Sociology and Political Science

The success of sociology is related to the decadence of the concept of political science and political art which appeared in the nineteenth century (more exactly in the second half, with the success of evolutionary and positivistic doctrines). What is really important in sociology is nothing but political science. "Politics" becomes synonymous with parliamentary politics or the politics of personal cliques. The conviction that with constitution and parliaments the epoch of "natural evolution" has begun, that society has found a definitive, because rational, basis, etc. So now society can be studied with the methods of the natural sciences. Impoverishment of the concept of State follows from this way of looking at things. If political science means science of the State and the State is the whole complex of practical and theoretical activities with which the ruling class not only justifies and maintains its rule but manages to win the active consent of the governed, it is obvious that all the essential questions of sociology are nothing but questions of political science. If there are some left over, these must be false problems, i.e. useless problems. The question presented to Bukharin was therefore one of determining in what relation political science could be placed with Marxism; if there is an identity between the two (which cannot be upheld, or can only be upheld from the point of view of shabby positivism), or if political science is the totality of empirical or practical principles which are deduced from a wider conception of the world or a philosophy in the true sense, or if this philosophy is only the science of concepts or general categories which arise from political science, etc.

If it is true that man can only be conceived of as historically determined, i.e. that he has developed and lived in certain conditions, in a determined social complex or totality of social relations, can sociology be conceived as only the study of these conditions and the laws which regulate their development? Since one cannot leave aside the will and initiative of men themselves, this concept must be false. The problem should be posed of what is "science" itself. Is not science itself "political activity" and political thought, inasmuch as it transforms men, makes them different from what they were before? If everything is "politics" we must, in order not to fall into tautological and tiresome phraseology, distinguish with new concepts the politics which corresponds to that science which is traditionally called "philosophy" from the politics which is called political science in the strict sense. If science is the "discovery" of hitherto unknown reality, does not this reality come to be conceived as transcendent in a certain sense? Does one not think that something "unknown" and therefore transcendent still exists? And does not the concept of science as "creation" mean "politics"? It all rests on seeing whether we are talking about a creation which is "arbitrary" or rational, that is, useful to men in enlarging their views of life, in making life itself superior (develop).¹

Notes

1. As regards the "Popular Study" and its appendix, Theory and Practice, the philosophical review of Armando Carlini, in New Anthology for March 16th, 1933, from which it emerges that the equation: "Theory: practice = pure mathematics: applied mathematics" has been promulgated by an Englishman (Whittaker, I think).↩