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A Short History of Sociological Thought Also by Alan Swingewood A Short History of Sociological Thought Also by Alan Swingewood The Sociology of Literature {co-author) Marx and Modern Social Theory The Novel and Revolution The Myth of Mass Culture Sociological Poetics and Aesthetic Theory A Short History of Sociological Thought Second Edition Alan Swingewood Lecturer in Sociology, London School of Economics Macmillan Education ISBN 978-0-333-55861-4 ISBN 978-1-349-21642-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-21642-0 ©Alan Swingewood 1984, 1991 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 2nd edition 1991 All rights reserved. For information, write: Scholarly and Reference Division, St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, No Y. 10010 First edition published in the United States of America in 1984 Second revised edition first published in the United States of America in 1991 ISBN 978-0-312-06735-9 (hardcover) ISBN 978-0-312-06736-6 (paperback) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Swingewood, Alan. A short history of sociological thought I Alan Swingewood. - [2nd ed.] p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-06735-9 (hardcover).- ISBN 978-0-312-06736-6 (paperback) I. Sociology-History. I. Title HM19.S975 1991 301'.09-dc20 91-16561 CIP Contents Introduction Note to the Second Edition 4 PART I FOUNDATIONS 1 Origins of Sociology 7 Human nature and social order 8 Vi co: science and history 10 Montesquieu 13 The Scottish Enlightenment 17 Problems of method 20 The emergence of class 22 The dialectics of social change 24 2 Industrialisation and the Rise of Sociological Positivism 29 Empiricism and positivism 30 The French Revolution and sociology 32 The concept of industrial society: Saint-Simon 36 Comte and positive science 40 Positivism and determinism 4 7 Sociology, political economy and the division of labour 48 Evolutionism and sociological positivism: Mill and Spencer 51 v Contents 3 Marxism: A Positive Science of Capitalist Development 59 The development of Marxism 62 Alienation of labour 63 The concept of ideology 72 Marx's method: base and superstructure 80 Class formation and class consciousness 84 Laws of development: the problem of historical determinism 88 PART II CLASSICAL SOCIOLOGY 4 Critique of Positivism: I Durkheim 97 Durkheim and the development of sociology 97 Durkheim's method: social facts and society 105 Division of labour, social cohesion and conflict Ill Anomie 116 Suicide and social solidarity 118 Functionalism, holism and political theory 124 5 Critique of Positivism: II Social Action 128 Understanding and the social sciences: Dilthey 128 Formal sociology: Simmel and sociation 133 Understanding and the problem of method: Weber 142 Ideal types and social action 146 Religion and social action: capitalism and the Protestant ethic 150 The logic of rationality: Simmel and Weber 158 Social action and social system: Pareto 163 6 The Sociology of Class and Domination 171 Marx's theory of domination 172 The state and class domination 174 The theory of class: Weber 182 Capitalism, bureaucracy and democracy: Weber's theory of domination 185 Vl Contents 7 Marxism and Sociology 194 Marxism after Marx 194 Marxism as revolutionary consciousness: Lukacs and the concept of totality 199 Culture and domination: Gramsci and the concept of hegemony 205 Marxism and the sociology of intellectuals: Garmsci 209 Lukacs and Gramsci on sociology 214 Western Marxism and the problem of sociology 219 PART III MODERN SOCIOLOGY 8 Functionalism 225 Sociological functionalism: general features 231 The concept of system 234 Functionalism and the dialectic of social life: Merton 239 Functionalism, social conflict and social change 244 Functionalism and stratification 249 9 Self, Society and the Sociology of Everyday Life 252 Action theory and the concept of self: the early and later Parsons 252 Psycho-analysis and self: Freud 258 The social self: Mead and symbolic interactionism 262 Sociological phenomenology: Schutz and the reality of everyday life 268 Social action and interactionism: ethnomethodology 272 10 Critical Theory, Ideology and Modern Society 275 Mannheim: the problem of ideology 276 Vll Contents Ideology and Utopia 282 The theory of mass society 283 The origins of critical theory 285 Habermas: crisis theory 289 Emancipation and communicative action 294 11 Structuralism 296 The development of structuralism: Saussure 297 The concept of structure 299 Marxism and structuralism 306 The problem of agency and structure: structuration theory 311 12 Modernity, Industrialisation and Sociological Theory 313 Marxism, industrialism and modernity 314 The theory of post-industrial society 316 Modernity and post-modernity 320 Further Reading 323 Bibliography 331 Index 343 Vlll HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGICAL THOUGHT Origins Eighteenth-century social thought (Vico, Montesquieu, Smith, Ferguson, Rousseau) The development of nineteenth-century sociological positivism (Comte), sociological evolutionism (Spencer) and Marxism (Marx and Engels) t Classical Sociology Weber, Simmel, Pareto Durkheim 's critique of the (the tradition of verstehen positivist tradition sociology and critique of positivism and evolutionism) The development of Marxism after Marx involving a critique of materialism and evolutionism: Labriola, Gramsc* Sorel, Lukacs Modern Sociology Phenomenological Sociology (Schutz) Functionalism Freud, Mead, Mannheim Systems Theory and Action Theory (Parsons) Structuralism Structuration Theory Critical Theory (Habermas) IX Introduction This book is neither a history of sociology nor of sociological theory but a selective history of sociological thought from its origins in eighteenth-century philosophy, history and political economy. By sociological thought is meant an awareness of society as a distinctive o~ject of study, as a system or structure objectively determined by laws and processes. Eighteenth­ century social thought was sociological in this sense although it failed to develop an adequate sociological concept of the social, too often assimilating it to political and economic elements. In effect eighteenth-century social thought posed many of the critical issues of sociology without resolving them sociologi­ cally. In contrast, early nineteenth-century sociological thought (specifically Comte, Spencer, Marx) sought to define the social both in terms of society as a complex structural whole and in its relation with specific institutions, notably the division of labour, social classes, religion, family and scientific/profes­ sional associations. Society was industrial society and the broad themes of the early sociologists were those of social conflict, alienation, community, social cohesion and the pos­ sibilities of evolution and development. The task of social science was to identify the forces promoting historical change. Early sociological thought was concerned with the separation of an autonomous social sphere (or 'civil society') from centralised state institutions (or 'political society'). It is this notion of 'finalisation', that history has a meaning apart from the actions of everyday life, which differentiates early sociologi­ cal thought from later, classical sociology and the various schools of 'sociologised' Marxism. Early sociological thought was broadly optimistic: the Introduction certainties of the natural sciences could be applied to the social sciences unproblematically. Classical sociology emerges as a reaction to this form of positivist scientistic thought. The broad themes of classical sociology were pessimistic: industrialisation produces social structures which alienate the individual from the community, transform cultural objects into commodities, rationalise human life into bureaucratic systems ofdomination and effectively strip the individual of autonomy. Classical sociology becomes centred not on large-scale changes but on the human subject: 'voluntarism' and action replace the historical determinism of nineteenth-century systems theory. It is this distinction which sets the agenda for the later develop­ ment of modern sociology. Modern sociological thought begins with the breakdown of the classical, voluntarist model. The dominant paradigm becomes functionalism, its pre-eminence bound up with the emergence of American sociology in the years following the Second World War. Classical sociology had been almost entirely European: the rise of European Fascism, Communism and the Second World War shifted the focus of sociological thought across the Atlantic. And it was not until the 1960s that new schools of sociology - phenomenology, action theory, structuralism, Marxist humanism - which drew much of their inspiration from classical sociology, emerged. In this book I have attempted to describe these develop­ ments. In particular, there is extended discussion of Marxism both as a distinctive theory of society and for its influence on classical and modern sociology. It has become fashionable to argue that Marxism is a sociology. I suggest that Marxist thought is certainly sociological and as such has been absorbed into sociology itself and, increasingly, that Marxism assimi­ lates sociological concepts and thought in order to offer adequate accounts of modern industrial society and historical development. Many of the crucial differences between soci­ ology and Marxism resolve themselves around the relation of centralised state structure to decentred social structures. By defining its object of study as civil society sociology developed theories which emphasised the differentiated and potentially autonomous nature of modern industrial society. In
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