The Sociology of Marxism

The continued influence of Marxism as an intellectual doctrine, as distinct from its role as the integrating ideology of Communist societies and parties, surprises many who regard its basic errors and irrelevancies to the analysis of contemporary society as obvious. Recently Talcott Parsons has pointed to the “striking fact that general orientations in this field [sociology] have, in recent years, tended increasingly to polarize between a nondogmatic and nonpolitical ‘Marxian’ position and one which in the broadest sense may be called one or another version of the theory of action [his own conceptual approach].”

George Lichtheim, whose book Marxism: An Historical and Critical Study represents the first detailed effort at a sociological analysis of the development and appeal of different variants of Marxism, presents as his basic thesis the assumption that Marxism as a set of revolutionary doctrines is most appropriate to societies in ...