Levi-Strauss and Marx on History

The great influence of Claude Levi-Strauss' structuralism on contemporary humanistic thought and the fact that Levi-Strauss frequently cites Marx and emphasizes his relation to Marx's theory of history make it appropriate to compare the opinions of Levi-Strauss and Marx on history. Much remains to be clarified by such a comparison, mainly because an attempt has not been made to make a comprehensive juxtaposition of the views of both authors, but, secondly, because quite frequently the partial analyses which have been made, including Levi-Strauss', operate under an inadequate interpretation of Marx's thought. In my subsequent remarks I shall attempt to make a comparative analysis concerning history, but with reference to the general theories of both authors. I shall treat history as both everything that has occurred in the past and as the study of the past, or historiography. These two meanings of the word history cannot be separated in our analysis, because, if anything links LeviStrauss and Marx, it is primarily the close connection of ontological and methodological views in their systems. For this reason I shall first concern myself with Levi-Strauss' and Marx's theories of the historical process and only then with their views on more strictly methodological problems. With reference to methodological problems, I shall be interested primarily in modelbuilding and explanation procedure. It is clear at this point that I propose to transcend the border of methodology of history strictly understood and encroach on the broader field of the methodology of the social sciences

Epistemology · Humanities · Levi strauss · Psychoanalysis · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism · Psychology · Weber, Simmel, Sociological Theory

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