Our purpose in this book has been twofold:
1 To elucidate some basic Marxian concepts. Marx himself developed them from three principal sources: German philosophy (Hegel), English political economy (Adam Smith, Ricardo), and French socialism (Saint-Simon, Fourier, Proudhon). He did not proceed eclectically or syncretically, but by way of a radical critique of philosophy, political economy, and the socialist “ideal.” The conceptions of his precursors were limited by the narrowness of their national and individual outlooks, and we have tried to show how his radical criticism broadened and transcended these conceptions. We have also tried to show where Marx’s new concepts originated (praxis, society and social relations, revolution, etc.), and how they can be linked to form a whole by being raised to a higher level. We have tried to clarify this process and this method. Once the thought inspired by Marx began to lose its critical radicalism, and as positivism or the cult of the positive supplanted the dialectical method of negation and going beyond, these matters were neglected. We have tried to reconstruct Marx’s thought in its own movement, in process of forming, keeping close to the texts so as not to “place it in perspective” or “interpret” it.
2 Instead of selecting passages from Marx’s writings and relating them to modern conceptions of sociology as a specialized science, we have tried to discern in these writings a sociological method and area of study, without thereby prejudging what other specialized sciences (economy, anthropology, history, psychology, etc.) may be able to draw from the works of Marx. However, we have tried to show in what sense Marx’s method implies the project of constituting or reconstituting, exploring or creating a totality (of knowledge, or reality).
It remains for us now to spell out and verify a proposition which has been implicit throughout: Marxian thought is not alone sufficient, but it is indispensable for understanding the present-day world. In our view, it is the starting point for any such understanding, though its basic concepts have to be elaborated, refined, and complemented by other concepts where necessary. It is part of the modern world, an important, original, fruitful, and irreplaceable element in our present-day situation, with particular relevance to one specialized science—sociology.
Let us take this concept of “situation” for granted, as a kind of postulate. Let us suppose there really is such a thing as a theoretical world situation, just as there is an economic or political world situation, and attempt to define it more closely.
According to a view that has been steadily gaining adherents, Marx belongs to the past—not to folklore exactly, but to culture. Which comes nearly to the same thing: after all, is not today’s culture yesterday’s most advanced thought? Marx, we are told, is representative of an epoch. He was mistaken: his prophecies did not come true. He foretold the end of capitalism, the end of the state, the end of philosophy, the end of human alienation—many, too many “ends.” The things he foresaw an end to are still with us, some more firmly established than ever. At the same time, this view holds that Marx’s analyses and extrapolations he drew from them express the reality and the hopes of the nineteenth century.
We have already pointed out that Marx predicted the end of competitive capitalism under the double pressure of the proletariat and the monopolies, and that on this score his predictions proved true. Capitalism has indeed survived in one part of the world, and yet it has been transformed. As for so-called capitalist society still dominated (by means other than those employed in Marx’s time) by the so-called bourgeoisie, it is just as absurd to say that nothing has changed as to say that nothing has stayed the same. To make out the changes that have occurred and to distinguish them from what has remained stagnant or regressed, do we not have to take Marx’s analysis as the basis for such a comparison—namely, the one we find in the work entitled Capital?
The adversaries of Marxian thought assert that over the past hundred years a new type of society has emerged, for which the way had been paved long since, and for which Marx himself—despite himself, as it were, despite the revolutionaries he inspired—helped to pave the way. The process that gave birth to this new society is “historical” in the sense that it includes unexpected, unforeseeable elements.
At this point the critics of Marxism part company. Some say, in effect: The process is too vast, too complex for knowledge to encompass and dominate it. Let us give free rein to the forces working toward this new society. The very tensions between them are helpful. All we can do is remove the obstacles standing in their way (these possibly include the action inspired by Marxism, revolutionary efforts consciously to transform the world).
Others say: Let’s get the facts straight, make an empirical study of the new world aborning, detail by detail, making use of the specialized sciences. Let’s draw upon our vast stores of learning to organize the new society in the light of these sciences, which are defined by their operational efficiency.
We may call the first group the “neo-liberals.” There is a good chance that their liberalism conceals a voluntarism. Today no more than yesterday do we have a sure criterion (from the point of view of liberalism) by which to determine obstacles to reason and freedom. Twentieth-century history has made us only too familiar with the divorce between liberal ideology and liberal politics. How often have liberal democrats believed, or pretended to believe, that freedom was being realized because they were in power! How often, while striking out at “the Left,” they have left themselves vulnerable on “the Right,” with consequences not of any deepening or broadening of democracy but, rather, the sorry spectacle of its dismantling and defeat.
The second group of critics clearly falls under the head of positivism and scientism. We might call them “neo-positivists” or “neo-scienticists.” Why “neo”? Because they base themselves on the sciences of man as much as or more than on the sciences of nature. The incomplete, fragmentary character of these sciences does not seem to bother them. They accept a dimming of the image of man. They repudiate “totality”—or sense of the whole—both on the plane of knowledge and on that of human self-realization. They sanction the operational but fragmentary study of social reality. Still, it should be noted that a few recent scientific disciplines—for instance, the theory of information, cybernetics—have “totalizing” ambitions. Neo-positivism puts paid (or so it believes) the intellectual controversy in favor of strictly factual findings. What it studies, what it grasps, is integrated by virtue of being grasped in a system or a structure; science and the scientist are both integrating and integrated parties. This new society into which we are allegedly entering is to be organized, systematized, and hence “totalized.” And who is to carry out this task? Needless to say, it will be the state, and within this state, specific groups—the technocrats. Will they succeed? Are they not divided among themselves? Don’t they represent divergent interests? Do they not differ according to whether they are active within the public sector of state capitalism or within the sector of “private” capitalism? Don’t they introduce new contradictions into society instead of resolving the old ones? Is there perfect agreement between the rationality of the state and that of technology (that of the analytical, operational intellect)? We leave these questions open. One thing sure is that this tendency is giving rise to a diffuse ideology, only as yet partially formulated. Doesn’t the exclusive importance ascribed by some to concepts such as those of structure, system, function—which have areas of validity, but which are often misused—reflect this ideology? At least this question makes sense. We would answer it in the affirmative.
Still, we ought to be able to give a name to this new society which is, it seems, being produced by mutation. What shall we call it? There have been a number of suggestions: industrial society, technological society, a consumer society, mass society, the society of leisure, the affluent society, the rational society, etc. Each of these designations has its champions and inspired publications which have enjoyed wide circulation.
Let us take a brief look at each of these hypotheses—for what we have here is hypotheses concerning the essential character of the society engaged in the mutation we are witnessing. Each hypothesis is summed up in a designation that emphasizes a certain feature, and treats it as a definition. This tends to mask the hypothesis implied. Let us try to discover what is true and false in each, what has been established and what is merely extrapolation.
Industrial society? If this means that industrial production gains ever greater preponderance over agricultural production, the term is obviously correct. It must even be acknowledged that Marx was the first (or the second, after Saint-Simon) to stress this fundamental feature of competitive capitalism. Can it serve as basis for an analysis in depth of contemporary society or societies? To think so would be to fall into a narrow “economism” which the Marxian method explicitly rejects. To limit oneself to this designation is to obscure the differences between the various industrial societies, differences stemming from their different histories. Granting that the term “industrial” applies to the type or genus of these societies, the species it includes may differ, and exclusive emphasis on the genus ignores specific differences, particularly those between capitalist society (or societies) and socialist society (or societies). Despite multiple interactions between the two, there can be no doubt that these differences exist and that they will be further accentuated. On the other hand, we must take into account the distinction between economic growth and social development. We have noted how Marx introduced this distinction between the quantitative and the qualitative aspect. In the modern world we witness examples of remarkable, even spectacular growth without development. Marx would not have suspected such a phenomenon, which is the effect of massive state interventions. Social (and “cultural”) development can result only from a revolutionary upsurge marked by more flexible institutions, by a deepening of democracy, and an active organizational network “at the base” expressing social needs. Once this aspect of praxis is taken into account, we must willy-nilly go back to the theory of the withering away of the state. Final point: there are only tiny islets of industry in the vast ocean of underdeveloped countries, where agricultural production is still predominant (and will remain so for a long time), supplying the resources for such industrialization as is actually carried out (at very different rates of speed) in the various countries.
A consumer society? It is forgotten that those who control production manufacture their consumers by various means, of which advertising is the most powerful. It is forgotten that this “consumer society” is scarcely concerned at all with social needs, and with individual needs only to the extent that they bring in profits. Supposing it true that elementary needs can today be satisfied, the very existence of higher needs can still be contested, and the evidence for them doubted. There is amazing factualism in their contemporary discussion. The satisfaction of elementary needs in so-called consumer societies seems to be accompanied by a reduction of consumption to the elementary. Moreover, it is not certain that all elementary needs (for instance, housing, education, etc.) are actually being satisfied. The old poverty is being replaced with a new poverty.
The affluent society? Those who launched this designation have shown its limitations. In the United States, they are “discovering” poverty. Sizable minorities (Negroes, recent immigrants, “farmers,” etc.) are reported to suffer from low living standards. Waste and the frenzied overconsumption of certain privileged groups cannot conceal the poverty and the “new poverty” far larger groups are suffering from.
The society of leisure? The amount of leisure time has not increased for most people. Though working hours have grown shorter, “forced time” (for instance, time used going back and forth to work) eats up our much-publicized leisure time. People have to keep working to invest; the scale of investment required for automation, for new branches of industry, for the conquest of space, and for aid to backward countries is enormous. This applies to both “socialist” and “capitalist” countries.
The urban society? Yes, near the islets of growth. No, if we take into account the peasants in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. It is no, there, even if we include the Hoovervilles to which uprooted peasants are flocking.
Mass society? As though every society from time immemorial did not rest upon this foundation—the human masses.
A technological society? Predominance of technology does indeed seem to be a fundamental feature of “modern times.” It deserves careful consideration. Many persons confuse the speeding up of technological progress with an alleged “acceleration of historical time,” with social and cultural development. Whereas a divorce between these aspects of praxis seems no less essential a feature of “modern times.” The predominance of technology contributes to the survival if not the salvage of capitalism, in the form of gigantic (monopolistic or state) organizations for promoting technological progress. According to Marx, the bourgeoisie can survive only by continually revolutionizing the conditions of production, lacking which the “revolution” will take over this task! Also, according to Marx, there is a connection, yet at the same time a difference, between man’s (technological) control over the outside world and his appropriation of his own nature, his social existence, his everyday life, his needs and desires. Moreover, technology has only been predominant under one particular set of historical circumstances: where rival socialist and capitalist “armed camps” or “systems” confront one another, under conditions of the armaments race, and the race for conquest of outer space. This set of historical circumstances may, however, become permanent, freeze into a structure. The fact that technology is championed by specific social groups—technologists and bureaucrats, as yet unsuccessful in constituting themselves as a class—implies certain dangers. The real problem is not to find a definition for the new society, but to elucidate these dangers. Definition, in a sense, tends to conceal the dangers and to present as an accomplished fact what is only a disquieting possibility. To an even greater extent than the other terms for the age, this one ought to inspire radical criticism, i.e., dialectical thought.
It may well be that the present period (of mutation or transition) cannot as yet be given any very exact denomination. Whither are we going? Who can tell? All that is clear is that we’re on our way—somewhere. No final end can be assigned despite the fact that there is rationality inherent in this process. Might this not be one of those “flights forward” which drive modern society toward an undeterminable future, toward the possible and the impossible, by way of nuclear terror, the danger of annihilation, and the rational madness of cybernetics?
If we do not want to stop here, contenting ourselves with this vague and endless questioning, we must try to explore the possible and the impossible. How? Starting from Marx. Let us follow the guiding thread: the concept of going beyond philosophy, political economy viewed as a distribution of scarcity, the state, or politics. Then more exact, if not more limited, questions will emerge. Can the socialist countries, which invoke Marx’s name so often and claim to be Marxist, bring their praxis closer to the concepts elaborated by Marx, the concepts of revolution and freedom? Can they put an end to the existing gap between ideology and practice? Can the state wither away under socialism as it exists today? Can the social management of society supplant authoritarian planning in these countries? Can the old mortgage be finally paid off? As for the capitalist countries, can “the socialization of society” keep alive and reach maturity within the shell of capitalism, finally bursting it open? In more general terms, can development, by a qualitative leap, catch up with the quantitative growth it is lagging behind in most, if not all, countries of the world today?
All these names for the age conceal ideologies, myths, utopias, in varying proportions. Marxian criticism dispels them. New conflicts are added to the old contradictions and take their place. For instance, there is acute conflict today between the quantitative (growth) and the qualitative (development). It is accompanied by mounting complexity in social relations, which is masked and counteracted by opposed elements. Control over external nature is increasing, while man’s appropriation of his own nature is stagnating or regressing. The former falls primarily under the head of growth, the latter of development.