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DRAFT OF THE FULL PAPER - for the virtual discussion purposes before, during and after the ISA 2014 Yokohama Congress at http://isarc10internetforum.wikispaces.com/Session+12+ISA+14 Vera Vratusa University of Belgrade, Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Sociology [email protected] The influence of social scientists’ small bourgeois class affiliation on the choice of social inequality research paradigm and policy proposals The study self-reflectively examines the impact of social scientists’ small bourgeois class affiliation on our choice of research paradigm starting from which we attempt to explain and understand social inequality and thereafter propose policies for its conservation, mitigation or elimination. The main hypothesis of the study is that social scientists, like other highly educated professionals, are affiliates of a new small bourgeoisie, owning formal certificate of acquired specialist knowledge as an incorporated property of small means of production of immaterial services. The new small bourgeoisie affiliates occupy contradictory place and role in class division of labor. On the one hand, diploma makes accessible to us employment in privileged work places with above average salaries for performing intellectual work functions like producing legitimizing ideologies and mediating values and commands from the top towards the bottom of social hierarchy. This privilege however, on the other hand, does not relieve us from permanent worries not to fall into the ranks of wage workers performing less qualified and unqualified manual and routine executing work functions in times of exacerbation of systemic economic crises and unemployment. This contradictory position in class division of labor leaves the new small bourgeoisie affiliates with a greater margin for the choice of a world view and social standpoint from which we approach the explanation or understanding of social inequality and propose policies to deal with it, than to the affiliates of the antagonistic classes of exploiters and exploited, rulers and ruled. The core finding of the study is that from the time of institutionalization of sociology and other social sciences as academic disciplines, the majority of social scientist tend to choose the interested standpoint of the ruling class of exploiters to conserve or only to reform the existing relations of “civil society” and corresponding consensus or conflict version of the functionalist positivist research paradigm of allegedly inexorable social inequality. A minority of social scientists attempt to come over to the interested standpoint of the class of exploited executors of ruling class commands to overcome class division of labor as historically generated social mechanism of social inequality reproduction and corresponding dialectical critical research paradigm and revolutionary practice of constructing relations of self-managed “socialized humanity”. Key wards: highly educated “new” small bourgeoisie , theoretical methodological research paradigm , practical political class standpoint Introduction Ever since the historical turning point symbolized by the fall of the Berlin wall, the inequality between individuals and groups as measured by the concentration at the top of the national income distributions of economic wealth is on the rise in both the Organization for European Economic Co-Operation member states (OECD report ,2011), as well as in former East European member states of The Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) (Lakner & Milanovic, 2013:45). This increase in inequality within both present OECD and former COMECON states since the last two decades of the XXth century is brought about by a protracted systemic crisis of both self-proclaimed regimes of “really existing socialism”, on the one hand, and of self-proclaimed “democratic” regimes of really existing capitalism, on the other. Common to both is the internal contradiction between potentially unlimited development of social production forces and limited aims of production for private individual and group profit within the world hierarchical system of capitalist economy, structured through the fight between national states of unequal power to defend domestic and occupy foreign markets in the center, semi periphery and periphery of the system (Wallerstein, 1974/2011). The most striking manifestation of this hyper accumulation of capital systemic crisis - the escalation of imperialist wars of recolonization from destruction of SFR Yugoslavia, over Iraq, Afghanistan, to Libya, Syria and Ukraine - challenge social scientists and sociologists to self-reflectively re-examine our choice of theoretical and methodological approaches to study of social inequality, as well as our practical standpoints, interests and values, in order to be able to attempt to control their influence on our interpretation of research findings and policy suggestions. The main hypothesis of this study is that social scientists, like other highly educated professionals, are affiliates of a “new” small bourgeoisie, owning formal certificate of acquired specialist knowledge as an incorporated property of small means of production of immaterial services, as a contrast to an “old” small bourgeoisie owning small means of production and exchange mostly working with them themselves and family members. The new small bourgeoisie affiliates occupy contradictory place and role in class division of labor. We are simultaneously hired direct producer of theoretical and ideological systems having no large private property, as well as mediators of orders and enforcers of ruling class interests. On the one hand, diploma makes accessible to us employment in privileged work places with above average salaries for performing intellectual work tasks like producing legitimizing ideologies and mediating values and commands from the top towards the bottom of social hierarchy. This privilege however, on the other hand, does not relieve us from permanent worries not to fall into the ranks of wage workers performing less qualified and unqualified manual and routine executing work tasks in times of exacerbation of systemic economic crises and unemployment. This contradictory position in class division of labor leaves the new small bourgeoisie affiliates with a greater margin for the choice of a world view and social standpoint from which we approach the explanation or understanding of social inequality and propose policies to deal with it, than to the affiliates of the antagonistic classes of rulers and ruled, exploiters and exploited. Bringing to consciousness one's own contradictory class position and role, allows the (self)critical part of the intellectual petty bourgeoisie to recognize in the basis of our own and others’ contradictory conservative, reformist and revolutionary social policies concerning social inequality and hierarchical structuration, ideological representation of one’s own and others' contradictory particular interests in the form of general interest. This self-reflection can influence the increase in the degree of conscious decision making as to which basic class a particular intellectual petty bourgeoisie affiliate will make available his or her expert knowledge, as a personal private property of the state protected monopoly on the title of a professional expert, keeping in mind that affiliates of basic classes themselves very rarely theoretically articulate their own class interests. This hypothesis is tested on the basis of critical content analysis of the theoretical methodological paradigms and practical and political policies of social inequality and hierarchical structuration articulated by the highly educated small bourgeois “classics” of social sciences, chosen and elaborated by their followers in the international sociology in general and in Serbian sociology in particular. Theoretical and methodological research paradigm and practical and political standpoint preferences of highly educated small bourgeois sociology “classics” From the time of establishment of sociology as an academic discipline in the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century, sociologists researching social causes and functions of social hierarchy, as well as social actions of individuals and social groups oriented by socially structured motives to conserve, reform or eliminate unequal access to the means of life reproduction and development of human capacities, have been explicitly or implicitly choosing between three divergent inequality and social hierarchy research paradigms (Kuhn, 1962/2012; Vratusa(Vratuša), 1983; 1995a: 417-431, 2006, http; 2010a:51-80;;2010c, http) and policy strategies, originally articulated by three major thinkers - Karl Marx (18181883), Emil Durkheim(1859-1917) and Max Weber (1864-1920). All three major thinkers are themselves affiliates of the highly educated small bourgeoisie by both achievement (doctorates in philosophy, social science and law respectively) and ascribed family status (sons of a lawyer, rabbi and civil servant respectively). The main locus of divergence between social inequality research paradigms and policy strategies construed by Marx, Durkheim and Weber finds itself in their conceptualization of the division of labor in human society as the key social factor molding predominantly hierarchical or egalitarian relationships in a given society. Karl Marx interprets division of labor in society throughout its “class pre-history” as antagonistic social or class specific division of work tasks within potentially universal human creative capacity and life reproducing activity or praxis, into intellectual work operations, on the one hand, and alienated and alienating manual and routine non-manual work operations, on the other (Marx, 1845a/1932). The ruling class minority monopolizes the “pleasant” intellectual, planning and commanding work functions, on the basis of exclusive control of access to main means and objects of life reproduction activity. This exclusive control enables the ruling class to exploit labor of a dispossessed and subjected class majority, forcing it to perform exclusively “unpleasant”, commands’ executing manual or routine non-manual work functions, deprived of intellectual content and educational potentiality. Private property of the ruling class over the products of the human activity of the dispossessed subjected class sanctioned by law, protected by physical force of the state and legitimized by ideological apparatuses of the state as natural, normal, necessary and possible (Althusser, 1970, http), presents therefore just the consequence and legal expression of the primordial class divided human activity itself or alienated labor (Marx, 1845a/1932). In the first volume of Capital (1867l2008), Marx defined capitalist exploitation more precisely as capital’s appropriation of the unpaid surplus labor of combined live work force of doubly “free” wage workers mediated by the economic necessity of exchange of their only possession, labor force, on the commodity market, instead of the appropriation of the unpaid surplus labor of personally dependent direct producers through the use or the threat of use of direct physical force in feudal and slave-owning economic formations of society. Historical “new” materialist and “inverted” dialectical (Vratusa, 2006) social inequality and hierarchy research paradigm articulated by Marx is characterized primarily by an understanding of class division of labor as historically generated and therefore transient and transformable antagonistic form of life production relation. This transitory form will disappear like it has temporarily emerged on the appropriate level of development of human social production forces and self-organization capabilities. In his letter to Weydemeyer of 5 March 1852, Marx explicitly stresses that the disclosure of the existence of classes in modern society and their struggle is not his merit: the bourgeois historians have long time ago presented the historical development of this struggle, while bourgeois economists have presented their economic anatomy. Marx considers that his innovation and contribution consists in the following three aspects: 1) first, demonstration that the existence of classes is associated only with certain historical developmental phases of production; 2. Second, that the class fight necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; 3) and third, that this dictatorship of the great majority over a small minority for the first time in history present only the transition towards the elimination of all classes and to a classless society (Marx, 1852/1983:58). Marx recognized the first dictatorship of the proletariat - "essentially working class government, the product of the producing against the appropriating class, the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economic emancipation of man" from wage slavery (Marx, 1871/2009, http) in the self-governing and cooperative organization forms of 1871 Paris commune: democratically elected Commune Council members who are easily revocable if they breach the imperative mandate received from their electors and who are getting for their work in the Council the average workers’ salary; handing over of factories, shops and public utilities abandoned and closed by private owners and state bureaucracy, to the associations of the producers and consumers to plan and execute production and distribution; substitution of the professional army by the armed people. Concentration and centralization of capital through market competition and imperialist wars, intensifies exploitation during systemic crisis cyclical repetitions and rising unemployment. This creates revolutionary situations in which one part of the old bourgeoisie (artisans, shopkeepers, peasants) and new highly educated small bourgeoisie (the physicians, the lawyers, the priests, the poets, the scientists), in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat as paid wage laborers, desert their own standpoint and interest to conserve or improve their role and place in class division of labor subservient to the interests of big bourgeoisie. They place themselves at the standpoint and interest of the proletariat to eliminate the class division of labor and ensuing exploitation and oppression of one human being by another (Marx, 1848/1969:http). Marx personally chose just this practical political option opened to highly educated affiliates of the new small bourgeoisie at a considerable cost in terms of material hardship and stressful living conditions of the revolutionary thinker and activist persecuted by the police. Through common fight against unemployment and low wages and salaries, rebelling workers and highly educated small bourgeoisie affiliates become increasingly conscious that qualitative change in the life reproduction rationality from production for individual and group private profit toward production for satisfaction of human needs is necessary and possible. Using concepts from the “Theses on Feuerbach” and the “Manifest of the communist party” we could say that in the course of revolutionary, new-materialistic and dialectical social practice, the usual object of both “old materialistic” and “idealistic” positivist social science inequality research – modern wage slave majority of population – become social subjects, historically produced producers, revolutionary destructors of bourgeois society and constructors of socialized humanity. Development of class self- conscience and self-organization presents subjective prerequisites for abolition of hierarchical and exploitative relationships of production of commodities for individual and group private profit within bourgeois society organized into bourgeois national states, and of establishment of socialized humanity or communism. Construction of classless society presupposes reintegration of managing and executing work tasks within each selfmanaging freely associated producer and consumer of use values necessary for the emancipation and balanced development of variegated human potentials of each individual (Marx, 1845b/1969:13-15; Marx, 1848/1969). The popularity of this critical social inequality and hierarchy research paradigm, grows among highly educated small bourgeoisie affiliates in periods of cyclical sharpening of class fight and systemic crisis of accumulation of capital on the worldwide scale, as it was the case in the first decades of the twentieths century (Korsch, 1919/1975; Lukács, 1919-1923/1967). Actual deep systemic crisis of capital accumulation that explosively manifested itself in 2007/2008, was theoretically explained and announced in the works of authors who opted for the critical research paradigm during the stag-flation crisis since the end of the sixties and beginning of seventies (Amin, 1970; Gouldner, 1970). Emil Durkheim interprets division of labor in society as the technical specialization of individuals and social groups for performance of specific intellectual or manual work tasks within social production process. This technical division of labor presents according to Durkheim the natural outgrowth of organic evolution of human societies through differentiation of originally multifunctional work roles performed by mutually similar affiliates of primitive communities. Tribes and clans are closely knit together by ties of mechanical solidarity based in sharing of common religious value and norm contents of collective conscience (Durkheim:1893/1967). Collective conscience is according to Durkheim basic objectively existing spiritual “social fact”, comprised of collective ways of thinking, acting and feeling external to and independent from individual conscience, coercive power determining individual ways of thinking, acting and feeling, securing thus the reproduction of the society as a whole (Durkheim, 1894/1988). The social causes of technical division of labor Durkheim found in morphological and moral factors like increased population density, development of trade and communication in the process of industrialization and urbanization, which stimulated specialization of individuals for performance of functionally specific work roles and corresponding differentiation of the value and norm content of collective conscience. Emergence of ties of organic solidarity between individuals performing increasingly differentiated but interdependent specialized work functions prevents disintegration of society due to development of competition, inequality and increasingly egotistic individual interests. Social cohesiveness of differentiated society is secured through the process of primary socialization in the family and secondary socialization in the formal educational system. Socialization process safeguards the interiorization by each individual member of society the socially required minimum of homogenous collective values and socially required minimum of specialized skills and knowledge for performance of specific mutually complementary intellectual and manual work functions (Durkheim, 1922: http). Organic solidarity provides necessary trust in contractual and allegedly reciprocally beneficial exchange or trade relationships on the market. Durkheim could not help but notice the incidence of anomic and forced division of labor due to over-specialization of work functions, lack of coordination and their unequal allocation to specific individuals on the basis of ascription and inheritance, irrespective of individual talents and achieved merits. Durkheim proposed mitigation of these dysfunctional effects of technical specialization through the regulatory system of moral codes of fair and just conduct of individuals performing specialized work functions. Specialized individuals should be organized in occupation based secondary groups like associations (corporations) and trade unions for protection and advancement of respective professional group interests of individual members in competitive relationships with other occupation based groups. The relationships between particular corporations should be conducted in the spirit of contractual solidarity and harmonization of interests (Durkheim, 1893/1967: Préface de la seconde édition “Quelques remarques sur les groupements professionnels”). Durkheim personally chose a radical republican political orientation sympathizing with reformist socialist ideas of the Saint Simon type. He advocated progressive taxing of inherited personal property and greater regulatory role of the state as the alleged representative of the general interest of the entire society, which should be organized as the all-encompassing system of national corporations (Durkheim, 1921-1924/2011). Researchers tend to choose the Durkheimian consensual variant of functionalist positivist social inequality and hierarchy research paradigm in the periods of the stabilization of capitalist mode of production. They conceptualize the basic element of social hierarchy, social strata, as aggregates of individuals performing similar specialized work roles or professions in technical division of labor, who unequally contribute to the functioning of a society as a whole, according to an allegedly general value consensus in a given society. Affiliates of respective strata therefore gradually differentiate themselves according to the possession of quantitatively unequal amount of economic wealth and income, political power or cultural esteem, understood as continuous and mutually independent dimensions of social inequality. These quantitative gradual differences in rewards are merited for the performance of respective, for the social reproduction unequally important, specialized work roles (Parsons, 1939/1954; Davis and Moore, 1961). Max Weber interprets division of labor in capitalist society as permanent generator of containable conflict, tension and distributive struggle between social subjects, individuals engaged in meaningful and value oriented social interaction and affiliated to distinct economic classes, political parties and cultural strata, competing to achieve individually and organized as a group (for ex. professional associations), the exclusionary control over the best possible market and work-place position and gain, on the basis of making rational choices between available opportunities open to them (Weber, 1921/1976: 927). Weber contrasts conflict generating division of labor in capitalist society with the division of labor in feudal society in the following way: clear separation of the household activities from the activities within the capitalist enterprise, substitutes undefined separation between work and leisure activities in pre-capitalist society; instrumentally rational work ethics originally inspired by the protestant inner-worldly ascetics and oriented on the ever greater material success in one’s worldly specialized work role or calling as the sign of individual’s predestination for salvation, substitutes a traditional work ethics oriented on the satisfaction just of the accustomed level of basic needs and postponement of salvation from worldly oppression to the afterlife (!Weber, 1958). These characteristics of division of labor and work ethics in capitalist society relax and open up oppressive and closed social hierarchy in pre-capitalist society rooted in inheritance of the attributed, immutable status in social hierarchy, enabling individuals to achieve better market and work-place position through their own work effort and a peaceful pursuit of gain through competition on the market. Weber was keenly aware of the often violent conflict over distribution of economic wealth, political power and social cultural status in “adventurous” or “political” varieties of capitalist society, of the universal rise of rationalization and materialistic value systems and of a tendency toward bureaucratization of big industrial companies and the state. All these adverse effects of capitalist division of labor, however, do not necessarily lead to the breakdown of capitalist system of market competition and to the revolutionary transformation of existing social power relations. According to Weber there is no intrinsic tendency towards the class polarization of society, but on the contrary, there is the tendency of growth of the middle class composed of intellectuals and professionals employed by the state or capitalists – engineers, lawyers, professors, clerks. Weber argued that there are several prerequisites for the rebellion of the working class against the managers and capitalists. First of all, workers must become conscious of the extent, social causes and consequences of the differentiation and inequality between the property owners and the property-less workers. Than they must organize collective common belonging based communal action or common interests based societal action to eliminate or reduce these inequalities. Finally, in the organized class action workers must be guided by the clear aims, defined as a rule by affiliates of the radically oriented middle class intellectuals (Weber, 1921/1976:ch.IV). If the contrast between different class situations is presented by conservatively oriented intellectuals and accepted by de privileged classes as an absolute fact, no action will be taken to change the class situation. Weber saw himself as a ‘class conscious bourgeois’, critical of the renegades of the bourgeoisie who were attempting to stop being excluded from participation in state power dominated by conservative landholding Junkers through buying ownership of entailed knightly property and titles of nobility (Mommsen, 1990). Weber was ‘class conscious bourgeois’ of liberal orientation, convinced that market allocation of resources guaranteed efficiency and rationality in contrast to inefficiency of bureaucratized state allocation planning voluntarism, advocating simultaneously German national state imperial power policy before the defeat of that policy in the World War I (Kieran, 2004). Weber chose his simultaneously liberal and conservative value system within the sphere of politics. He wrongly believed that this choice did not affect his subsequent engagement in an allegedly value free or neutral rationalistic scientific quest to interpretatively understand ideal typical relationships between means and ends of social action of individuals and groups and in this way causally explain the course and effects of social action (Weber, 1919/1946: 129-156). Researchers tend to choose the Weberian conflict variant of functionalist positivist social inequality and hierarchical structuration research paradigm in the periods of the sharpened class conflicts. Neo-Weberians conceptualize basic elements of social hierarchical structuration, social classes, as relational categories which emerge as qualitatively differentiated from each other through the fight of their affiliates having opposed economic interests in the possession of goods and opportunities for better position and income in commodity or labor markets. NeoWeberians namely underline like Weber that the ownership of material production goods enable their owners to monopolize the chances to use them as capital for earning the income under the conditions of commodity market through direct or indirect participation in the profit which stems from the function of the organization and management of economic businesses. Those who own nothing are able to offer only their personal services (either in a natural form, or in the form of the product of their labor) and they are obliged to cede them for any price just in order to be able to preserve their naked life (Weber, 1921/1976: 631-633). The most influential “neo-Weberians” include Louis Coser (1957), Ralph Dahrendorf (1959, 1967), Goldthorpe (1987; 1992), but also “neo-marxists” like Pierre Bourdieu (1986) and Eric Olin Wright (Wright, 1997). According to these authors, the conflict of private owners of different sorts of merchandises, from the production means to labor power of different levels of formal qualification and accordingly different level of market competitiveness, are institutionalized through the elements of state regulation, so that the free market competition so far did not lead to disintegration of contemporary capitalist society, but on the contrary, market competition led to its global spreading and reproduction. Common theoretical denominator of both Durkhemian consensual gradualist and Weberian conflict relational versions of the positivist-functionalist social inequality and hierarchy research paradigm, presents unhistorical interpretation of class division of labor as eternal hierarchical distribution of work functions in a specialized technical division of labor on those who “think” and on those who “act”. Social hierarchy and inequality of bourgeois society renamed as modern, industrial, service, based on knowledge, informatic, globalized… society, is presented in the contemporary mainstream social science as inescapable “functional prerequisite” of complex social systems and as the only efficacious and therefore desirable form of organization of relationships between people concerning their access to conditions and means of life reproduction. Common denominator on the level of practical policy proposals presents acceptance of inevitable social inequality and hierarchy and at the best attempts at partial reforms to mitigate some of their most dysfunctional effects. Durkheim resumed this common denominator by declaring that “society needs” such hierarchical distribution of specialized work functions, regardless of the fact that such specialization implies the stunting of unpracticed human potentials (Durkheim, 1922:38-9), while Weber compared the rationally calculated and bureaucratically controlled work in a specialized calling with an unbreakable “iron cage” (Weber, 1958:123-124). Propagators of both consensual gradualist and conflict relational functionalist-positivist social inequality and hierarchy research paradigm, start their research from the practical political standpoint/interest of exploiting class of rulers affiliates, to preserve or only reform of the oligopolistically controlled market mediated commodity production of primarily exchange values for private individual and group appropriation of profit. They do not pose the Marxian dialectical-critical question/project of overcoming the antagonistic social relations of exploitation and oppression between antagonistic social classes historically rooted in the class division of labor of potentially universal human practice between the planning and order-giving ruling class and exploited and oppressed class reduced to executing and routine work tasks. The most conservative propagators of the functionalist-positivist research approach to study of social inequality and hierarchy, tend to ideologically qualify and disqualify the very attempt to question alleged universality and eternality of the division of labor between those who “think” and “act”, as potentially “totalitarian” utopian ideology. They claim that this ideology disregards unchangeable laws of nature and “facts” on naturally unequally distributed physical and mental capacities among individuals in both animal and human society discovered by socio-biology (Sanderson, 2001). Conclusion The main finding of the content analysis of the theoretical methodological research paradigms and practical political policies concerning social inequality and hierarchical structuration articulated by the highly educated small bourgeois “classics” of social sciences, chosen and elaborated by their followers in international sociology, can be resumed in the form of the hypothesis for further research: the affiliates of highly educated new small bourgeoisie are by their commands mediating and legitimizing ideology producing place and role in the class division of labor inclined to choose the consensual or conflict variant of positivist functionalist ahistorically and contemplatively materialist or objectively and subjectively idealist theoretical methodological approach to study of social inequality and hierarchy, starting from the class standpoint/interest of the conservation or only reform of existing dominant relations of life reproduction of “bourgeois society” of allegedly inexorable social inequality which stimulates progressive social change through capitalist market competition. They are only exceptionally inclined to choose the critical, historical and dialectical “new” materialist research paradigm, starting from the class standpoint/interest of the exploited and oppressed class to construct classless “socialized humanity”. As Marx observed already in 1848, minority of small bourgeoisie affiliates attempt to come over to the interested standpoint of the class of exploited executors of ruling class commands to overcome class division of labor as historically generated social mechanism of social inequality reproduction and corresponding dialectical critical research paradigm and revolutionary practice of constructing relations of self-managed “socialized humanity”. In such revolutionary situations the main aim of the research is not the stabilization of capitalism, but the raising (instead of blurring) of consciousness about the extent, social causes, consequences and desirable policies concerning inequality between the ruling exploiting and ruled exploited class (Vratuša, 2012b). The primary intent of this author is not to argue about the merits and demerits of the choice between positivist functionalist and critical dialectical social inequality and hierarchical structuration research paradigms, but to draw the attention of readers to the fact that this choice presents the unavoidable part of the research process fundamentally determining its entire course. We researchers often do not explicitly state that we have made this choice, either because we are even not aware that we have made it, or we are attempting to impress upon our audience the wrong conclusion that the standpoint which we have chosen to approach our research subject/object, presents the scientifically objective standpoint.