Rethinking Method: The Reflective Reconstruction of History

Abstract

The previous chapters have been an attempt to transcend the limitations of viewing Marxism as an either/or proposition. That is, it has been customary to view Marxism as either a critical social theory (Critical Marxism: Lukács, Korsch, the Frankfurt School, Sartre, Goldmann, etc.) or a science (Scientific Marxism: Althusser, Godelier, Poulantzas, Therborn, etc.).¹ Both perspectives have different views regarding knowledge, truth, ideology, the nature of science, social action, the possibility of revolutionary change, etc. Korsch, Colletti, Merleau-Ponty, Aron, Marković, Anderson, and Gouldner have been aware for some time of the existence of the two perspectives of Marxism. The two Marxisms have evolved from the confusions and apparent contradictions within and between Marx’ works. On the one hand, they see the Marx who stresses the notions of praxis, self-consciousness, and revolutionary change, that is, the Marx of the Manuscripts and the ‘Theses on Feuerbach’. The other Marx is the scientific investigator who is studying “the natural laws of capitalist production … these laws are in themselves the tendencies which work out with an iron law of necessity towards an inevitable goal.”