Problems of Politics in Marxist Sociology

Abstract

Politics is a complex social phenomenon that has both features in common with other phenomena and features that are specific to it. These features determine the possibility of and the necessity for investigating politics at various levels: the general theoretical level, on the one hand, and the concrete, practical level, on the other; between these two levels (depending on the degree of similarity of knowledge) are so-called intermediate levels. It is important, however, to consider that the choice of a certain level of investigation depends not so much on the subjective discretion of the individual scholar (or group of scholars) as on the structure of the theoretical and practical knowledge that has objectively formed (or is forming) at a given time in one society or another. If we are speaking of socialist society and referring to the structure of Marxist sociological knowledge, the following levels of research are delineated, albeit with different degrees of determinacy: general sociological (from the standpoint of historical materialism); specifically sociological (from the standpoint of scientific communism); partially sociological (from the standpoint of individual social sciences); and, finally, concrete/applied sociological (from the standpoint of empirical research on various social phenomena). What are the specifics of research on politics at these levels, and what is the connection among them?