Mehmet Özay 02.05.2020
On the contrary, Karl Marx's sociological solutions were not merely theoretical, as an ideologue himself, he also exhibited an effort to foresee and work for the destruction of a certain system and the construction of a different system in its place.
The fact that the revolution Marx envisioned did not materialize either in the German society from which he emerged or in English society, where he witnessed the continuing and accelerating traces of the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century, and the approach he took during the revolution that was attempted but failed in France in the 1830s and 1840s should be important.
The fact that his academic identity as an economist, prior to and predominantly as a sociologist, led him to understand the social structure of the society from which he emerged, and the discourse he put forward in areas such as the state, administration, power and power, which would be classified as political philosophy, should undoubtedly be understood as a movement in his view of social relations, as well as the limitations and expansion of the fields of economics and political philosophy. In other words, a process evolving towards sociology.
Marx, like other sociologists or social scientists, did not only observe the latent/overt rapid/slow changes in the social structures of 19th century wider Europe, and especially in German, French and English social structures, into which he was born.
On the contrary, while it has endeavored to shape the social relations thought to have been structured in the past in the context of the conditions and reality of the period it is in, it has also endeavored to shape the conditions of the society in which it exists, based on the approach it assumes to have been shaped in the past. In this sense grand design While he belongs to the group of theorists, he has demonstrated the dynamics of being an ideologist and of his ideology by taking a precise approach to social relations in various societies in history and to future social relations.
Marx's attempt to find a solution to the crisis caused by the rapid progression of industrial societies, or more precisely, the process of the production dimension of the production-consumption relations chain, at a rate that destroys the rational existence of the individual human being, is meaningful as an attempt to find a response to his own social reality.
In this framework, this process has brought to the agenda of his thought and social analysis the question of what constitutes the dynamics of transformation and change in past, current and future societies, and he has based his answer on the dichotomous relationship built on material foundations between those who dominate the processes and means of production and those who do not.
While the assertion that this relationship is in a dimension that will ensure dominance over all kinds of social spheres is a response to the conditions of 19th century Western Europe as a paradigm, it has been revealed that this paradigm has no function and validity as a result of its subjecting social relations to such a reductionist approach in the intervening period.
This situation, while the generalized idea of employer-employee, which was structured around the basic production spaces of industrial societies in general and factories in particular, which were subject to multiple production processes, was left behind due to other dualities that would replace this duality in the development processes of European societies, it is very important that at least some of the European social scientists had a say in new fields with theories that would find their counterpart in Marx.
This, of course, does not mean a validation of Marx's reductionist paradigmatic approach. However, what needs to be pointed out here is that the social scientists who came after him continued to construct new theories with reference to the epistemology on which his theory was based.
This corresponds to the process of renewing the positivism-based epistemological structuring produced by European civilization in the pre-Marx period through his theory. However, just as the theories of other social scientists and especially sociologists in the 19th century have been eroded and overcome in the intervening period, Marx remains a source of reference, just as their names are indispensable.
The binary designs that Marx brought to the agenda in the employer-employee special, the idea that it corresponds to the oppressor-oppressed polarity in a way to theorize in social relations and that social change emerges with the movement caused by the conflicting structure between these two phenomena is a dominant feature.
However, in the rapidly changing social structures of Western European societies, it is witnessed that in the context of the element that will produce social movement and change, it is not the employer-employee relationship itself, but the conflict that is thought to be inherent in this relationship that is realized through its emergence in different areas. This does not mean that there was no "conflict phenomenon" prior to Western societies and/or the sociological structuring developed in the West. On the contrary, what has been brought to the fore is the systematic highlighting of conflict as a dominant element within the framework of social sciences in the West.
At this point, Marx's prioritizing one of the elements structuring social relations and building his theory on it causes him to be included in reductionist sociology. The extent to which this contributes positively or negatively to Marx's importance as an ideologue is another matter. The circles that accept Marx as an ideologist and keep him on their agenda, including the critical approach, not only try to understand societies through him, but also embrace his ideology as a means of changing societies.
In the social changes that Western Europe has undergone, both the quantitative importance of the 'workers', who form the fulcrum of the classical class relationship, in the demographic structure and the qualitative element in their relations with Marx are enough to question what kind of class conflict is on the agenda today.
In fact, it is precisely this social reality that reveals how sociologists/social scientists who observe, study and theorize the gradually emerging processes of social change subject Marx's class-based theory to a hidden/overt evolution. At this point, while there is no classical "working class" in front of us, other classes, which are increasingly becoming micro, beyond the masses that are desired to have the values of this working class, are gradually revealing themselves, proving that social reality is actually structured by many actors and processes, not by singular processes.
English and Indonesian versions translated with DeepL AI
