Marxist Sociology Revisited. Critical Assessments

286 Pages·1985·44.63 MB·English

by  Martin Shaw

MARXIST SOCIOLOGY REVISITED
nr-
Also by Martin Shaw
WAR, STATE AND SOCIETY (editor)
SOCIALISM AND MILITARISM
MARXISM AND SOCIAL SCIENCE: the Roots of Social
Knowledge
MARXISM VERSUS SOCIOLOGY: a Guide to Reading
MARXIST SOCIOLOGY
REVISITED
Critical Assessments
Edited by Martin Shaw
©Martin Shaw 1985
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civil claims for damages.
First published 1985
Published by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 QXS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
Printed in Hong Kong
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Marxist sociology revisited: clitical assessments,
1. Communism and society 2. Sociology
I. Shaw, Martin, 1947-
301 I-IX542
ISBN 0-333-36629-8
ISBN U-333-36630-1 Pack
Contents
Notes on the Corltributors vi
Acknowledgements vii
1 Introduction: Sociology and the Crisis of Marxism 1
Martin Shaw
2 Marxism and the Urban Question Z1
Rosemary Mellor
3 Marxism and Development Sociology: Interpreting the Impasse 50
David Booth
4 Marxism and Nationalism 99
Ephraim Nimbi
5 Marxism and the Sociology of Racism:
Two Historical Variants
Ivar Oxaal 143
6 The Family and Capitalism in Marxist Theory 181
Colin Creighton
7 Marxism and Psychology 214
Norman O'Neill
8 Marxism, the State and Politics 246
Martin Shaw
Index 269
Notes on the Contributors
David Booth, Colin Creighton, Norman O'Neill and Martin Shaw are
Lecturers in Sociology, and Ivar 0xaa1 is Fellow in Sociology, in the
Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, University of Hull.
Rosemary Mellor is Lecturer in Sociology, University of Manchester ,
she was formerly a lecturer at Hull.
Ephraim Nimni is Lecturer in Sociology, Thames Polytechnic, and is
completing a thesis at Hull .
vi
Acknowledgements
We should like to thank colleagues and students in the Department
of Sociology and Social Anthropology, the University of Hull, as well
as in other departments in which some of us have taught, for provid-
ing a climate in which our ideas have Hourished. Some of the papers
were First presented as seminar papers at Hull. We should also like to
thank Theresa Weatherston and Pat Wilkinson for typing many of
the articles at different stages, and of course our families for their
support.
Hull MARTIN SHAW
I
vii

1 Introduction: Sociology and
the Crisis of Marxism
MARTIN SHAW
In the decade from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, sociology devel~
oped from a marginal discipline limited to a handful of British
universities to a core social-science subject established in virtually all
centres of further and higher education. In the same decade, how-
ever, it was widely believed that sociology was 'in crisis The crisis
was not merely a birth-pang: analyses of it were borrowed, as were
the main concepts of the discipline itself, from writers in continental
Europe and North America where sociology was long-established. lt
was widely believed that the crisis reflected contradictions in the
theoretical premises of the subject, which were highlighted by the
emerging social conflicts of Western industrial society.
The most iniiuential reflections on sociology's problems came from
American theorists: C. Wright Mills whose criticism anticipated the
radical decade, and Alvin Gouldner whose The Corning Crisis of
Western Sociology appeared, typically, when a crisis was already
widely recognised Neither was committed to Marxism, except in
Mills' sense of the 'plain MarxiSt' using Marxist concepts pragmati-
cally where they made sense and discarding them when they did not.
Younger sociologists, especially in Europe where there were better
sources, were however less inhibited in their relationship to Marxist
theory. The political radicalisation of the years before and after 1968
helped propel many in that direction; but Marxism also offered a
theoretical answer to the apparent incoherence of mainstream sociol-
ogy. Marxism came, of course, in many different guises, and the
Marxisms the new sociologists embraced were often not those which
an older generation had rejected. There was a recovery of earlier
Marxist traditions, long buried by Stalinism, as well as a genuine new
development of Marxist theory.
1