Abstract

Critics of a predominantly ethical or psychological interpretation of Marxism which neglects the existential reality described by the class struggle rightly complain of the emasculation of Marxian social theory. However, the corrective is not simply a question of emphasizing the unity of Marxian sociological and normative theory. Now it has always appeared to commentators that the unity of theory and practice is the merit of Marxian social science as a descriptive and therapeutic discipline. It is the argument of this paper that the unity of Marxian social theory is sacrificed to a schism which the Marxian ethic introduces into history and thereby into Marxism as a historical science. In the post-historical stage the positive version of Marxian ethics is naively dependent upon the suspension of Marxian sociological realism. The latter, however, becomes brutalized through the divorce of the Marxian ideal from the mechanism of historical and political change in the period before the socialist revolution which divides history.