Rudolf Schlesinger - Marx His Times and Ours

The International Library of Sociology

MARX HIS TIME AND OURS

SOCIAL THEORY AND METHODOLOGY
In 22 Volumes

by
RUDOLF SCHLESINGER

First published in 1950
by Routledge

Reprinted 1998, 2001, 2002
by Routledge
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or
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First issued in paperback 2010

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

1950 Rudolf Schlesinger

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Marx: His Time and Ours
ISBN 9780415175104 (hbk)
ISBN 9780415605007 (pbk)
Social Theory and Methodology: 22 Volumes
ISBN 9780415178181
The International Library of Sociology: 274 Volumes
ISBN 9780415178389

Publishers Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent

The events of the present world find a preconceived framework in Marxs forecast of social transformations. The fit is quite loose enough to accommodate whatever changes may have occurred and may yet occur in revolutionary Russia, and whatever her influence may be on the development of other countries. It is clear, at least since the Stalingrad battle, that the Soviet Union will constitute one of the political forms of the new society. But the adaptation of the diverse national civilisations to the conditions of survival in the times to come may proceed in diverse ways. A society changes faster than its ideology : during prolonged international conflict, ideologies originally expressing the fundamental differences of the competing systems may come to lose any relevance except for self-assertion because only those systems can survive which adapt themselves to certain general patterns of structure. Only in the event of collaboration and mutual assimilation, the characteristics common to the new societies may receive expression in a universal ideology with local differences arising from national conditions. In spite of all the tribute paid by competing sects to theological and political creeds originated from past periods of social conflict, our generation is no longer exposed to the risk of periodical butcheries about the respective merits of papal authority and the Bible, or of republic and monarchy. Everyone who takes up the job of a sociologist in times like ours is likely to have done so because he considers that thereby he is making his contribution to the development of society; but, being a scientist, he should clearly realise that he is making his contribution in a quite definite way, namely, by establishing the elements of truth approached from different starting points in different ways and by fighting the spirit of self-assertion that rejects what is deemed un-Ruritanian and repudiates forms of expression unfamiliar to the group thus asserted. Whether the fulfilment of that task may be described as a reception of the definite achievements of Marxism into academic theory or as purging Marxism from Utopian elements conditioned by the specific conditions of its origin depends very much on the respective sociologists personal background. Naturally, my contribution is conditioned by my personal background in the continental Labour movement and by my various attempts at analysing the development of Soviet society. But if most of my criticism is devoted to those who approach the common task from various starting points this is done because I regard theirs as the only work which is relevant. The respective value of our different backgrounds will be measured by the contribution each of us can make to the synthesis to come; but the dangers of eclecticism cannot be avoided except by mutual criticism inspired not by any desire to assert the infallibility of the creed which we have been taught, but by the need to distinguish the relevant contents of theories from the ideological by-products conditioned by the circumstances of their origin. In this, and only in this sense, this book has been written from the Marxist point of view. But I do not think that the historical importance of a theory that has inspired the Russian revolution and the bulk of the modern Labour movement, and without whose impact modern historiography and sociology were inconceivable, depends on the truth of its individual tenets.