Marx and the Category of Individuality' in Communist Society*

Marx was one among the great humanist philosophers who, like the humanists from the Renaissance up to those of our day, have stressed the idea that all social arrangements must serve the growth and the unfolding of man; that man must always be an end and never a means; that each individual carries within himself all of humanity; that human progress in science and in art depends upon freedom; that man has the capacity to perfect himself in the process of history…. It is an ironical fact that the main accusation against Marxism in the capitalist countries has been his “materialism”; this is ironical because it was precisely Marx's aim to fight the materialism engendered in bourgeois life and to create a society in which man—the creative, “self-active” human being—is the summon bonum, in which the rich man is the one, as Marx put it, who is much, and not the one who has much.     

Reflexivity,Sociology and the Rural-Urban Distinction in Marx,Tonnies and Weber*

Dans cet article, on évalue la pertinence de diverses représentations du ruralisme et de l'urbanisme chez Marx, Tonnies et Weber, dans la mesure où elles se rapportent à la documentation actuelle sur la question de la réflexivité en sciences sociales. Étant donné l'influence linguistique dans la recherche en sciences humaines, le nouvel examen de ce discours n'est pas fait dans le but de définir la ruralité de façon «essentialiste». L'analyse porte plutôt sur la signification des tentatives que font Marx, Tonnies et Weber pour élaborer un concept de ruralité qui permet de démêler la façon dont fonctionnent les négations et les oppositions dans leurs textes. On prétend que le discours rural/urbain est structuré autour d'une modernité qui cherche àétablir un dialogue avec l'altérité et à questionner les limites. On montre aussi la difficulté qu'éprouve l'esprit de la modernité devant la nécessité de préserver un sens à l'altérité tout en l'engageant dans un processus relationnel sans pour autant se l'approprier. Plusieurs études canadiennes, qui font appel à la distinction rural/urbain, sont citées pour illustrer la difficulté conceptuelle du domaine. L'auteur affirme qu'un aspect de cette difficulté face à l'altérité, dans ce cas-ci l'altérité du rural, tient de l'objectivité scientifique, laquelle exclut la réflexivité du processus de recherche. La réflexivité, inhérente et nécessaire au processus de recherche en sciences humaines, est donc ici à la fois sujet et ressource. This paper assesses the relevance of various representations of ruralism/urbanism in Marx, Tonnies, and Weber as these pertain to the current literature on the issue of reflexivity in social science. Acknowledging the linguistic turn in human science inquiry, the re-examination of this discourse does not attempt to develop an “essentialist” definition of rurality. Rather the analysis is concerned with the meaning of the attempts by Marx, Tonnies, and Weber to develop a concept of rurality which involves teasing out the way negations and oppositions operate in their texts. The paper argues that the rural/urban discourse is structured by a modernist interest in engaging otherness and questioning limits. It also shows the difficulty a modernist consciousness has with preserving a sense of the very otherness it needs to engage. Several Canadian studies, which draw on the rural/urban distinction are cited to illustrate the field's conceptual predicament. The paper argues that part of the problem which modernity has with otherness (in this case the otherness of the rural) lies in the scientific requirement that, by virtue of a commitment to objectivity, reflexivity be excluded from the process of inquiry. Reflexivity, as intrinsic and necessary to the process of human science inquiry, is therefore both a topic and a resource for the paper. a … disquieting quality of modernism: its taste for appropriating or redeeming otherness, for constituting non-Western arts in its own image, for discovering universal, ahistorical “human” capacities. (Clifford, 1988: 193)     

George Herbert Mead and Karl Marx: Exploring Consciousness and Community*

Current discussions within symbolic interaction point to a concern with (a) returning to Mead's original insights, (b) extending Meadian thought beyond the micro realm, and (c) linking Mead's ideas to constructive social action. These concerns complement an effort within contemporary Marxist literature to provide a systematic social psychology for understanding new forms of domination in capitalist society. In exploring the philosophical foundations of Mead and Marx, the authors identify fundamental similarities in their approaches to the relation between consciousness and community. The authors criticize the current attempts to synthesize Marx and Freud and call for a more thoroughly sociological approach. A Meadian reading of Marx, unlike the Marx-Freud synthesis, is consistent with sociological assumptions and points to the practical possibility of transformative social change through the interpersonal act.     

The Logic and Meaning of the Logico-Meaningful Method*

La “recherche du sens logique” chez Pitirim A. Sorokin n'est pas une méthode qui contredise les principes généraux de la science, comme longtemps les critiques I'ont prétendu. Il s'agit plutôt d'une méthode qui rencontre les exigences prescrites afln d‘élaborer des modèles théoriques d'un niveau d'abstraction élevéà partir de données empiriques. Cette methode propose une façon d'agencer les faits sociaux et culture] s en ayant recours a un ensemble conceptuel grace a des types ideaux. II s'agit d'une espèce de conceptualisation qui a une grande valeur explicative et qui peut permettre de plus l’élaboration de nouvelles théories.     

From Marx to Bonger: Socialist Writings on Women,Gender, and Crime*

Contemporary socialist criminologists concentrate their analysis of crime on production relations, ignoring the co-determination of reproduction and thus the role gender plays in crime by men and women. The author argues that this omission has occurred by reason of the theoretical work of Marx and Engels, as well as other socialist “criminologists” of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The importance of the paper lies in its demonstration that the questions raised by these early socialist theoreticians are inadequate for developing a comprehensive theory of crime.     

End of an orthodoxy? The critique of sociology's view of Marx on class *

In this paper I comment critically on the dominant form of appropriation of Marx's theory of class and the state within what one might call the‘conventional’sociology of class in the post-war period. I argue that the typical mode of interpretation and assimilation has been highly selective and has taken a form that has rendered the proposed theory particularly vulnerable to sociological criticism especially in the light of changes in the structure of capitalist social formations in the twentieth century, although there is no suggestion here that the selectivity has been intentional. I contrast the dominant sociological construction and critique of Marx's theory of classes and the state with an interpretation drawn from recent scholarship, arguing that it is possible to document the contention that most theorems hitherto regarded both as central to Marx's analysis and as particularly susceptible to criticism were actually revised by Marx himself in his maturity as part of a more general process of intellectual formation and theoretical development. Many of these revisions have been widely discussed in debates within the world of Marx scholarship and some have undoubtedly been noticed in sociological interpretations of Marx. However, they have not led to the major overall reinterpretation of Marx's theory of class that is now long overdue.     

Constructing Monothetic and Polythetic Typologies By the Heuristic Method*

Past students of heuristic types such as the ideal or constructed types have often proposed that empirical cases be studied by comparison with the heuristic type. However, they have provided no specific guidelines for such comparison, and critics have deemed the operation unfruitful. Such guidelines are provided here, based on the monothetic-polythetic distinction. Each empirical case is initially assigned to a monothetic type, then later a decision can be made about whether to collapse to polytheticism. Both general and specific guidelines for delimiting types are provided. A distinction is made between theoretical and mechanical methods of type construction, and examples are provided. Methods of choosing variables for a typology are also discussed.     

Marx,formal subsumption and the law

Recent work rethinking the place of the law in Marxian analysis of capitalist society provides us with a foundation for a renewed look at the labor process. Drawing on this literature, which emphasizes the materiality of institutions through which labor is exploited, and returning to Marx’s discussion of formal subsumption in Capital, I argue that the law was central for subordinating labor. I then present three case studies from industries in Victorian England to demonstrate the diverse ways in which law was implicated in formal subsumption. The case studies focus on the ways in which capitalists used master and servant law, the key law governing the workplace, to subordinate labor. I conclude by considering how these cases provoke us to consider the materiality of the law in labor relations more broadly, and such questions might be pursued in developing capitalist economies such as China.     

On Assessing Organizational Priorities: Concept and Method*

Criticisms of the concept “organizational goal”are summarized. An alternative formulation is proposed wherein organizations are viewed as open systems. Through continual interaction incumbents seek to manipulate, and are manipulated by, expectations that they, and persons within various environmental sectors, hold for the organization regarding its mission, authority relations, relative status, affective expressions and sanctioning activity. Organizational missons include sets of social expectations which define appropriate tasks, priorities, territoralities, processing procedures and evaluation criteria. Behavioral observations of police communication officers are used to explore one aspect of mission—organizational priority. Three types of criteria appear critical in understanding priority rankings: 1) feedback intensity, 2) environmental capability to influence recognition and acceptance of feedback, and 3) sequential requirements.     

Marx,Irigaray, and the politics of reproduction

Both the concept and practice of reproduction have been newly configured, with reproductive labor assuming an abstract value as social labor and women around the globe work to produce baby commodities which enter the market along with other domestic and imported products. This situation dictates that surrogacy not be treated as an aberration. One must instead reconceptualize the maternal body as a reproductive resource and rethink the relationship between mother and fetus. This paper attempts to develop a materialist analysis of reproductive labor by offering a strategy for renarrativizing the mother. It briefly explains what feminists involved in the pro-abortion movement could gain by incorporating a Marxist understanding of reproductive labor as productive in the strictest sense, and then suggests, through an analysis of the work of Luce Irigaray, the simultaneous need for a self-reflexive renarrativization of the maternal body which may account for women's role as reproductive laborers. Sections are on reproduction, maternal as mimetic matrix, and reproductive ethics and sexual rights.     

Theory and Method in Social Impact Assessment *

Social Impact Assessment (SIA) is a method of policy analysis that offers great potential for integrating scientific policy analysis into a democratic political process. This potential has not been realized in large part because there has been no theoretical framework to guide SIA. In this paper I propose such a framework, using Habermas’(1970) pragmatistic approach to policy. The framework suggests heavy emphasis on use of SIA early in the policy process and on methods that emphasize impact identification and portrayal.     

The concept of development: Smith and Marx revisited

This paper attempts to provide a framework for understanding and analyzing the social origins of underdevelopment in contemporary third world societies. In critically examining Adam Smith, Karl Marx, the dependency school, and the sociological modernization theories, it shows that the considerable dispute between the two commonly advanced explanations, “conservative” modernization theory and “radical” dependency theory is spurious. It is argued that neither Smith and the modernization theories that draw upon him, nor the dependency school, provide an appropriate framework for analyzing the historical rise of capitalism and examining the obstacles thereto.