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From Metaphor to Self-Reflection: Gouldner and Critical Marxism
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11103 |
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BOOK WORLD
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3 / 1986 |
2,342 Words |
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Andrew Arato
Andrew Arato is an associate professor and the chairman of the
Department of Sociology and a member of the Graduate Faculty
of The New School for Social Research. He is the co-author of
The Young Lukacs and the Origins of Western Marxism (New York:
Seabury Press, 1979). |
Alvin Gouldner wrote important books all his life, and his last, Against Fragmentation, most emphatically was one of them. Combining the themes of The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class (1979) and The Two Marxisms (1980), Against Fragmentation is the better work. Avoiding the reductionism of the former and the temptation to "Marxology" of the latter does, however, involve some costs: Gouldner does not quite manage to synthesize fully the results of his reading of theory. As a result, the work, a veritable gold mine of insights, does not ultimately hold together. Its weaknesses, however, are almost as instructive as its strengths.
The theory of the intellectuals as the "New Class" is, of course, well known. It is, however, a bad theory in spite of its venerable lineage. Saint-Simon and Comte, Bakunin and Machajski, Sorel and Benda, the theorists of the managerial revolution and of the New Class, as well as some of today's neo-conservatives, are part of the history of the concept. Gouldner's own treatment belongs in particular to a tradition going back to Lukacs and Mannheim of turning historical materialism against itself. Such Marxian analysis of Marxism is also the background of a recent work of the Hungarian dissidents Szelenyi and Konrad.
Along with the other theories of this latter type, Gouldner's is not only far more sophisticated than those of its non-Marxist competitors (especially the neoconservatives) but also suffers from ailments peculiar to its own project. The book on the intellectuals contains all the usual fallacies, paralogisms, and antinomies of the classical Marxian theory of class. Even worse, it cannot avoid the obvious logical circularity of discrediting precisely the theory that the whole
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