Bill,
Thanks for the post. I just want to make a few comments and
clarifications.
On Wed, 19 Nov 1997, Bill Schell wrote:
> Weber sought in his models a level between historical description and
> sociological theories of universals. Weber found Marx's materialism to be
> an interesting potentially useful hypothesis but he did not (unlike some on
> this list) accept it as REVEALED TRUTH.
Three points here. First, I think it is more accurate to characterize
Weber's demarcations as dividing social science from the logic of natural
science, seeing the former as incapable of generating nomothetic
statements about history. Second, Marxism is not revealed truth, but
rather a useful heuristic and method we employ to interpret historical
system. Third, I don't see Marx's system as materialism, but rather
historical materialism. I think that Lefebvre and Avineri nailed Marx's
approach when they noted its focus on the historicity of knowledge (and
cultural) system. Marx's system is materialist in the sense that it
focuses on the objective structures that humans materialize through
interaction. But they do so through practice, and practice carries a
considerable degree of subjectivity. In fact, Marx frequently argues that
humans materialize their ideals. Marx's position straddles idealism and
materialism, with emphasis given to the objective behavior relations,
hence a realist position, and a favoring of material premises. Marx's
sharpest polemics were against materialists, e.g., Feuerbach.
> Unlike Marx, Weber insisted that individual action (rather than class) was
> the proper unit of sociological anaysis.
And here is where I find Weber to be most in error. As Mead points out,
individual action is only meaningful in its relations, and thus the social
group is the appropriate unit of analysis. Society is an objective entity.
Weber erred in denying this.
> Thus meaning and culture become fundamentals and not mere superstructure
> as in Marxism.
As Mead points out, taking the social group as the analytical unit does
not banish meaning and culture, since both meaning and culture are
social products not the products of individual organism. The flaw in
beginning with the individual for ideas is that it doesn't recognize where
ideas come from, namely, the social group.
> Weber recognized that cultural studies are subjective in that they
> originate in the investigator's notions of what is culturally significant.
This can apply to everything. Studies of physics can be said to be
subjective in this regard because of the investigator's notions of what is
physically significant. I have a problem with this position generally
because it commits what Bhaskar calls the "epistemic fallacy." In any
case, Weber finding this in one domain and not finding it another (rather
assuming it isn't in the other) is one of Weber's more significant
blunders.
> But once the question has been framed, Weber holds that it must be
> investigated systematically by the formulation of testable models -- ideal
> types.
Ideal types are by definition not testable. They are not causal models,
but rather heuristics that guide the observer to certain features about
which to attend.
> Weber conceptualized collectives (groups) in terms of social behavior
> rather than structures.
The definition of structure is persistent patterns social behavior. This
is a distinction without a difference. Weber's problem is one of
methodological individualism.
> Weber does not reject structuralism but rather shows how culture and
> behavior produces structure.
Marx makes the same argument. Marx never argued, and even Engels makes
this point, that culture and behavior is always bound to economic or
material structures. Marx, for example, admitted that he found no
meaningful connection between aesthetic production and the material
structure of society (there are other examples). It has been noted that
Weber's real disagreement is with the MarxISTS of his day, not really with
Marx.
> He cannot be said to competely reject materialism for he holds that group
> formation is based on material interest as well as on affinity and
> authority.
Yes, there are certainly parts of Weber that converge roughly with
reality. Although his arguments in regards to interests tend to conflate
interests with preferences, and thus slip over into an extreme
subjectivism.
Andy