MARXIST SOCIOLOGY REVISITED nr- Also by Martin Shaw WAR, STATE AND SOCIETY (editor) SOCIALISM AND MILITARISM MARXISM AND SOCIAL SCIENCE: the Roots of Social Knowledge MARXISM VERSUS SOCIOLOGY: a Guide to Reading MARXIST SOCIOLOGY REVISITED Critical Assessments Edited by Martin Shaw ©Martin Shaw 1985 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1985 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 QXS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world Printed in Hong Kong British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Marxist sociology revisited: clitical assessments, 1. Communism and society 2. Sociology I. Shaw, Martin, 1947- 301 I-IX542 ISBN 0-333-36629-8 ISBN U-333-36630-1 Pack Contents Notes on the Corltributors vi Acknowledgements vii 1 Introduction: Sociology and the Crisis of Marxism 1 Martin Shaw 2 Marxism and the Urban Question Z1 Rosemary Mellor 3 Marxism and Development Sociology: Interpreting the Impasse 50 David Booth 4 Marxism and Nationalism 99 Ephraim Nimbi 5 Marxism and the Sociology of Racism: Two Historical Variants Ivar Oxaal 143 6 The Family and Capitalism in Marxist Theory 181 Colin Creighton 7 Marxism and Psychology 214 Norman O'Neill 8 Marxism, the State and Politics 246 Martin Shaw Index 269 Notes on the Contributors David Booth, Colin Creighton, Norman O'Neill and Martin Shaw are Lecturers in Sociology, and Ivar 0xaa1 is Fellow in Sociology, in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, University of Hull. Rosemary Mellor is Lecturer in Sociology, University of Manchester , she was formerly a lecturer at Hull. Ephraim Nimni is Lecturer in Sociology, Thames Polytechnic, and is completing a thesis at Hull . vi Acknowledgements We should like to thank colleagues and students in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, the University of Hull, as well as in other departments in which some of us have taught, for provid- ing a climate in which our ideas have Hourished. Some of the papers were First presented as seminar papers at Hull. We should also like to thank Theresa Weatherston and Pat Wilkinson for typing many of the articles at different stages, and of course our families for their support. Hull MARTIN SHAW I vii 1 Introduction: Sociology and the Crisis of Marxism MARTIN SHAW In the decade from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, sociology devel~ oped from a marginal discipline limited to a handful of British universities to a core social-science subject established in virtually all centres of further and higher education. In the same decade, how- ever, it was widely believed that sociology was 'in crisis The crisis was not merely a birth-pang: analyses of it were borrowed, as were the main concepts of the discipline itself, from writers in continental Europe and North America where sociology was long-established. lt was widely believed that the crisis reflected contradictions in the theoretical premises of the subject, which were highlighted by the emerging social conflicts of Western industrial society. The most iniiuential reflections on sociology's problems came from American theorists: C. Wright Mills whose criticism anticipated the radical decade, and Alvin Gouldner whose The Corning Crisis of Western Sociology appeared, typically, when a crisis was already widely recognised Neither was committed to Marxism, except in Mills' sense of the 'plain MarxiSt' using Marxist concepts pragmati- cally where they made sense and discarding them when they did not. Younger sociologists, especially in Europe where there were better sources, were however less inhibited in their relationship to Marxist theory. The political radicalisation of the years before and after 1968 helped propel many in that direction; but Marxism also offered a theoretical answer to the apparent incoherence of mainstream sociol- ogy. Marxism came, of course, in many different guises, and the Marxisms the new sociologists embraced were often not those which an older generation had rejected. There was a recovery of earlier Marxist traditions, long buried by Stalinism, as well as a genuine new development of Marxist theory. 1