ABSTRACT
THE question posed in the title of this paper is not intended to exhaust all the aspects from which Marx’s work may be regarded; nor is it meant to prejudge the issue as to whether a thinker—and Marx in particular—may be both a sociologist and a Marxist. But there are advantages in putting just this question. First, the consideration of Marx’s thought as one of the early systems of sociology, that is, as an attempt to formulate new concepts for depicting the structure of whole societies and for explaining massive social changes, brings into prominence the most distinctive and, I would say, the most interesting of his ideas. This has become clearer with the growth of sociological studies in the past few decades and with the accompanying reassessment of the history of modern social thought. It is evident that the marked revival of interest in Marxism as a theoretical scheme (which is in contrast with its declining intellectual appeal as a political creed) owes much to the recent work of sociologists; but even at an earlier time, at the end of the nineteenth century and in the first decade of the twentieth century, the most fruitful discussions of Marx’s thought seem to me to have been those which arose from sociological or philosophical concerns—in the writings of Max Weber, Croce, Sorel, and Pareto, for example—rather than those which originated in strictly economic or political criticisms.
