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Over the past few years, the skepticism against the stance of value neutrality and the reception of the Frankfurt School in the wake of renewed attention to Marxism in a Critical Sociology has once again focused attention on the problem of the integration of theory and praxis in sociology. Bearing in mind social philosopher Karl Marx's famous statement, philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways, but the point is to change it, members of the Frankfurt School recognized the problem and perhaps difficulty, of praxis in sociology from the very beginning. This paper is primarily an attempt to present a critique of current approaches to field work and especially of participant observation. This particular focus is important for two reasons. First, ethnographic work has become of paramount importance given the sophisticated manipulation of people's lives today. The intricate organization of the work place, the divisive and paralyzing structure especially of the urban setting. The second reason for such an extended critique is that it would guide people to politically and methodologically adequate approaches to field work.

Marxism has an uncanny knack of reappearing when and where it is least expected. It has a boomerang-like character. Marxism's continuing appeal lies in its compelling account of capitalism, outlining possible challenges to capitalism and envisioning alternatives to capitalism. The magic of Marxism lies in somehow holding together these three contradictory elements, its objectivity, diagnosing capitalism as a totality riddled with contradictions, limits and insurgent social forces, its engagement, challenging capitalism on its own terrain and its imagination, daring to postulate a freer world beyond capitalism. The revival of Marxism depends on the reconfiguration of these three moments but without abandoning any one of them. The paper discusses possible fates of Marxism in general with a specific engagement with the emblematic "Communist Manifesto." It offers three readings of the text. The first is a literal reading in which it considers three theses as applied to nineteenth-century capitalism. The second reading draws on shadows lurking within "The Communist Manifesto" to address the twentieth century tripartite division into organized capitalism, its nemesis in state socialism and anti-colonial and postcolonial transformations of the peripheries. The third reading restores "The Communist Manifesto" for comprehending, challenging and envisioning alternatives to the transnational capitalism of today.

The study of mass contentious politics in Southeast Asia has accumulated significant knowledge over the last 40 years. This politics is instructive because it presents distinctive problems for analysis whose solutions will be useful to future analysts there and elsewhere. Two areas of knowledge where this literature has made special contributions are peasant resistance and the politics of insurgency and counterinsurgency. In addition, the peculiarities of the scholarship on this topic offer an opportunity to engage two different debates. First, because of the diverse methods employed to tackle this topic, the literature is useful for evaluating claims often made by partisans to methodological debates that only one’s own method can accumulate knowledge while others cannot. Second, given the high geopolitical stake Southeast Asia once held for the United States in its fight against world communism, the scholarship on contentious mass politics in this region provides an appropriate test case for the common argument that postwar American scholarship has been dominated by American “imperial designs.” This article examines the different genres of analysis in the literature and shows how these genres hold different normative and ontological assumptions, conceptualize problems differently, and accumulate knowledge in different modes. A key finding of the essay is that knowledge accumulation by different genres has experienced cycles of growth and exhaustion. The evolution of these genres indicates the often neglected fact that knowledge accumulation consumes exhaustible knowledge resources that need to be replenished. The changing fortunes of the genres with different normative orientations also suggest a loose link between scholarship on this topic and broad ideological shifts in the United States, although “imperial interests” did not always prevail as often claimed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

These essays were originally presented at a symposium of the same title that took place at the annual meeting of the American Association of the Advancement of Slavic Studies in Toronto on November 20, 2003. The charge to the participants was to “to reread the book and make short presentations on it, its significance, the validity of its analysis in hindsight, its historical contribution to our understanding of late communism, its influence on others.” The symposium was timed to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of writing of the book in 1973-1974 as well as the twenty-fifth anniversary of its publication in English in 1979. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article builds on insights of the New Economic Sociology, which sees the economy as structurally embedded in networks of social relations that collectively make up the social structure. Specifically, in this article, researchers argue that the more the economic actors that own and control post communist economic organizations are embedded in political and financial clientelistic networks, the less successful the transition from the planned to the market economy will be. Therefore, the key to a successful transition is to control the nature of networks in which firms are embedded. Privatization policy should be formulated to discourage the activation of networks linking managers of firms to individuals in the state or financial institutions. This article investigates the process of transition by identifying various managerial strategies needed to survive the transition or to transform socialist era enterprises to operate in a market or quasi-market environment. The transition from "socialism" to "capitalism" was apart from being the defining phenomenon of the late twentieth century, an unprecedented natural experiment in societal transformation and organizational restructuring. Before revolutions, economies in Eastern Europe were almost entirely state owned and centrally planned, today the property of most postcommunist countries is predominantly in private hands and is market integrated. According to neo-classical "transition economics," as articulated by the leading economists studying the transition as well as the World Bank and other International Financial Institutions, the creation of private property and the freeing of markets should have created enterprise restructuring leading to rapid growth at the national level after a brief period of "readjustment."

This article investigates the problem of Anti-politics and the spirit of capitalism, dissidents, monetarists and Czech Republic's transition to capitalism, as of February 1, 2000. The argument is that the type of capitalism to emerge after the fall of communism was determined by struggles and alliances in the late communist field of power. Dissidence is an existential attitude, not a profession. The best way to describe the identity of these individuals is as "internal exile." Monetary policy is not only a technology to govern economic life. These dissidents invited monetarists to join them during the roundtable negotiations between the regime proved highly significant for destinies of both groups and for Czecho-Slovak politics.

The article analyzes communism from ancient as well as modern perspectives. No greater challenge to social theory has been presented by history at the end of the twentieth century than the collapse of the socialist project in Eastern Europe. It offers sociology of communism. An account of the nature, incidence, and social roots of its ideas and institutions can usefully be prefaced by some scaffolding. Communism should be defined, first of all, as an attempt to institutionalize the sharing of land or women in the face of the complexity represented by organized agro-literate politics. Consequently, communism is not mere equality nor is it communalism: it is a dream of moral unity, an example of what the critic Sigmund Freud called "the oceanic feeling," in the face of complexities that are felt to be unwelcome. The historical record shows three main types of communism in premodern circumstances. A feature of modernity has been the extent to which intellectuals have lost much of their status as literacy has become universalized and their own numbers augmented: this status insecurity may go some way toward explaining the anti-capitalist nature of most modern social thought.

The article critically explores the compatibility between Green political philosophy and the Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas, German philosopher and sociologist. This critique is conducted from the perspective of the more radical, ecocentric wing of the emergent Green political spectrum. According to this perspective, the ecological crisis is not simply a crisis of human democratic participation, welfare, and survival; the now familiar litany of ecological disturbances, particularly the alarming rate of species extinction, reflects a crisis of evolutionary proportions affecting all members of the biotic community. Green theorists have done much to draw attention to the limitations of Marxism's traditional preoccupation with human alienation and exploitation. From a Green perspective, the most significant thematic innovation of the first generation of Critical Theorists was their critique of the domination of nature-a critique that grew out of their attempt to understand why the original emancipatory promise of Marxism had not been fulfilled. All the major themes of Critical Theory have a significant bearing on the Green critique of anthropocentrism, industrialism, modern technology, and bureaucracy and the Green commitment to grassroots democracy.

This article discusses on the issue of departing from the usual beliefs or established doctrines in the field of social science. Social science must break with the preconstructions of common sense. One of the major obstacles to progress in the social sciences no doubt resides in the formidable gap between strict compliance with the rules of proper scientific conduct, as they are defined by the methodological ways taught in universities, and true scientific virtues. Studies that simply confirm the constructions of common sense and ordinary discourse by franscribing everyday assumptions into scientific definitions have every chance of being approved by the scholarly community, and its audiences, especially if they comply strictly with the more superficial rules of scientific discipline. Whereas research that breaks with the false obviousness and the apparent neutrality of the constructions of common sense, including scholarly common sense, is always in danger of appearing to be the result of an act of arbitrary imposition, if not of ideological bias, and of being denounced as deliberately producing the data fit to validate them.

This article focuses on the emergence of a new comparative political economy. The political turmoil of the sixties was a world-wide phenomenon and the international character of the impact of the decade on intellectual life is perhaps clearer in the case of development theory. Intellectual currents originating in the third world challenged accepted approaches to development issues. These new streams of thought found a receptive audience in the developed world among younger scholars and students radicalized by the events of the sixties. The new comparative political economy has not aimed at charting progress along a presumed unilinear path of societal development but rather at uncovering, interpreting, and explaining distinctive patterns of development. Different countries exhibit different patterns of distribution and accumulation over the course of their development. Industrialization associated with strikingly disparate political regimes in different periods and regions. One of the hallmarks of the new comparative political economy is its focus on the way processes of historical change are shaped by the patterns of conflict and alliance among classes or fractions of classes.

Three waves of New Class theories can be identified: the anarchist theories of the intellectual class of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; the bureaucratic-technocratic class theories of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s; and the knowledge class theories of the 1970s. Each wave offers different insights, each wave captures in a fragmented manner different aspects, or dimensions of a New Class formation. From a textual analysis of New Class theories three dimensions of class formation can be identified: agency, structural position, and consciousness. Although theorists in each wave do capture features in each dimension, they put particular emphasis on selected dimensions. It has been found that the first wave of theories emphasizes agency, the second structural position, and the third consciousness. The main weakness of the New Class in the West during the last two decades has been its inability to find an institutional position. At the same time, with increasing state intervention, a new structural position around the institutions of government planning was gradually created. As the West is sliding--with some cyclical fluctuation--toward a statist future, away from competitive capitalism, the likelihood of a statist New Class domination is increasing.

\This article focuses on labor organization and class alliance. The focus on alliance formation derives from recent historical studies of the European working class, particularly the French working class, and from an attempt to reformulate long-standing debates over the role of skilled workers in working-class movements. As the knowledge of workers' experiences in different countries has grown, so has the interest in conceptualizing and analyzing the process of working-class formation. Out of the ensuing debate has come a rejection, on both theoretical and empirical grounds, of the traditional Marxist assumption that the capacity for collective action develops automatically with the productive forces. Instead, students of class formation now point out that collective action is inherently difficult, that it requires resources and organizational capacity as well as shared grievances and generalized discontent. Accordingly, class formation has been reconceptualized as a mobilization process that entails building a set of organizations that represent the general interest of labor and are capable of class-based collective action.

The article focuses on stanlinism. The term has become an almost universally accepted category in both Soviet and Communist history, yet there is remarkably little discussion of its meaning; disagreements and hesitations about its theoretical premises have discouraged all but a handful of attempts at definition. In scholarly usage "Stalinism" describes here a movement, there an economic, political, or social system, elsewhere a type of political practice or belief-system. Those engaged in this project have in good measure been drawn to the concept of Stalinism as a revisionist alternative to the totalitarianism model, which, as formulated by political scientists in the 1950s, postulated a malignant "inner logic" and "unbroken continuity" to the Soviet experience. The concept of Stalinism has been useful in helping periodize the Soviet experience, an important step in rendering that experience more historical, but an emphasis on structure over process implicit in the term as well as its amorphous and ill-defined nature have frustrated a complete break with many assumptions of the totalitarian model.

The article examine the thought of a minority group in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), who tried to justify political reforms in China and even democratization, by resurrecting the question of Asiatic Mode of Production (AMP). The debate over AMP in China, reflects both the common and potentially diverging interests of fractions of the Leninist state elite. For analyzing politics in China, a new communist theory is needed, given the failure of the totalitarian model to explain the growing change and divergence within and between Communist systems. In China, the present situation can be viewed as one in which a new coalition of state elites came to dominate the mainstream of the CCP under leader Deng Xiaoping. This coalition formed after an extreme lack of social cohesion had led elements to defect to Deng's side from the previous mainstream coalition. Deng's coalition differed radically from the mainstream under the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976, when elites favoring ideological and coercive incentives were dominant in previous ruling coalition.

This article responds to comments on the article about the transition from capitalism to communism. It is of crucial importance to bear in mind that, under advanced welfare-state capitalism, access to paid labor has become a privilege. Contrary to what others seem to take for granted, unemployment is not just a matter of inefficiency, but also of injustice. The introduction of the universal grant must be viewed as a way of sharing out the advantages currently attached to the holding of a job. In one word, the very persistence of involuntary unemployment shows that there is a persistent imbalance of benefits in favor of the employed. A universal grant cannot be justified by reference to solidarity or to any desert principle. It can only be justified in terms of real freedom from toil for everyone. Once such freedom has become possible, it needs much more than a quick reference to a widely accepted notion of justice to convince those who attach a high price to freedom that this opportunity should be forgone and the subjection to paid work maintained. There are distinct trends that concur to undermine the claim that work alone entitles one to any part of the social product. Firstly, the women's movement has led to a revaluation of unpaid work. Secondly, technical progress has immensely attenuated the truth contained in the impression that what is being produced by a worker, the income she or he generates, is owed entirely, or principally, to that worker's efforts. Finally, privatization and destruction of the remaining commons by industrial society have left whoever does not get a monetary income with such meager possibilities for subsisting independently.

This article comments on an article about the transition from capitalism to communism, specifically the presence of the conditions for weak abundance, universal grants will result in an improvement of the quality of work and they are politically feasible and a continual increase of such grants is politically sustainable. Defined for the purposes of universal grants, fundamental needs would thus have two components, namely some fixed level and a part that varies contextually. The perennial doubt about universal grants is whether people will work of they do not have to. The framework in which the question arises is this. Individuals are self-interested and rational. They dispose of a certain amount of time that they divide into work, for which they are remunerated, and leisure. In fact weak abundance is feasible from the point of view of labor supply if the current aggregate income is sufficient to satisfy aggregate subsistence requirements, aggregate income would not fall below this level as the result of individuals receiving grants, and it would not fall below this level as the result of individuals receiving grants and paying higher taxes. Wages increase because of supply of labor falls as the grant is introduced.

This article comments on an article about the transition from capitalism to communism. Full communism is a sort of Marxian utopia, in which scarcity and human selfishness are overcome, and they must be overcome together: scarcity inevitably breeds selfishness, because what we get must involve some others not getting. People identify with the needs they know, and identify these with the common good. Soviet-type economies and societies do not show themselves able to overcome either scarcity or human selfishness. Certainly, Karl Marx was wrong to imagine that capitalism has exhausted its productive potential, that the search for profit acts as a brake upon the productive forces. Of course the West has many economic problems, not least unemployment, but one can certainly argue that the present-day Soviet system is in contradiction with the productive forces, that it tends indeed to routine and inertia. However, capitalism has other features that the authors did not mention. One is the constant stimulation of wants, and secondly, it stimulates overuse of natural resources, and there is also ecological damage. So capitalism may be an efficient way to increase output, and this despite the efforts of monetarists and laissez-faire fanatics to upset the social-economic applecart.

This article comments on an article about the transition from capitalism to communism and argues that some form of social ownership of the principal means of production is essential for the development and reproduction of communist social practices. Typically when Marxists talk about communism, the concept also entails collective ownership of the means of production and some kind of associated collective planning of social and economic life. There are two basic arguments that are frequently advanced for why socialism might be a necessary means for the emergence and development of communism. First, Marxists often argue that mature capitalism blocks the development of social productivity whereas socialism enhances productivity, second, they sometimes argue that socialism is necessary for the formation of altruistic personalities that are themselves necessary for a viable communist society. If it is correct that socialism is not a necessary means to communism, the question then becomes whether institutional innovations within capitalism can be introduced that allow for the development of communism within capitalist society itself. If the universal grant is sufficiently high to cover basic needs, then immediately one of the central goals of communism is achieved: work is no longer a necessity for survival of individuals, but becomes a free choice, and distribution is at least partially geared towards needs.

This article argues that the bleak prospects for the Left provides no legitimate ground for dismay, cynicism, or despondency, not because true socialism is different, or because it is possible after all, but because the Left need not be committed to socialism. From a Marxian standpoint, socialism is not an end in itself. It is a means, indeed the best means or even the only means, to reach true communism. The term socialism covers what Karl Marx calls the lower stage of communism in the Critique of the Gotha Programme. It refers to a society in which workers collectively decide what these should be used for and how the resulting product should be distributed, namely according to the principle, to each according to his labor. Communism on the other hand, refers to the higher stage of communism, as characterized in the Critique of the Gotha Programme. It is defined by the distribution principle, from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs, which implies at least that the social product is distributed in such a way that everyone's basic needs are adequately met, and that each individual's share is entirely independent of his or her labor contribution. Socialism, as defined, implies that exploitation is abolished--workers appropriate the whole of the social product--while communism, as defined, implies that alienation is abolished--productive activities need no longer be prompted by external rewards.

The collapse of the socialist revolutions in Europe at the end of World War I made evident one of the chief failings of Marxist social theory as a whole - namely, its neglect of the subjective factor in social phenomena. In Germany, after November 1918, author Karl Korsch wrote, "the organized political power of the bourgeoisie was smashed and outwardly there was nothing else in the way of the transition from capitalism to socialism." But the revolution did not materialize. The "great chance was never seized," Korsch went on to say, "because the socio-psychological preconditions ... were lacking." Orthodox Marxism had not taken into account that the psychological situation of the working class largely determines the possibilities for fundamental social change. If psychoanalysis is to be extended from an individual to a social psychology, it must shift the focus of its inquiry; for unlike individual analysis, the analytic study of social phenomena does not seek to arrive at a relatively complete picture of the individual's psyche. Rather, it focuses on the character traits common to the members of a group.

The author discusses prolific and energetic writer, Anthony Giddens, who has been responsible over the last few years for a prodigious outpouring of books that develop, and sometimes modify a coherent set of views on social theory. To attempt to summarize, and subject to criticism such an oeuvre is a little like trying to catch quicksilver. There are two reasons behind author's initiative. First, the sheer erudition and intellectual range of Giddens's work commands attention. Secondly, the book "A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism," as the title suggests, itself expounds Giddens's substantive theory in the form of an appraisal of Marxism. The criticisms it offers represent a direct challenge to those of a Marxist persuasion, a challenge to which the author feels obliged to respond. Giddens is too intelligent and sympathetic a critic of Marx simply to be brushed aside. Giddens's work can best be represented as a very ambitious attempt to effect a synthesis of distinct and opposed traditions in social theory.

The article presents a response from the author on criticism of his article "Marxism, Functionalism and Game Theory," published in the July issue of the journal "Theory and Society." The author finds that the discussants demolish each other's objections to some extent. Some critics understand the term functionalism as functional explanation and in the same sense it is conceived in the article also. One of them defend it and other two accepts author's criticism of it. They also object to his argument against the Markov-process approach to social change and author agrees to this point that the argument is too brief to carry conviction and that, even if valid it does not show the difference between biology and social science to be more than a matter of degree. Author's view of methodological individualism is also criticized in a very explicit statement that microeconomics and macroeconomics can and must be methodologically isolated from each other. With the help of some economic models, the author suggests that it can be reduced to microeconomic terms.

The article presents comments by the author on the debate concerning sociologist Jon Elster's article on "Marxisim." This is not an easy debate upon which to comment, for each of the articles in some part sidesteps the chief concerns of the others.' Jon Elster's article, which is a substantial one, refers to "Marxism" in its title and in sections of its discussion. Elster's critique of functionalism and his advocacy of game theory have no necessary relation to Marxism. He may appeal to a range of examples drawn from Marxist thought, but there is nothing in what he says that could not be applied across the whole range of the social sciences, Marxist and non-Marxist. One of the attractions of Elster's article is the diversity of sources in which he discovers the use of functional analysis. Some of his examples are of unlikely provenance, but perhaps for that reason are all the more telling. What Elster labels the "strong functionalist paradigm" is also in a certain sense a misnomer, for it is a position that few have ever held, its weaknesses being rather apparent. It is the view that all patterns of behavior have a function, this explaining why they exist in the first place. According to Elster, the strong functionalist paradigm is "flourishing" in areas of Marxist and radical social science.

At the center of his critique of functionalism, Sociologist Jon Elster argues that a need does not create its own fulfillment. The author do not want to quarrel with this statement, which is not exactly novel. The question is whether actually, as Elster seems to argue, implies such a devastating critique of the functionalist paradigm as a whole. Any sophisticated functionalist would gladly grant that the function of an institution or a pattern of behavior is not, by itself, a sufficient cause for the existence of the institution or pattern in question. Functionalist arguments remain fruitful even if they do not pretend to arrive at causal explanations. Jon Elster's plea for methodological individualism consists, first, of a critique of the functionalist paradigm and, second, of an advanced variety of game theory as a methodological alternative. For only after functionalists have been convinced of the poverty of their own creed are they likely to move to the camp of game theorists. Although Elster addresses Marxists, the methodological problems he discusses involve a much broader controversy that is certainly not restricted to Marxist social scientists.

The article presents a comment on Jon Elster's Marxism and functionalism. Not only does functionalist Marxism still permeate a large proportion of Marxist research and teaching, but two of the most exciting recent developments in Marxist theory are also unambiguous further variants of it. There are two general strategies for challenging the validity of functionalist Marxism, one resting on the claim that the latter is flawed because social scientific functionalism in general is flawed and one focusing on the specific features of functionalist Marxism. Elster uses both. In this article, the author shall consider each in turn and argue that neither is successful. In its strongest formulation, Elster's position is that "functional analysis has no place in the social sciences, because there is no sociological analogy to the theory of natural selection" As is made clear by this quotation, Elster's quarrel with functionalism does not stem from the belief that explaining any phenomenon by its (unintended) consequences is a "logical mistake," a sin against sound chronology. Rather it derives from the adoption of a general principle very close to though not identical with, methodological individualism.

The article presents information on Marxism, functionalism and game theory in relation to methodological individualism. This issue is related to the conflict over methodological individualism, rejected by many Marxists who wrongly link it with individualism in the ethical or political sense. By methodological individualism the author means the doctrine that all social phenomena (their structure and their change) are in principle explicable only in terms of individuals, their properties, goals and beliefs. This doctrine is not incompatible with any of the following true statements. Individuals often have goals that involve the welfare of other individuals, They often have beliefs about supra-individual entities that are not reducible to beliefs about individuals. "The capitalists fear the working class" cannot be reduced to the feelings of capitalists concerning individual workers. By contrast, "The capitalists' profit is threatened by the working class" can be reduced to a complex statement about the consequences of the actions taken by individual workers, Many properties of individuals, such as "powerful," are irreducibly relational, so that accurate description of one individual may require reference to other individuals.

The article focuses on the Corporation Model and socialism. To understand more about the politics of communist societies as they evolve is interesting for its own sake. Moreover, the "socialist" model of development is popular in much of the third world today, and in at least some instances, the communist path of rapid industrialization is likely to be followed. The author proposes that a fairly obvious and familiar political model exists which may not only explain some of the direction in which internal communist politics are moving, but which also tells us something about the future evolution of whatever "socialist" states happen to come into being. This is "corporatism". In order to show this the article author relies on a discussion of one case, Romania under communist rule. The nation has returned to a form of extreme nationalism. The irony is that revolutionary states are unlikely to claim, or even admit, corporatist ideology as their own. This has led to the paradox that students of "revolutionary" and "socialist" development patterns have largely overlooked the one established model of political and social organization that would help them understand and predict the direction in which radical third world societies are likely to move in the future. It has also caused considerable confusion about the real nature of established communist societies.

The article focuses on syncretism in the society. Premature socialism turns out to be an effective organization for industrialization in the period of imperialism. The opposition of imperialism to all industrialization except its own is the first source of the present contradiction between socialism and industrialization. Social syncretism includes another element: an immense power autonomously organized, which reproduces the incompatibility and the coexistence of the other two. The most general function of this structural syncretism is to assure the effectiveness of capitalist mechanisms at the level of the production and distribution and, at the same time, their total substitution by the decisions of the state at the level of appropriation and investments. Social syncretism is naturally also that of the power which it embodies. It defends the social structure against the economy, the economy against the social structure, and itself against both of these. It is at the same time the protector and the perturber of the social structure and of the economy.

The article focuses on Marxists in the United States. In this country Marxism has always been regarded as a foreign import, part of the unwanted baggage of the newer European immigrants. Because Marxism has no institutional base in the United States, to be a Marxist here is to renounce any hope of gaining power in most institutional spheres, including the academic world. For in the normal course of events Marxist identification is a considerable personal and professional liability. Few Marxists have senior appointments in the elite universities and those few are seldom treated very well. Therefore, being a Marxist in this country entails considerable personal sacrifice, it is a decision having significant social and intellectual consequences. Ambitious individuals would tend to steer away from Marxist identification since it can only limit their horizons. Here individuals must become Marxist out of somewhat different kinds of motivations. At any given time some of the players are winners but most are losers.

The article discusses concept of social class as interpreted by sociologist Louis Althusser. Classes in the Althusserian model are not first economic, and then political and ideological entities. They are always all three. From the sound argument that social classes are simultaneously economic, political and ideological, the analysis proceeds as if they are only economic, political and ideological. Other dimensions of social reality and experience are dropped from the picture. Once again, these exclusions are not argued for, they are simply a tacit consequence of the science being defined by its problematic, and the problematic being defined by the "marxist classics." The scope of Althusserian class analysis is limited to questions that can be handled within the conceptual language of communism. This may give the impression of an extremely rigid theoretical position, which in some respects it is; yet there are other features of the Althusserian model that give it immense flexibility.

This article shows that how writings of the sociologist Karl Marx provides a starting point for conceptualizing contradictions of advanced capitalism. The core of theoretical framework is an effort to make a post-industrial argument with Neo-Marxism. Most developed societies -- both capitalist and state socialist -- face a transition from industrial society, organized around the production of goods, to post-industrial society, organized around the provision of services and advanced technologies that release labor from direct production. The transition to a post-industrial society creates a profound social crisis: contemporary capitalism is ripe for a transition to post-industrial society, but existing social relations block the release of new productive forces, creating social and economic stalemate. Some writers pointed to the inadequacy of orthodox Marxism for understanding an advanced capitalism that had successfully improved the standard of living of the working class. They stressed that within advanced capitalism, new contradictions and new social forces would become the basis for emancipatory social possibilities, as capitalism created new needs that could not be satisfied within it.

The Western left has been and continues to be rent by a Luxemburgian either, reform or revolution, which produces less a confrontation than a mutual isolation of two self-enclosed dialogues. This division has become increasingly artificial and obfuscating in an era of complex technological societies, international interdependence, and nuclear weaponry. The best that can be said of the concept of revolution which is implied is that it is obsolete, at least for the West. For when Luxemburg used the term she meant essentially what Russian extremist Vladimir Ilich Lenin meant by it and what it would come to mean in the lexicon of Soviet Marxism-Leninism, the violent conquest of political power by workers. Central to this view is the expectation that objective historical forces will produce a crisis of capitalism in which a well-organized working class can seize a momentary opportunity to gain control of the state, consolidate its power, and only then proceed to the creation of appropriate social relations.

While a self-destructive economic system might be transformed into an efficient and equitable set of working institutions by a new socialist regime, it is unlikely that a population damaged by its experiences with capitalism (if that were the case) would be prepared for such a transformation. What this implies is that at least two parallel processes are required for change in a socialist direction, economic and psychological. But these may not be in harmony with one another. In the earlier Marxist version the two processes were sequential and harmonious—the economic process leading to breakdown was immanent in the capitalist system and came first; the psychological process leading to the regeneration of man followed upon his release from the repressive, alienating, humanly destructive influences of capitalism. It is a mistake to press socialist institutions upon a society that is not ready for them, but the "readiness" consists of the personological qualities required to work a democratic socialist system and to protect it from degeneration into poverty, stasis, or the abuse of power.

An entire history of political sociology could be written on the theme of the new middle classes. Whether in the guise of the managerial revolution, white collar, the new working class, or the new petite bourgeoisie, the emergence of intermediate strata in advanced industrial societies has been rediscovered more often than the wheel. Moreover, nowhere does the ideological commitment - of whatever variety - found in political sociology appear more transparently than in consideration of this problem. Examples abound. German Social Democratic sociologists used the appearance of the new mitteistanden as the sociological justification for their Revisionism. Later, and primarily in the U.S., the managerial revolution was used by intellectuals of many political persuasions for their own purposes, from liberal economic fundamentalists who saw new bureaucratic strata as decisive threats to the integrity of capitalism, to liberal pluralists who saw the same groups as bringing the private corporation to a new stage of socially responsible soulfulness. Then, in the U.S. of the 1950s and 60s, in what C. Wright Mills called the Great American Celebration, pluralist political scientists saw the burgeoning new middle classes as a new, moderate political center between polarized elites and workers and, as such, the key to American capitalism permanent stability. This analysis was exported in tow to England in the 1950s by revisionist British intellectuals to justify the strategic changes which they were urging upon the British Labor Party.

This article discusses two different concepts of coercion, the Marxian and liberal. The article author states that liberals and Marxists may use the same word, the concept is not the same. They are two distinct concepts of coercion, each constituted according to the requirements of liberal and Marxian theory, respectively concepts of coercion. Politically, practically, and theoretically, their respective concepts are opposed; but ontologically and methodologically they are not opposed, they are simply different. Despite the fundamental and irreconcilable rupture between them, the liberal and Marxian theories are not wholly incommensurable. The ontological individualism has its methodological counterpart in methodological individualism indeed methodology recapitulates ontology and its political-theoretical counterpart in liberalism. Neither concept is valid if its ontological presuppositions are insecurely grounded and/or if it exhibits internal inconsistencies or contradictions. The liberal concept of coercion, explicated by means of the agency model, suffers from both of these defects.

The article focuses on the revolutionary process, political strategy and the dilemma of power in Marxist movements. One of the most troublesome dilemmas encountered by Marxist movements and regimes is how to effectively combine two distinct sets of tasks, the instrumental, which includes above all the struggle to conquer and maintain political power and the prefigurative, which expresses the ultimate end of the revolutionary process itself. Historically, the three archetypical strategies — Leninism, structural reformism and anarcho-communism have all failed to integrate these two dimensions. The supposed mechanics of capitalist development undercut the need for a conscious, well thought-out scheme of transition or any real elaboration of new socialist structure. The strategic paralysis created by this schema is theoretically significant. The disintegration of the European Social Democratic strategy was hastened by the Russian Revolution and the political success of the Bolshevik model. In advanced capitalist societies, classical Leninism has generally given way to the strategy of structural reforms. Another alternative to the instrumentalist strategies is the Jacobinism-II, a variant of Leninism.

In attempting to develop a Marxist theory of crime and criminal law we are handicapped by the fact that Karl Marx did not devote himself very systematically to such a task. There are nonetheless, several places in his analysis of capitalism where Marx did direct his attention to criminality and law. Furthermore, the logic of the Marxian theory makes it possible to extrapolate from the theory to an analysis of crime and criminal law in ways that are extremely useful. Thus, in what follows the author will be focusing on the implications of the Marxist paradigm as well as relying heavily on those Marxist writings that directly addressed these issues. As with the general Marxist theory, the starting point for the understanding of society is the realization that the most fundamental feature of people lives is their relationship to the mode of production. The mode of production consists of both the means of production and the relationship of different classes to the means of production-whether they own them or work for those who do. Since ultimately, the only source of an economic surplus is that amount of goods which is produced beyond what the worker consumes, then the distinction between those who own and those who work for others is crucial to understanding the control of the surplus in the society.