ABSTRACT
It is impossible to be clear about the relations between sociologies and Marxisms and the ways in which they have influenced each other without first sorting out the varieties of sociologies and the varieties of Marxisms spawned in the twentieth century. As my brief here is to look at the last thirty years or so I shall merely mention, as briefly as is compatible with the importance of forebears, the key figures in and around sociology and Marxism through whose interpretations of the subject matter most of us have come to the awareness that there is something very problematical about the relations between sociology and Marxism. To purists the matter may well have been settled by the sarcastic reference that Marx made to the recipes of Auguste Comte in Capital and indeed the contempt that some Marxists have for some varieties of sociology is exceeded only by the contempt that sociologists have for them. To balance this let me remind those who need reminding that the orthodox textbook of Marxism in the 1920s, written by that very influential Bolshevik, Bukharin, was subtitled ‘A System of Sociology’. However, extreme reactions of outright hostile rejection or outright incorporation are quite uncommon and most Marxists and most sociologists have been and continue to be more interested in working out some unilaterally beneficial modus vivendi. The precise nature of these strategies vary with the varieties aforementioned, and so it is to these that I must immediately address myself.
