Re: [Critical-Realism] Comment re: holism

[GIMENEZ MARTHA E <Martha.Gimenez@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I know this is very late in the conversation but, for many reasons, I have 
been unable to keep up; it is only this past Sunday that I have been able 
to read RTS' preface, introduction and chapter 1 prior to tackling all the 
messages!!! That took two days.  Whew! It was work!  There are issues I 
want to bring up eventually about this first part of the readings and hope 
you do not mind my being late most of the time.  I need to spend more time 
in this processes than many of you because I am a sociologist, not a 
philosopher.

On Mon, 4 Jun 2007, Howard Engelskirchen wrote:
.......
> This much we can be clear on -- there's methodological individualism,
> there's holism associated with sociological traditions like that of
> Durkheim, and there's a relational approach associated with Marx.  That's
> PON's analysis.

In an article by Levine, Sober and Wright (New Left Review 162 1987), 
"Marxism and Methological Individualism," they posit four approaches: 
atomism, holism, methodological individualism and anti-reductionism. 
They are critical of methodological individualists who claim that social 
explanations can and must be reduced to microfoundations.  They argue that 
some social phenomena can thus be reduced while others cannot and that 
both kinds are equally important in social science.  Using the distinction 
between types and tokens, they argue that that types (for example, gender 
inequality, capitalism, the strike as a tool of labor struggle) are 
irreducible to microfoundations and, as I understand it, need to be 
explained as the effect of macro level structures and processes. On the 
other hand, tokens or specific instances of a type (e.g., the existence of 
gender inequality in a given institution) necessitates a micro-level 
explanation, for not all institutions are similar in that respect;  for 
example, in any given university, departments vary in their degree of 
gender inequality and that variation responds to the activities of 
identifiable individuals in positions of power.

> Perhaps Marx's 'Method of Political Economy' from the
> Introduction to the Grundrisse, can help.  Tendencies we might call holist
> are those that attribute reality to the thing concepts like "population"
> refer to.  We want to treat population as a thing we can measure, describe,
> etc.  But the problem is that just like that, without more, the concept is
> too vague, it doesn't refer to anything that is causally potent that would
> help us explain.  It's a starting point, but to make it work, we need to
> break it down into the relations of which it is composed.

You are right;  Marx is critical of a social science that starts "post 
festum;"  one must identify the relations that result in what can be 
observed at a common sense level or taken for granted level.  I have read 
and reread this section of the Grundrisse and it is soooo complicated - 
One of the problems I have with it is that Marx is exceedingly cryptic
and does not tell how one can identify those relations.  To do so 
presupposes a theory of the mode of production and its potential effects 
at the level of what sociologists, a la Durkheim, call "social facts."
For Marx, I conclude though he does not say so explicitly, method 
presupposes theory and his theories are always about historically specific 
social configurations (i.e., capitalism, feudalism).

I think that RB theorizes that which is transhistorical about human social 
organization;  what must social reality be like for social science to be 
possible. Am I right?   I had some other ideas about this issue but this is 
enough for now.

Martha

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