Historiography of sociology, nr. 3

This is the third part:

Why did the mainstream social thought ignored
the socialist or anarchist discourses?



The debates on presentism vs historicism within the historiography of social 
sciences are part and parcel of current debate within various 
sub-disciplines of the social.  Here, I am not going to repeat what Elias 
Khalil ( 1995, 78-9) or Robert Heilbroner
( 1979, 192) had earlier stated about the distorted state of historiography. 
  But it should be noted, even briefly, that throughout the twentieth 
century, histories of social thought have ignored the positive dimensions of 
all socialist or anarchist


discourses.  One of the ideological ( read political) weapon in establishing 
this politics has been the so-called scientific basis of social theory.  It 
is still worth asking the question Schumpter ( 1972, 34) asked half a 
century ago, in relation to social theory in general, ' Is the History of 
Theory a History of Ideologies?'

However, as Rob Knowles ( 2000, 31) remarks, a generic approach to histories 
of social thought cannot exclude anarchist thought on any ground than 
ideological bias.  There is no way to dismiss Anarchism as an inadequate 
discourse regarding the 'social'.  Because it shares with all other modern 
Western discourses the ideals and ideas of Enlightenment: Science, 
Scientific Method and Materialism.  The only thing which they repudiated was 
the uncritical attitude of mainstream social theorists reegarding the State 
institution and the undue role and authority attributed to it.  (This was 
actually a total negation, by Statists, of the Kantian critique of 
tutelage.)  They did not reject the idea of Leviathan on sentimental or 
emotional grounds but by resorting to anthropological findings they 
attempted to establish their points in accordance to the current scientific 
logic which brought about the natural sciences.  Peter Kropotkin is an 
interesting figure in this regard.  His thoughts on Modern Science and 
Anarchism should be taken as the great Manifesto of anarchism in the 
tradition of Godwin, Fourier, Robert Owen, and et.al. but as he noted 
himself this tradition was not appreciated by the community of 
intellectuals.

Kropotkin and the host of anarchists cannot be excluded from the classics of 
modern social science discourse on the charges of unscientificity; the only 
thing, in my view,


which made him unclassical in the myopic eyes of constructors of  
classicality was his vision of human society which did not make any 
theoretical case of state-ideology.  An ideology which suited then the 
imperial and colonial endeavours of so many powerful states.  Another 
interesting point in terms of historiography is Kropotkin's conscious 
extension of the range of native modernity by including Russians into this 
drama, not as an imitator but as an actor.  In so doing he disturbed the 
mainstream historiographical sensibility and defied the convention.  The 
best and unscholarly position would be what the mainstream opted for, i.e. 
neglegere.

There cannot be any logic in neglecting Anarchism as a tradition and 
anarchists as contributors to the study of social.  Anarchism has been most 
often understood to involve revolutionary overthrowing of the existing state 
( and its economic system) with nothing more than anarchy ( meaning 
unstructured social chaos), or a ' utopian' dream of harmonious communal 
life, as a post-revolutionary outcome for society.  Whereas these 
perceptions and imperatives can be found in numerous published definitions 
of anarchism ( Henry Higgs: 1925, Vol.1 and R. Williams: 1988.), they are 
far from being representative of anarchist theorizing about the 
characteristics of society and its future.

The undeniable ( and actually encouraging; because their actions and the 
restrictions imposed on their initial social activities reflects the 
political structures of Iron Cage System and the politics of 
state-domestication) violence of some elements of anarchist activism, 
especially late in the ninteenth century, must be read into the


bloody context of state colonialist activities outside of Britain and 
Western Europe ( included Russian Colonial Power), and police action against 
socialist and anarchist protest activities which opposed contemporary 
economic and political systems.
( Kropotkin: 1988, 118-9)

Here, in regard to Anarchism as a tradition, one can find the hidden 
mechanism of mainstream politics of exclusion and the shallow basis of 
Classics.  One of the great episodes of modern European history is the case 
of Spanish Social Theorists and their anarchist movement.  This group has 
been systematically excluded from the mainstream historiography and their 
ideas never appear in a coherent frame of presentation.  Why? Is it an 
inherent feature of their thought or?  The exclusion of this Spanish 
tradition would accomplish so many tasks which are dear to mainstream 
historiography.  One of the constitutive components of conventional 
historiography is the emergence of modern thought and its alleged relation 
to a) a shift from Catholicism to Protestantism, b) a shift from 
Protestantism to modern Spirit, c) the emergence of Positive knowledge from 
this Spirit.  That is another version of secular historiography which should 
be always the frame of historiographical reference.  Whatever one does with 
the findings, one should bear in mind that this semi-cosmological hypothesis 
should not be touched or rejected.  Because this is the cornerstone of 
modern intellectual enterprise and if touched or scratched one would fall 
where Protestants and Catholics fell  during the religious wars in 15th and 
16th centuries.  So it goes the mainstream historiography, and sociology did 
not any better in this regard but Classics built on this wisdom its own 
theories.  The Spanish case


would refute, or at least shake, this ideological historiography on many 
basis.  Firstly, it should be noted that they were mostly anti-statist 
socialist.  This could be the best reason to exclude them from the 
state-oriented academia.  Secondly, it has been held by mainstream that 
Catholicism is an impedement to the emergence of positive social thought and 
if a country which is one of the largest center of this creed be credited of 
producing a body of theory and praxis which defied the dear categories
( like modernity-protestantism, capitalism-state) of mainstream then one 
would be forced to change so many institutionalized orientations.  Were the 
mainstream sociologists ready for that?  The last but not the least point is 
the connection between state and capitalism.  The conventional stance on 
this issue is that capitalism is not dependent on state as such but 
state-capitalism is just one of the feature of Capitalism.  Regardless the 
current debate on the role of state and globalization, one should credit the 
anarchists in repudiating the naive faith in capitalism.  The anarchists, in 
my view, were right about capitalism and the role of state in nurishing it, 
if one does not confine the unit of analysis to the Territorial State Nation 
of, say, England, but to the Imaginary England ( which meant the Imperial 
hand of Queen outside England).  Spanish anarchists did not respect the 
sanctity of Leviathan and exposed the ideological basis of modern state 
which equates order with ruling.

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