ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the systematization of an explicitly Marxist sociology of knowledge based in Georg Lukacs, and exerts considerable influence today. In France, the work of Lucien Goldmann developed many of the specifically theoretical elements of Lukacs's book in a humanistic direction so as to produce a quite sophisticated sociology of literature. Goldmann and the Frankfurt 'critical theorists' share most centrally a fundamental organizing principle, whose source, though not exclusively Lukacsian, nevertheless received its distinctive moulding at his hands. It is, in short, opposition to positivism in the realm of social theory. Quite clearly, Habermas employs the Young Marx against 'scientific' Marxism, arguing that Marx was wrong in believing his work to be a natural science rather than a critique of bourgeois society. Broadly speaking, it may be argued that sociologies of knowledge serve as a polemic against the methodological imperialism of natural science paradigms, especially when conceived as vehicles of a unification of Marxism and neo-Hegelian dialectical philosophy.
