Andrew Gamble, David Marsh and Tony Tant (eds.)
Marxism and Social Science, Macmillan. London, 1999, 381pp.

Reviewed by:
Richard Howson
University of Wollongong

The work of Karl Marx represents an important element of social scientific knowledge for three reasons. The first is that Marx held a central position in the historical development of sociology and as such his work along with the other classical sociologists, Durkheim and Weber, is fundamental. The second reason is that Marx, more than any other thinker, is responsible for bringing to the forefront of social scientific study the concept of class as a way of understanding structures of power and concomitant social inequality. The third reason is that Marx’s analysis of class structure, coupled with his conclusion that future societies will see an end to class-based inequality, has helped to stimulate almost all the attempts by subsequent social thinkers to explain social inequality and its transformation over time.

However, Marxism as a valid knowledge in contemporary social science is argued by many to no longer be in touch with what is really happening in today’s society. The fall of the Berlin Wall, which marked the collapse of the Soviet Union as a communist state and its opening up to liberal and capitalist ideals in the last decades of the twentieth century, has only exacerbated this belief. Also, the rise of postmodernism within the social sciences in the last few decades of the twentieth century represents a perspective that eschews any notion of universalism, essentialism and determinism as a necessary or valid basis for knowledge. The crucial assertion made by postmodernism is that ‘society’ and the ‘self’ are centreless networks of historical/contextual identification which can never be finally completed or represented. However, the need for people to come together as collectives and challenge the inequities of their lives, which are organised around structures of power relations that persistently undermine a sense of social justice, has not diminished. This idea sits at the intellectual core of Marxism, where key questions about the origins, character and lines of development of the economic and social systems of the modern world are posed and give rise to the doctrines of class struggle and historical materialism. The foundations upon which these doctrines were raised (in the nineteenth century at least) lay in Marx’s effective critique of such things as political economy and political liberalism.

However, a significant dilemma for Marxism has been the fact that as a doctrine it has never been set in stone and in the last one hundred years it has experienced significant challenges to its most fundamental premises: economism, determinism and structuralism. For example, writers such as Kautsky, Lukacs and especially Gramsci, have, in their own way, openly challenged the validity of the doctrinal priority afforded to these premises. In particular, Gramsci's inversion of the fundamental base/superstructure model has exposed as problematic the crucial Marxian argument that through changes to the relations of production within the economic sphere all other spheres will be altered, producing a new society. The notion of hegemony that Gramsci developed overturned the base as the determinant force, and positioned culture and ideology as material forces within any hegemony where change and instability is always a reality. More recently, post-Marxists, such as Laclau and Mouffe, who operate within a Gramscian framework but are also sympathetic to the postmodernist position, have attempted to re-configure the conceptualisation of Marxism’s fundamental premises so as to fit it within a postmodernist paradigm where a recognition of the Enlightenment values of freedom and equality can be played out without a final completion. This, for Laclau and Mouffe, represents a metanarrative which is postmodern in character.

These challenges have left the face of Marxism in contemporary social science almost unrecognisable. It follows then, that if Marxism’s most fundamental premises can be shown to be problematic by those who claim to operate within its tradition, what is left for Marxism? Here Marxism and Social Science offers some clear and approachable insights into this dilemma.

The book is a collection of essays whose purpose is twofold. Firstly, it attempts to explicate the strengths and the weaknesses of the Marxist tradition through the analysis of Marxism in a number of social scientific fields. Secondly, it seeks to highlight the extraordinary richness and diversity of this tradition, which throughout its history has absorbed so much material from other traditions and perspectives within the social sciences. On both accounts this book gives an excellent account of itself. The essays are interesting, easy to read and balanced. They give the reader a clear insight into the eclectic nature of contemporary Marxism, and the consequent problems of defining the Marxist approach.

The book is structured in two parts. Part One focuses on the engagement between Marxism and other perspectives in social science: feminism; regulation theory; postmodernism; the new right; and ends with an essay on the scientific nature of Marxism. Part Two assesses the utility of the Marxist approach to a broad range of social issues: the state, welfare, democracy, culture, class, globalisation, ecology, nationalism and communism. More specifically, each essay is structured around a broad set of research criteria. In Part One the essays examine, in relation to their particular topic, the way in which certain key contemporary approaches have criticised Marxism; how Marxists have responded to these critiques and the success of this response. In Part Two the essays examine, in relation to their particular topic, the development of the Marxist perspective, examine contemporary criticisms of the Marxist position, and give assessments of the success of Marxism’s response to these criticisms. This format gives Marxism and Social Science a unique quality in that it exposes Marxism’s interconnectedness, even interactivity, within the sphere of social scientific knowledge. More importantly though, it highlights the points at which Marxism is re-configuring itself or has re-configured itself, and thus shows Marxism to be a living and generative tradition.

Marxism and Social Science can be considered a polemic in that, even though it exposes the very significant challenges to Marxism and identifies the points at which change has occurred or is occurring to its theoretical foundations, it also stresses that Marxism remains an important element of social scientific knowledge with a great deal to offer the discipline. The importance of Marxism is most clearly expressed in its focus on the problems of capitalism and upon structured inequality which is the key feature of today’s dominant societies. Marxism also offers an agenda for change towards social justice through a discourse that can no longer be viewed as ossified, but fluid.