A Response to Merkx's "Revolution in America?"; Rejoinder

Abstract

Sociologists at their most conventional are the chroniclers of systematic contemporary gossip; some do not progress much further even when they "go radical." Sociology, the field that nurtures them, is usually devoid of theoretical basis, is historically shallow, and, when not directly antithetical to Marxism, is certainly ignorant of it. Not surprisingly then, the "radicalization" of sociology has led to a proliferation of social ideas which, while often pretending to be "beyond Marxism," have done little other than add both common and uncommon items to the storehouse of distortions of Marxism. Sociology, perhaps the most popular subject among students on the Left, is at the center of recent attempts to revise Marx, not only in the traditional revisionist manner by renouncing the significance of a revolutionary proletariat, but by embracing a variety of formulations about new non-proletarian "revolutionary" classes. We have been treated to a sophisticated example of this genre in a recent article by Gilbert Merkx called "Revolution in America?" (MR, January 1972).

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