Marxism, Positivism, and Scientific Sociology: Social Gravity and Historicity

Abstract

Marxism and positivism are often thought to be incompatible perspectives in sociology. Yet, Marxism has a long history of commitment to scientific inquiry. Here, we juxtapose these two scientific paradigms—Marxism and positivism—in ways that can enhance both, while highlighting in particular the power of the former. We argue that many of the key theoretical claims of Marxism can be explored in terms of analytic concepts congruent with and easily accessible to the contemporary positivist tradition. Marxist criticisms of the cruder versions of the positivist program are not antiscience but are rather rational critiques based on scientific principles.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank John Bellamy Foster, Philip Mancus, Jason W. Moore, Eugene A. Rosa, and the TSQ editor and anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. The first author's contribution was supported in part by the New Faculty Award and the Junior Professor Development Award from the University of Oregon.

NOTES

Notes

¹ Here, we are only stating a generality. We, of course, recognize that there are some scholars who do not fit this pattern. The most notable example is Erik Olin Wright (see, e.g., Wright and Perrone 1977; Wright and Cho 1992), who is perhaps the sociologist best known for combining a Marxist perspective with quantitative empirical methods. Likewise, Marxist approaches to economics have often been empirically and mathematically rigorous (e.g., Steindl 1952; Kalecki 1968; Shaikh and Tonak 1994).

² “Western Marxism,” labeled as such by Merleau-Ponty (1973) in the 1950s, is a tradition that is derived from the work of Lukács, Korsch, and Gramsci in the 1930s, which emphasizes the role of culture, rather than economics, in shaping social relations. Western Marxists embrace dialectics, emphasizing holism, history, and reflexivity, noting that these are distinctive to the realm of human history. By forging this separation between natural science and social science, Western Marxists distanced themselves from Marx's materialist conception of human history and his materialist conception of nature. (It should be noted that not all Western Marxists were equally caught up within this move away from materialism.) For Marx, materialism must be both historical and dialectical (Anderson 1976; Bhaskar 1989; Foster 2000). Materialism without dialectics tends toward mechanism and reductionism. Dialectics without materialism tends toward idealism.

³ Marxist social movements have generally been more practical and less prone to esoteric philosophical hang-ups than academic Marxists. We are focusing on issues in academic Marxism and recognize that these same issues are not necessarily a principal concern of those involved in the immediate practical aspects of social movements.

⁴ For an extensive discussion of various traditions, see Timpanaro (1980).

⁵ Throughout this article, we engage work by both social and natural scientists. In part, we rely on the work of natural scientists to illustrate our argument because it is the natural sciences that are usually used as a model for positivists in the social sciences. Many of our examples will also be drawn from both the natural history and environmental literatures. The work of Marxist natural scientists demonstrates that there is substantial heterogeneity in the natural sciences and that a Marxist social science is not necessarily at odds with epistemological practice in the natural sciences.

⁶ Karl Popper (2002) is perhaps the best-known critic of “laws of history,” such as those supposedly suggested by crude versions of Marxism. The critical Marxist tradition we focus on here, characterized by scholars such as Thompson (1978), Haila and Levins (1992), Foster (2000), Lewontin (2000), Gould (2002), and Burkett (2005), generally takes a position at odds with Popper's caricature of Marxism, rejecting universal trans-historical laws of history and arguing for the prevalence of contingency in the unfolding of historical processes. In other words, it takes history seriously. The Marxist view of the philosophy of science is more in accord with Lakatos (1978) and even Kuhn (1962) than with Popper, without thereby abandoning a realist perspective or rejecting all of Popper's insights. It should also be noted that Levins and Lewontin (1985) provide an important example of how a dialectical and historical approach is used to study nature, as opposed to a mechanistic approach.

⁷ The term “positivism” is not widely used within the natural sciences. Instead, critical scientists, such as Lewontin and Gould, critique mechanism and crude reductionism.

⁸ Note that Galton is a complex historical figure who defies simple classification. In addition to providing insights into the evolutionary process, helping to lay the foundations of modern statistics, and writing on and engaging in African exploration, among many other endeavors, he was a key proponent of the eugenics movement. We recognize the irony that an advocate of biological determinism (in the form of eugenics), also provided an important metaphor regarding the nature of historical change (as well as structural constraint) that was utilized by Marxist-influenced scholars (see Gould 1993, 2002).

⁹ The collapse of the Soviet Union caused much debate within the social sciences, as scholars tried to determine why they had not predicted such an event (see the special issue of Theory and Society in 1994 [Vol. 23, No. 2] devoted to this topic). As a result, a symposium in the American Journal of Sociology (1995, Vol. 100, No. 6) was devoted to issues of prediction in the social sciences. Collins (1995) contends that social science, given a set of conditional statements, can make predictions about future social developments. Collins, using a modified version of world-systems perspective, argues that he was able to predict the eventual downfall of the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, prediction making remains a contested issue, especially in regards to issues of temporality, particularly if prediction is aimed at the moderately distant future (e.g., 30–50 years). Kuran (1995) finds this type of prediction making to be unacceptable and imprecise, because there is inherent uncertainty about many social processes because of fractured and incomplete knowledge. Kuran notes that surprises will frequently confront social scientists in a contingent world.

¹⁰ Our use of Wallerstein and the world-system perspective is for illustrative purposes. Wallerstein is a theorist influenced by Marx, as well as other theoretical traditions. Wallerstein is in agreement with classical Marxism that capitalism is, from birth, a globalizing system.

¹¹ Mészáros, Sweezy, and Magdoff, along with Paul Baran, have all contributed to the development of the Monthly Review school of thought, of which Wallerstein has drawn upon (and debated) at times in his own theoretical development. This particular tradition is separate from the world-system perspective as conceived by Wallerstein. At the same time, there is a similarity between these perspectives in their view of capitalism as a global system.

¹² In 1864, George Perkins Marsh (1864:11) highlighted the role humans had in the transformation of nature, often in devastating ways, in the process of obtaining their livelihood (also see Clark and Foster 2002:167–169). His work served as a warning to humanity that if wanton destruction of nature continued the necessary conditions for human life would be destroyed.

¹³ Lewontin (2000) emphasizes that there is no evidence that organisms are becoming more adapted to the environment. Environmental change is a given. Around 99.99 percent of all species that have ever existed are extinct. He argues that what humans can try to do is to slow the rate of extinction and decrease the degradation of the earth so humans and other living creatures can have decent lives (p. 68).

¹⁴ The long-standing view that nature exists in a static state and the challenges of analyzing dynamic processes with data covering only a short span of time likely inhibited the recognition of the anthropogenic climate change currently underway. Note that data from glacial and geologic sources on climatic conditions stretching back well before modern humanity emerged were important in firmly establishing the influence of modern societies on the global climate (IPCC 2001).

¹⁵ It must be noted that an overly mechanistic, reductionist tradition of Marxist materialism was once quite popular, as seen in the crude work of Plekhanov (1974). This crude mechanistic position was fairly common within the Second and Third Internationals and prompted Western Marxist scholars such as Lukács (1972) and Gramsci (1995:293) to reject this direction of Marxist theory. Unfortunately, this rejection resulted in the abandonment of any connection between the dialectic and nature, and hence a distancing of Marxism from the natural and physical sciences altogether. An epistemological Marxism wrapped in idealistic practice developed, leaving materialism to natural science and positivists (Foster 2000:231–49). Fortunately, a historical materialist approach, which rejects narrow mechanism, has resurfaced in environmental sociology (see Burkett 1999a; Foster 2000) and continues in the natural sciences (see Levins and Lewontin 1985; Haila and Lewins 1992; Gould 1996; Lewontin 2000; Gould 2002).

¹⁶ We, of course, do not wish to imply that conjectures based on Marxist theory have the same likelihood of being correct as those based on the second law of thermodynamics! We are merely making the point that both types of conjectures are based on extrapolating from known observations into an unobserved future. It is important to recognize that in both cases (the heat death of the universe and the collapse of capitalism) we do not reach a point of absolute certainty until we make observations when such events occur. For example, Hawking (1988:143–53) notes the possibility (a possibility that he ultimately rejects, however) that under a certain set of assumptions about the nature of the universe (i.e., it eventually contracts, collapsing in on itself), a reversal of entropy may occur.

¹⁷ Given monopoly capitalism, the contradictions of capital have only increased. Stagnation becomes the normal state of the economy, even though it continues to expand (Baran and Sweezy 1966:108). Operating at less than full capacity, the valorization of surplus value and incentive to invest capital is hindered, leading to further stagnation in the economy (Foster, Magdoff, and McChesney 2003).