"Ideal Types" and " Abstraction" (was Re: the Frank challenge)

WSN, 

The term "abstraction" is better than "ideal type" to describe the models
historical materialists use in historical analysis. The mode of production
model is abstracted from historiography and critique of theory. This is in
contrast to the development of "perfect" rational conceptual types/systems
(not empirical generalizations) and then looking for deviations from the
ideal. In the process of abstraction, the goal of the mode of production
model, like other concepts and conceptual systems, is to reveal the basic
structure of a historical system and the central processes of development.
This model is a heuristic that is used to analyze of the concrete totality
with the purpose of reproducing or representing the concrete in thought,
or "rising from the abstract to the concrete." I suppose one could argue
that the method of ideal types may be used in this fashion, but how it has
been used by subjectivists like Weber and modern economists is to draw an
non-materialist and ahistorical explanation, such as the cultural geist of
rationalization, which appears to realize itself in the organization of
"modern society," or the economic actor in the perfect market. This is not
what historical materialists do. And, again, the way ideal types are
conceived is inconsistent with the dialectical method. Finally, the method
of ideal types is an ideological approach to explaining social reality. I
do not believe that historical materialism is an ideology.

Andrew Austin
University of Tennessee