ABSTRACT
This chapter deepens the previous chapter’s analysis of how Karl Marx’s critical theory opens the way for a historical-sociological approach to grand narratives and critical theorising by focusing on his conception of class struggles. The argument is made that in Marx’s work lies immanent a multidimensional conception of class struggles that interweaves social struggles around class, gender, race, and nationality in a complex analytical framework for how concrete historical struggles between social groups are expressive of the universal social dynamics that Marx captures in his general theory of human development. Hence, class struggles are here argued to function as a process-concept in Marx’s critical theory, via which he analyses the concrete historical expressions of the universal social dynamics expressed in his grand narrative of human development. Such an approach permits a recovery of grand narratives in critical international theory, without which it becomes incapable of answering the problem of orientation, while avoiding falling either into contextualist relativism or abstract universalism and Eurocentrism. However, the argument is also made in this chapter that Marx is ultimately incapable of actualising in a coherent manner the potential for the development of a historical-sociological means of orientation that lies immanent in his work. Shortcomings burden Marx’s critical theory that ultimately hinder its adequacy as a means of orientation.
