The Twilight of Capitalism by Michael Harrington (Part I: The New Karl Marx, Chapter 7)

Part I concludes with Harrington’s view of the “Marxist Paradigm.” Sociologists debate whether Marx and others are present in modern sociology or whether the discipline has freed itself.  Any analysis of sociology finds that Marxian analysis is alive and well, even more so with advent of the Grid-Group Theory (which by now you can tell that I really like).

The theory divides social relations by group v. individual and rules or grid v. liberty. It results in four ways of life (five if you include a mediating class of heroes that have the characteristics of all). They are hierarchy (high group, high grid), fatalism/despotism (low group, high grid), individualism (low group, low grid) and egalitarianism (high group, low grid). If Capitalism is seen as despotic (rather than the libertarianism it imagines itself to be), then Marxian Philosophy will lead to a combination if real liberty and equality.

The old anthropology served the interest of the hierarchs, who sought to prove their racial theories. It is now basically egalitarian with individualist overtones. Meanwhile, welfare economists and social choicers assume that all economic and social relations live in a libertarian framework (including hierarchy).  Grid-Group shows that this is not the case, as does Marx. Harrington describes the Marxian paradigm using a number of questions. For the analysis of each, read the book. They are as follows (I will use the authors term Marxist rather than my own Marxian as well as his own words).

1. The Marxist paradigm is critical about its own definitions and data. Unlike other social sciences, it looks for class bias in its reasoning.
2. Marxism makes no pretense of being “value free”; yet it seeks to be rigorously scientific.
3. Men and women are both creatures and creators of their society.
4. Again, it is helpful to recall the Marxist paradigm of the essential determinacy of the economic element in the structure of society, with reciprocal interaction, at the same time, of the political, social and cultural.
5. The Marxian paradigm uses contradictions as a key element in the social dynamic.
6. The economic takes social form in the shape of the classes which, under capitalism, are determined in the production process.
7. In the Marxian paradigm, technology is an extremely important variable. It is not, however, determining for a social system as a whole.
8. Clear distinctions must be kept in mind, as Schumpeter insisted, between Marxian possibilities, symptoms and causes. The possibility of crisis is inherent in the very structure of capitalism, in Marx’s analysis.

While my analysis differs a bit in some particulars, especially regarding the business cycle and how to move forward, the analysis of the issues in Part II which address the welfare state in the modern America of the 1970s. (or 6 B.R. – before Reagan).