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This paper takes up a series of related issues arising out of the work of Karl Marx. The first two sections consist of a discussion of the premises and methodology of Marxist analysis. I then go on to explore the implications of this discussion for two central features of Marx's legacy: the concept of class, and the base/superstructure distinction. In both cases I argue that undue faithfulness to the letter of some of Marx's texts has distracted attention from the methodology implicit in his analytic and historical work, and thereby has contributed to an overly sterile Marxism. The final section of the paper is devoted to a critique of a particular vulgar historicist view of Marxism, which is in fact rarely espoused today by Marxists. It is included for two reasons. First, this interpretation is occasionally presented by Marx's critics as Marxism, and it is therefore worth destroying this illusion. Secondly, and far more significantly, elements of this view can be found buried within the work of Marxists whose Marxism is, when taken as a whole, far from vulgar.
Many of the points made here have been made before. Such originality as this paper has, therefore, rests mainly in the way I have sought to relate them. I hope to show that what have often been treated as isolated problems, in fact rest on a common failure to grasp how Marx conceived and analysed production; and that, conversely, it is in the methodological principles which are embedded in these substantive analyses that the distinctiveness of Marx's historical materialism is to be found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analytical methodologies assume 'resolution into simple elements' as a necessary preliminary stage of scholarly investigation. They explicitly, or more often implicitly accept, therefore, that the conclusions reached reflect not only the phenomena analysed, but also the applied system of analytical subdivision. The paper explores and compares the main systems of analysis in current sociology: institutional, class and communal. It suggests a taxonomy of analytical systems and a cross-classification which is introduced to throw light on their conceptual properties at the societal as well as the individual level. It proceeds by discussing the issues of: (A) The societal roots of selection of analytical schemes in sociology; (B) The advantages and blind spots of the specific analytical systems; and (C) Attempts at the integration and reduction of analytical systems in contemporary sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]