marxism and positivism a discussion

Marxism and PositivismAuthor(s): W. Byron GrovesSource: Crime and Social Justice, No. 23, SOCIALISM, CAPITALISM, AND THE REPRODUCTIONOF CRIME (1985), pp. 129-150Published by: Social Justice/Global OptionsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29766255 .

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Pedagogy

Marxism and Positivism

W. Byron Groves

The being of Spirit cannot...be taken as something fixed and immovable (Hegel, 1977:204).

Introduction

What is the relationship between Marxism and positivism? One might suspect that this question has been answered, as positivism has received a fair amount of attention from radical criminologists. And yet the relationship be? tween Marxism and positivism is not clearly defined. For example, after listing several assumptions characteristic of positive inquiry1, one prominent Marx? ist criminologist concludes that "virtually every tenet of positivist criminology has been attacked by radicals" (Greenberg, 1981:2). On the other hand, this same author goes on to note that "the concerns of positivist criminology and its empirical research findings are not inherently incompatible with a Marxian

perspective" (Greenberg, 1971:65). But what does this mean? Does it mean

that Marxism is best characterized as a measured, predictive science of human

behavior; or that causal analysis is the sine qua non of Marxist inquiry? To add to the ambivalence, we might note that causal models are implied in the efforts of radicals who are otherwise hostile towards positivism (i.e., Taylor et al., 1973) and are openly supported by others in the radical camp (Gordon, 1971; Spitzer, 1975).

For the record, we have no quarrel whatsoever with causal analyses. More than that: the causal structures which inhere in positivism are indispensable for a balanced understanding of criminal (or any other) behavior. But let us

not make too much of this claim, for there can be no doubt that criminology is top-heavy with positivistic thinking.

BYRON GROVES is currently teaching in the Department of Social Change and Development, University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, WI 54302.

CRIME AND SOCIAL JUSTICE No. 23 129



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This article, then, stands as an attempt to substantiate claims made by criminologists wishing to qualify the assumptions which underlie positivism. Specifically, we wish to outline a neo-Marxist conception of human agency, and shall do so with the assistance of Hegel, Marx's most important philosophical predecessor.2 Continuity between the two will be established with reference to the following issues: determinism, praxis, labor, teleology, the

relationship between the natural and the social sciences, their conception of the "individual," and their conception of the relationship between the individual and society. As will become evident, their stand on these issues is a far cry from that presupposed by positive criminology.

Though our concern is with both Hegel and Marx, this critique will draw

heavily on Hegel, who allows us to do three things: first, he serves as an ex?

cellent and perhaps indispensable stepping stone to Marx; second, he provides a conception of human agency which challenges the hegemonic portrait of? fered by positive criminology; and finally, he foreshadows many of the most

important themes to have emerged in social and political theory over the last two decades. Hegel began a "revolution in the basic categories in which we understand the self (Taylor, 1977:5), and the way in which we conceptualize the self has everything to do with the type of criminology we subsequently undertake. As Dawe (1978:379) sees it, this concern with human agency "is the problem around which the entire history of sociological analysis could be

written...[it is the] single most central concept in sociology.'' 4'Furthermore, insofar as our choice of models implies an ordinal ranking in terms of "better" or "worse," we confront a moral as well as a theoretical problem. Images of man, theories of human behavior, models of practical intervention, and

morality ? these go hand in hand. Let us see, then, where Marx and Hegel

stand on this crucial issue.

1. Physiognomy and Phrenology

The particular portion of Hegelianism with which we shall be concerned comes from a chapter of his Phenomenology of Spirit entitled Physiognomy and Phrenology. In it, Hegel assesses a form of consciousness which he calls the "logic of observation." When Hegel refers to the "logic of observation," he is speaking of a method presupposing continuity between the natural and social sciences. He wishes to know what use this method is in the study of human beings. Against the view that there is no substantive difference between the natural and social sciences, Hegel will conclude that the further "observ?

ing reason"3 rises above an analysis of nature, the less it is able to explain, for "description and classification of things correspond to a certain logic of

being which is adequate to elementary existence" ? not to the existence of human beings (Hyppolite, 1974:259). Put crudely, a methodology such as this errs by treating persons as though they were objects, which is why Hegel assails

oberving reason for its "fixity," for treating its objects as "frozen universals and as "arrested particulars." The sum and substance of his argument is that, when transplanted from the natural into the human realm, "observing reason"



Marxism and Positivism 131

will prove itself incapable of grasping the nature of the rational and self conscious agent.

For Hegel, human beings differ from rocks and bugs in that they have a hand in their own self-creation, have a capacity to "transcend" themselves. In his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, Marx (1975:386) had argued that this was the most important thing to be gleaned from Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit:

' 'The importance of Hegel's Phenomenology.. .lies

in the fact that Hegel conceives the self-creation of man as a process...and conceives objective man...as the result of his own labor." It is precisely a failure to acknowledge this which

...underlies all those would be sciences that aspire to give observa? tion the same role in the study of human beings than it has into in?

quiries into nature. For what we can observe in nature is, so to speak, all that there is to discover; but what we can observe in human be?

ings is the expression of rational activity, which cannot be understood as merely the sum of the movements that we observe (Maclntyre, 1974:232-233).

Furthermore, the methodology which Hegel intends to examine smacks of positivism in its reliance on the objectification, quantification, classifica? tion and observation of behavior. Thus, Hegel is concerned to distinguish positivism, discussed in terms of environmental and physiological determinism, from a decidedly Marxist/Hegelian mode of understanding human action.

Marxism and Determinism4

Hegel begins by offering a critique of determinism as a mechanism for

adequately understanding human behavior. The postulate of determinism underlies virtually every explanation of criminal behavior, and what follows is a passage from Kinberg's Basic Problems of Criminology (1935:66-67) which deals with the notions of free will, determinism, and indeterminism from a

positivist perspective. We cite it in order to provide insight into the way tWnking existed then, and still exists today, in criminology.

Metaphysical theses and misinterpretations of empirical facts are ex?

tremely harmful to criminology.. .as they distort scientific thought... .The

general validity of the law of causation, on the other hand, is essential to all scientific work....The fundamental predictability of human ac?

tions, and the possibility in many areas of actually seeing how a man will act are, however, of great importance to criminology....If psychological connections were fortuitous, practical criminal policy would collapse. It would be impossible with any degree of probability to predict...whether and in what circumstances this effect, once ac?

tually observed, would actually persist. To treat criminal etiological problems scientifically would also be impossible_The ^deterministic attitude is thus hostile to science. It.. .is hostile also to morality.



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One might suspect that this last sentence is an anachronism. Indeterminism

may or may not be wrong ? but immoral? Ernest Becker, perhaps the most

eloquent student of man to have emerged in the last 20 years, stands this equa? tion of determinism with morality on its head with his declaration that "if we had a science of the precise determinism of human behavior we should have to repudiate it! It would be incompatible with the belief in human possibility" (Becker, 1964:216). In any event, mainstream positive criminologists do cling to the notion of determinism, and do see its retention as having something to do with morality. Travis Hirschi, for example, "has declared.. .that for

criminologists to neglect research on why people commit crimes is morally indefensible. He argues that this is what criminologists are paid to do and what

they ought to deliver" (Pepinsky, 1980:29 ? emphasis added). In his American Delinquency, Lamar Empey (1978:15) refers to a group

of theories which dominate contemporary criminological thought (culture, strain, and control theories) and notes that,

' 'Ultimately.. .all imply that human

behavior is determined and not free." This belief in determinism promotes crystal-ball criminology, i.e., the frantic quest for a constellation of antece? dent events which will enable us to pin down the "cause" of crime once and for all. This is why Hirschi (in Johnson, 1978:378) argues that "the postulate of determinism is essential to social science. It asserts that delinquency can be completely explained. It directs us to continue the search." But such a view is not shared by everyone, and no less a social scientist than Karl Popper (1977:85) has acknowledged that "determinism is not a necessary prerequisite of a science which can make predictions. Scientific method cannot, therefore, be said to favor the adoption of a strict determinism."

Why, then, do certain criminologists see the notion of determinism as

"essential"? One common justification is that determinism allows for con?

tinuity between the natural and social sciences. Christensen (1980:19) has this in mind when he argues that the scientist "must accept one basic axiom..., an axiom concerning the uniformity in nature. The scientist must believe that there is uniformity in nature because otherwise there can be no science," which is something like saying that the theologian must believe in God or there can be no religion. In any case, the bottom line for Christensen, and for positive criminology generally, "is the notion of determinism." But the belief that it is determinism which unites the natural and social sciences only betrays a lack of insight into the natural sciences themselves. Werner Hiesenberg, the noted

physical scientist, points out the a priori nature of universal causal determinism under the rubric of his

' 'uncertainty principle.'' The long and short of his posi?

tion is that the presumed existence of a universe governed by the law of cau?

sality is

.. .sterile and meaningless ? and we wish to emphasize this opinion.

Physics is only supposed to describe the connection of perceptions in a formal way. The true situation can better be characterized in the

following way: Since all experiments are subjected to the laws of




quantum mechanics, the invalidity of the law of causality is definitely proved by quantum mechanics (in Quinney, 1970:133).

Now, we certainly do not object to the use of models which presuppose determinism for certain purposes; we do, however, object to the miraculous transubstantiation of a mere model into the eleventh commandment. Let us

be very clear on this point: determinism is a metaphysical concept. It is as

much a transcendental starting point as Kant could ever have imagined. Fur?

thermore, this model strips human action of any creative or constitutive dimen? sions whatsoever, makes the subject accidental, and for this reason has been denounced by Habermas (1971:90) as "misleading ontology." In general, positive scientists disdain philosophy, and terms like epistemology, ontology, and metaphysics are likely to earn a grimace from the tough-minded empiricist. Against those who see philosophical concerns as trivial or irrelevant, we should

argue that more attention to them would spare students some of the more glow? ing excesses of the positivistic tradition.

We shall return to this notion of determinism. For the time being, let us see how Hegel deals with this issue.

Though determinism takes many forms, it is convenient for present pur? poses to speak of internal (physiological) and external (environmental) influences as they impact on behavior. Hegel begins with environmental deter?

minism, points out its limitations, and moves to a critique of physiological determinism under the guise of physiognomy and phrenology (the latter of which is quite familiar to criminologists). Both forms of determinism, he

argues, seek laws which attempt to relate structure (be that structure

physiological or environmental) and function (behavior), and do so under the rubric of the logic of observation.

Beginning with external influences, Hegel notes that there are two "poles" to the relationship: the individual and the environment. In Hegel's words:

The moments constituting the content of the law are, on the one hand, the individuality itself, on the other hand,.. .the given circumstances, situations, habits, customs, religion, and so on: from these the specific individuality is to be comprehended....They are something given, something which provides material for observation and which... ex?

presses itself in the form of individuality (Hegel, 1977:183 ? second

emphasis added).

The strategy, then, is to observe the many factors (i.e., the circumstances, situations, habits, customs, etc.,) which "press" on the individual from out? side and are presumably responsible for creating that individual. The reason that environmental determinism is amenable to the logic of observation is that it is believed possible to observe the individual, count up all the environmental contacts made over time, add them up and specify the influences which

' 'made''

the individual what he or she is (Sutherland's theory of Differential Associa? tion is unquestionably the best example of this mentality)5. If "observing



134 GROVES

reason" is to vindicate itself, it must live up to the following requirement: "The law of this relation [i.e., between the individual and the environment] would have to state the kind of effect and influence exerted on the individual?

ity by these specific circumstances" (Hegel, 1977:183). In other words, how do these general circumstances merge to form this particular individual? Sartre

(1962:22) argues that analysis such as this "proceeds from the postulate that an individual fact is produced by the intersection of abstract universal laws.... The concrete is only an organization of abstract qualities; the individual is only the intersection of universal schemata." Put in terms of Sutherland's theory,

we might say that the individual is a vacant intersection for stimuli which vary in intensity, frequency, priority, and duration.

Though the location of the independent variable is in a different place (i.e., in the body as opposed to the environment), Hegel sees exactly the same strategy underlying the pseudo-sciences of physiognomy and phrenology. With refer? ence to physiognomy the hope is that individuality can be deduced from facial

expressions, while the phrenologist hopes to explain behavior by measuring skull formations. While the specific findings of these pseudo-sciences have

long since been discredited, the operative principle guiding such inquiries has not. In its continued attempts to locate phrenology-like causes, traditional

criminology has generated a veritable carnival of causes (these include physical type theories, criminal anthropology, phrenology, intelligence testing, theories of heredity and hereditary defects, endocrine imbalance, XYY chromosomal

theories, theories of the autonomic nervous system, neuroticism, and extraver sion ? and this list is limited to a partial specification of dispositional variables). It has reached the point, especially with respect to dispositional variables such as these, that theory is abandoned in favor of the "non-spurious correlation." David Layzer (1973:122-123), himself a physical scientist, explains this cor? relation fetish as an attempt by social scientists to emulate methods assumed in the natural or physical sciences. He goes on to note, however, that the belief that this type of measurement emulates that used in the natural sciences

.. .is mistaken. The first and most crucial step toward an understand?

ing of any natural phenomenon is not measurement. One must begin by deciding which aspects of the phenomenon are worth examining. To do this intelligently, one needs to have, at the very outset, some kind of explanatory or interpretive framework... .The aspect of scien? tific measurements the non-scientists often fail to appreciate is that

they always presuppose a theoretical framework....In short, signifi? cant measurements usually grow from theories and not vice versa.

Despite this reservation, much time in theoretical criminology is spent on the "correlation hunt," specifying, defining, and measuring a potpourri of ever-elusive independent variables. Attempts such as these, when carried to the extreme, are a forceful reminder of what C. Wright Mills (1977) calls "abstracted empiricism," and Hegel (1977:194) argues that excessive reliance on abstracted variables such as these is neither useful nor interesting: "to




recount that one man has more inclination than another, another more in?

telligence, is...not very interesting,...for these give observation the right to take them [the correlations] singly and uncomprehendingly. It is to take con? scious individuality unintelligently, as a manifestation that is single and

separate," giving rise to the charge that "explanations" such as these are a-theoretical and a-historical in that they arbitrarily bypass human agency and

presuppose a complete vitiation of subjectivity. Neither Sartre6 nor Hegel is satisfied with such abstracted explanations,

and both are of the opinion that "laws" specifying a determinate relationship between environmental or dispositional variables and behavior will remain forever elusive. Chambliss and Seidman (1982:11) have much the same reser? vation in mind with their observation that "no sooner did social scientists

develop 'laws' about human behavior than eternal human cussedness proved them less than invariant." Much of what we have to say in the remainder of this paper will be an attempt to examine just what this "eternal human cussedness" is all about.

In a depiction of individuality which smacks of the existentialism of a

Dostoyevsky or a Sartre, Hegel will argue that the individual cannot be reduced to (or deduced from) environmental circumstance because there are three ways in which the individual can respond to stimuli. First, he may "directly and

unresistingly coalesce with the given universal [i.e., the environment], the

customs, habits, etc., and become conformed to them" (Hegel, 1977:183). In this case, the individual could be deduced from the environment as he or she would passively mirror the universal and, as D?rkheim might have said, the individual and the collective conscience would coincide. Should this occur,

we would also have Marcuse's "one-dimensional man," Erich Fromm's

"automaton," C. Wright Mill's "cheerful robot," or Michel Foucault's "docile body." But there is another side to this story, and that is that it is in the nature of rational self-conscious agents that they can set themselves "in

opposition to them [i.e., environmental influences] and in fact transform them''

(Hegel, 1977:183). Here the individual is seen as having the ability to oppose environmental influences by interfering with them in self-selected ways. Simone de Beauvoir (1966:111) describes this two-fold relationship between persons and circumstance as follows: "[Man] asserts himself as a pure internality against which no external power can take hold, and he also experiences himself as a thing crushed by the dark weight of other things" (positivism has done justice to only the latter of these dimensions of experience). Finally, the individual

may "behave towards them [the influences] in its individuality with complete indifference, neither determining nor being determined" (Hegel, 1977:183). Both these latter modes of interaction preclude reducing the individuals to the

myriad of influences which impinge upon them, and this because persons "are not dumb as regards their external action, because they are thereby at once reflected into themselves, and give expression to the reflectedness into self

(Hegel, 1977:190). This is not double-talk. By "reflected into themselves," Hegel means that we possess the capacity to reflect on our extraversion, our



136 GROVES

LQ., our race, social class, etc., etc.,.. .and as a result of this process of reflec? tion generate action which can be 1) in conformity with, 2) opposed to, or

3) indifferent to whatever the specific variable was that the self-conscious agent decided to reflect on. Thus, when Hegel says that we "give expression to that reflectedness into self," he is referring to action which is the product of that reflection. Result: Action cannot be seen as the automatic product of the disposi? tion (LQ.) or state of affairs (environment) itself. Sartre (1968:153) has much the same point in mind:

If my companion suddenly starts toward the window, I understand his gesture in terms of the material situation in which we both are. It is, for example, because the room is too warm. He is going to "let in some air." [Yet] his action is not inscribed in the temperature; it is not "set in motion" by the warmth as by a "stimulus" provoking chain reactions (emphasis added).

This account is not without a touch of ambiguity. Earlier in his

Phenomenology (chapter two ? Sense Certainty) Hegel had argued that the nature of language assured that persons were essentially social beings. In this

sense, and Hegel is here very close to D?rkheim, society is a necessary con? dition for the production of individuality. Hegel expresses this as follows: "if these circumstances, ways of thinking, customs, in general the state of the

world, had not been, then of course the individual would not have become what he is" (Hegel, 1977:183).7 But this in no way dissuades Hegel from mak?

ing room for subjectivity, and he immediately goes on to note that

the fact...that the state of the world has particularized itself in this

particular individual ? and it is such an individual that is to be

comprehended ?

implies that it must also have particularized itself on its own account and have operated on the individual in this specific character which it has given itself; only in this way would it have made itself into this specific individual that he is (Hegel, 1977:184).

The passage is somewhat dense. Hegel's point is that the fundamental and essential "sociality" of man "does not militate against his capability of modi?

fying his environment or of exchanging one environment for another"

(Loewenberg, 1965:141). This permits Hegel to argue for a social being which is not a wholly determinate social being, a theme which will re-emerge in our discussion of Marx.

Hegel's reservation against wholesale environmental determinism functions as a welcome prophylactic against the type of mechanistic thinking which afflicts

vulgar Marxism and much of positive criminology. To argue that the individual

simply and wholly expresses his or her environment is at bottom a crude

tautology wherein the individual is the external world, which Hegel derisively characterizes as "a distinction without a difference." Were this the case,

...we should have a double gallery of pictures, one of which would




be the reflection of the other; the one, the gallery of external cir? cumstances which completely determines and circumscribes the in?

dividual, the other, the same gallery transplanted into the form in which those circumstances are present in the conscious individual

(Hegel, 1977:184).

Again, the nature of the rational agent militates against this tautologous reduction, for "what is to have an influence on the individual and what kind of influence it is to have...depend solely on that individuality itself (Hegel, 1977:183).

What observing reason as a form of consciousness sought was a "law"

linking the outer with the inner. Now while it is true that the individual can

merely "coalesce with the world, let it enter into him and.. .behave as a mere?

ly formal consciousness, "it is equally true that" "the world...can be transformed by the individual." Thus, the individual "either allows free play to the stream of the actual world flowing in upon it [in which case we have

Hegel's double gallery of pictures], or else breaks it off and transforms it [in which case there is room for the subject]" (Hegel, 1977:185). Hegel is not

arguing that there is no such thing as an influence; nor is he arguing that these influences cannot function as "causes" of behavior. What he is arguing is that attempts to discover a "law" establishing a necessary connection between a specified constellation of influences and a particular (an individual) behavior

pattern are of limited utility because such influences are too amorphous to pro? duce the desired explanatory result. Hegel describes lawlike "necessity" such as this as "an empty phrase, so empty that what is supposed to have had this influence could just as well not have had it" (Hegel, 1977:185). With reference to its attempt to "explain" individuality, even the specification of an apparent law connecting a dependent to an independent variable (i.e., a strong or even a perfect correlation) needn't be taken as binding, for awareness of such a law now becomes a source of information which may be utilized by the ra? tional agent to alter the "lawlike" relation in question. Hegel's concern, then, is that explanations which presuppose physiological or environmental deter?

minism aim at "denying the doer the character of Reason" (Hegel, 1977:194), as it is reason which bestows upon the self-conscious agent the capacity to contradict the "indeterminate," be it an innate disposition or a general en? vironmental influence. By becoming aware that we possess this or that disposi? tion, that we are subject to this or that environmental influence, we are in a

position to transform stimuli into information which then allows us to manipulate our behavior in light of ends chosen by ourselves. It is "to open up to the

agent the possibility of exchanging what he is for what he is not" (Maclntyre, 1976:223).8 This capacity for self-consciousness or self-reflection means that stimuli do not bombard a passive and inert individual, but on the contrary func? tion as information that can be processed in accordance with projects9 the individual has selected for him or herself. As Chambliss and Seidman (1982, 44) put it, "knowledge...becomes part of the process determining how and



138 GROVES

why people behave."

The Individual and Society

Implicit in Hegel's discussion is a view of both the nature of individuality and the nature of the relationship between the individual and society. Theorists who hypostatize or "reify" society by splitting it off from the individual tend to assign persons an insignificant role vis-a-vis their self-determination.

D?rkheim, for example, characterizes social institutions as "real, living, ac? tive forces which, because of the way they determine the individual, prove their independence of him; which, if the individual enters as an element in the combination whence these forces ensue, at least control him once they are

formed" (D?rkheim, 1966:39 ? emphases added).10 As is well known, "soci?

ety" possessed a reality sui generis for D?rkheim, it was a "thing" or a "social fact" which loomed over and determined the individual. But this view is anathema to Marxism, and Alvin Gouldner (1971:53-54) sees it as being "at the heart of the repressive component of sociology." What he means is that

when society is viewed as being split-off from the individuals who "create, embody, and enact" it, the stage is set for a reified or alienated11 social science which erroneously believes society to be an autonomous thing. True to his theme that method follows domain assumption, Gouldner goes on to tie this

way of looking at the relationship between the individual and society with the

tendency to adopt a positivistic methodology modeled after the natural sciences:

The emerging academic social sciences thus commonly came to con? ceive of society and culture as autonomous things: things that are in?

dependent and exist for themselves. Society and culture were then amenable to being viewed like any other "natural" phenomenon, as

having laws of their own that operated quite apart from the intentions and plans of men, while the disciplines that studied them could be viewed as natural sciences like any other. Method, then, follows do? main assumption. In other words, sociology emerged as a "natural" science when certain domain assumptions and sentiments became

prevalent; when men felt alienated from a society that they thought they had made but could not control.

It is for this reason that Gouldner (1971:53) describes academic social science as "the social science of an alienated age and alienated man."

Hegel's position should be sharply distinguished from this Durkheimian

type of domain assumption. Marx (1975:350) too is emphatic on this point, noting as he does that "it is above all necessary to avoid once more establishing 'society' as an abstraction over against the individual. The individual is the social being....Man's individual and species life are not two distinct things, however much ? and this is necessarily so ? the mode of existence of in? dividual life is a more particular or more general mode of the species life." This position is exactly the same as Hegel's, who also comes to the conclu? sion that "individuality is itself this cycle.. .of the unity of the world as given




and the world it has made: a unity whose sides do not fall apart.. .into a world that in itself'is already given, and an individuality existing on its own account'1

(Hegel, 1977:185). Thus, to cut the individual off from society is a dubious

division; both Marx and Hegel would say that it is false. We have already touched on Hegel's position that persons actively transform

reality by breaking off the stream of the actual world as it flows in on their

individuality. Let us combine this with Marx's claim and take the argument one step further: to grasp this active attribute of the subject is to grasp the individual and society in their unity rather than over and against one another, as is the case with, say, "control theory" assumptions about human nature12.

With this awareness, ' 'reason... [will be] led to observe individuality no longer

as a reflection of the putatively given environment but as a concrete whole in its own right" (Hyppolite, 1974:164).

But what does it mean to say that the individual is a "concrete whole"? What is more, hasn't Hegel jumbled things up here with his request that we see the individual and society in their "unity"? Wasn't this the position he

argued against with his polemics against the "double gallery of pictures"? Let us see if we can't clear things up.

Concrete behavior does not, on Hegel's account, automatically reflect the circumstances which "surround" it, for "circumstances, situations, etc., ex?

press only the indeterminate nature of the individual, which is not the point [here]" (Hegel, 1977:184). True, the world provides the raw material for in? dividual initiative. But it is equally true that individuals have a hand in deciding what will be permitted to influence them. As Alasdair Maclntyre (1976:230) puts it, "it is universals concretized in their concrete occurrence to which we

respond in our actions," which is to say that we do not automatically and

unreflexively respond to indeterminate circumstances and dispositions. On the

contrary, in our dealings with reality we choose an actual (a concrete) behavioral

response, and it is this actual revealed behavior13 that Hegel labels the "con? crete particularization" of general circumstances and dispositions. From this

perspective, the individual cannot be reduced to an echo of general conditions "since on account of this freedom.. .the world of the individual is to be com?

prehended from the individual himself (Hegel, 1977:184). The most we can

hope for by surrounding the individual with a myriad of influences which are

alleged to "cause" his or her behavior is some appreciation of what Maslow

(1978) calls its "correlational meaning," an appreciation of which is impor? tant. But such are not the only meanings available, and arbitrarily halting one's

analysis at this point is to circumvent subjectivity by expelling it into those circumstances alleged to constitute the individual's life.

Thus, Hegel refuses to define subjectivity as redundant on circumstances or dispositions; he is opposed to reducing the individual to an "intersection of universal schemata" because explanations such as these simply cannot ex?

plain subjectivity. As Sartre (1962:24) puts it, attempts to explain behavior

by means of an exclusive reliance on "the great idols of our epoch ?

heredity, education, environment, physiological constitution...allow us to understand14



140 GROVES

nothing....The transitions, the becomings, the transformations, have been

carefully veiled from us, and we have been limited to putting order into the succession by invoking empirically established but literally unintelligible sequences." The parallel between Hegel's conception of human agency and Sartre's existential portrait is worth noting. Sartre defines man as a being whose existence precedes his essence, which means that man has no pre-ordained or metaphysical human nature. As Sartre puts it, man "first of all exists, en? counters himself, surges up in the world ?and defines himself afterwards. If man as the existentialist sees him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself." Sartre goes on to make the very Hegelian point that "man is nothing else but the sum of his actions," a perspective which

clearly rules out motivational portraits presupposed by positive criminology. For both Sartre and Hegel, man is "a project which possesses a subjective life," is "something which propels itself toward a future and is aware that it is doing so" (Sartre, 1969:291 ? emphasis added). For much of positive criminology, persons are lost to a series of proxies (Hegel will call them "empty possibilities" ?we call them "independent variables") of which human behavior is seen as a function. One needn't be an existentialist or a Marxist to repudiate this way of looking at things

? a sensible positivist (Karl Popper) will do nicely:

Beethoven.. .is surely to some extent a product of musical education and tradition... .The more important aspect, however, is that he is also a producer of music, and thereby of musical tradition and education. I do not wish to quarrel with the metaphysical determinist who would insist that every bar that Beethoven wrote was determined by some

combination of heredity and environmental influences. Such an asser?

tion is empirically entirely insignificant, since no one could actually "explain" a single bar of his writing in this way....What he wrote can be explained neither by the musical works of his predecessors, nor by the social environment in which he lived, nor by his deafness, nor by the food which the housekeeper cooked for him; not, in other

words, by any definite set of environmental influences or cir? cumstances open to empirical investigation, or by anything else we

could possibly know of his heredity'' (Popper, 1971:210 ? third em?

phasis added).

For all of Popper's vicious polemics against Hegel,15 his position here is

exactly the same as that taken by Hegel in this paper. As Popper makes clear, after we hedge Beethoven in with a host of correlations, peer into his life for the variables which would explain his work, we are forced to admit that there still exists an inexplicable remainder which embraces nothing less than the

problem of individuality itself. The point is this: if correlations cannot build

up to subjectivity, then the completed act cannot be reduced to a set of anterior

proxy variables of which it is a function. And so "if someday we find the




chemical [or environmental] equivalent to these [behavioral] processes, so much the better. But the higher level integration, the completed act, will still exist

by a right of its own. It will still be irreducible" (Becker, 1964:98). Hegel, Sartre, Popper, and Becker are squarely confronting the nature of

individuality, and their position is that persons cannot be adequately understood

apart from their role vis-a-vis both the world and their own self-development. For Hegel, as for Marx, "the self-creation of man is a process," and it is this processual dimension which undercuts any separation of persons from their life world. Let us see how these themes interact with reference to Marx's con?

ception of "praxis."

Praxis and History

For Marx (1976:48), history is not "a collection of dead facts," a "high sounding drama of princes and states" (Marx, 1978:210). Rather, history grows up in action, it is an "active life process," which means that we are not talk?

ing about history as a form of historicism. In The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. 2, Karl Popper (1971:81) argued that Marx's theory of history was "the

purest, most developed and the most dangerous form of historicism," whose

defining characteristic is that history is seen as beyond human control. Where certain forms of positivism reduce persons to an epiphenomenal function of an anterior set of variables, historicism reduces persons to an epiphenomenal dimension of a history made behind their backs. Both, in their extremes, repre? sent forms of irrationalism. With respect to historicism, irrationalism finds

expression in the belief that "the main course of history [is] predetermined, and neither good will nor reason has the power to alter it" (Popper, 1971:86). Because explanations such as these circumvent subjectivity, Hegel argues that

they amount to "a complete denial of Reason" (Hegel, 1977:205),16 and if

Popper's historicist reading of Marx were correct, persons would have nothing to do with history; they would exist only as its victims. History would no longer be a dimension of man as a praxical being (Meszaros, 1978:251), but man would be a rather insignificant dimension of history. But if we are concerned with human history, we would do well to ask: what can history do without man? Marx responds as follows:

History does nothing; it 'does not possess riches,' it 'does not fight battles.' It is men, real, living men, who do all this, who possess things and fight battles. It is not 'history' which uses men as a means of

achieving ? as [if] it were an 'individual person'

? its own ends.

History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their own ends"

(Marx in Israel, 1971:69).

Here is a decidedly nonhistoricist Marx, who sees history as the process by which that same history is itself brought into being or, as we put it earlier,

history grows up in action. The production of history is related to the dialectic between man (who is never to be considered as its passive pawn) and cir? cumstance (which is never to be considered as separated from the action which



142 GROVES

brought it into being), and is summed up nicely in the following passage:

History is nothing but the succession of separate generations, each of which exploits the materials, the forms of capital, the productive forces handed down to it by all preceding ones, and thus on the one hand continues the traditional activity in completely changed cir? cumstances and, on the other, modifies the old circumstances with a completely changed activity (Marx, 1978:211 ? emphases added).

Note that Marx does not characterize "forms of capital" or "the produc? tive forces" as things which determine history. Were this the case, he would fall from his praxical platform into a vulgar economism which sees the "mode of production" as the sole determinant of historical movement. Marx was em?

phatically opposed to those who would characterize history as a rigid succes? sion of modes of production absent the mediation of human activity. In his

words, "a certain mode of production...is always combined with a certain mode of cooperation.. .and this mode of cooperation is itself a productive force" (Marx, 1978:202 ? emphases added). Thus, rather than characterizing them as "things," Marx refers to them as "traditional (i.e., historical) activity," that is, as objectified or congealed forms of human activity. It is characteristic of Marx's whole way of looking at things that he does not "freeze" this pro? cess or, as Hegel put it, this "cycle." Once again a contrast with D?rkheim is instructive. In his Rules of the Sociological Method, D?rkheim (1966:15) had requested that we "treat social facts as things," and it is this which led D?rkheim to see persons as being on the receiving end of structures which loomed large over the individual.17 Now Marx was certainly no stranger to the constraining effects of circumstance and history. In his 18th Brumaire, to cite just a single example, Marx (1959:320) notes that:

Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given, and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a

nightmare on the brain of the living.

But this should not be read as saying that "history" (either of the species or of the individual) determines present or future behavior. Though history and circumstance do confront the individual or the species as raw material to be reworked, it would be an error to read this action as inscribed in either circumstance or history. From a Marxian perspective, "if history means

anything at all, it must be open-ended" (Meszaros, 1978:117), which simply means that, since persons create themselves in action, they retain some capacity to decide what the future will hold. On this view, history is a story always in the making and never fully cast, and this because man has a measure of

praxical prowess which ultimately means that "there is no prophetic sociology to help us" (Popper, 1971:208), i.e., to help us find the key to history in?

dependent of our involvement in it.




Marx was surely sensitive to inevitabilist or historicist interpretations, and on occasion reacted very strongly against them. For example, he notes that the historical begetting of man via his own labor "can be speculatively distorted so that later history is made the goal of earlier history... [and] thereby history receives its own special aims" (Marx, 1973:211). But as we have seen, it is

man who "continues the traditional activity...modifies the old circumstances," and with this we are back to a nonhistoricist reading which sees "the whole of what is called world-history [as] nothing more than the creation of man

through human labor" (Marx, 1975:357).18 Thus far Hegel and Marx have taken a stand against the ontology of deter?

minism and have shown that methodological positivism "cannot really cope with the meshing of the given and the self-made in persons.. .but tries to separate these two aspects from one another" (Taylor, 1977:162). In the process, light has been shed on what they take to be the nature of individuality and the nature of the relationship between the individual and society. Certainly human be?

ings are exposed to influences which color their interactions; neither Hegel nor Marx were fool enough to deny this. But they do not stand in the same relation to the environment as a rock or a bug. As Jean Hyppolite (1974:265) puts it, "specificity manifests itself at the heart of individuality as the transcendence of all determinations." This point is at the heart of Sartre's

(1962:19) existential psychology, and he too shuns positivism for its attempt to "avoid everything which could evoke the idea of transcendence." We shall

explore this point further. For now, suffice it to note that individuals are not

always and everywhere the dependent variable.

Teleology

Clearly, Hegel is of the opinion that we cannot adequately understand

persons by way of reference to fixed and stable dispositions. Marx too is critical of such efforts, and for both Marx and Hegel "the human essence is not an

abstract inherent in the single individual. It is in reality the ensemble of social conditions" (Marx, 1962:71). Assuming this to be the case, what are we to make of arguments that criminality is a "continuous trait," or that it is "in? nate" (Eysenck, 1977:78-79)? Explanations such as this are an implicit denial of man's fundamental historicity, his basic sociality; they are ill-conceived

attempts to circumvent man's most important distinguishing feature ?his

historically and socially generated consciousness. In addition, this reduction of the problem of crime to the problem of the criminal is the direct result of an inability to see the individual and society as inseparable.

But what is the alternative conception of human agency proposed by Hegel? For both Hegel and Marx, human behavior exhibits a teleological dimension which forces us to modify explanations cast in terms of efficient causes, ex?

planations where "one constant moment [is related to] another constant mo?

ment" (Hegel, 1977:207). That there are strong teleological overtones in

Hegel's conception of Spirit is evident in the following quote:



144 GROVES

Consciousness.. .produces itself by its own activity. It is itself the End at which its action aims (Hegel, 1977:209).

Let us unpack this quotation by way of a comparison with Marx. Nowhere are Hegel and Marx closer than on their view of human agency,

and both Bernstein (1974) and Plamanatz (1975) have argued that Hegel's con?

ception of Spirit, teleological overtones and all, prefigures the Marxian con?

ception of Praxis. Earlier we cited a passage from the Paris Manuscripts (1974:385-386) which bears repeating:

The importance of Hegel's Phenomenology, and of its final result ?

the dialectic of negativity as the moving and producing principle ?

lies in the fact that Hegel conceives the self-creation of man as a

process.

For Hegel, "consciousness produces itself by its own activity"; for Marx, "the self-creation of man is a process." Their positions are indistinguishable.

When Marx refers to "the dialectic of negativity as the moving and pro? ducing principle," he is highlighting the single most important fact about self

consciousness, described by Alasdair Maclntyre (1976:232) as "its self

negating quality." Though their language differs, a number of important thinkers make much the same point. Hyppolite speaks of "transcendence"; for Heidegger, man is "going towards a possibility"; Sartre defines it as "pro? pulsion towards a future''; and with Nietzsche it is a

4 'transvaluation of values.''

Alasdair Maclntyre (1976:234) describes this teleological "self-creation" of

persons as follows:

The progress of rational agents is seen as moving towards goals that are only articulated in the course of the movement itself. Human behavior is neither blind nor goalless nor the mere implementation of means to an already decided end....That it is only in the course of the movement that the goals of the movement are articulated is the reason why we can understand human affairs only after the event. The Owl of Minerva, as Hegel was later to put it, flies only at dusk. The understanding of human beings is not predictive in the way that natural science is.

A perspective which brings this teleological dimension of human striving back into the theoretical fold allows us to substitute for the question

? 4 4 what

caused this behavior?" ? a concern with what the individual or group is try? ing to accomplish. How can we appreciate this dimension of human action if behavior is defined as an exclusive function of antecedent events? If Marx and Hegel are correct, if we are in possession of a subjective life which is not redundant on circumstance or dispositions, then we cannot exhaust our

understanding of persons by surrounding or stuffing them with correlations. The question Hegel and Marx pose, then, is this: supposing criminality were a bone, what then?




NOTES

1. Greenberg (1981:2) lists five such assumptions. We shall be concerned to examine two of them: that "the causes of crime are deterministic (i.e., accurately predictable from its initial

causes)," and that "crime can be studied through the same methods (quantitative statistical tech?

niques) and with the same goals (the formulation of historically invariant laws) as the natural sciences."

2. Unfortunately, Hegel is largely ignored by criminologists, even by those who acknowledge an indebtedness to Marxism. Where references do emerge, it is evident that he is either misunderstood or is not taken very seriously (Pepinsky, 1980:300; Greenberg, 1981:14). Such

neglect is not evident beyond the confines of criminology, and over the past few years a number of books have been written whose stated intention was to restore to Hegel the prominence he so richly deserves. Among the works which have contributed to the resurrection of Hegelianism are the following: Alexandre Kojeve's Introduction to the Reading of Hegel (1969); Jean Hyppolite's Genesis and Structure of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (1974); Quinten Lauer 's A Reading of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (1978); J. Loewenberg's Hegel's Phenomenology (1965); Charles Taylor's Hegel (1975); Richard Norman's Hegel's Phenomenology (1976), and J.N.

Findlay's Hegel: A Re-examination (1958). Without exception, the bulk of each of these books is devoted to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, and the majority were written within the last 15

years. In addition, all share Findlay's (1959:26) belief that "Hegel is worth restating and reassessing on account of the great contemporary relevance of many aspects of his thought."

But a rehabilitation of Hegel is only half the story; the other half concerns the relationship between Hegel and Marx. Again, a number of important books have been written which attempt to establish this connection. The groundbreaker was History and Class Consciousness (Lukacs, 1979), which attempted to nudge Marxism away from both positivism and determinism, and did so with the assistance of Hegel. Among the more important works which follow this Lukacsian lead are: Richard Bernstein's Praxis and Action (1974); Shlomo Avineri's The Social and Political

Thought of Karl Marx (1971); Istvan Meszaros's Marx's Theory of Alienation (1978); Adolfo Sanchez Vasquez's The Philosophy of Praxis (1977), and perhaps most importantly, John Plamanatz's Karl Marx's Philosophy of Man (1975). For additional information on how various thinkers line up on the Marx/Hegel issue, see Perry Anderson's Considerations on Western Marxism

(1979), especially pp. 49-74. 3. Hegel uses "Observing Reason" and the "Logic of Observation" interchangeably in this

chapter. What he means by both is a method of analysis which has affinities with the natural sciences. The reference to "Observing Reason" should not be confused with the Hegelian emphasis on

Reason, which Hegel equates with the distinctive human capacity for reflection, self-consciousness, or intentionality.

4. This concern with determinism will emerge time and again in the course of our discussion, and it is perhaps best to take it as a threshold question: is Marxism deterministic? Turning to

Marx for an answer is not likely to be of much assistance, as he himself frequently wavers on

this crucial point. One moment he is castigating others for characterizing social events in a one?

way, linear causal manner, and in the next breath does so himself. These ambiguities, and they abound in Marx, have led to incredible variations among his interpreters. Istvan Meszaros

(1978:115), for example, notes that "Marx is often accused of 'economic determinism.' He is

supposed to hold the naive idea according to which the economy determines, mechanically, every aspect of development. Such accusations, needless to say, cannot be taken seriously." But there are those who take a deterministic interpretation of Marx very seriously. John Hoffman (1976:140), who specifically addresses the "praxical" interpretation of Marx to be defended in this article, claims that "there is no doubt...that Marx is a determinist," and he uses this claim to bolster his case against what he calls "the praxis mythology about Marx" (Hoffman, 1976:136). This

determinism-praxis debate can be extended to a number of authors. At the risk of oversimplifica? tion, the battle lines could be drawn as follows: On the mechanistic or deterministic side we find Robert Tucker, Daniel Bell, Louis Althusser, Karl Popper, and John Hoffman. On the praxical side are John Paul Sartre, Charles Taylor, Georg Lukacs, Istvan Meszaros, Erich Fromm, Shlomo

Avineri, and Richard Bernstein (both lists could, of course, be extended). Our sympathies lay with the latter interpretation.

5. Sutherland's is an attempt to bring "crime" under the heading of a "universal law" (i.e., all behavior is learned). He is of the opinion that his theory provides both the necessary and suffi? cient conditions for individual criminal behavior, an ambition summed up in his observation that



146 GROVES

"the conditions which are said to cause crime should always be present when crime is present, and should always be absent when crime is absent" (Sutherland and Cressey, 1966:77). But this model presupposes a total breakdown of subjectivity, and in place of the person we have a con? tainer into which culturally derived definitions are poured. The individual is nothing more than a vacant intersection for stimuli, and there is a view of human beings as utterly passive, as "machines rather than organisms." On this view, "socialization does not produce a minded organism or an active self capable of selecting among stimuli those that are relevant to the self. It produces an individual stamped by the printing press of culture" (Kornhauser, 1978:198). We use Sutherland's

theory as the best example of anti-subjectivism available in the sociological version of theoretical

criminology. 6. Sartre's existential philosophy owes a significant debt to Hegel, who is treated at some

length in Being and Nothingness. For an examination of Sartre's relation to Hegel, see Mark Poster's Existential Marxism in Postwar France (1975). For an analysis of the relation of Marxism to

existentialism, see the collection of essays in Novack's Existentialism versus Marxism (1966), and for an examination of the relation of existentialism to both Marx and Hegel, see The Existen? tialist Rediscovery of Hegel and Marx, by George Kline (1971).

7. This is an important observation. Hegel does not argue that environmental factors and disposi? tions do not exist, nor that they might not in some way impact on behavior. Thus, where (in the

text) Hegel sees environmental factors as a necessary condition for the production of individuali?

ty, he also notes that "the original being of persons consists of dispositions" (Hegel, 1977:201). He is quick to add, however, that persons are "free to do as they wish" vis-a-vis these disposi? tions. Hegel's aversion to dispositional variables (I.Q., extraversion, etc.) was shared by D?rkheim, who dismisses dispositional (in his words, extra-social) variables as follows:

A very general predisposition [does] not necessarily produce any special action, but

[is] capable of assuming the most varied forms according to circumstance. It is a field in which the most varied tendencies may take root depending from the fertilization it receives from social causes.

In a footnote to this discussion, D?rkheim notes that "a single organic state [i.e., a disposi? tion] may contribute to almost opposite ends" (D?rkheim, 1966:77). Thus, to assign dispositions to individuals and to then correlate them with a specific behavior pattern might just turn out to be the "empty possibility" Hegel believes it to be, for "individuality, when it commits itself to the objective element in putting itself into a deed," might contradict this disposition. The point, one which certain criminologists would do well to remember, is that "the murderer is not the abstraction of a murderer" (Hegel, 1977:202).

8. It is this which led Sartre to define man as follows: "Man is the being who is not what he is, and is what he is not" (in Poster, 1975:33). It is also the same definition which Hyppolite attributes to Hegel.

9. In his Being and Nothingness, Sartre (1956:806) provides the following definition of what he means by "project": "It refers to the For-itself s choice of its way of being and is expressed by action in the light of a future end." As is evident, a teleological dimension is built into the definition.

10. Though this is the most common interpretation of D?rkheim's position, a thinker of his

complexity cannot be reduced to a uni-dimensional position such as this without qualification. For example, after defining institutions as constraining forces which do not depend upon individual

wills, D?rkheim goes on to note that "because beliefs and social practices come to us from without, it does not follow that we receive them passively or without modification, for. ..each of us colors the world after his own fashion....Each of us creates, in a measure, his own morality, religion, and mode of life. There is no conformity to social convention that does not comprise an entire

range of individual shades" (D?rkheim, 1966:lvii ? emphasis added). Though he here allows for a realm of freedom, his true colors are revealed in his closing sentence: "It is nevertheless true that this field of variations is a limited one [so much for the 'entire range of individual

shades']....One encounters limits that cannot be crossed." 11. As Berger and Luckmann (1967:89) define it, "reification is the apprehension of human

phenomenon as if they were things....Reification implies that man is capable of forgetting his

authorship of the human world, and further, that the dialectic between man, the producer, and his products is lost to consciousness."

12. Control theories assume that the motivation to delinquency is "natural," that it can be

explained with reference to "inborn tendencies," which means that, so far as motivation is




concerned, there is nothing to be explained (Empey, 1982:11). Whatever else this might be, it is a decidedly non-Marxist view of human motivation. Phrases like "inborn tendencies" and

"naturally delinquent" have no place in a Marxist criminology. Control theorists take a fixed

anthropological model as their point of departure; they base their beliefs on a hunch as to what the individual is like outside of society. But a proposition such as this makes no sense, for we

know nothing of man outside of society. For Marx and Hegel, there can be no discussion of man

"outside" history and society because man does not exist there. For excellent discussions of this

issue, see Plamanatz (1975:36); and Meszaros (1978:45). 13. In line with Sartre, Hegel is suspicious of any explanatory scheme which attempts to cir?

cumvent actual revealed behavior. In the battle between disposition and deed, there is no contest.

What people do is the more important of the two dimensions. To make this point, Hegel quotes Lichtenberg:

If anyone said, "you certainly look like an honest man, but I see from your face [your I.Q.] that you are forcing yourself to do so and are a rogue at heart," without a doubt,

every honest fellow to the end of time, when thus addressed, will retort with a box on the ear (Hegel, 1977:193).

14. The theoretical tension here is between "explanation" and "understanding." According to von Wright (1971:6), the cutting edge between these concepts is that '"understanding'...has a psychological ring which 'explanation' does not," and that "understanding is also connected with intentionality in a way explanation is not." The point is not that intentionality is the primary component of human action, but only that "intention and therefore the actor's views are always potentially relevant and must be taken into account" (Pitkin, 1972:256). Hence Sartre's (1962:24) remark: by surrounding the individual with correlations, we limit ourselves to "putting order into the succession by invoking empirically established but literally unintelligible sequences." For an extended discussion of the difference between explanation and understanding, see von

Wright's Explanation and Understanding (1971); Brian Fay's Social Theory and Social Practice

(1980), and Chapter 7 in Habermas's Knowledge and Human Interests (1971), which deals with

Dilthey's treatment of this distinction. 15. In his Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. 2, Popper deals at some length with both Hegel

and Marx. His treatment of Hegel is unfair in many respects. In Conjectures and Refutations (1965:330), Popper offers his own opinion of Hegel: "I think it represents the worst of all those absurd and incredible philosophic theories to which Descartes refers in the sentence which I have chosen as the motto for this paper" [that sentence reads: "There is nothing so absurd or incredi? ble that it has not been asserted by one philosopher or another"]. Popper is certainly entitled to his opinion, but we should add that much of what Popper has to say elsewhere finds direct

expression in this chapter of Hegel's Phenomenology. For a detailed examination of Popper's treatment of Hegel, see Kaufmann (in Maclntyre, 1976:24), where it is argued that "Popper's treatment contains more misconceptions about Hegel than any other single essay."

16. Hegel's emphasis on Reason finds expression in a number of celebrated books, not the least of which is Karl Popper's Open Society and its Enemies. C. Wright Mills defends a concep? tion of reason in his Sociological Imagination (1977); Marcuse in Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory (1960), and in his Negations (1968). In addition, Reason was a

category central to the Frankfurt School, and finds expression in the following works: Toward a Rational Society by J?rgen Habermas (1970); the Eclipse of Reason by Max Horkheimer (1974); and in a collection of essays by Horkheimer entitled Critical Theory (1972). With the exception of Mills and Popper, the conception of Reason found in these latter works owes an explicit debt to Hegel. See also Maurice Mandelbaum's History, Man, and Reason: A Study in 19th Century Thought (1971).

17. In The New Criminology (1973), Taylor, Walton, and Young correctly note that D?rkheim made an important break with "analytical individualism." It should be added, however, that D?rkheim's was an undialectical break in that a wedge was driven between the individual and

society. Their turn to D?rkheim is unobjectionable, but Marx would have been more appropriate for the point they were trying to make.

18. What follows are some passages designed to capture the dialectical relationship between

persons and circumstance from some of Marx's interpreters, each of whom agrees that circumstances do provide the raw material for action, none of whom would agree that action is inscribed in

circumstance, as is the case with a thoroughgoing materialism.



148 GROVES

Shlomo Avineri (1971:71):

According to Marx, nature cannot be discussed as if it were severed from human ac?

tion. Man shapes nature. This act also shapes man and his relation to other human

beings; it is a total process, implying a constant interaction between subject and object.

Nathan Rotenstreich (1965:56-57):

The root of Marx's critique lies in the recognition of the impossibility of the separa? tion of the different facets of human reality, whether we consider the separation of

man from circumstance or... .This critique is implied in the idea of practice... [and is]

fundamentally grounded in the awareness of the contiguity between the reality given and the man who works within it. Circumstances...do not exist within an external, solid and given boundary....Circumstances do not have an independent status vis-a? vis man....The fetishism of commodities parallels the fetishism of circumstance.

John Plamanatz (1975:71):

If society changes it is only because men come to behave and to think and to feel dif?

ferently, and so it is just as true to say that society is produced by man as to say that it produces him. These two assertions, far from contradicting one another, refer to two complementary processes', to the activities of men socially related to one another and to the effects of these activities on them.

Wal Suchting (1979:13):

In praxis there is a simultaneous transformation of both terms [i.e., subject and object].

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marxism and positivism a discussion

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