Sunshine Skyways

Here's Beau in one of his favorite poses looking for food.

The large open wound in Tony's stomach looks like he was shot with a shotgun. But Junior used a handgun. Was the large hole due to an exploding bullet?

Ethnography as Speaking Out for Women: A Review of Women, Development, and Communities for Empowerment in Appalachia by Virginia Rinaldo Seitz

Women, Development, and Communities for Empowerment in Appalachia is a feminist ethnography about the marginalization of working-class Appalachian women and how, despite and because of their marginalization, they have acted for the betterment of their families and communities through strategic collective interaction, and in the process, have transformed themselves. Virginia Rinaldo Seitz’s methodology is complex, her empirical statements powerful, and at times, both include contradictory elements; nonetheless, her ethnography as a whole is compelling for two reasons. First, it effectively challenges stereotypes and other negative images of women and Appalachians, especially those found in the popular media and implicitly supported by development experts who use the culture of poverty theory to claim Appalachians are poor because of their pathological and backward culture.[1] Second, its critical-feminist use of life story interviews results in gendered, working-class, local descriptions of marginalization and indigenous gendered-development activism, and in this way, the book speaks out for, not about, working-class Appalachian women. In so doing, it confronts traditional development practices, which define development as economic growth and women’s contribution as increased employment, which assume outside experts are necessary, and, yet, which are inconsistent with local individual, family, and community needs.

For anyone with little-to-no knowledge of Appalachians beyond the stereotypes one hears or sees in the popular media, Seitz ethnography is insightful because its life stories rebut the stereotypes of Appalachian women as naïve, wild, dim-witted, superstitious, fatalistic, and continually pregnant and barefooted (Byrd; Heller). The women of her study are none of the above. Instead, they are resourceful, idealistic, and hard working despite and because of their marginalization. Furthermore, it is out of their resourcefulness, idealism, and hard work, along with their feelings of responsibility for the wellbeing of their families and communities, that they have become development activists working for social, economic, and political change. Seitz underscores that they are not exceptional women; they are not male-identified, nor have they rejected their families and communities; they are ordinary. However, later in the text, she admits that some of her participants may be exemplary.

Seitz uses the first two chapters to describe her research methodology, which is an innovative, feminist, and, at times, conflicting montage of elements of interpretivism, critical theory, feminist standpoint theory, and grounded theory. In the first page she warns the reader that the “presentation is not linear” because the text is and presents an “interative and reflexive exploration of change.” Perhaps, that warning is, in part, to prepare the reader for contradictions within the text that mirror the contradictions that emerged during her research process.

Early in the second chapter Seitz clearly rejects positivism because she is concerned with things that would be rejected as unknowable and irrelevant by positivists: meanings, motivations, and social structures of gender and class relations, and accepts an anti-positivist or, what shell calls, her “post-positivist” approach grounded in elements of interpretivism and critical theory (p. 16). Seitz accepts, like interpretivists and critical theorists, multiple, socially-constructed realities that may conflict and a more personal, interactive mode of data collection because meaning (interpretation) can only be communicated through such interaction. However, unlike interpretivists, but in agreement with critical theorists and some feminists, she claims that interpretivists do not go far enough to reject the researcher-researched distinction. Specifically, Seitz argues that the relationship of the researcher and researched should not just be interactive, but should be interactive and empowering to both, and although there are multiple interpretations of reality, researchers should place central importance on the lives and experiences of those who have been marginalized in society.

An important and potentially contradictory element in Seitz’s methodology is her use of feminist standpoint theory to imply that the knowledge produced by the working-class Appalachian women of her study or any oppressed group is “a more complete and therefore privileged knowledge of society” (p. 18). Just as positivists privilege method, in the sense that they claim to use objective methods that produce the Truth, similarly feminist standpoint theorists privilege the knowledge of women, and perhaps, in that sense, some-to-all feminist standpoint theorists assume that the knowledge produced by women is objective, grounded in the Truth. If Seitz accepts the assumption of an objective epistemology, then she contradicts a fundamental assumption of both interpretivism and critical theory, and agrees with a positivist assumption. Furthermore, she may also share the positivists’ ontology of a “real” social reality. If so, this reality, although it may be contested, is ultimately revealed by those who have been marginalized and, in some sense, are “outsiders.” This reviewer, however, believes Seitz uses feminist standpoint theory, not because she believes it produces an objective truth, but because she is an advocate for women, not just a laissez faire moral relativist.

Grounded theory, which is a research process used to develop theory, also informs Seitz’s ethnography, particularly her data collection and analysis. There are many variations of grounded theory; however, according to Charmaz and Mitchell (p. 160), they all include the following strategies:
1. simultaneous data-collection and
analysis;
2. pursuit of emergent themes through
early data analysis;
3. discovery of basic social processes
within the data;
4. inductive construction of abstract
categories that explain and
synthesize these processes;
5. integration of categories into a
theoretical framework that specifies
causes, conditions, and consequences
of the processes.


Seitz’s grounded theory is similar to Charmaz’s constructivist approach: it assumes multiple, socially constructed realities, recognizes and encourages the mutual creation of knowledge by the researcher and researched, and its goal includes interpretive understanding of subjects’ meanings (Charmaz).

Both grounded theory and Seitz’s ethnographic research begin with central concepts (Denzin). For Seitz, there are two: “marginalization” and “empowerment.” These central concepts are important to her as a feminist and critical researcher, and she makes that known to the reader in the first chapter. She starts with “working definitions” of these concepts and uses them to form questions that frame her research, in the hope that the resulting life stories become the text for “drawing out the ‘extralocal relationships’ and structural constraints on women’s lives” (p. 19). These definitions change through a recursive and reflexive process, with both the women in her study and Seitz empowered to change the definitions.

The author’s concern for and use of reflexivity is implicitly woven throughout the text, but is explicit in the second chapter. There she explains her personal motivations for the study and describes relationships that she strategically developed, encouraged, and discouraged with her participants inside and outside the research process, and which affected her data and conclusions. Seitz explains to the reader that it is out of her feminism, dissatisfaction with the Women in Development (WID) literature, anti-positivism, and fifteen years of experiences living and working in Southwest Virginia that she chose to focus on the lives and experiences of working-class Appalachian women in Southwest Virginia. These people are marginalized because they are women, because they are working-class, and because they are Appalachian, and for each and all of these reasons, they have been excluded from knowledge construction, and in particular, the knowledge that justifies social and economic policies that affect them. , Seitz is a feminist, activist and scholar, and she wants to “speak out” for these women (p. 7). Thus, it is out of all of the above that her study seeks to generate a gendered, working-class, local knowledge of the marginalization of working-class Appalachian women and how that marginalization influences their collective struggle for social, economic, and political change. Specifically, her ethnography seeks to answer the following questions (p. 2):
1. “How are women marginalized and oppressed on the basis of their class, gender, and other positions of difference?
2. How do women theorize an understanding of class and gender?
3. Under what conditions do women come together collectively for social change?
4. What associations provide contexts for women’s empowerment? (and)
5. How are women empowered through their grassroots collective practices?”

A sixth question that Seitz derives from the above is:
6. “Does the feminism (as theory and practice) of women in this research setting share standpoints with third world feminisms?”

To generate a gendered, working-class knowledge that can answer the above questions, Seitz is emphatic that she does not repeat data collection methods that for centuries have been used to produce male scholars’ knowledge of women and authorities who have spoken for women. Thus, she rejects any data collection technique, such as a survey, that controls informants; reduces their ideas, thoughts, and memories to words of the researcher; and does not require face-to-face interactions. Instead, she uses a data collection method that avoids control over the subjects of her research and develops a researcher-researched connectedness so both researcher and researched are co-equals (Brewer; Oakley, 1981, 2000; Reinharz, 1992). Seitz agrees with Oakley and Reinharz that the open-ended interview process is the best method for feminist research because it permits access to participants’ ideas, thoughts, and memories in their own words rather than the words of the researcher; permits non-verbal communication and emotions; produces non-standardized information that allows researchers to make full use of differences of people; and creates participants, not respondents, who are essential for the construction of a gendered knowledge. Therefore, the open-ended interview process is the primary data collection technique she uses, and in particular, Seitz uses life-history interviews because they can be focused around biographically meaningful events for her research participants that occurred because of their participation in community organizations. These biographically meaningful events or “epiphanies” connect personal troubles to public issues (Denzin, 1989). For Seitz, epiphanies are particularly useful in explaining “the ‘how’ questions of social change”; therefore, she restricted her participants to working-class Appalachian women who have experienced epiphanies through their participation in local community organizations (p. 21).
For twenty-three months, Seitz ‘met, individually and in groups, numerous women from Southwest Virginia [and] attended their meetings and celebrations, observed them working, went out for coffee, and visited their homes” (19). She states she used her own knowledge of the area, based on fifteen years of living and working there to identify and contact “more than twenty key informants,” all of which are women, “’development catalysts’” and could help her identify associations that met her four criteria (20). ,
In the second chapter, Seitz states that five associations were found that met the four criteria, and which could “provide collective contexts for women’s empowerment”, and where she had no long-term personal involvement (20). However, in an endnote for the chapter, she admits that her analysis shows that two of the associations do not meet two criteria. , Later during the research process, because it is reflexive, Seitz adds a sixth association. The six associations are:
1. Gender Equity Support Group: A community college support group for women as individuals who are getting job training and/or enrolled in degree programs.
2. Income-Generating Cooperative: A group, organized by a local woman, of about twenty women who do piecework sewing in their homes as wage laborers, not entrepreneurs.
3. Coal Employment Project: A national advocacy and support group for women miners that was formed by a small group of women miners “’to help miners claim their rightful place in the coal industry’” (147).
4. Family Auxiliary of District 28 of United Mine Workers of America (UMWA): An association of wives, widows, mothers, daughters, sisters, and other family members of coal miners.
5. Dungannon Development Commission: A community development organization that was formed in 1979 “in response to the practical gender needs of one-hundred women working at a local sewing factory” (186).
6. Ivanhoe Civic League: A community development organization that was formed in reaction to the county’s plan to sell an industrial park rather than bring industry to the town of Ivanhoe.

Seitz states she contacted each association, fully disclosed the purposes of her research to them, and asked for permission to conduct her research during formal and informal meetings with members. During association meetings, she asked members for volunteers or names of women who could represent other women in their groups. She used a strategy of snowball and purposive sampling techniques and eventually selected twelve women for her life story interviews.
The effort to obtain data for ethnographic research is very different from that sought by the positivist researcher. While the ethnographer works to “get in,” which means becoming connected and personally involved, the positivist’s effort is to be estranged by “procedural objectivity” (Burawoy, 10). Seitz “gets in” by fully disclosing the purposes of her study and revealing shared experience and sympathy for the women’s collective efforts. She reveals personal information about herself: she is a mother, divorcee, head of a household with two children, and about the same age as many of her participants. By personalizing her relationship with her participants, Seitz and the women of her study develop relationships of trust and mutuality, and in so doing, Seitz describes herself as an “outsider within” (Seitz, 19). She is a participant-as-observer who becomes an “observer-as-participant” when she conducts the intensive interviews.
According to Seitz, most of the intensive interviews were conducted during a period of ten months. In two to four sessions, with each session varying from three- to eight-hours long, these women told Seitz their life stories. She states that she guided, did not control, their conversation by use of an open-ended interview guide, which was reflexive; it varied with the women being interviewed and as their life stories were told.
As stated above and implicitly, Seitz’s primary data collection technique is intensive interviews, specifically life-story interviews. She states that she recorded all of these interviews and produced verbatim transcriptions of each interview within one week of their occurrence. These transcriptions include her observer comments, which are Seitz’s comments that “convey settings, describe processes, and reflect on meanings for both the subjects and the researcher” (23). These transcriptions are her primary data.
Other data, which “provided illustrative materials for analysis of the [primary] data,” include field notes, which were produced from interactions with women in the associations, videotapes, photographs, memorabilia, and other documents and print materials (24).
Seitz’s claims her analysis was an interactive process of going back over transcripts of each interview numerous times as each life story was reconstructed and used Denzin’s approach of bracketing central and recurring themes. Consequently, her analysis should have taken the following five steps (Denzin):
1. Locate within the life stories key phrases and statements that speak directly to marginalization and empowerment.
2. Interpret the meanings of these phrases and statements.
3. Obtain the participant’s interpretations of these phrases and statements, when possible.
4. Inspect these meanings for what they reveal about recurring themes of marginalization and empowerment.
5. Offer a tentative statement of marginalization and empowerment in terms of the recurring themes in the previous step.

Conceptualization is an important process for Denzin’s analysis, and it is for Seitz’s as well. She uses the process to locate marginalization and empowerment in the life stories and social environments of her participants. In this way, she presents the results, which are the recurring experiences and feelings of marginalization and empowerment, as they occur within the participants’ families, at work, and in their communities, in their own words and emotions and Seitz’s summaries of such.
What marginalization and empowerment mean to the working-class Appalachian women of her study is presented in chapters three to eight. Marginalization and empowerment began with the following working definitions:
Marginalization: To cause to live
on the edges of society by excluding
from participation in any group effort.

Empowerment: A process aimed at
consolidating, maintaining, or
changing the nature and distribution
of power in a particular cultural
context…
The twelve women of the study speak of being isolated and powerless because they are female, working-class, and Appalachian. Recurring experiences and feelings of isolation and powerless of these women are communicated in the third through fifth chapters on family, work, and community. For example, in the chapter on the family, Seitz presents the following summaries,
· 10 participants “acknowledged that the most difficult aspect of growing up was recognition that their sex made them powerless”(4).
· Staying home and missing school was routine and accepted by schools because girls were expected to mother their younger sisters and brothers.
· “Threats of abandonment and shunning by family members, and fears about life outside the extended family network were recurring themes in the interviews” (66).
· Not to marry was not a choice, for all participants.
· 9 women spoke of verbal abuse, “being ‘put down’ or told that they ‘weren’t worth anything’” (58).
· 7 spoke of being slapped, 4 of being beaten, and 1 of being raped by her husband.
· “For wives of workers in an uncertain and vulnerable industry, dependency was enforced economically as well as physically” (56).

Along with experiences and feelings of isolation and powerless in their families, at work, and in their communities, the women also speak paradoxically of experiences and feelings of empowerment in their families, at work, and in the community. For example, in chapter three on the family, Seitz reports:
· Some women married as a way to “escape the
deprivations or degradations of both poverty
and being female” (53).
· “the women still perceive a primary
relationship of equity and mutuality as their
ideal, if not their experience, of marriage”
(61).
· “Women found the strength to endure and some-
times resist abusive relationships with
husbands because of their children” (63).
· 4 of the 6 women who divorced, “initiated
separations to protect their children if not
themselves” (64).
· 1 woman’s form of resistance was staying in
her marriage to give her child financial, if
not emotional, security, as a form of
resistance.

Seitz analysis demonstrates that she satisfied her goal to limit her intensive interviewing to women who have been changed by their participation in one of the six associations, and in the process is able to compare the opportunities for change that these associations allow. Women in the Gender Equity Support Group and Income Generating Cooperative reported that participation in their groups increased their and their peers’ individual self-esteem and self-confidence, and helped them recognize their “inadequacies as productive workers were based on structural inequalities” (143). Participants in the Coal Employment Project (CEP) expressed that their participation in CEP allowed them to both identify their needs and determine how they could participate in association; it helped them develop a gender consciousness. Those in the Family Auxiliary told stories of improved self-esteem and strategic collective actions that were taken during the union’s dispute with the Pittston Coal Company and which changed them by raising their class consciousness and gender consciousness. The women in the Dungannon Development Commission (DDC) reported that their participation in DDC changed their foci from individual self-interest to the interest of workers in the factory, and then to the community as a whole, with the conviction that community development should be indigenous and inclusive. Finally, the women in the Ivanhoe Civic League communicated that through their participation in the League they have become conscious of and have acted on strategic gender needs, and in the process have recognized that they, as women, “have some power within their communities,” and within their homes (216). ,
Any ethnography, from positivist to postmodernist, should include a discussion of reliability and validity because they have traditionally been the methods used to evaluate academic research, especially positivist research. To this, Seitz does not disappoint because a section in the second chapter is entitled, “Issues of Reliability and Validity.”
For Seitz, reliability refers to replicability, and specifically to the question, “Would similar recurring themes be described by different respondents?” That the answer to that question is a concern to her is evidenced by her research strategy to select women who were identified by others in their groups as being able to speak for their experiences. Furthermore, she reports that she asked similar questions to other women in one association to assess the commonality of experiences of change (25):
In one association, … I have had
several opportunities to ask similar
questions of other members and to
discuss my analysis of their
collective experiences with
respondents and with others. Other
members have described similar
processes of change through
participation in the group.

Seitz defines validity as an assessment of the veracity of the respondents’ accounts because it is the women who describe and explain their marginalization and empowerment. Because she is a critical feminist, and because she believes there are multiple, socially constructed realities and each life story is a “’fiction of self-representation,’” she rejects concerns for validity and instead shifts the concern to “’subjective mapping of experience” (26). By making that shift, she rejects concerns that participants may lie or be misinformed and, instead, tells us that these women should be heard because we can learn from them.
Linked to reliability and validity is an approach called “triangulation,” which refers to the crosschecks made to assess if data are valid and an effective representation of the phenomenon being studies (Schensul et al.). Crosschecks are made by obtaining information in different settings, from different persons, and at different times (Class Notes). Seitz interviews twelve women who are members of six different associations, and as stated above, she poses similar question to different women in one of the associations. Furthermore, she interviews the twelve women not just in one session, but, instead, in two to four sessions that range from three to eight hours. The life-story interviews are conducted as conversations in the women’s homes, in a park, laundromat, restaurants, coffee shops, and their places at work, with concerns for the idiosyncratic effects of place on the life stories. For example, at least one of these women is always interviewed in the same place (24):
one respondent who was not overtly critical
of a project organizer was always interviewed
in the group’s meeting place [because] her
husband would not have appreciated [Seitz]
coming to her home.

Social sciences researchers are also traditionally concerned with generalizability, which refers to the ability to make inferences about a larger population based on research results from a sample (Schensul et al.). The women of Seitz’s study are working-class Appalachians from Southwest Virginia who have participated in six specific associations and experienced epiphanies because of their participation. Seitz does not claim that the twelve women that she interviewed speak for all women, all of the working-class, or all Appalachians; instead, she reports that these twelve women speak for the experiences of other women in their associations.
Ethical concerns are imbued throughout Seitz’s research process. First, she does not hide her motivations from the reader; she identifies herself as a critical feminist who has lived in Southwest Virginia for fifteen years and how that motivates her study. Second, she does not conduct her research in secret. She declares that she “was careful to fully disclose the purposes of her research and to ask permission to carry on the study” in both formal and informal meetings with members of the associations (22). Third, she protects the confidentiality of the women and assures their anonymity. She does not report data in ways that could be used to construct “individual profiles” and then identify the women, nor does she create fictionalized composites of working-class, Appalachian women, because Seitz wants each woman to be heard in her own words (26). Fourth, she respects requests to speak off the record. For example, Seitz reports there are few quotes from one participant in the Coal Employment Project because “she asked that the tape recorder be turned off while we were discussing this association” (244). Fifth, and finally, she admits that although every participant is quoted or summarized at least once in each of the analysis chapters, “not all women are given equal voice on the page” (26).
Just as Seitz’s ethnographic research is an iterative and reflexive exploration of the experiences of working-class, Appalachian women in community associations, a reading and review of her ethnography is an iterative and reflexive process. What can appear as a complicated and, at times, inconsistent mix of elements from alternative research paradigms can also appear as a strategic and thoughtful feminist interplay. Furthermore, what can be judged as a compelling, but, at times, flawed mix of empirical statements, can also be understood as inevitable products of the dialectical tension between subject and object, between researcher and researched, between powerless and empowered, and between insider and outsider. The women of the study are marginalized as women, as working-class, and as Appalachians, yet, despite and because of their marginalization, they have acted for the betterment of their families and communities through strategic collective interaction, and in the process, transformed themselves.
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Structure and agency, or in other words, society and individuals or macro and micro, have been and continue to be an unresolved and yet, very important, dualism in the social sciences because how social theorists conceptualize the relationship between society and individuals "determines their methodologies and their understanding of social reality and social change" (Gimenex, p. 19). Social theories and empirical studies -- past, present, and future -- are fundamentally dependent upon underlying notions of how individuals relate to society.

This post examines and compares how Marx and orthodox Marxists answered the question, "What is the relationship between society and individuals?" In so doing, it illustrates important methodological differences in the history of classical social thought.

One method of eliminating the problem of the unresolved dualism of society and individuals is by eliminating one of the concepts. For example, one can theorize that individuals exist prior to and have properties that exist independently of society, such as a biologically determined human nature, and that society is nothing more than the term to denote the sum of individuals and their actions and interactions. Formally, this metaphysical approach is known as ontological individualism, and it can be found in the writings of some rational choice economists, such as Léon Walras, who assumes markets are nothing more than the sum of individual actions and interactions.[1] Conversely, one can theorize that society exists prior to and has properties independent of individuals, and furthermore, that social change results not from the actions of individuals, but from objective laws of social change. This latter approach can be called dogmatic structuralism, and it is this second approach that can be seen in the writings of the orthodox Marxists, such as Stalin.[2]

In Dialectical and Historical Materialism, Stalin conceives of a material world that exists prior to and independently of individuals and casually determines their thoughts and actions.[3] It is an objective reality, which evolves according to a natural law, which Stalin claims has been scientifically examined, tested, and proven to be true. Stalin and other orthodox Marxists then contend that the material conditions of society are objective, exist independently of individuals' wishes and desires, create society, and evolve according to social law.[4] Consequently, the objective understanding of social reality and social change is to be found in the scientific study of the social law of development and not in the study of individuals and their motives. And with that emphasis on cause-and-effect and objective laws like what one finds in nature, sociology for orthodox Marxists is a natural science. It is social physics.[5]

Orthodox Marxists reduce society to an historical socio-economic formation, which is defined by its economic base: the "mode of production". This mode of production is the totality of the "productive forces" and "relations of production", and all three -- the totality and its two parts -- exist as objective reality and are the social reality (Buzuev and Gorodnov).[6] Social change is the historical development of the mode of production, which proceeds by changes in the forces of production and subsequent changes in the relations of production, and which ultimately is the effect of social law: a universal law of technological change. Non-economic processes, such as legal, political, educational, religious, artistic, literary, and ideological processes, are marginalized to the extent of being epiphenomena that make up the "superstructure".

In the orthodox Marxist conceptualization of the relationship between society and individuals, individuals are psychological, not sociological, subjects of study. Class is the smallest social unit. Thus, agency is no more than "the ability of an emerging class to carry out a historic project dictated by the onward march of the productive forces of society" (Bowles and Gintis, p. 93). [7]

Although Stalin and the other orthodox Marxists believed Marxism-Leninism was the empirical Truth about society, social change, and the society/individuals dualism, it was not a predictive model of broad or specific social change as professed (Kolakowski). Rather, it was a social theory grounded in the strict determinism of historical processes that extended from natural law and which yielded a utopian ending that greatly conflicted with the harsh realities of Stalinism.[8]

Marx was not an orthodox Marxist; however, passages from his writings are found in the works of Stalin and other orthodox Marxists to support their "scientific" understanding of society. First, for example, orthodox Marxists evidence that Marx, like them, claims society and Nature are parts of a single system, and, as such, such social science will and should be a natural science. In the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, Marx states:[9]

Natural science will in time incorporate into itself the science of man, just as the science of man will incorporate into itself natural sciences; there will be one science. ... The social reality of nature, and human natural sciences, or the natural science of man, are identical terms.

Second, orthodox Marxists show that in the "Preface" of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx, like the orthodox Marxists, believes society to be an organic whole composed of an economic base, called the "mode of production", and a non-economic superstructure.[10] Together, the productive forces and relations of production causally determine the mode of production, which ultimately "conditions" social behavior and consciousness, while the superstructure merely supports the economic base:[11]

The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life processes in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.

Third and finally, for example, like orthodox Marxists who claim that it is scientific fact that society and classes evolve as the material conditions change, in a letter to Joseph Weydemeyer, Marx claims he proved classes are the effect of specific historical modes of production and that the productive evolution climaxes in a classless society (Marx and Engels, p. 45):[12]

What I did that was new was to prove: (1) that the existence of classes is bound up only with specific historical phases in the development of production; (2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; (3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.

In the above statement by Marx and in texts by orthodox Marxists, history appears as an independent entity, which uses man for its own fulfillment (Kolakowski). Consequently, it seems that both Marx and orthodox Marxists believe taht men do not make their own history. However, Marx explicitly rejects such an idea in other writings. In Theses on Feuerbach, Marx rejects as idealist the materialist doctrine that claims social conditions determine thinking and cause change. Bottomore and Rubel quote Marx to have written in Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe and Die Heilige Familie (p. 78):

History does nothing; it 'does not possess immense riches', it 'does not fight battles'. It is men, real, living men, who do all this, who possess things and fight battles. It is not 'history' which uses men as a means of achieving -- as if it were an individual person -- its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.

It is clear from the above quote that Marx does not reduce man to an epiphenomenon of history, contrary to orthodox Marxism. Thus, Marxist humanists, such as Fromm, contend that Marx's "understanding of history [is] based on the fact that men are 'the authors and actors of their history'" (Fromm, p. 13).

There are other passages in Marx's writings that contradict orthodox Marxism's conceptualization of structure and agency. First, for example, in Theses on Feuerbach Marx vigorously rejects theories that reify human creations with supernatural powers that are perceived as being superior and prior to their creators. Orthodox Marxists' reified technology and reified history represent a higher power that determines our social being, not unlike religious reification, which Marx opposes.[13]

Second, some of Marx's writings describe a theoretical system that supports methodological individualism, which is contrary to orthodox Marxism's dogmatic structuralism (Elster; Classical Society Theory class notes, University of Manchester). Methodological individualism is the doctrine that social phenomena can and must be explained as outcomes of individual behaviors and decisions. It denies collectivities, such as classes and the state, the ability to be autonomous decision makers.[14] In the Communist Manifesto, Marx begins chapter one with the statement, "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles" (p. 13). Those class struggles are not the relationships of abstract entitites, such as the relationships of Ricardo's capitalists, laborers, landowners, and tenants who exist outside of history, but instead are relationships of different types of individuals, such as capitalists and laborers, who act and make history.[15] Individuals are primary as reflected in a letter in 1846 to P.V. Annenkov, in which Marx states, "the social history of men is never anything but the history of their individual development" (Cohen, p. 13).

Individuals for Marx are neither all powerful nor completely powerless and irrelevant. As a philosopher and historian, Marx rejects theories grounded in either ontological structuralism, such as orthodox Marxism, or ontological individualism. Instead, he describes individuals as affecting and affected by other individuals and collective entities, past and present, and their effects depend on their scale and duration as social things. The less durable and smaller something is, such as a conversation, an individual or a small group, the more it belongs to agency, whereas the more historical and larger something is, such as language, the state, or an organization, the more it belongs to structure. For example, Marx uses as an example the fact that a single individual does not have the power to create the language that is spoken because its development results from the "great many diversified and dispersed actions by very many individuals", past and present (Classical Social Theory class notes).[16] Because much of Marx's writings focus on considerable historical developments and very large collectivities, it is understandable that some Marxists and non-Marxists believe he is a structuralist, particularly a dogmatic structuralist like Stalin and other orthodox Marxists. However, he is not, and Marx reminds us of that fact in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844: "we must avoid postulating 'society' again as an abstraction vis-à-vis the individual. The individual is the social being."

As discussed in this posting, Marx's writings evidence that he did not have a single or simple answer to the structure/agency problem, and that has been an enigma to many Marxists and non-Marxists. Perhaps, that enigma is not the fault of Marx as much as it is of readers who require structure and agency to be polar opposites in a fixed relationship regardless of scale and duration of social things.[17] Instead, Marx's conceptualization of the relationship between structure and agency appears to be on a continuum dependent upon the scale and duration of the social thing)s) being examined.

ENDNOTES:

Walras was the originator of the "general equilibrium model". It depicts the economy as a mechanical system of commodity flows causally determined by the actions of both individual consumers with given and fixed preferences and individual firms with given and fixed technologies that exist prior to the economy. Consumers and firms act according to their own self interests.
1. It is also known as Marxist structuralism.
2. This material world is nature.
3. The material conditions of life refer to what people produce, such as food, clothing, and shelter, and how they produce those use values. The production of material wealth is the primary social process.
4. According to Cornforth, if there were no causal laws in nature and society,

   [w]e could not decide upon or carry out even the simplest actions, for we would never know what to do in order to secure the results we intended. We would not possess even the freedom to make a cup of tea, for example, for we would never know whether the water would boil or, when we poured it into the teapot, whether the resulting brew would turn out like. Still less could we carry out any more complex social activities, for everything would be in chaos. In fact, we could not exist at all.(p. 187)

   Furthermore, it is because society and nature act according to objective laws that there is the "human freedom" to act according to knowledge of those laws (ibid).
5. The forces of production are labor and the means of production, which are tools, raw materials, and capital that labor uses to create use values. The relations of production refer to the ownership of the means of production.
6. The individual is not part of the social reality of orthodox Marxism. Consequently, Petrovic claims "there is no place for man" in orthodox Marxism (p. 22).
7. In light of the dogmatism of orthodox Marxism and tyranny of Stalinism, one can understand why some social scientists associate "structure" with "repression" and other words, such as "objective", "causes" and "mechanisms", and associate its antonynm, "agency", with words such as "freedom", "subjective", "reasons" and "intentions".
8. This appears in the chapter, "Private Property and Communism".
9. The economic base or mode of production is also known as the economic infrastructure.
10. The above quote and chapter 32 of Capital, Volume I, suggest Marx was an economic and technological determinist.
11. That Marx's moral concerns drive his social theory is obvious. What he foretells as the end of social evolution is consistent with his revolutionary ideals.
12. Thus, a devout orthodox Marxist who lives in a capitalist country should sit back and wait for technology and history to necessitate revolution in her country despite Marx's fundamental belief that actions, not ideas, change the world.
13. Ontological individualism presumes individuals precede the society or community to which they belong and reduces all social phenomena to individuals and their actions and interactions. Thus, social reality is no more than individuals and their actions and interactions. Methodological individualism does not presume individuals exist prior to and independently of society or their communities nor does it define what the social reality is because it is methodological, not ontological.
14. In Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, Ricardo assumes capitalism is the end of history. Private ownership of the means of production, production of use values for their sale, and relations of laborer to capitalist and tenant to landowner are optimal and eternal. Economic laws of value, of wages, of rent, of profit, and so on, are objective, and economic outcomes are inevitable and optimal.
15. In the first chapter of Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations 1857-58, Marx declares, "Language as the product of an individual is an absurdity. But so also is property."
16. For example, some have criticized Weber for not being methodologically consistent. In his theory, he is an individualist, but in his empiricall studies, a structuralist.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Bottomore, T.B. and Rubel, Maximilien, eds. 1961. Karl Marx Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy. Penguin Books: Middlesex, England.
1. Bowles, Samuel and Gintis, Herbert. 1986. Democracy and Capitalism: Property, Community, and the Contradictions of Modern Social Thought. Basic Books, Inc., Publishers: New York.
2. Buzuev, V. and Gorodnov, V. 1987. What is Marxism-Leninism? Progress Publishers: Moscow.
3. Cohen, G.A. 1986. "Historical Inevitability and Human Agency in Marxism" in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London; Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Predictability in Science and Society, vol. 407, no. 1832, (September 8), pp. 65-83.
4. Cornforth, Maurice. 1971. The Theory of Knowledge. International Publishers: New York.
5. Elster, Jon. "Marxism, Functionalism, and Game Theory" in Theory and Society, vol. 11, pp. 453-482.
6. Fuchs, Stephan. 2001. "Beyond Agency" in Sociological Theory, vol. 19, no. 1, (March), pp. 24-40.
7. Fromm, Erich. 1966. Marx's Concept of Man. Frederick Ungar Publishing Co.: New York.
8. Gimenez, Martha E. 1999. "For Structure: A Critique of Ontological Individualism" in Alethia, vol. 2, no. 2, (October), pp. 19-25.
9. Hankins, Frank H. 1939. "Social Science and Social Action" in American Sociological Review, vol. 4, no. 1, (February), pp. 1-16.
10. Katzner, Donald. 1988. Walrasian Economics: An Introduction to the Economic Theory of Market Behavior. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company: Reading, MA.
11. Kolakowski, Leszek. 1978. Main Currents of Marxism: Its Origins, Growth and Dissolution, Volume I. Oxford University Press: New York.
12. Marx, Karl. 1844. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. Online at www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm.
13. -----------. 1848. Communist Manifesto. Henry Regnery Company: Chicago, 1954.
14. ------------. 1857-58. Pre-Capitalist Economic Foundations, 1857-58. Obtained online at www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/precapitalist/ch01.htm.
15. -------------. 1859. Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Obtained online at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface-abs.htm.
16. ------------- and Engels, Frederick. 1848-95. Letters to Americans: 1848 - 1895. International Publishers: New York.
17. -----------------------. 1845, 1846, 1859. The German Ideology including Theses on Feuerbach and Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy. Prometheus Books: Amherst, New York, 1998.
18. Petrovic, Gajo. 1967. Marx in the Mid-Twentieth Century. Anchor Books: Garden City, New York.
19. Ricardo, David. 1817. Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. J.M. Dent & Sons, Ltd.: London, 1937.
20. Ritzer, George and Gindoff, Pamela. "Methodological Relationism: Lessons For and From Social Psychology" in Social Psychology Quarterly, vol. 55, no. 2, pp. 128-140.
21. Roemer, John, ed. 1986. Analytical Marxism. Cambridge University Press: New York.
22. Stalin, Joseph. 1938. "Dialectical and Historical Materialism" at http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/Stalin/works/1939.
23. Swingewood, Alan. 2000. A Short History of Sociological Thought, 3rd ed. St. Martin's Press: New York.
24. Webster, Murray Jr. 1973. "Psychological Reductionism, Methodological Individualism, and Large-Scale Problems" in American Sociological Review, vol. 38, (April), pp. 258-273.

Main Currents of Marxism: Its Origins, Growth and Dissolution, Volume I. The Founders. Leszek Kolakowski. Trans. by P. S. Falla. Oxford University Press, New York. 1978.

Leszek Kolakowski is a Polish philosopher who began his academic career as an orthodox Marxist, but later became disillusioned with Marxism under Stalinism, and by the mid 1950s was one of the most prominent revisionist Marxists in Poland. The outspoken Kolakowski was banned from the party in 1966 and from teaching two years later. Subsequently, he went into exile and began what was to be a series of visiting positions in the United States and Canada until he settled into a permanent position at Oxford University.[1] It is out of these experiences that Kolakowski wrote the three-volume set, Main Currents of Marxism: Its Origins, Growth and Dissolution to answer the question, "How, and a result of what circumstances, did Marx's philosophy culminate in Stalinism?". This book review concerns Volume I: The Founders, who are Marx and Engels, but mostly Marx.

Kolakowski identifies Marx as a "German philosopher" and as such, he argues that the starting point of an understanding of Marx's writings and Marxism is to be found in Marx's philosophical inquiry about human nature and human phenomenon, which was influenced by Hegel, Feuerbach, and other philosophers dating back to the Neo-Platonists. In so doing, Volume I does what Stalinism viewed with contempt: it pays respect to pre-Marxist philosophers. Specifically, Kolakowski rejects the Stalinist judgment that Marxist philosophy is scientific and, therefore, anything preceding Marxist philosophy is of no essential importance for the understanding of Marxism because it is pre-scientific.[2] Instead, Kolakowski evidences pre-Marxist philosophical conceptions to be essential components of Marx's thought and Marxism.

Kolakowski equally rejects Althusser's claim that a philosophical reading of Capital demonstrates an epistemological break in Marx's thought from its juvenile humanism, Hegelian dialectic, and philosophical theory of history with its utopian ideals, to its mature structuralism, non-Hegelian dialectic, and scientific theory of history devoid of utopianism (Althusser). Kolakowski believes there is continuity in Marx's philosophical thought as evidenced by philosophical conceptions in Capital that are consistent with conceptions in Marx's earlier writings, such as alienation, duality, Hegelian dialectic, and Species-Being.[3]

Volume I presents a challenge for readers without philosophical backgrounds because Kolakowski presumes the reader has basic and, at times, more than basic philosophical knowledge. The first four chapters are complicated and sometimes puzzling descriptions and examinations of pre-Marxist philosophers that influenced both Hegel and Marx, puzzling because at times it is not apparent if the author is summarizing the original philosophies or analyzing their concepts of human nature and human phenomenon from a Hegelian/Marxist or other perspective.

Kolakowski begins his analysis of Pre-Marxist philosophers with the Neo-Platonists, especially the mystical thinker, Plotinus, and highlights their extensive influence on Christian theology and medieval philosophy, which in time influenced the Enlightenment philosophers, Rousseau, Hume, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx, and others. Kolakowski's descriptions of Plotinus' theories of emanation and individual salvation are sufficient to be understood by a reader with little philosophical training and who has access to an online philosophy dictionary or encyclopedia; however, his subsequent descriptions of the theories' transformations in Christian theology, medieval philosophy, and later philosophies of Hegel and Feuerbach are too sketchty to be understood by those without more sophisticated philosophical training. The problem is mostly due to what could be described as the author's hit-and-run-like rhetorical style of taking a name or concept out of the history of philosophy and inserting it into a sentence without explanation.[4] Consequently, some of Kolakowski's potential insights become lacunae in his argument. For example, although he finds in the Neo-Platonists' concepts of man, dialectic and progress presages of Marx's concepts of Species-Being, dialectic, and progress, that continuity of philosophical thought is not seen or appreciated by readers who are without backgrounds in philosophy.[5]

Volume I demonstrates that although Marx attempted to avoid the dilemma of utopianism versus historical fatalism, he does not, and in part for that reason, Kolakowski charges that Marx's works are not valid guides to social action. [6][7] Furthermore, he shows that Marx's and his co-authored writings with Engels use contradictory concepts, such as those that are steeped in "Promethean humanism" and "utopian idealism" versus structuralism and historical fatalism. [8][9] Consequently, the philosophical contradictions of the founders have resulted in a conflicted Marxian tradition in which various Marxists have aruged that only they know the Truth of Marx's thought, and some of those Marxists have been apologists for the tyranny of Stalinism. Volume I can be understood as a prelude to the author's reaction reaction to that despotism in the subsequent volumes. However, it can also be understood as a prelude to dismissal of Marxism as a whole, and this is unfortunate because Kolakowski does see brilliance in Marx's writings, such as Marx's "principle that men's spiritual and intellectual life is not self-contained and wholly independent but is also an expression of material interests" (p. 371).


ENDNOTES:

1. Kolakowski no longer identifies himself as a Marxist of any kind.
2. The Stalinist (or orthodox Marxist) view of Marxism as a science is illustrated by the following quote:

   Marxism-Leninism is a coherent scientific system of philosophical, economic and socio-political views, and is the world outlook of the international working class, who are called upon to rejuvenate the world on socialist and communist principles. Marxism-Leninism is a science about the cognition and revolutionary transformation of the world, about the laws of development of society, nature and human thinking (Buzuev and Gorodnov, p. 11).

   Because orthodox Marxists categorize Pre-Marxists thinkers as idealists, not scientists, they conclude that it is a mistake for Marxists, who are true to Marxism-Leninism, to find guidance in the writings of Pre-Marxists. That is illustrated in Stalin's statement that "in order not to err in policy, one must look forward, not backward" (Stalin, p. 5).
3. Volume I is not unique in its rejection of the Althusserian claim that the Mature Marx negated the philosophical thought of the Young Marx (van den Berg, Petrovic). Petrovic gives one of the more humorous statements regarding the Young versus Mature Marx debate:

   The 'young' Marx is not a juvenile sin of the 'old' genius, who wrote Capital. Marx's youth was not merely a passing young-Hegelian episode, but a period of which Marx developed the basic philosophical conceptions to which he remained faithful in his later works. Without the 'young' Marx, a full understanding of the 'old' is impossible (p. 13).

4. Because Kolakowski presumes the reader knows the basic history of philosophical thought.
5. Man, according to the Neo-Platonists, is a duality because he is only partly of this world. Although his lower soul is in the physical world, his higher nature is independent of the body and belongs eternally to a divine realm without multiplicity. Consequently, the Neo-Platonists describe man as not knowing his true, primordial self. In order to negate this duality, which was created by a negation -- that is, the negation or emanation of the One, the Neo-Platonists advocated the process of contemplation in the form of dialectical reasoning. Kolakowski aruges that Marx's concepts of the alienated man and "Species Essence" or "Species Being" arise from the Neo-Platonists' view of the duality of man. Both Marx and the Neo-Platonists believe in a higher, not-of-this-world, primordial or non-historical aspect of man. Furthermore, both Marx's dialectic and the Neo-Platonists' dialectic are essentially an historical process of negation of negation that ends with the unity of man and an Absolute. Marx's contention that communism results in man's return to his "Species Essence" -- in which individual human power and interest, particularly creative power to produce use values for oneself, is at one with community production and interest -- is consistent with the Neo-Platonists' belief that contemplation results in man's return to the highest form: the One. However, they differ. For the Neo-Platonists, progress is an individual experience, whereas for Marx, it is a social experience.
6. Recall, that according to Stalinism, Marxism-Leninism is the one and only guide to social policy. Thus, the author continues his attack against the Marxism of Stalinism.
7. Perhaps, as a reading of Borochov suggests, Marx believed he was neither utopian nor fatalist because he did not ignore the historical process and believed that it was man who made his own history. At stated by Borochov:

   Utopianism always suffers because it strives to ignore historical process. Utopianism wishes by means of human endeavor to create something not inherent in social life. Fatalism, on the other hand, assumes that the effective participation of human will is impossible with regard to these historicall processes, and thus it drifts passively with the stream. Utopianism knows of no historical process. The Utopianists fear to mention the phrase 'historical process'; for they see in the so-called historical process fatalism and passivity. The fatalists on the other hand, fear the conscious interference with the historical process as a dangerous artificiality. The fatalists forget that history is made by men who follow definite and conscious aims and purposes only when those aims and purposes are well adapted to the historical necessities of social life.

8. By "Promethean humanism", Kolakowski means secular humanism, which has in part a tradition of defiance dating back to the ancient Greeks. The ancient Greeks idolized Prometheus because he defied the authority of Zeus by stealing the fire of the gods and bringing it down to earth. For that he was punished; yet, he continued as a revolutionary.
9. Hegel's work is steeped in Christian humanism where God is the Revolutionary who perfects man, whereas for Marx, it is the revolutionary philosopher and the proletariat who bring about the ultimate social change.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

1. Althusser, Louis. 1979. "From Capital to Marx's Philosophy" and "The Object of Capital" in Reading Capital, pp. 11-198. Althusser, Louis and Balibar, Etienne. Trans. Ben Brewster. Verso: New York.
2. Buzuev, V. and Gorodnov, V. 1987. What is Marxism-Leninism? Progress Publishers: Moscow.
3. Borochov, Ber. 1906. "Our Platform, parts IV-VI" The Ber Borochov Internet Archive at http://www.angelfire.com/il2/borochov/platform2.html
4. Classical Social Theory class notes, University of Manchester.
5. MacGregor, David. 1980. "Evaluating the Marxist Tradition" in Contemporary Sociology, vol. 9, no. 4, (July), pp. 486-488.
6. Moore, Edward. 2001. "Plotinus (204 - 270 C.E.)" in The Internet Encyclopedia at http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/p/plotinus.htm
7. Petrovic, Gajo. 1967. Marx in the Mid-Twentieth Century: A Yugoslav Philosopher Reconsiders Karl Marx's Writings. Anchor Books: Garden City, New York.
8. The Radical Academy. http://www.radicalacademy.com
9. Sociology Online. "Marxism & the dialectic" at http://www.sociologyonline.co.uk/soc_essays/marxism1.htm.
10. Stalin, Joseph. 1938. "Dialectical and Historical Materialism." Online at http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/Stalin/works/1938/09.htm
11. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy at http://plato.stanford.edu
12. United States Library of Congress. 2003. "2003 John W. Kluge Prize in the Human Sciences: Leszek Kolakowski" at http://www.loc.gov/loc/kluge/kolakowski.html
13. Van den Berg, Axel. 1988. The Immanent Utopia: From Marxism on the State to the State of Marxism. Princeton University Press: Princeton, New Jersey