The use of materialism as an objective basis of sociology was a “stroke of genius”, Lenin says, but one which could only be an hypothesis until verified by empirical research and analysis. That is what Marx did over a 25 year period, not in examining all social formations, but concentrating on one in depth, the development of one specific social formation, capitalism, the conclusions from which are presented in Capital. Before then, sociology attempted to analyse and explain social formations and their institutional frameworks on the basis of the ideas in men's heads, but had no means of explaining why one set of ideas arose or dominated society in the period or country, rather than another. The subjective sociology that arises from this methodology is, thereby, necessarily idealist, meaning that ideas develop in men's heads because of some Hegelian unfolding of The Idea, or revelation of the Word of God, or else because of some sort of universal moral principles, discoverable by logic, as part of a Kantian Categorical Imperative. A functionalist approach to social development is merely an extension of this idealism, because, in seeing society as merely a machine, and the relations within it as merely the manifestation of the institutions and rules required for its effective operation, it implies that these rules are there simply to be uncovered, much in the way that the Word of God, is revealed by study of Scripture, or The Idea unfolds in the minds of the wise men in the service of the state.
“But this conclusion, fully expressed in the idea of the Contract social (traces of which are very noticeable in all systems of utopian socialism), was in complete contradiction to all historical observations. It never has been the case, nor is it so now, that the members of society conceive the sum-total of the social relations in which they live as something definite, integral, pervaded by some principle; on the contrary, the mass of people adapt themselves to these relations unconsciously, and have so little conception of them as specific historical social relations that, for instance, an explanation of the exchange relations under which people have lived for centuries was found only in very recent times.” (p 139)
The classic example of this application of the materialist method in determining the source of these ideas in the production relations, as opposed to the subjectivist method, is given by Marx in his criticism of Proudhon in The Poverty of Philosophy.
“M. Proudhon the economist understands very well that men make cloth, linen, or silk materials in definite relations of production. But what he has not understood is that these definite social relations are just as much produced by men as linen, flax, etc. Social relations are closely bound up with productive forces. In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations. The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist.
The same men who establish their social relations in conformity with the material productivity, produce also principles, ideas, and categories, in conformity with their social relations.
Thus the ideas, these categories, are as little eternal as the relations they express. They are historical and transitory products.”
(Poverty of Philosophy, Chapter 2)
“Each principle has had its own century in which to manifest itself. The principle of authority, for example, had the 11th century, just as the principle of individualism had the 18th century. In logical sequence, it was the century that belonged to the principle, and not the principle which belonged to the century. When, consequently, in order to save principles as much as to save history, we ask ourselves why a particular principle was manifested in the 11th century or in the 18th century rather than in any other, we are necessarily forced to examine minutely what men were like in the 11th century, what they were like in the 18th, what were their respective needs, their productive forces, their mode of production, the raw materials of their production – in short, what were the relations between man and man which resulted from all these conditions of existence. To get to the bottom of all these questions – what is this but to draw up the real, profane history of men in every century and to present these men as both the authors and the actors of their own drama? But the moment you present men as the actors and authors of their own history, you arrive – by detour – at the real starting point, because you have abandoned those eternal principles of which you spoke at the outset.”
(ibid)
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