ABSTRACT
The so-called contemplation from the standpoint of society means nothing more than the overlooking of the differences which express the social relation (relation of bourgeois society). Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand. A lot of sociology and Marxist or socialist elaborations ignore the persistent reality of living differences in two ways. First, the way that social contradictions entail contradictory rather than unitary individuals; and secondly, how differences are to be depicted. However much the relations of regulation in societies are contradictory within their field of operation. Although sociology, as it were, epistemologically sets itself against any biologism (and, with rather more qualifications, most Marxisms), there is much slippage as to which enables the return of the ‘natural’ in other guises. Victories depend on means as much as ends because socialist construction is, above all, about form and representations.
