Marxist Methodology

INTRODUCTION M any claims have been made for “the Marxist method.” Some of them are justified, others are exaggerated, false, or unintelligible. Although Marx had valuable methodological insights that are not yet fully exhausted, there is no “dialectical reason” that separates Marxists from ordinary mortals. On first exposure to Marxist writings, many feel mystified and terrorized by references to the “dialectical unity of opposites,” the “revolutionary unity of theory and practice,” and similar phrases. All too often, such locutions have allowed followers of Marx to get away with murder, sometimes literally so. It is against this background of extreme self-indulgence that I adopt what may look like an excessively purist viewpoint on methodology. Readers may tolerate suggestive ambiguity in a writer if on past performance they are willing to give him the benefit of doubt, but Marxism has long since exhausted its credit. The Marxist methodology that I want emphatically to reject is an amalgam of three elements. The first is methodological holism, the view that in social life there exist wholes or collectivities, statements about which cannot be reduced to statements about the member individuals. The second is functional explanation, the attempt to explain social phenomena in terms of their beneficial consequences for someone or something, even when no intention to bring about these consequences has been demonstrated. The third is dialectical deduction, a mode of thinking that is derived from Hegel's Logic and that does not lend itself to brief summary.