Saturday, March 04, 2006
Structure and Agency in Marxian Thought
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]
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:
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
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.
- It is also known as Marxist structuralism.
- This material world is nature.
- 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.
- 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). - 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.
- 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).
- 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".
- This appears in the chapter, "Private Property and Communism".
- The economic base or mode of production is also known as the economic infrastructure.
- The above quote and chapter 32 of Capital, Volume I, suggest Marx was an economic and technological determinist.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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."
- 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.
- Bowles, Samuel and Gintis, Herbert. 1986. Democracy and Capitalism: Property, Community, and the Contradictions of Modern Social Thought. Basic Books, Inc., Publishers: New York.
- Buzuev, V. and Gorodnov, V. 1987. What is Marxism-Leninism? Progress Publishers: Moscow.
- 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.
- Cornforth, Maurice. 1971. The Theory of Knowledge. International Publishers: New York.
- Elster, Jon. "Marxism, Functionalism, and Game Theory" in Theory and Society, vol. 11, pp. 453-482.
- Fuchs, Stephan. 2001. "Beyond Agency" in Sociological Theory, vol. 19, no. 1, (March), pp. 24-40.
- Fromm, Erich. 1966. Marx's Concept of Man. Frederick Ungar Publishing Co.: New York.
- Gimenez, Martha E. 1999. "For Structure: A Critique of Ontological Individualism" in Alethia, vol. 2, no. 2, (October), pp. 19-25.
- Hankins, Frank H. 1939. "Social Science and Social Action" in American Sociological Review, vol. 4, no. 1, (February), pp. 1-16.
- Katzner, Donald. 1988. Walrasian Economics: An Introduction to the Economic Theory of Market Behavior. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company: Reading, MA.
- Kolakowski, Leszek. 1978. Main Currents of Marxism: Its Origins, Growth and Dissolution, Volume I. Oxford University Press: New York.
- Marx, Karl. 1844. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. Online at www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm.
- -----------. 1848. Communist Manifesto. Henry Regnery Company: Chicago, 1954.
- ------------. 1857-58. Pre-Capitalist Economic Foundations, 1857-58. Obtained online at www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/precapitalist/ch01.htm.
- -------------. 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.
- ------------- and Engels, Frederick. 1848-95. Letters to Americans: 1848 - 1895. International Publishers: New York.
- -----------------------. 1845, 1846, 1859. The German Ideology including Theses on Feuerbach and Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy. Prometheus Books: Amherst, New York, 1998.
- Petrovic, Gajo. 1967. Marx in the Mid-Twentieth Century. Anchor Books: Garden City, New York.
- Ricardo, David. 1817. Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. J.M. Dent & Sons, Ltd.: London, 1937.
- Ritzer, George and Gindoff, Pamela. "Methodological Relationism: Lessons For and From Social Psychology" in Social Psychology Quarterly, vol. 55, no. 2, pp. 128-140.
- Roemer, John, ed. 1986. Analytical Marxism. Cambridge University Press: New York.
- Stalin, Joseph. 1938. "Dialectical and Historical Materialism" at http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/Stalin/works/1939.
- Swingewood, Alan. 2000. A Short History of Sociological Thought, 3rd ed. St. Martin's Press: New York.
- Webster, Murray Jr. 1973. "Psychological Reductionism, Methodological Individualism, and Large-Scale Problems" in American Sociological Review, vol. 38, (April), pp. 258-273.
