocated models as if there did not exist social systems with unique logics requiring analyses specific to them, an approach any anthropologist would find appalling if applied to hunter-gatherers, pastoralists, and so on. Bridging an anthropological view with one sociological, we must instill our models of the modern world with an understanding of its historical origin as well as with the

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relations of class and power that characterize it. Unfortunately, this is not the conventional approach in sociology. To view our condition in capitalist society as reflecting universal social laws is to construct a science based on and steeped within modern relationships of power while covering them up, a place where scientific and political implications meet. Marx’s dialectical method aspires to provide no institutionalized power within capitalist society intellectual tools for disguising the disciplining of its subjects, a view challenging the basic tenets of traditional social theory, as well as pillars of political and religious dogma and their representatives’ positions of privilege. Today’s social structure is the source of many empirical social realities that are problematic and capable of change (and others no doubt progressive and advantageous and to be preserved). A social science would be remiss to ignore those social problems that we might alleviate through altering our social relations. Still, nothing happens in midair and there are no clean breaks with the past. What the world will look like next year depends on what the present makes possible. One cannot predict with certainty how far/long different parts and elements will survive but we have more than uneducated guesses without any data to inform them as to what the future will look like. Marx believed that capitalism contained socialism within it, which needed to be unleashed. Should the right variables come into mutual relations it would then be possible to offer a prognosis on our probable future, though carrying the same weight of probability as a weather forecast. Marxists are thus in the same league with meteorologists. Given the dominance social institutions have over individuals and society, Postone (2005: 70) argues that “history … should be understood as delineating a form of unfreedom.” Class societies, especially, because of their systems of property and methods of appropriation, undermine access to creativity and freedom for the individual. Class history has been a history of human estrangement from itself, and class struggle has been an attempt to combat the more readily apparent aspects of this. For Marx, capitalism provides us the first best opportunity to rid ourselves of this estrangement. This will not be possible without wielding the tools of science to reveal the conditions with which we must struggle.23 It took thousands of years to figure out the

23 “That form of unfreedom is the object of Marx’s critical theory of capitalism, which is centrally concerned with the imperatives and constraints that underlie the

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why of planetary gyrations, what meteorites are, or why rain falls. Our understanding of disease is improved but incomplete. Aristocratic and royal privileges still maintain sway over swaths of the world. We invented gods and myths to explain all of these things and religious institutions maintain their legitimacy, no matter their past crimes or the historical inconsistency of their doctrines. Intellectuals similarly point to laws of nature, god, or genes to explain social relations that predominate, depending on time and place. The idols we create entrance us, and thus to disallow that there are interchanges between power relations and scientific practice is to deny historical realities. Capitalist material relations’ pace of change provide against any ossification of social relations, where “All that’s solid melts into air” and we are “at last compelled to face with sober senses [our] real conditions of life and [our] relations with [our] kind” (Marx and Engels 1978a: 476). Capitalism, however, does not produce a socialist classconsciousness as a matter of reflex and socialism is not a ghostly figure of the future pulling the marionette strings of the present. In their struggles, and on their way to a potential class-consciousness, classes may or may not have a coherent set of ideological and material grievances and any such grievances might not take on a class character at all. When class-consciousness does form, it results from a mixture of past conditions and knowledge of them, present conditions and knowledge of them, and the range of future possibilities contained in the present and knowledge of these (thus explained is capitalists’ efforts to own the mass media, fund universities, and ally with religious organizations). Class-consciousness may be composed of and often has had flavors of socialist visions, given that working classes have rarely rallied for a more lopsided concentration of wealth. However, they occasionally have and here political/economic leaders often mobilize religious rhetoric to disguise or deflect attention from this (e.g., the corporatebacked Tea Party in the 2010 US midterm elections dressed up as a historical dynamics and structural changes of the modern world. That is, rather than deny the existence of such unfreedom by focusing on contingency, the Marxian critique seeks to uncover its basis and the possibility of its overcoming. I am suggesting that the very processes underlying the collapse of accumulation regimes that had declared themselves heirs to Marx have reasserted the central importance of global historical dynamics, that those dynamics can be understood best within the framework of a critical theory of capitalism, and that approaches that do not engage this level of analysis are fundamentally inadequate to our global social universe. That is, the historical transformations of recent decades point to the importance of a renewed encounter with Marx’s critical analysis of capitalism” (Postone 2005: 70).

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populist movement, one that attracted many religious conservatives). One version of freedom, as a result, is Christian mental slavery and bourgeois freedom to work or go hungry.24 Additionally problematic is the illusion of representative democracy within a class structure, where formal participation of publics in choosing between one representative of capital or another casts a cloak of moral authority on the state as an expression of popular will.25 Marx’s method does not simply present findings but rather engages his audience in a series of complex inquiries that strive to bring greater insight into social processes, revealing to them heretofore hidden realities to which they are subject in order to aid them in their political action. For Marx, one of our central challenges is to confront the realities of class power associated with capitalism. Scientists, intellectuals, and/or everyday people are not under the obligation to answer this call nor must they act in the way(s) Marx advocates. But act they do and to suppose knowledge is a-political is both disingenuous and simply counter-factual. In the service Marx’s dialectical science provides to politics, we can use knowledge about the range of possible futures today’s social structure makes imaginable to inform our intellectual and political work, while keeping in mind there are varieties of potential outcomes. Many future potentialities exist in the possibilities of the present and in other secondary contingencies and there is no guarantee of particular outcomes, especially given realities further into the future one includes in their thinking. Taken as a whole, in providing several ways to address empirical material with a method and analytical framework that can reveal and expose social relations that have hitherto remained unclear, obfuscated, misunderstood, and/or hidden, Marx’s method challenges conventional social science. Done well, done dialectically, science, when put to work as Marx did, is an enterprise with radical implications. Marx offers us a way to think about how teleological reason functions as an ideological cover, but also how, when stripped of metaphysics 24 “The self-confidence of the human being, freedom, has first of all to be aroused again in the hearts of these people. Only this feeling, which vanished from the world with the Greeks, and under Christianity disappeared into the blue mist of the heavens, can again transform society into a community of human beings united for their highest aims, into a democratic state” (Marx 1975l: 137). 25 “Or has German Social-Democracy indeed been infected with the parliamentary disease, believing that, with the popular vote, the Holy Ghost is poured upon those elected, that meetings of the faction are transformed into infallible councils and factional resolutions into sacrosanct dogma?” (Marx and Engels 1991: 400).

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and theology, we must be willing to become agents in goal-directed struggles without assuming that some finalist endpoint—some utopia—awaits us at the end of the day. Capitalism has changed in many ways since Marx wrote but, at the same time, its core features have remained. In viewing Marx’s work the way internal relations theorists argue—i.e., recognizing his central methods of abstraction and his core moments of inquiry—there are reasons for optimism that his ideas retain valuable insights for all serious thinkers and students of society.

AFTERWORD It would be a mistake to interpret this book as an exercise in theoretical rumination. Rather than aspiring to offer a new theory about society as such, its intent is to examine Marx’s methodological principles and how these inform an understanding of relationships between science and politics. Compared to my Marx’s Scientific Dialectics, this book provides more focus on why we must study political-economic relationships of power and how conventional approaches often mask or otherwise distort what these are and how they work. One principle advocated across Marx’s works that I have tried to illuminate is that theory and knowledge must be grounded in the analysis of systematically observed empirical conditions. Method, political-economic power, research, these are the central issues. A critic might reasonably ask why more extended empirical demonstrations of such principles are absent from these two works. Simply put, one must tackle one issue at a time. Questions about the state, labor, and social inequalities are additional issues for elaboration of Marx’s scientific and dialectical inquiries that interest me. Such a research agenda, in terms of Marxist studies, raises a problematic issue. Marx’s work is generative for studies that focus on political economy, religion, the state, dialectics, and so on. However, there seems to be a division of labor here that fragments such studies in a way that they sometimes fail to inform one another. And when non-Marxist social scientists encounter Marxists’ studies in relation to their own research on substantive topics such as race and gender, among others, they find little that they think they can use. One reason is that the application of Marx’s method to empirical research is still an ongoing project, where most works on method stay in that realm without venturing too far outside. That is, very often Marxist methodologists do not demonstrate the application of that very method. Also, the question of a Marxist method often is ignored in conventional sociology. As a result, the widespread assumption tends to hold that it is difficult to impossible to apply “Marxism” to other issues sociologists study. But Marx’s method is not simply something for theoreticians to debate but can and should be used in our continuing empirical research, as this is what his method is meant to inform.

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I must address an issue that is likely to be controversial, as it is something that concerns me about the state of Marxian studies. Empirical research for Marxian studies must be its highest priority. And by this I mean not simply or only reading Marx and writing books about him. This is already done by many people, and indeed I am one of them. It is the kind of books and discourse that often dominate Marxian studies that I find troubling. More specifically, Marxian studies are often too heavily influenced by philosophical discourse, which is ironic given Marx’s and Engels’s efforts to expose philosophy’s limitations and move beyond them. Here, I also lump in many sociological theoreticians who, in my opinion, often fail at differentiating philosophical discourse from methodological and theoretical models (a sociological critic of mine appears to have read my previous book from the vantage point of philosophy, unawares that this is what he was doing). I hope to have shown in both Marx’s Scientific Dialectics and in Marx and the Politics of Abstraction that, for Marx, we must move beyond speculative theorizing, Kantian searches for abstract Truth, and any sort of investigation that is not rooted in a systematic examination of the concrete world animated by sound principles of analysis. Many philosophers will object, I am sure, and argue that they do examine things systematically and use sound principles of analysis. Of course, it is easy to over generalize when making such charges as I have. However, it seems to me that most Marxist discourse coming from philosophers have concepts leading their exposition and then choose an empirical case with which to demonstrate their interpretive value. This is an approach Marx criticized as an a priori construction and speculation. Much of philosophy, in my reading, remains within this Kantian orbit, often without recognizing it. In my last chapter of this book I mentioned Foucault as a theorist whose work corresponds well with an internal relations approach. Was he not a philosopher? Yes, it is true this is how he is understood. But I do not really see him as doing philosophy. In his books what one finds are deep researches of history, examinations of empirical information, and analyses worked up after the collection of the relevant data, just as Marx says we should do. What we do not find in Foucault is a litany of possibly interesting observations about how different societies have different toilets that reveal something of their cultural character or concepts plucked from the sky where rhizomes and nomads reign. One does not find concepts stretched beyond their

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utility, where empires exist without states that center them. Speculative theorizing, no matter how insightful it may be, is no substitute for positive knowledge. Foucault’s work may be burdened with abstract language at times, but there is no doubt he builds his framework from a thorough investigation of empirical detail relevant to the study of multiple historical and structural relationships. Sociologists too often fail to distinguish between the type of theoretical derivation Marx asks of us and speculative theorizing. One anecdotal example here will suffice. A former student once called and said one of his graduate courses was examining the issue of alienation. The professor had them watch the movie The Matrix. The lead character Neo is given a choice between two pills, one which would take him back to his humdrum life in the official world and another that would show him the true reality of the human predicament. Choosing the latter, Neo discovers that all of our life is a simulation; that we are controlled by a digital world of computers and villains that have us do their bidding. We are literally trapped in a caged world where our eyes, bodies, and minds are fed the reality our overseers want us to have, and we are clueless as to our prison. A little searching on the internet reveals that this supposed metaphor for alienation has animated student discussions, online chat rooms, and even professorial comment all over the country and world. I was unimpressed and disconcerted that the use of The Matrix as an example of alienation was uncontroversial for many people. But this is a good demonstration of the speculation that thrives in the philosophical mind, though it ultimately amounts to nothing more than musing and guesswork, interpretation more than positive knowledge. I told my colleague that the selection of a pop cultural film was not my objection so much so as was the particular movie used. I offered my own choice of what might be closer to a Marxian demonstration of alienation, Fight Club. In this movie, the main character (who remains unnamed throughout the movie) works for an automobile company and his job is to calculate whether or not there should be recalls on flawed vehicles (i.e., if the cost of the number of predictable deaths that lead to a number of predictable lawsuits is less than the cost of recalling all cars with questionable parts, no recall is done). He hates his white collar job and his boss, and finds himself in one city after another to do his investigations while losing sleep and track of time. He has no close friends and his personal identity is wrapped up in his consumption of goods from Ikea and its ilk. After experiencing insomnia for weeks on

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end, he learns to make connections at self-help groups for those with terminal and other serious diseases. There he learns to cry and this leads to him being able to sleep. Without going into too much of the movie, he later finds himself leading other men in a “fight club”, an underground boxing exhibition of sweat, blood, and brotherhood which later morphs into guerilla attacks on corporate culture. My point is this. To see The Matrix as demonstrating alienation is to posit the question, “How do we know what we see around us is real? Couldn’t it be that our society programs us to see things just a certain way?” Well, yes, that could be. But what happens in this movie has nothing to do with our real reality or Marx’s concept of alienation. In Fight Club we find a character whose creative work is controlled by others, whose job it is to prevent those at risk from corporate power from having a fair redress, sacrificing them at the altar of profit, a person whose identity is submerged by consumer culture, who cannot make connections with other human beings, and who, we later find out, has no idea that his personality has split in two and what he really has been doing. If one were to use this film as a point of departure to discuss alienation, they could at least point to representations of real things that have real outcomes in a world that is not located in an abstract fictitious netherworld, as is found in The Matrix. The Matrix may be acceptable from a point of view entranced by philosophy, but if one were to use a film that helps us understand alienation sociologically, then Fight Club is preferable as its plot unfolds because of the conditions in a real world—our capitalist world—its characters experience. This is not to say Fight Club is necessarily coherent or convincing as a demonstration of alienation; there is some exaggeration and license in the movie that drift toward the fantastic. Nevertheless, there is a difference between applying an a priori theory in a speculative way to an abstract case (The Matrix and philosophy) versus showing how the loss of control of one’s creative capacities leads to estrangement from one’s work, the product of that work, one’s self, others, and the human species as a whole. And it has a target in the real world, corporate capitalism. This is fit for Marx’s theory of alienation, which is something meant to apply to our real conditions of existence, not as a metaphor about the unknown unknowns in the world. Personally, I find Marx’s concept of alienation somewhat slippery in terms of applying it in empirical demonstration. Nevertheless, should one use this concept, it provides us no positive knowledge if its application remains in the

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orbit of speculation. And it is the resistance to such approaches that Marx asks of real science. There is no shortage of explanation for the disciplinary mishandling of Marx, his method, how to use it, and on what topics we should do so. Sociologists seem to gravitate away from studies related to dialectics and the philosophy of science (something different than philosophy per se). Philosophers tend away from learning principles of systematic data collection, engaging in systematically collecting such data, and ignore Marx’s concerns with economics. Economists tend to ignore Marx’s dialectical method as a nuisance and often simply abstract the issue of historical analysis out of their models. Marxist dialecticians often spend so much time studying his method that they tend to be less skilled in political-economic analysis. While most empirical research in Marxian studies comes from those engaged in political economy, very often these scholars also spend less time engaging in a deep study of Marx’s methodological principles (exceptions exist to all these instances, no doubt). The result is that it is difficult to find anyone working with the range of skills and concerns that marked Marx’s own work (myself included). Our disciplinary boundaries have handcuffed our studies. Attending conferences where Marxists meet is sometimes dispiriting. Though it is true that good and valuable research is being done by Marxist scholars, one nevertheless finds much too much guesswork, ruminations, abstract ideas confronting abstract ideas, political rhetoric presented as if it is analysis, and so on. Like Nietzsche who criticized his colleagues ruthlessly, Marx made his move away from philosophy only to have us today find philosophers appropriating his ideas in their vocational pursuits. My accusations, if they can be called that, do not apply to all of those doing work in the Marxist tradition and I wish not to overstate my case. One can find valuable work being done by researchers who examine hard data on labor markets, industrial capacity, standards of living of everyday people, foreign policy, and the like. Others are hard at work dealing with ongoing controversies, unsettled debates, and remaining problems in our understanding of Marx’s methods and core theories. And still others have taken accurate and powerfully generative readings of Marx’s method and understanding of both history and capitalist society to produce new research on topics of contemporary import. But as a whole, many Marxian studies seem very often to reproduce the problems that Marx spent much time criticizing.

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How many traditional readings of Marx must we overturn? Marx was no metaphysician. He did not see dialectic as a thing in the world. He never used the thesis-antithesis-synthesis construction. He was not an economic determinist. He forwarded no universal sequential stage theory of history. Socialism was not to be an authoritarian state where social freedoms faded into the past. Communism was not an inevitable outcome of capitalist development. And, as I show elsewhere (Paolucci 2010), his view of labor and value were not restricted to capitalist society. Many in both the pro- and anti-Marx camps have situated their work in respect to these formulations, seeing them as accurate reflections of Marx’s ideas to be embraced or rejected. Refuting an interpretation of Marx that is itself a misinterpretation has done much to discredit Marx while giving such critics additional purchase in academic circles. Just as a lie gets half-way around the world before the truth gets its pants on, many putative refutations of Marx remain ensconced in academic convention, even though what is being refuted is often nothing Marx forwarded in the first place. We need a reset button on many of our debates and discourses on Marx. In order to ever-improve our research, we must put a mastery of Marx’s method at the head of our inquiries. We must understand his method of critique, what he rejects and accepts in social research and why. We must understand his methods of abstraction and inquiry and what justifies his approach. We must respect his requirement that we ground our work in both history and the studied observation of our real concrete conditions of life. We must understand capital as modern society’s social organizing principle and how the state in capitalism develops as an institution the bourgeoisie needs to manage its privileges and affairs. We must do all of this while resisting speculation, a priori theoretical constructions, individualistic reductionism, inverting the relationships between our primary variables, imprecise language, and faulty forms of reasoning. If we do not do these things, Marx’s work will be unable to help us in the work he wants us to do and to which we often say we aspire. Even if we can do what is proposed above, there are other questions we must ask, and these are uncomfortable questions that might bring a sense of nihilism to our work. And many of these questions we will be unable to answer until our near future unfolds. Can we really reset Marxian studies so that they are better fit for the work he asks of the endeavor of social science? Not only do disciplinary boundaries set up a hurdle for us to clear, but so do the many standard and conventional readings of Marx that are misplaced.

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Can we really “fix” Marxist discourse so that it at least can go forward based on an accurate characterization of his ideas and, if so, how long will this take? Even if we can do so, will any of our work make much of a difference in public discourse as to be a positive influence before it is too late? Though we must try, will we become a new Don Quixote fighting something that is beyond our efforts to change? It is possible that present and future Marxist scholars will produce outstanding work and the world just continues on its own way. Can capitalism really be attacked in a way where working classes have an opportunity for more freedom and control of their lives? Can the working classes do this work today in a way Marx thought possible for his time? It is possible that the working class missed its moment. And even if this is not true, we also must consider whether a global working class movement will ever be able to build a more rational future. Marx, remember, said that proletarian revolutions must engage in constant self-criticism in order to constantly improve. How likely will this be without devolution into schisms and factionalism? One implication of the theory of alienation is that a society in such a condition produces people with distorted perceptions of the world, a world that in turn produces knowledge ill-formed to tell them what they need to know. If the people suffering capitalism’s abuses and mystifications have little idea about from where the problems in their society come, what will happen as the system lurches from crisis to crisis in its terminal phase? Does not barbarism instead of communism seem to be the most likely outcome of our intermediate future? When have ruling classes simply ceased their own struggles to maintain their power and privilege as their system dissolves around them? The more likely scenario is one where they use the resources at hand to work up a new system that allows them to maintain a position of wealth and power. Will capitalists bring back feudalism but now on a global level as the current system collapses? To what extent is fascism on the immediate agenda? If there is a wider working class uprising that attains any sort of success, is it not possible that the bourgeoisie would rather blow up the world rather than lose control of it? And, pressingly, will capitalism destroy the ecological foundations any future society will need before we can prevent this from happening? Is there anything Marxist scholars can really do about any of this other than speaking out to a limited audience? These seem to me to be some of the most pressing and intractable questions our real conditions are forcing us to confront today.

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INDEX – MARX AND THE POLITICS OF ABSTRACTION A Priori (A Priori Conceptualization) 28, 33, 35, 36, 39, 44, 47, 50, 53, 55, 67, 73, 76, 93, 126, 133, 134, 152, 153, 162, 163, 174, 180, 192, 210, 212, 214 Abstraction, Method of (Abstracting) 9–17, 21, 23, 24, 29–31, 33–35, 37, 39, 45, 46, 49, 55–61, 63–66, 70, 73, 78, 82–84, 87, 88, 91, 95– 99, 101, 104, 108, 110, 111, 124, 126, 127, 131, 133, 134, 149, 150, 168, 173–175, 180, 184, 186–188, 193, 198, 208, 210, 214 Abstracting Internal Relations (see also Extension, Level of Generality, Vantage point, Politics of Abstraction) 95 Abstractions 9–17, 23, 24, 29–31, 33–35, 37, 39, 46, 57–61, 64–66, 70, 73, 78, 82–84, 88, 95–97, 99, 101, 108, 111, 126, 131, 133, 134, 168, 173, 180, 184, 188, 193 General Abstractions 12, 73, 111 “Hypostatised” Abstractions 131 “Accidents” 34, 166, 174, 176 Action 16, 17, 21, 22, 25, 35, 42, 45, 49, 50, 55, 60, 62, 63, 78–81, 83, 91, 101, 115, 137–139, 141, 168, 170, 173, 174, 177, 180, 183, 185, 186, 188, 203, 204, 207 Agency (Agents) (see also Freedom) 4, 11, 29, 50, 71, 82, 84, 94, 112, 154, 166, 173, 175, 176, 179, 180, 208 Agrarian Societies 102 Ahistoricism (Ahistorical) (see also Historical Analysis) 28–32, 44, 53, 73, 111, 122 Alienation (Alienated) 92, 126, 177, 183, 184, 198, 200, 211, 212, 215 Analysis (Analytical) 4, 7, 11–15, 17, 18, 21–23, 25, 27, 33, 36, 37, 42, 45–50, 52, 53, 58, 59, 61, 62, 64, 65, 67, 69, 74, 78, 79, 83–85, 90–95, 97–100, 102, 104, 106, 108, 109, 111, 113–116, 119–127, 129, 131, 132, 146, 147, 149, 150, 162, 163, 166–168, 171, 173–175, 178, 179–183, 187, 191, 192, 194–198, 206, 207, 209, 210, 213

Analytical Philosophy (Analytical Logic) 115, 123, 127, 146, 175 Analytical Marxism (Analytical Marxists) (see also Wright, Erik O.) 49, 50, 113, 114, 120 Anomaly (Anomalies, Anomalous) 19 Antagonism (Antagonisms) 79, 89, 107, 125, 160 Anthropology (Anthropologists) 1, 5, 8, 140, 152, 204 Appearance (Appearances) 16, 24, 28, 38–40, 56, 57, 66, 88, 92, 105, 126, 133, 147, 170, 186, 187, 192, 195, 202, 204 Appropriation of Wealth (Appropriate) (see also Value, Surplus-Value) 46, 114 Arbitrary (Arbitrary Divisions, Arbitrariness) 36, 51, 123, 125, 187, 188 Aristotle 137, 161 Art (Artistic) 6, 16, 91, 151, 161 Asiatic Mode of Production 75, 160, 162, 163, 165 Assumption (Assumptions) 10, 13, 14, 17, 20, 22, 25, 29, 31, 32, 42, 49, 55, 57–59, 62, 68, 82, 83, 85–91, 93, 94, 108, 126, 134, 151, 154, 155, 162, 173, 174, 179, 182, 187, 191, 209 Asymmetry (Asymmetrical) 88, 90, 95, 134 Asymptote (Asymptotic) 20, 129 Atomism (see also Individualism, Reductionism) 44, 53 Backward Study of History (see also Historical Analysis) 56, 60, 61, 72, 82, 96, 106, 107, 146, 169, 193 Barbarism 79, 215 Base (see also Base-Superstructure Model, Superstructure) 10, 14, 64, 67, 70, 75, 192 Base-Superstructure Model (see also Base, Superstructure) 67, 192 Bias (see also Confirmation Bias) 6, 7, 11–13, 16, 23, 25, 26, 31, 36, 52, 54, 71, 104, 108, 130, 182, 187, 188, 193

228

index

Biology (Biological) 2, 13, 14, 138, 139, 140, 141, 167, 186, 194, 200, 202, 203 Boundary (Boundaries, Boundary Drawing) 25, 41, 64, 85, 86, 88–91, 93–96, 98, 100, 101, 104, 108–110, 119, 123, 128, 131–134, 213, 214 Bourgeoisie (see also Class, Proletariat) 41, 46, 104, 133, 154, 159, 181, 200, 214, 215 Bureaucracy 45 Bureaucratic Classes 118 Business Class (see also Corporations) 3, 8, 112 Capital (see also Interest, Profit, Rent) 3–7, 12, 24, 25, 27, 30, 35–37, 53, 59, 61, 77, 78, 84, 90, 92, 94, 96–98, 102–105, 112, 116–121, 124, 133, 147–149, 154, 164, 170, 181, 183, 186–192, 194– 200, 203, 207, 214 Logic of Capital 5, 53, 76, 103, 116, 122 Organic Composition of Capital 77, 98 Capital (Volume I) 36, 40–44, 64, 71, 73–76, 107, 111, 114, 132, 155, 166, 168, 175 Capitalism (see also Class Systems, Level of Generality, Political Economy) 4, 7, 12–15, 25, 26, 30, 40, 42, 44, 47, 51, 56, 59–63, 66, 70–73, 75–82, 84, 92, 95–106, 108–113, 115, 116, 120–122, 124, 125, 134, 144, 148, 152–155, 163, 167–171, 173–176, 179–181, 183, 187–192, 196– 201, 203–208, 212, 214, 215 Capitalist Mode of Conception (see also Ideology) 42, 198 Cause (Causality, Causes) 16, 17, 19, 29, 30, 38, 39, 49, 70, 103, 132, 137, 139, 140, 141, 145, 153, 154, 156, 159, 174, 175, 181, 186 Central Tendencies (see also Laws) 59 Centrality of Labor (see also Labor) 46, 67, 82, 91, 93, 102, 192 Certainty (see also Uncertainty) 16, 20, 22, 143, 179, 203, 205 Christianity (see also Religion) 24, 75, 76, 141, 142, 144, 145, 156, 184, 185, 207 Catholic Church, The 2, 107 Civil War in France, The 69, 70, 80 Class (Classes) (see also Bourgeoisie, Business Class, Middle Class,

Proletariat, Ruling Class, Working Class) 3, 5, 7–9, 12, 13, 23–26, 36, 37, 42, 45, 46, 49, 52, 53, 55–57, 59–62, 67, 69, 70, 71, 73, 75–81, 84, 85, 92–100, 102–109, 112–125, 132–134, 137, 144, 153, 154, 156–158, 160–163, 165–167, 171–173, 175–177, 179, 181–184, 186–192, 196, 197, 203–207, 215 Class Location (see also Wright, Erik O.) 49, 114–118, 121, 122, 134 Class Structure 60, 95, 106, 108, 114, 119–121, 124, 125, 190, 207 Class Struggle 12, 46, 59, 67, 69, 71, 75, 79, 96, 105–108, 118, 154, 157, 161, 162, 165, 166, 172, 173, 175, 176, 183, 187, 188, 192, 205 Class Systems (Class Societies) (see also Appropriation, Capitalism, Feudalism, Slavery) 46, 59, 62, 67, 70, 73, 75, 76, 79, 81, 84, 95, 98, 99, 102, 160, 182, 205 Classification (Classificatory) (see also Taxonomy) 36, 43, 134 Cognition (Cognitive) 9, 22, 57, 91, 100, 101, 144, 195, 199, 202, 204 Colonial System (see also Imperialism) 1, 61, 78 Commensurability (Commensurableness) (see also Incommensurability) 28, 36, 37, 38, 40, 148, 149, 167 Commodify (Commodification) 190 Commodity (Commodities) 38, 40, 42, 75–78, 90, 97, 103, 109–111, 119, 133, 175, 180, 186, 193, 201 Commonsense (see also Knowledge, Popular Knowledge) 16, 17, 24, 25, 29, 34, 44 Communism (Communist) (see also Communist Project, Socialism) 23, 39, 42, 47, 53, 55, 60, 62, 63, 73, 75, 78–84, 99, 106, 158, 159, 161, 165, 168–171, 173–176, 192, 197, 199, 200, 214, 215 Primitive Communism 99, 106, 165 Soviet Communism 169 Comparative Method 47, 62, 64, 67, 74 Competition 41, 49, 118, 129, 162, 182, 189 Complexity 72, 102, 103–108, 115, 125, 134, 156 Concepts (Conceptualization) (see also A Priori Conceptualization) 11–13,

index 15, 16, 26, 28, 29, 31, 32, 42, 43, 45, 54, 57, 59, 62, 72, 73, 83, 87, 89, 91, 93, 96, 97, 99, 104, 109–111, 113–115, 122, 124, 126, 128, 130–133, 146, 148, 149, 154, 170, 187, 192, 193, 195, 198, 200, 210 Misconceptualize 96, 109 Conclusion (Conclusions) (see also Premise) 3, 9, 12, 13, 20, 22, 23, 25, 29, 35, 37, 38, 51–53, 75, 84, 95, 106, 137, 148, 153, 155, 162, 169, 181, 183, 188, 192, 193, 203, 204 Concrete 19, 21, 29, 33–35, 39, 45, 57, 58, 65, 66, 68, 73, 80, 88, 90, 101, 111, 115, 121, 122, 128, 131–133, 145–147, 151, 161, 166, 177, 180, 186, 189, 190, 210, 214 Confirmation Bias (see also Verify) 11, 36 Consciousness 10, 15, 29, 32, 34, 63, 66, 68, 69, 74, 79–81, 88, 120, 126, 127, 161, 194, 195, 197, 203, 206 Class-Consciousness 206 Conservative (Conservatism, Conservatives) 6, 8, 13, 20, 25, 50, 130, 146, 155, 156, 158, 159, 197, 200, 204, 207 Neo-Conservatives 158 Contingent (Contingency, Contingencies) (see Relations of Contingency) 6, 61, 66, 78, 79, 81, 87–89, 99, 103, 105, 106, 108, 113, 116, 124, 149, 173, 176, 206, 207 Contradiction (Contradictory) 8, 14, 20, 46, 47, 51, 62, 65, 66, 69, 70, 73, 77, 89, 91, 93, 97, 106, 107, 113, 116, 117, 119–121, 123, 124, 156, 181, 192, 195 Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, A 69, 70, 72, 114, 160 Marx’s Preface (see also Historical Materialism, Marx’s Supposed Stage Theory of History) 70, 114, 160, 162, 163, 165, 169 Control (Controlled Comparison, Controlling) (see also Experiment, Variables) 1, 3–5, 7, 9, 13, 19, 47, 48, 67, 68, 73, 75, 76, 92, 104, 106, 114, 118, 130, 143, 154, 203, 204, 211, 212, 215 Core, Regions of the WorldEconomy 153, 185, 193, 201 Corporations (Corporate) (see also Business Class) 3, 4, 6–9, 11, 12, 26,

229

30, 37, 40, 46, 51, 93– 95, 109, 115, 124, 134, 151, 179, 192, 198, 206, 212 Correlations (Correlated) 94, 104, 109, 123, 128, 129, 139, 143 Crisis (Crises) 25, 75, 77–79, 81, 98, 103, 196, 197, 215 Political Crisis (Crises) 81 Criteria (Criterion) 11, 18, 51, 102, 104, 106, 108, 165 Critique, Method of 26–28, 52, 55, 62, 70, 72, 73, 122, 214 False Criticism 27, 28 Negative Critique 28, 43–55 Positive Critique 44, 51 Self-Critique 43, 44 True Criticism 27, 28, 43, 44 Culture 10, 24, 101, 152, 167, 197, 212 Popular Culture 197 Darwin, Charles (see also Evolution, Natural Selection, Teleology) 8, 14, 138, 155, 161, 162, 172 Data (Data Collection) 4, 13, 18–21, 24–26, 29, 34, 45, 47, 49, 53, 59, 83, 95, 96, 100, 125, 129, 131, 132, 134, 169, 187, 193, 198, 205, 210, 213 Deduction (Deductive Method) (see also Induction) 35, 75, 77 Democracy (Democratic) 6, 79, 87, 155, 156, 169, 184, 197, 207 Description (Descriptions, Descriptive) 21, 32, 37, 62, 76, 87, 114, 133, 149, 181 Design (see also Intelligent Design) 47, 138, 141, 153, 172 Develop (Development) (see also Emerge) 2, 3, 6, 8–10, 12, 16, 19, 21, 22, 30–32, 34, 41–43, 45–47, 51, 53, 55–57, 59–79, 81, 86, 88, 89, 91, 94, 96, 100–106, 108, 111, 117–119, 121, 125, 126, 134, 139, 140, 146–149, 151–158, 160, 161, 163, 164, 166–176, 180, 184, 187, 188, 190, 191, 194, 200, 202–204, 214 Development, Theories of (Development Theory) 10 Dialectic 9, 10, 15, 22, 27, 28, 30, 34–36, 39, 42, 44–49, 54, 55, 62–67, 71–73, 75, 77, 83–86, 96, 113, 117–121, 122, 127, 128, 133, 146, 149, 170–175, 179, 188, 194, 195, 197, 198, 202–205, 207, 209, 210, 213, 214 “Dialectical Materialism” (see also Metaphysics) 48, 67, 170

230

index

Thesis-Synthesis-Antithesis 48, 49, 174, 214 Dialectical Method (see also Dialectic, Hegel, Science, Scientific Dialectic) 35, 55, 62, 65, 83, 84, 205, 213 Difference (Differences) (see also Identity) 72 Disciplines (see also Anthropology, Economics, Psychology, Sociology) 4, 6, 8, 9, 11, 52, 62, 184 Discourse 1, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 18, 23, 24, 26, 36, 44, 48, 51, 52, 53, 55, 60, 69, 75, 106, 124, 130, 138, 140, 144, 145, 146, 149, 152, 155, 167, 173, 179, 181, 182, 183, 184, 186, 193, 194, 196, 197, 198, 199, 204, 210, 214, 215 Scientific Discourse 9, 13, 26, 36, 52, 53, 138, 184 Doctrine (Doctrinaire, Doctrinal) (see also Dogma) 2, 3, 15, 26, 28, 44, 80, 138, 141, 143–146, 155–157, 160, 191, 199, 206 Dogma (Dogmatic) (see also Doctrine) 2, 3, 11, 20, 27, 28, 43, 44, 80, 166, 180, 203, 205, 207 Dominant (Domination) 1, 6, 11, 13, 25, 55, 70, 96, 101, 113, 122, 147, 154, 155, 180, 183, 185, 188, 189, 190, 194, 203 Durkheim, Emile 56, 66, 146 Dynamic (Dynamics) 12, 19, 20, 57, 59, 61, 66, 76, 78, 85, 86, 90, 91, 97, 104, 107–110, 115, 120–122, 126, 127, 134, 137, 140, 168, 173, 176, 180, 185, 190, 191, 206 Ecology (Ecological) 102, 105, 106, 215 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, The 79 Economics (Economists) 6, 8, 13, 26, 30, 31, 37, 41, 42, 54, 71, 72, 87, 97, 98, 122, 124, 151, 152, 164, 188, 189, 191–196, 213 Economy-of-Scale 118 Education (Educating) 7, 53, 87, 89, 94, 123, 158, 173, 176, 197, 201 Ehrman, Bart 142–144 Emerge (Emergent, Emergence) (see also Develop) 1, 10, 13, 20, 30, 32, 60, 61, 69, 79–82, 87, 95, 101, 106, 107, 109, 112, 116, 139, 140, 142, 145, 151, 153–155, 160, 163, 167, 171, 173, 175, 176, 182, 185, 188, 191, 192, 203, 204

Emirbayer, Mustafa 85, 86, 90, 91, 93, 95, 97, 98, 100, 104, 109, 110, 130–135, 193 Empiricism (Empirical Data) 21, 45, 47, 83, 131 Engels, Frederick 26, 29, 30, 32–35, 37–39, 42, 44–46, 48, 53, 65, 67, 68, 70, 80, 88, 92, 110, 114, 126, 144, 151, 159, 161–163, 166, 169, 173, 179, 183–185, 187, 194, 200, 206, 207, 210 Enlightenment 1, 26 Epistemology (Epistemological) 5, 14, 26, 55, 59, 62, 85, 86, 89–91, 93, 95, 96, 109, 179 Eras (Epochs, Era) (see also Periods) 64, 72, 102, 144, 160, 163–165, 170, 200 Essence (Essentialism in Marx) (see also Operational Definitions) 24, 28, 31, 32, 56, 66, 73, 100, 121, 125, 126, 133, 152, 154, 185, 186, 200, 203, 204 Essentialism 100, 125, 133, 200 Anti-Essentialism (AntiEssentialist) 10, 133 Eternal 29, 31, 42, 71, 142, 143, 145, 149, 163 Ethics (Ethical) 23, 53, 181, 182 Ethnography 5 Eugenics 13, 155, 167 Evaluation (Evaluate) 23, 52, 60, 111, 113, 114, 117, 183, 187–189 Evidence 9, 19, 38, 39, 56, 131, 151, 162, 168, 197, 198 Evolution (see also Darwin, Natural Selection, Teleology) 2, 5, 37, 62, 64, 69, 74, 79–82, 102, 105, 108, 138–141, 143, 144, 154–157, 160–162, 165, 168–171, 173, 174, 176, 183, 184, 186, 192, 200, 202–204, 215 Exchange 22, 38, 40, 42, 58, 75, 92, 97, 102, 103, 109, 111, 128, 147, 148, 168, 179, 198, 199 Exchange-Value (see Value) 38, 92, 111 Expansion (Expand) 3, 4, 6, 9, 10, 77, 94, 105, 117–119, 125, 132, 133, 159, 169, 170, 191 Experiment (Experiments, Experimental Model) (see also Control, Variables) 18, 47, 64, 75, 195 Explanation (Explanations, Explanatory) 4, 16–19, 21, 24, 27, 37, 46, 49, 50, 57, 58, 60, 62, 65, 71, 72, 77, 82, 84, 87, 88, 97–99, 105–113, 119, 121–123, 129, 134, 137–141, 146, 149,

index 153–155, 171, 176–178, 192, 196, 203, 213 Exploitation 4, 27, 60, 77, 84, 97, 98, 108, 112, 113, 121–123, 153, 154, 192, 196, 203 Expression (Expressions) 29, 31, 37, 38, 40, 42, 43, 57, 69, 88, 90, 94, 116, 127, 129, 130, 137, 138, 146, 147, 149, 152, 162, 177, 185, 186, 190, 207 Expropriation 71, 73, 154 Extension (see also Abstracting) 33, 56, 58, 59, 61, 65, 67, 72, 75, 78, 82, 83, 94–99, 112, 117, 118, 120, 126, 133, 188, 191, 192, 195, 199 External Relations (see also Internal Relations, Things) 86, 87, 90–93, 100, 128, 133 Facts 21, 36, 37, 39, 45, 48, 66, 74, 78, 82, 87, 109, 111, 138, 141, 142, 146, 153, 156, 172, 187, 201, 202 False Historization (see also Historical Analysis) 96 False Universalization (see also Universal) 28, 29, 32, 33, 54, 73, 101, 148, 152, 177, 191 Feudalism (see also Class Systems) 26, 59, 60, 71, 78, 96, 99, 103, 108, 110, 166, 169, 170, 175, 183, 190, 215 Feuerbach, Ludwig 30, 34, 39, 45, 53, 66, 70, 80, 180 Theses on Feuerbach 66, 70, 180 Fight Club 211, 212 Flexible (Flexibility) (see also Precision) Foucault, Michel 1, 5, 193, 194, 199, 210, 211 Framework (Frameworks) (see also Model) 6, 11–13, 16–18, 21, 24, 26, 27, 29, 36, 37, 42, 44, 54, 55, 59, 61, 62, 67, 73, 75, 82, 85–87, 90, 91, 93, 95, 97, 112, 115, 116, 120–123, 125, 126, 131, 133, 134, 146, 150, 152, 169, 171–173, 177, 178, 188, 190–193, 195, 206, 207, 211 Freedom (see also Agency) 9, 51, 200, 203, 205–207, 214, 215 Function (Functional, Functioning, Functions) 8, 12, 16, 31, 55, 57, 60, 70, 74, 87, 89, 95, 97, 101, 102, 104, 108, 122, 124, 125, 139–141, 146–148, 150–152, 161, 173, 176, 177, 187–189, 191, 193, 194, 202, 207 Future 19, 25, 47, 60–62, 75, 79, 81, 83, 84, 91, 139, 140, 141, 143, 145, 150,

231 157, 159, 160, 167–169, 173–177, 183, 192, 204–207, 214, 215

General (see also Level of Generality, Specific) 6, 12, 15, 18, 28, 30, 31, 34, 35, 37, 40–44, 46, 56, 58–61, 63–73, 75, 76, 78, 79, 81–83, 87, 89, 92, 94–100, 102, 103, 105, 107, 108, 110, 111, 114, 116, 121, 122, 126, 127, 129, 131–133, 138, 146, 149, 151–153, 155, 160, 162, 164–166, 170, 172, 174, 184, 187–193, 197, 198, 201–203, 210 General Abstractions 12, 73, 110, 111 Geography (Geographical) 10, 14, 94, 109, 118, 123, 129, 176 German Ideology, The 29, 49, 68, 70 God (Gods) 16, 17, 24, 29, 30, 33, 35, 39, 58, 97, 138, 139, 141–143, 145, 150, 152, 153, 156–159, 177, 181, 183, 187, 202–204, 206 Government (Governing) (see also State, The) 2, 6, 8, 10, 45, 75, 89, 119, 151, 189, 191, 196, 202 Grundrisse 37, 40, 57, 70, 72, 73, 75, 92, 164, 165, 190 Harding, Sandra 9, 10 Harvey, David 14, 15 Hegel, Georg (see also Dialectic, Dialectical Method, Hegelian, Idealism, Speculative Philosophy) 15, 29–36, 39, 43–46, 48, 49, 53, 65, 67, 70, 82, 91, 96, 97, 111, 117, 128, 133, 161, 177, 192, 197, 198 Hegelian (see also Dialectic, Dialectical Method, Idealism, Speculative Philosophy, Young Hegelians) 15, 28, 30, 31, 33, 37, 39, 44, 45, 49, 146, 151, 161, 163 History (Historical) 1, 6, 7, 11, 12, 14–16, 18, 19, 22–24, 29–35, 37, 39, 41, 42, 45–79, 81–84, 88–101, 103–109, 111–113, 116, 120, 121, 123, 125, 126, 127, 129, 132, 134, 138, 139, 142, 144–149, 151–174, 176, 177, 179–185, 187, 190–195, 199, 200, 202, 203, 205, 210, 213, 214 History, Stage Theories of Marx’s Supposed Stage Theory of History 168, 169, 214 Smith and Stage Theory of History 153 Rostow’s Stage Theory of History 169

232

index

Historical Analysis (Historicism) (see also Backward Study of History, False Historization, Historical Materialism) 11, 28–32, 44, 45, 63, 67, 73, 113, 120, 122, 182, 187, 213 Historical Materialism 7, 53, 55, 62, 66, 67, 70, 72, 75, 77, 78, 81, 83, 84, 122 Holy Family, The 28, 49, 70, 161, 200 Horticultural Societies 107 Human Nature 13, 32, 50, 54, 58, 71, 84, 97, 149, 150, 153–155, 177, 195, 198 Hunter-Gatherer Societies 106, 107, 204 Hypothesis (Hypotheses) 21, 63, 70 Idealism (Idealist, Ideas) 1, 10, 16, 20, 22, 28–36, 43–46, 49, 53, 54, 63, 65, 68, 69, 73, 74, 83–85, 91, 101, 105, 107, 114, 122, 130, 144, 155, 161, 166, 171, 172, 176, 180, 181, 186, 192, 193, 195, 197, 198, 203, 204, 208, 213, 214, 215 Identity (Identities) (see also Difference) 7, 41, 39, 57, 72, 84, 96, 110, 128, 133, 149, 174, 185, 193, 211, 212 Identity/Difference 39, 96 Ideology (Ideological) (see also Capitalist Mode of Conception) 7, 29, 31, 39, 41, 42, 49, 55, 60, 68–70, 72, 75, 106, 130, 153, 155, 156, 158, 159, 170, 171, 177, 182, 183, 185, 186, 195, 196, 199, 201, 206, 207 Imperialism (see also Colonial System) 112, 189, 197 Imprecision (see also Precision) 28, 36, 94 Income (see also Class Measurement) 4, 5, 7, 12, 87, 114, 121–125, 134, 198 Incommensurability (see also Commensurability) 28 Individualism (see also Atomism, Reductionism) 33, 49, 50, 63, 122 Induction (Inductive Method) (see also Deduction) 10, 47, 74 Industry (Industrialization) 30, 91, 104, 112, 125, 151, 154, 167, 170, 201, 202 Inquiry 1, 8, 12, 14, 18, 19, 21, 23, 29, 30, 36, 54, 55, 57, 59, 61–63, 65–67, 69, 71, 73–77, 79, 81, 83, 84, 86, 88, 107, 110, 134, 146, 168, 172, 177, 178, 180, 183, 186, 187, 191, 193, 208, 214 Institution (Institutions, Institutional, Institutional Spheres) 1–6, 8–14, 20, 24, 46, 47, 50, 53, 56, 58, 71, 87, 89, 90,

109, 112, 130, 141, 145, 146, 148, 150–152, 170, 173, 177, 180, 184, 190–195, 204–206, 214 Apparent Separation of Institutional Spheres 89, 148, 191 Intellectuals 1, 2, 8, 23, 26, 53, 155, 206, 207 Interest (see also Capital, Usury) 5, 11, 45, 71, 77, 118, 156, 184, 197, 198, 200, 203, 209 Interests 3–6, 8, 9, 23, 24, 45, 46, 65, 73, 97, 107, 113, 117, 118, 122, 157, 158, 196–198 Interiorize (Interiorized, Interiorizing) 90, 93, 98, 104–109, 111, 124, 133, 135, 152, 192, 193, 195 Internal Relations (Philosophy of Internal Relations) (see also Abstracting Internal Relations, External Relations, Interrelations) 55–61, 65, 66, 84, 86–88, 90, 93–96, 99, 100, 113, 125–128, 130, 132–135, 174, 193–195, 199, 208, 210 Interpenetration of Opposites 175 Interpretation 21, 22, 30, 48, 51, 52, 123, 141, 143, 145, 159–163, 165, 169–171, 174, 187, 190, 211, 214 Interrelations (Inner-connections) (see also Internal Relations) 55, 56, 59, 74, 78, 83, 137, 188 Invert (Inversion, Inverted, Inverts) 28, 32–34, 44, 54, 84, 86, 101, 104, 122, 131, 186, 199, 214 Judgment (Judgments) 51–53, 122, 127, 144, 181 Justice 4, 5, 14, 15, 53, 122, 181, 186 Kant, Immanuel (see also A Priori Conceptualization, Speculative Philosophy) 15, 34, 35, 39, 46, 48, 53, 105, 137, 160, 169, 175, 177, 184, 199, 210 Kantian Philosophy of Science 35, 39, 160, 169 Knowledge 1–3, 5, 8–29, 34, 36, 38, 44–47, 54, 55, 57, 59, 61, 63–65, 67, 68, 71–73, 80, 85, 86, 88, 92, 93, 98, 100, 109, 111, 116, 121, 122, 125, 128, 131, 133, 139, 141, 142, 145, 148, 150, 152, 158, 163, 167, 170, 177, 179–195, 199, 204, 206, 207, 209, 211, 212, 215

index Popular Knowledge 92 Positive Knowledge 34, 45, 180, 193, 211, 212 Labor (see also Centrality of Labor, Slavery) 3, 7, 9, 12, 13, 28, 37, 38, 40, 42, 44, 46–48, 52, 58, 59, 61, 67, 68, 75, 76, 77, 82, 84, 90–94, 96–99, 102, 103, 106, 107, 109–114, 116–124, 130, 133, 134, 147, 163, 171–173, 176, 181, 183, 186, 188–190, 192, 196, 209, 213, 214 Abstract Labor 76, 84, 133, 188–190 Division of Labor 46, 75, 90, 116, 130, 163, 172, 209 Labor in General versus WageLabor 42, 92, 110, 188 Labor-Power 77, 114, 116, 117, 189 Unpaid Labor (see also SurplusValue) 77 Wage-Labor 42, 59, 96, 110, 111, 133 Laissez-Faire 104, 153, 155 Language (Linguistic) (see also Obscurantism) 4, 10, 12, 22, 36, 39, 43, 49, 51, 62, 68, 72, 101, 143, 152, 198, 211, 214 Laws 29, 30, 31, 49, 50, 59, 62–64, 67, 68, 71, 72, 74, 76–78, 109, 120, 132, 151, 153, 156, 166, 167, 189, 191, 205, 206, 211 Eternal Laws 29, 31, 71 General Laws 153 Laws of Motion, Capital’s 59, 64, 76 Laws of Variation 74 Legitimate (Legitimacy) 4, 7, 8, 40, 114, 157, 183, 187, 196, 206 Lenski, Gehard 102–108, 169 Levels of Generality (see also Abstracting) 61, 66, 70–72, 78, 79, 82, 83, 92, 96, 99 Capitalism in General (Level Three) 59, 61, 70, 71, 78, 81, 82, 98 Class Systems (Level Four) 46, 59, 60, 62, 67, 73, 75, 76, 78, 79, 81, 84, 95, 98, 99, 102, 105, 182, 205 Humans as Animals (Level Six) 71, 92, 98 Humans as Humans (Level Five) 58, 71, 98, 99, 102 Humans as Nature (Level Seven) 98 Recent Capitalism (Level Two) 59, 60, 71, 76, 81, 82, 98

233

Unique Persons, Situations (Level One) 59, 71, 82, 98 Liberal (Liberalism) 3–6, 9, 13, 112, 146, 150, 156, 158, 169, 184, 189, 197, 200, 204 Limit (Limitation, Limits) 1, 6, 16, 20, 39, 48, 57, 58, 64, 90, 96, 102, 105, 113, 119–121, 125, 129, 149, 150, 154, 167, 168, 179, 182, 200, 210, 215 Logic (Logical) 3, 5, 16–18, 21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 34–36, 38, 39, 42, 51, 53, 54, 60–62, 75–77, 89, 103, 108, 116, 117, 120, 122, 123, 126, 127, 131, 137, 141, 145, 146, 148, 149, 155, 163, 164, 175, 177, 179–182, 185, 188, 192, 194, 202, 204 Logic, Systemic (Inner Logic, Logic of a System) 181 Management (Managers) 3, 4, 6, 26, 104, 116, 118, 119, 189 Manifesto of the Communist Party, The 42, 69, 80, 159, 175, 200 Market, The (Free Market) 7, 44, 50, 75, 77, 78, 98, 103–105, 109, 112, 118, 119, 121, 122, 132, 150, 153, 154, 156, 157, 169, 175, 188, 190, 193, 195, 196, 199–202, 213 “Marxism” 50, 62, 113, 114, 120, 134, 174, 180, 194, 209 Materialism (Materialist) (see also Historical Materialism) 7, 14, 30, 33, 37, 45, 48, 53, 55, 62–64, 66–70, 72, 73, 75, 77, 78, 80, 81, 83, 84, 101, 102, 122, 138, 166, 170, 172, 175, 181, 186, 192, 202, 203 Math (Mathematics, Mathematical) 36, 43, 64, 73, 127, 189 Matrix, The 211, 212 Measure (Measurement) 8, 17, 19, 25, 37, 38, 40, 42, 45, 80, 87, 94, 123–125, 127–130, 134, 154, 189, 196, 198 Measurement Error 129 Media (Mainstream Media, Mass Media) 26, 35, 37, 88, 97, 98, 120, 133, 168, 171, 172, 190, 195, 197, 201, 202, 206, 215 Metaphysics (Metaphysical) 28–32, 34–36, 43–45, 48, 49, 51, 53–55, 62, 65, 68, 70, 80, 85, 105, 131, 139, 141, 146, 154, 160–163, 165, 168–176, 180, 184, 199, 207 Method (Methodological Principles) (see also Abstracting, Dialectical

234

index

Method, Scientific Method) 10, 12–14, 18, 21, 23, 25–33, 35, 37, 39, 41–45, 47–53, 55, 56, 58, 60–65, 67–70, 72–74, 76, 83–85, 95, 97, 99, 102, 104, 111, 118, 122, 124, 125, 127, 128, 130, 132, 134, 135, 150, 153, 160, 162–164, 174, 181, 188, 195, 198, 205, 207–210, 213, 214 Middle Class (see also Class) 98 Model (Modeling, Models) (see also Framework) 2, 12, 15, 17, 19–22, 26, 32, 42, 47, 49, 50, 62, 64, 65, 73, 75, 76, 83, 85, 90, 100–102, 104–110, 113, 115, 116, 119, 120, 122, 127, 132–134, 152–154, 161, 163, 169–171, 174, 176, 179, 181, 188, 192, 193, 195, 196, 204, 210, 213 Modernity (Modern Society) 2, 24, 27, 46, 55, 75, 84, 111, 146, 148, 151, 152, 167, 177, 183, 185, 190, 195, 214 Moments of Inquiry (Marx’s) 61, 62, 65, 66, 79, 83, 208 Communist Project 78–82 Dialectical Method 65, 66 Historical Materialism 66–70 Method of Critique 62, 70, 72, 73 Political Economy 70–78 Scientific Method 63–65 Money 3, 8, 38, 40, 42, 45, 61, 71, 73, 77, 102, 123, 124, 133, 134, 146–149, 173, 177, 186, 197, 201 Morality (Moral, Morals) 1, 14, 15, 16, 22, 23, 38, 39, 51–53, 60, 68, 87, 112, 122, 144, 155, 158, 175, 177, 181, 186, 187, 189, 202, 204, 207 Movement 13, 46, 47, 74, 76, 80, 88, 98, 128, 132, 145, 159, 161, 163, 166, 170, 172, 176, 183, 186, 203, 207, 215 Mystification (Mystify, Mystifying) 29, 30, 54, 57, 70, 71, 72, 126, 187, 191, 215

162, 164, 166, 171–174, 177, 182–184, 190, 195, 196, 198–200, 202–204, 206 Necessary (Necessity) (see Relations of Necessity) (see also Relations of Contingency) 1, 9, 25, 27, 31, 40, 41, 45, 49, 50, 53, 58, 60, 61, 64, 66, 74, 79, 82, 89, 93, 99, 100, 103, 105, 106, 108, 110, 113, 116, 117, 120, 122, 125, 130, 137, 141–144, 148–152, 154–156, 158, 162, 166, 168, 169, 173–177, 182, 184, 186, 193, 194, 202, 203 Needs 13, 45, 83, 92, 97, 101, 103, 119, 140, 191, 193, 203, 214 Negation 62, 64, 66, 89, 163, 168 Negative Criticism (see Critique) 27, 28, 43, 44, 51, 52, 55 Neutral (Neutrality) 12, 16, 25, 51, 53, 125, 181, 182, 187 Non-Sequitur 9, 200

Nationalism (see also State, NationState) 39, 156, 177, 185, 199 Naturalism, Philosophical 63, 65, 67 Natural Selection (see also Darwin, Evolution, Teleology) 65, 138, 140, 161, 162, 172 Nature (Natural) 3, 7, 12–14, 19, 22, 26, 29–32, 37, 40–42, 46, 48, 50, 51, 54, 57, 58, 63–65, 67, 69–72, 84, 86, 89–92, 94, 97, 101, 103, 106, 110, 112, 119, 121, 123, 126, 130, 133, 134, 137–141, 150, 152–157, 161,

Paradigm (Paradigms) 8, 13, 20, 21, 24, 26, 134, 171, 188, 191 Paradox (Paradoxical) 10, 22, 98, 117, 119, 123 Part (Parts) (see also Whole) 1, 2, 5, 8, 15, 17, 18, 22, 24, 41, 42, 48–50, 56–61, 63, 65, 66, 77, 80, 82, 86–91, 95, 96, 98, 107, 108, 111, 117, 118, 121–123, 126–128, 130, 131, 134, 137, 139–141, 144, 147, 149, 154, 156, 164, 166, 170, 174, 175, 180, 187, 188, 193, 199, 202, 204, 205, 211

Objective (Objectivity) 5, 9, 12, 22, 25, 34, 50–53, 91, 100, 126, 148, 161, 171, 172, 180, 181, 182, 187, 199 Obscurantism (Obscure) 12, 28, 36, 37, 43, 47, 53, 54, 57, 109, 115, 124, 128, 132, 139, 156, 185, 187, 188, 191, 201 Linguistic Obscurantism 36 Observation (Observable) 1, 8, 10, 11, 17–19, 21, 22, 24, 34–36, 45, 46, 50, 64, 66, 72, 83, 110, 115, 123, 126, 129, 131, 133, 139, 150, 165, 166, 175, 179, 184, 186, 187, 195, 202, 210, 214 Ollman, Bertell 9, 55–60, 80, 82, 95, 96, 98, 174–176 Ontology (Ontological) 14, 39, 55, 56, 58, 59, 62, 82, 83, 86, 89–96, 98–101, 106, 108–110, 112, 126, 172, 179 Organic Systems (Organisms) 74, 137, 140 Ownership (Owners) 12, 41, 84, 96, 114, 116, 117, 124, 189, 195, 197

index Pastoral Societies 147 Periods (Periodizing) (see also Eras) 79, 94, 170, 193, 197 Peripheral, Regions of the WorldEconomy (Peripheries, Periphery) 10, 153, 185, 189, 193, 201 Philosophy (see also Philosophy of Science, Speculative Philosophy) 7, 9–11, 14, 15, 27, 28, 31, 33–36, 39, 41, 44–46, 48, 49, 51–56, 58, 61, 63, 65, 66, 70, 94, 104, 115, 123, 127, 130, 134, 135, 137, 152, 156, 160, 161, 163, 169, 174, 175, 177, 180, 181, 184, 193–195, 197, 200, 210, 212, 213 World-Philosophy 36 Philosophy of Science 7, 10, 14, 15, 27, 28, 35, 39, 48, 49, 52, 94, 137, 160, 169, 193, 213 Physics 25, 28–31, 34, 35, 45, 48, 49, 53, 65, 68, 85, 138, 139, 141, 161, 169, 171, 179, 184, 207 Pole (Poles) 23, 155, 187 Polarization 190 Politics (Political) 1–17, 19–33, 36, 37, 39–47, 50, 52–55, 58, 60–63, 67–72, 74–81, 83– 85, 87, 97, 102, 104, 105, 107, 108, 111, 114–116, 122–125, 128, 130, 131, 137, 147–151, 153, 155–158, 160, 163–167, 170, 173, 176, 177, 179–185, 187–195, 197–201, 203–207, 209, 210, 213 Politics of Abstraction, The 14–16, 210 Political Economy 23, 27, 30, 33, 36, 37, 39–43, 50, 53, 55, 62, 69–72, 74–78, 80, 81, 83–85, 114, 123, 160, 164, 165, 182, 189, 194, 198, 199, 209, 213 Positive Critique (see Critique) 44, 51 Positivism 199 Positive Science (see also Science) 46 Possibility (Conditions of Possibility, Possibilities) (see also Potential) 22, 25, 79, 81, 92, 107, 150–152, 174, 180, 200, 204, 206, 207 Postmodernism 22, 49, 199, 200 Postone, Moishe 6, 27, 91, 92, 160, 180, 190, 205, 206 Potential (Potentialities) (see also Possibility) 60, 73, 75, 78, 79, 81, 83, 84, 96, 116, 118, 148, 150, 170, 173, 174, 176, 177, 189, 192, 203, 204, 206, 207 Poverty of Philosophy, The 31, 49, 70, 152, 163

235

Power 1, 2, 5, 6, 10, 12, 13, 15, 25, 26, 31, 32, 44, 45, 47, 48, 60, 66, 69, 71, 74, 77, 81, 84, 88, 92, 95, 101, 103, 104, 108, 109, 114–119, 123–126, 129, 134, 146, 150, 152, 156, 157, 160, 177, 182, 183, 188, 189, 193, 194, 198, 200, 203, 205–207, 209, 212, 213, 215 Practice (Practices) (see also Praxis) 3–5, 9, 14, 17, 21–23, 25, 27, 28, 32, 42, 44, 49, 52–56, 59, 62, 79, 80, 85–87, 90, 92, 93, 95, 96, 99, 128, 132, 144, 145, 149–152, 155, 173, 179–183, 187, 190, 194, 195, 198, 202, 204, 206 Praxis 25, 156, 171, 172, 179, 181, 187, 188, 204 Precision (see also Flexibility, Imprecision) 19, 20, 28, 36, 66, 69, 94, 95, 104, 132, 195 Flexible Precision 95, 132, 195 Preconditions (see also Presuppositions) 41, 60, 61, 78, 79 Premise (Premises) (see also Conclusion) 19, 38, 45, 68, 93, 122, 146, 188 Presuppositions (see also Preconditions) 60, 61, 78, 79, 81–83, 89, 120, 186 Principles 10, 11, 26–28, 31, 35, 37, 44, 47, 49, 55, 59, 61, 62, 67–71, 73, 75, 76, 78, 93, 115, 117, 122, 137, 138, 155, 163, 177, 179, 181, 182, 184, 198, 209, 210, 213 Processes (see also Relations) 10, 11, 17, 21, 22, 30, 45, 47, 53, 56, 61, 62, 64, 66, 69, 80, 83, 85– 88, 90, 91, 95–97, 99, 100, 107, 109, 120, 121, 124, 131–133, 135, 139, 141, 149, 172, 175, 176, 191, 192, 195, 202, 206, 207 Production (Productive Relations) 3, 10, 15, 17–21, 26, 31, 32, 37, 41, 42, 44, 46, 48, 49, 53, 58, 59, 62, 64, 67–73, 75–79, 81, 84, 87, 90, 92–97, 100–103, 105–108, 110, 111, 114, 118, 122, 124, 132, 133, 144, 148, 149, 160, 162–166, 168–170, 182, 190, 192, 198, 201–203 Production, Forces of 32, 69, 70, 103, 106 Production, Means of 41, 81, 84, 103, 106, 148 Production, Modes of (Forms of Production) 41, 46, 58, 59, 75, 94,

236

index

96, 103, 105–108, 160, 163, 165, 168–170 Profit (also see Appropriation, Capital, Surplus-Value) 3, 37, 40, 42, 50, 77, 78, 84, 96–98, 105, 114, 118, 119, 133, 148, 170, 186, 189, 201, 212 Profit Rate 97, 119 Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall (see also Laws) 77, 78 Progress 8, 13–15, 19–23, 26, 29, 39, 41, 60, 105, 138, 140, 154, 158–160, 163–166, 168–170, 176, 180, 200, 205 Historical Progress 180 Scientific Progress 21, 138 Proletariat (see also Bourgeoisie, Class, Working Class) 80, 133, 159, 184 Proletarianization 190 Property 30, 41, 42, 61, 67, 69–71, 75, 76, 90, 92, 96, 107, 123, 124, 132, 133, 150, 151, 157, 180, 192, 194, 195, 199, 205 Communal Property 41 Private Property 41, 42, 61, 67, 71, 90, 96, 133, 192, 195, 199 Proudhon, Pierre 27, 31, 34, 37, 39, 46, 47, 49, 53, 70, 163 Psychology (Psychologists) 5, 6, 33, 100, 101 Quality (Qualitative) (see also Quantity) 2, 4–7, 9, 13, 32, 37, 38, 56, 58, 62, 66, 84, 89, 115, 120, 121, 123–125, 127, 147–149, 152, 167, 181, 189, 198, 202 Quantity (Quantitative) (see also Quality) 6, 37, 38, 40, 62, 66, 127 Race (Racism, Racist) 1, 2, 6–9, 13, 22–24, 35, 39, 46, 61–63, 76, 78, 105, 107, 122, 133, 146, 152, 155, 156, 163, 167, 170, 179, 185, 199, 200, 209, 214 Radical (Radicalism) 7–9, 15, 24–26, 77, 81, 122, 158, 172, 177, 181, 185, 190, 204, 207 Rationality 50, 51, 97, 101, 196 Rational-Actor 85 Rational-Choice 50, 101, 154 Realism 46, 47, 55, 193 Reason 3, 4, 6, 9, 15, 17, 21, 23, 27, 29, 31, 34, 36, 38–41, 62, 64, 73, 85, 102, 123, 129, 130, 137–139, 146, 149–151, 156, 157, 162, 167, 169, 171–174, 176–178, 180, 183, 186,

188, 194, 198, 200, 202, 203, 207–209, 214 Reductionism (see also Atomism, Individualism) 28, 32, 33, 45, 54, 63, 73, 78, 85, 105, 123, 214 Individualistic Reductionism 54, 63, 78, 214 Refute (Refutation) 21, 171, 214 Reification (Reify) 10, 133, 152, 169, 195 Relations (Relational) (see also Processes) 1, 5, 6, 8–14, 17, 19, 21, 22, 24–26, 30–33, 35–39, 41, 45–47, 52–67, 69–75, 78, 81– 135, 137, 141, 147–149, 151–153, 156, 157, 160, 164, 172–177, 179, 181–185, 187–196, 198, 199, 201–203, 205–211, 214 Labor-Capital Relation (Capital-Labor Relation) 98 Religion (Religious) (see also Christianity) 1, 2, 7, 11, 17, 22, 29, 31, 37, 39, 46, 66, 68, 69, 75, 84, 87, 89, 107, 130, 138, 141, 142, 144–146, 150–152, 154–159, 166, 167, 177, 185–187, 190, 191, 194, 199, 200, 203–207, 209 Civil Religion, American 156–158 Religious Fundamentalism 130 Rent (see also Capital) 3, 77 Research Programs, Degenerating and Progressive 8 Revolution (Revolutionary) 5, 37, 62, 69, 79–82, 144, 157, 165, 168–170, 173, 174, 176, 183, 184, 186, 192, 200, 203, 204, 215 Ricardo, David 32, 44, 53, 54, 71 Ritual (Rituals) 18, 32, 69, 109, 146, 150–152, 155, 186, 204 Ruling Class (see also Bourgeoisie, Business Class, Class) 53, 79, 104, 144, 154, 157, 158, 177, 183, 197, 203, 215 Science (see also Positivism, Positive Science) 1–11, 13–30, 34–36, 39, 44–49, 51–55, 62–66, 69, 73, 85, 86, 92, 94, 100, 112, 129, 134, 137–140, 154, 160–162, 164, 169–171, 174, 179, 181, 183–185, 187–189, 191–195, 197–201, 203–205, 207, 209, 213, 214 Corrupted Science 11, 85 Relational Science 21

index Scientific Dialectic (see also Dialectic) 27, 28, 34, 47, 62, 188, 197, 207, 209, 210 Scientific Method (see also Experiment, Controlled Comparison) 13, 23, 45, 52, 55, 62, 63, 73, 83, 188, 198 Self-Reference (Self-Referentiality) (see also Tautology) 128, 129 Sex (Sexuality) 6, 7, 9, 18, 24, 58, 102, 112, 130, 133, 140, 145, 185, 191, 193, 194 Sexism 185 Simplify (Simplification, Oversimplification) 126, 127 Slavery (Slave-Labor) (see also Class Systems) 26, 59, 60, 96, 99, 102, 110, 112, 145, 157, 165, 181, 184, 201, 207 Smith, Adam 27, 32, 41, 44, 50, 53, 54, 71, 153, 192, 199 Social Change 58, 78, 82, 94, 105, 106, 121, 122, 126, 134, 151, 173, 176, 177, 192, 202 Social Forms (Social Formation) (see also Social Organization, Systems) 41, 64, 67, 88, 94, 101–103, 106, 107, 109, 111, 148–150, 160, 164, 172, 188, 202, 204 Social Organization (see also Social Forms, Systems) 13, 22, 68, 84, 101, 148, 182 Social Science (see also Sociology) 4, 6–9, 14, 19, 22, 23, 26, 51, 55, 86, 92, 100, 112, 129, 134, 137, 140, 164, 183, 192, 195, 197, 204, 205, 207, 214 Socialism (Socialist) (see also Communism) 1, 15, 47, 79, 80–82, 122, 173, 174–176, 181, 198, 205, 206, 214 Dictatorship of the Proletariat 80 Scientific Socialism 80, 181 Society 1, 4, 12, 13, 15, 24, 27, 32, 37, 41, 42, 45–48, 50, 55–59, 63, 66, 67, 69–73, 75, 76, 80, 81, 84, 89, 90, 92, 93, 95–100, 103–105, 107–113, 119, 124, 125, 127, 131, 144–153, 155, 157, 160, 162–165, 168, 169, 171–177, 180, 182, 183, 185, 189–192, 194, 195, 197–203, 205, 207–209, 212–215 Society in General (Society as a General Abstraction) 58, 59, 71, 72, 92, 95, 97, 99, 127, 131, 152, 172, 174, 192 “Society” versus “Capitalism” 100, 110

237

Sociology (Sociologists) (see also Social Science) 1, 6–8, 10, 22, 25, 26, 48–50, 56, 66, 73, 85–89, 91, 93, 95, 97, 99–101, 103, 104, 110, 113, 121, 126, 128, 130, 132, 134, 146, 179, 186, 191–193, 195, 198, 205, 209, 211, 213 Conventional Sociology (Mainstream Sociology) 25, 85, 100, 209 Public Sociology 186 Relational Sociology 85–89, 91, 93, 95, 97, 99, 101, 103, 105, 107, 113, 121, 134 Space (Spatial, Spatially) (see also Time) 1, 2, 6, 8, 9, 14, 15, 18, 19, 29, 43, 54, 58, 61, 66, 87, 91, 96, 98, 107, 111, 119, 125, 134, 144, 167, 177, 179, 191, 193, 195 Species 45, 52, 78, 79, 91, 92, 111, 138, 139, 140, 155, 161, 162, 172, 182, 185, 186, 198–200, 203, 212 Species Activity 92, 199 Species Being 111, 200 Specific (see also General) 12, 18, 27, 28, 31, 40, 41, 50, 59, 62, 65–68, 71, 73, 76, 78, 81–84, 86, 94–99, 101, 110, 111, 114, 122, 123, 128, 133, 134, 139–141, 155, 162, 179, 188, 190, 192–194, 201, 204, 210 Speculation (see also Speculative Philosophy) 33, 45–47, 54, 63, 162, 184, 196, 204, 210, 211, 213, 214 Speculative Philosophy (see also Speculation) 28, 33–35, 39, 45, 46, 48, 49, 53, 54, 177, 180, 200 Spuriousness 127–130 Stasis (Static, Static Conceptualization) 26, 58, 67, 85, 86, 89–91, 93, 99, 101, 107–111, 121, 127, 132 State, The (States) (see also Government) 2, 4–8, 12, 13, 18, 23, 24, 31, 33, 38, 40–42, 45–47, 49, 51, 55, 62, 66–70, 72, 73, 75, 79, 81, 94–96, 101, 104, 106, 108, 110–113, 119, 120, 128, 130, 141, 145, 148, 150, 151, 153, 156–160, 162–164, 167, 171, 175, 177, 180–185, 190–194, 196, 197, 199–201, 203, 204, 207, 209–211, 213, 214 Nation-State 119, 120 Statistics (Statistical) 47, 85, 87, 94, 100, 123, 125, 127, 128, 130, 132, 134, 198 Structure (Structural, Structural Analysis) (see also Systems) 6, 9–11,

238

index

15, 32, 45, 46, 50, 54–57, 59–63, 66, 67, 69, 70, 72–76, 78, 79, 82, 83, 85, 86, 88, 91–99, 101, 104, 106–111, 114–116, 119–122, 124–128, 132, 134, 135, 139, 141, 143, 154, 157, 159, 160, 164, 166, 168, 169, 173, 175– 177, 179–181, 183, 188–190, 192–195, 202, 205–207, 211 Subjective (Subjectivity) 10, 11, 22, 32, 50–52, 60, 161, 185 Superstructure (see also Base, BaseSuperstructure Model) 67, 69, 70, 107, 166, 192 Surplus-Value (see also Value) 3, 42, 77, 92, 96, 105, 117–119, 123, 196 Surveys (Survey Analysis) 4, 123 Systems (Systemic) (see also Organic Systems) 10, 12, 21, 23, 26, 46, 54, 58–60, 62, 67, 70, 72–76, 79, 81, 83, 84, 88, 90–95, 97–99, 101–106, 108, 110, 122, 130, 134, 135, 140, 148, 165, 166, 170, 176, 182, 193, 204, 205 Tautology (Tautological) (see also Self-Reference) 10, 28, 36–42, 50, 127–130, 146 Taxonomy (Taxonomic) (see also Classification, Criteria, Type) 12, 16, 87, 100, 102, 104, 106, 116, 117, 124, 133, 134 Technology (Technological) 2–4, 17, 19, 79, 94, 102–106, 108, 118, 134, 183, 191, 192, 200 Technological Determinism (see also Lenski) 102 Teleology (Teleological) (see also Darwin, Evolution, Metaphysics, Natural Selection, Religion) 31, 52, 65, 105, 137–141, 143, 145–147, 149, 151–153, 155–157, 159–163, 165–169, 171–178, 192, 202, 207 Teleologies of Finalism 139 Teleologies of Self-Direction 139 Teleology and Marxist Theory 159 Teleology of the Modern 156 Theological-Teleology 138, 141 Tendency (Tendencies) (see also Laws) 25, 33, 59, 68, 77, 78, 117, 121, 129, 170, 173, 191, 203 Countervailing Tendencies 77 Things (see also External Relations) 8–10, 12, 16–19, 21, 22, 24, 28, 29, 32–34, 36, 37, 45, 46, 48, 54, 56–58, 60, 61, 63, 65, 72, 83, 85, 87–91, 94, 96–99, 104, 106,

108–110, 114, 115, 117, 121, 123, 126–129, 131, 133, 137, 148–150, 154, 157, 159, 160, 165, 166, 174–176, 190, 194, 198, 199, 204, 206, 210, 212, 214 Time (Temporal, Temporally, Time/ Space) (see also Space) 3–9, 13, 14, 16–21, 23–32, 34, 37, 38, 40, 42–44, 47, 51–54, 57–62, 64, 66, 67, 70–72, 75, 79, 80, 82, 83, 85, 87, 89, 91, 96–99, 101, 102, 106, 107, 111–113, 116–120, 124–127, 129, 130, 132–134, 138–141, 145–147, 149–153, 155, 156, 158, 160–162, 164, 166–169, 176, 177, 179, 181, 182, 185, 188, 190– 193, 195, 196, 198, 200–202, 206, 208, 209, 211, 213, 215 Totality (Totalities) (see also Whole) 32, 57, 58, 61, 65, 77, 79, 87–89, 103, 127, 129, 164, 199 Transformation 21, 35, 60, 68, 69, 71, 73, 79, 82, 93, 109, 126, 134, 142, 155, 189, 190, 193, 198, 203, 206 Transhistorical (see also Universal) 29, 32, 50, 94, 97, 152 Tribal Society (Tribes) 65, 147 Truth (Truth-Value) 1, 8, 10, 22, 23, 29, 31, 34, 35, 38, 51, 65, 70, 101, 145, 146, 161, 175, 177, 183–185, 187, 210, 214 Type (Typify, Typology) (see also Criteria, Taxonomy) 2, 6, 11, 12, 21, 36, 47, 52, 57, 94, 102, 104, 114, 129, 140, 187, 188, 194, 211 Uncertainty (see also Certainty) 17, 19, 22 Unit of Analysis (Units of Analysis) 58, 90, 97, 113, 115, 119 Universal (Universalization) (see also False Universalization, Transhistorical) 4, 14–16, 22, 28–33, 36, 41, 42, 48, 50, 54, 63, 65, 68, 71–73, 76, 96, 100, 101, 105, 108, 111, 126, 128, 142, 146, 148–152, 154, 155, 160, 161, 163–165, 167–171, 173, 176, 177, 184, 185, 191, 192, 195, 199, 205, 214 Universal Reason 29 Use-Value (see also Value) 40, 92, 97, 111 Usury (see also Interest) 144, 145 Utopia (Utopian, Utopians) 41, 47, 53, 79–81, 181, 183, 192, 193, 208

index Value 3, 5, 8, 11, 15, 22, 23, 29, 33, 37, 38, 40–42, 44, 48, 51–53, 63, 74, 75, 77, 82, 87, 92, 94, 96–98, 101, 103, 105, 109, 111, 116–119, 123, 129, 133, 147, 148, 155, 175, 178, 182, 184, 186–190, 196, 198, 199, 210, 214 Exchange-Value 38, 92, 97, 103, 111 Surplus-Value 3, 42, 77, 92, 96, 105, 117–119, 123, 196 Use-Value 40, 92, 97, 11, 148, 190 Values 5, 11, 40, 52, 63, 75, 87, 94, 98, 101, 103, 111, 129, 155, 187, 190 Vantage Point (see also Abstracting) 9, 10, 56, 58–61, 67, 71, 75, 78, 82, 83, 85, 95–97, 99, 102, 106, 107, 126, 131, 133, 134, 142, 153, 156, 163, 164, 166, 172, 176, 183, 195, 210 Variables (see also Control, Experiment) 19, 33, 37, 47, 64, 67, 68, 70, 74, 77, 78, 82, 87–89, 98, 102, 106, 108, 123, 125–130, 132, 134, 137, 205, 214 Control Variables 68 Dependent Variables 74, 128, 129, 132 Independent Variables 128, 129, 132 Violence 1, 154, 155, 157, 182, 201 Verify (Verification) (see also Confirmation Bias) 19, 36

239

Wallerstein, Immanuel 160, 169, 193, 194 War 2, 5, 6, 69, 70, 80, 103, 108, 125, 150, 157, 159, 162 Wealth (see also Appropriation, Surplus-Value) 25, 38, 41, 46, 50, 71, 76, 77, 81, 84, 96–98, 108, 112, 124, 125, 148, 177, 190, 196, 198, 200, 206, 215 Concentration of Wealth 77, 125, 196, 206 Whole (Wholes) (see also Part, Totality) 7, 15, 18, 28, 32, 35, 42, 49, 55–60, 62, 64–66, 72, 74, 77, 82, 87–90, 92, 94, 98, 100, 103–105, 111, 112, 115, 116, 120, 123, 124, 126–128, 130, 134, 137, 139, 141, 147, 148, 153, 155, 164, 170, 172, 173, 176, 181, 186–188, 191, 199, 202, 207, 212, 213 Whole-Part Relation 57 Working Class (see also Class, Proletariat) 5, 23, 52, 53, 56, 77, 79–81, 112, 117, 118, 119, 122, 123, 154, 167, 173, 179, 203, 206, 215 World Market (World-Economy) 75, 77, 119, 122, 132, 189 Wright, Erik O. 4, 5, 7, 47, 49, 113–117, 119–123 Young Hegelians, The (see also Hegel, Hegelian) 28, 39