The Influence of Marxism 1880 – 1914

Whether we read intellectual history backwards, singling out the thinkers who have since come to be accepted as the ancestors of modern sociology, or whether we look at what was accepted as the influential sociology in the 1880s – 1900s (Gumplowicz, Tatzenhofer, Loria, Winiarski, etc.), the presence of Marxism is both strong and undeniable. The same is true in the field of what today would be called political science. The traditional political theory of "the state", developed in this period, perhaps chiefly by philosophers and jurists, was certainly not Marxist, yet, as we have already seen, the philosophical challenge of historical materialism was strongly felt and answered. The concrete investigation of how politics operated in practice, including such novel subjects for study as social movements and political parties, was likely to be more directly influenced. We need not claim that, at a time when the emergence of democratic politics and mass popular parties made the class struggle and the political management of the masses (or their resistance to such management) a matter of acute practical concern, theorists needed Marx to discover them. Ostrogorski (1854–1921), exceptionally for a Russian, shows no more signs of Marx’s influence than de Tocqueville, Bagehot or Bryce. Nevertheless, Gumplowicz’s doctrine that the state is always the tool of the minority holding the majority in subjection, which may have even had some effect on Pareto and Mosca, was certainly in part influenced by Marx, and the Marxist influence on Sorel and Michels is obvious.

Eric Hobsbawm

1917 - 2012