MACRO-MICRO LINKAGES IN THE CONTEXT OF HISTORICAL MATERIALISM
INTRODUCTION
The relationship between the macro and micro levels of
analysis is perhaps the most fashionable topic in the social
sciences today, so much so that it was chosen as the theme for the
1989 ASA meeting. The differences between what is macro and what
is micro can be conceptualized analytically; by micro it is meant
social interaction between individuals; by macro it is meant
social structure. What is macro and micro, therefore, would
depend on the purposes of research; it is possible to analyze the
same organization or institution using micro- or macrosociology.
Another possible way of making this distinction has to do with
relative size; for example, the family is micro in relation to the
economy and macro in relation to the individuals that interact
within its structure. But the crucial issue that fuels current
theoretical development about macro-micro linkage is that of the
relationship between individuals and society or, to state it a bit
differently, the question of the role of individuals in history or
relationship between structure and agency. Lukacs (1971) pointed
out years ago that idealism and materialism were the antinomies of
bourgeois thought; unavoidably so, the debate between idealism and
materialism underlies the examination of macro-micro linkage in
the social sciences today. In the absence of a dialectical under-
standing of human history, the question whether individuals create
social reality or viceversa continues to shape sociological theory
construction. Is society a sui generis, transcendent reality which
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coercively shapes human behavior or is it, instead, simply equal
to the sum of individual actions? Can social facts be explained
only by other social facts or does explanation require, to be
valid, that social facts be reduced to micro-level explanations?
The fashionable "search for micro foundations" has had consider-
able impact upon Marxist theory; the emergence of "rational-
choice," "neo-classical," and "game-theoretic" "Marxisms" attest
to the hegemony of ideologies about individualism and freedom both
upon non-Marxist and Marxist social thought.
Granted; it is important to understand the connections
between structure and agency. If unrelated to a historical and
dialectical theory of social reality, however, the search for
macro-micro linkages is likely to produce either deterministic or
idealist modes of conceptualizing those linkages. In this
presentation, I will briefly examine some of the major ways in
which micro-macro linkages have been identified in sociology and
neo-Marxist theory and, building upon some of their unquestionably
important insights, I will then present some ideas about macro-
micro linkages in the context of historical materialism.
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES
Alexander (1987) identifies five major sociological stances
about the macro-micro relationship:
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society because they are forced to by external social control
(Alexander, 1987: 14).
The first option characterizes exchange theory in sociology,
and neoclassical economics. The aggregate result of the behavior
of utility maximizing individuals, acting rationally in pursuit of
self-interest is the creation of market equilibrium (economics)
and society (sociology). Symbolic interactionism, a perspective
which denies the importance of socialization and macro-structures,
posits, instead, actors who negotiate situationally relevant
meanings with each other. Option 2, interpretive sociology, is
thus the sociological counterpart to option 1. Like economic
actors, interpretive individuals orient their behavior according
to "taste," not constraining norms or institutions. Meanings are
purely subjective and change according to the situation. Ethno-
methodology (option 3) focuses on the methods individuals use to
appropriate the normative order in which they find themselves, re-
creating it in the process. The social order, therefore, is not
external or constraining; it is, instead, the artful achievement
of members' methods who, constantly and in various ways, "make
sense out of nonsense." Option 4 is the classical sociological
tradition whose "oversocialized" conception of man (i.e., people
are the product of the socialization process) Wrong critized many
years ago. This perspective, despite criticisms, remains the
sociological mainstream in the United States. Representative of
option 5 is conflict theory, which gives paramount importance to
power. The amount of power individual or collective actors have
is crucial for deciding their ability to attain goals and enforce
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their goals on others. Conflict between individuals or between
collective actors takes place in a pre-existing macro-structural
context characterized by a given distribution of power; in turn,
macro-structures are the unintended result of conflictual action.
Alexander (1987: 15) includes Marx's later work in option 5. That
view is mistaken because it overlooks the dialectics between
freedom and necessity in Marx's work; workers are both free at the
level of market and social relations and unfree in the context of
the relations of production.
Qualitatively different from the above is Blau's distinction
between two separate disciplines: macrosociology, concerned with
the impact of external constraints and opportunities upon patterns
of social relations, and microsociology, which studies social
exchange processes. In Blau's view, although macro and micro
social theories are complementary in that each seeks to explain
what the other treats as an assumption, macrosociology studies
emergent properties of social structures which are irreducible to
micro-level phenomena (Blau, 1987: 71-85).
NEO-MARXIST PERSPECTIVES
The ideological struggle between idealist (critical and
praxis theorists such as, for example, Marcuse and E.P. Thompson)
and determinist standpoints (functionalists such as G.H. Cohen and
structuralists such as Althusser, Therborn and Godelier) attests
to the impact, upon theoretical development in the context of
Western Marxism, of the hegemony of bourgeois philosophical
antinomies (see Anderson, 1979; 1980). Given the dominance of
methodological individualism and idealism in the philosophy and
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practice of "normal" (in Kuhn's sense) social science, it is not
surprising that recent theoretical developments within academic
Marxism (analytical, rational choice or neoclassical "Marxisms")
are little more than conventional social science (an uneasy combi-
nation of options 1 and 4) formulated, with the appropriate
"rigor," in Marxist categories emptied of dialectical complexity
and historical specificity. In fact, non-Marxist social science
is taken as a model to be admired and imitated:
In seeking to provide micro-foundations for behavior which
Marxists think are characteristic of capitalism, I think the
tools par excellance are rational choice models: general
equilibrium theory, game theory, and the arsenal of modelling
techniques developed by neo-classical economics (Roemer,
1986: 192).
What micro-economics is for Marxist economic theory, social
psychology should be for the Marxist theory of ideology
Elster, 1982: 454).
The adoption of methodological individualism, "the doctrine
that all social phenomena (their structure and their change) are
in principle explicable only in terms of individuals - their pro-
perties, goals, and beliefs" (Elster, 1982: 453), entails also the
the rejection of structural causality; i.e., the analysis of the
effects of structures upon other structures, effects which are
independent from individuals' will and consciousness. The adoption
of rational choice models entails a conceptualization of economic
and social organization and change as intended outcomes of indi-
viduals' rational choice. Class formation and class struggles,
it follows, are also results of individuals' optimizing behavior.
And, just in case naive "fundamentalist" Marxists may inquire
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about the role of ideology, Roemer (1986) calls for a theory of
ideology formation (as if Marx, Marxists, and sociologists had
written nothing about ideology, value systems, theories of action,
and normative constraints) and advances "game-theoretic" notions
of ideology: i.e., ideology as "a rational strategy in a game;"
"an institution that cuts transaction costs of various kinds;" or
"a set of satisficing rules which an agent adopts to limit his own
feasible set" (Roemer 1986: 194-195). Game theory is used to
explain lack of class consciousness and class formation: workers
rationally choose to behave as free riders. The problem rational
choice "Marxists" set for themselves, consequently, is the inves-
tigation of the conditions affecting individuals' preference for-
mation and preference ordering. Class solidarity will emerge when
individuals' preferences change from the "prisoners' dilemma," to
an "assurance game" in which individuals choose to cooperate as
long as they are assured that others will cooperate too (Roemer,
1986; Levine, Sober and Wright, 1987).
As others have pointed out (Kieve, 1986; Lebowitz, 1988; and
Locke Anderson and Thompson, 1988), this way of theorizing is
alien to Marxist theory. Furthermore, methodological individualism
is bad scientific methodology because social science (Marxist or
non-Marxist) is concerned not only with explaining why specific
phenomena occur (e.g., the "deindustrialization " of the northeast
in the U.S. during the 1980s), but also with the nature of the
social systems within which those phenomena can be understood
(e.g., capitalism). Social types and concepts referring to
aggregate social entities are supervenient (irreducible to micro
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individual types) because the "black box" connecting macro level
phenomena, or realizing a given social type admits a variety of
historically contingent contents. (Levine, Sober and Wright,
1987). In sociology, for example, this means that the relationship
between the racial/ethnic composition of a population and rates of
intermarriage cannot be reduced to micro-level explanations based
on individuals' attitudes towards those of different race or eth-
nicity. Within Marxist theory, for example, the relationship
between profit seeking and development of the productive forces is
supervenient on its micro-realizations. There is no single micro-
level explanation for firms'or entrepreneurs' decisions about
technological innovation and concomitant changes in the labor
process. For each instance it would be possible to identify
different micro-level determinants (e.g., degree of labor unrest;
owners' attitudes towards technology; interlocking directorates
giving some firms advantages over others, etc.) and, I may add,
macro-level determinants as well. 1 The development of the
productive forces is supervenient because it is the unintended
structural effect of decisions reflecting different micro-
constraints and motivations (see Cohen, 1986, for an elaboration
of this point).
HISTORICAL MATERIALISM
The approaches to macro-micro linkages listed above indicate
an inability, within sociology and social science in general, to
move beyond voluntaristic and deterministic alternatives. Options
1For a thorough critique of methodological individualism and the defense of an antireductionist methodological stance see Levine, Sober and Wright, 1987.
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1, 2, and 3 emphasize the contingency of human activity; they
differ in their assessment of what that activity is all about, but
coincide in their reduction of the social order to the outcome of
intentional individual behavior. From the standpoint of historical
materialism, the notion that social structure is the product of
contingent intentional acts of freedom (whatever the nature of
such acts might be) is open to criticism on the grounds that indi-
viduals always act in the context of pre-existing structures which
establish the content of formally rational behavior, the range of
socially possible meanings and the taken for granted rules that
individuals encounter in the course of acting as economic or
interpretive actors, or as ethnomethodologists. Formally rational
behavior, the general form of intelligent human behavior, explains
nothing because what makes a particular form of behavior rational
depends not on the rationality of the individuals engaged in that
behavior but upon the rationality of the social structure within
which they are located. Rationality, in other words, is a property
of the structure and has explanatory power in so far as it is
conceived as such, not as an attribute of individuals acting
within the structure. Marx made this point clearly:
... I paint the capitalist and the landlord in no sense
couleur de rose. But here individuals are dealt with only in
so far as they are the personifications of economic cate-
gories, embodiments of particular class-relations and class-
interests. My standpoint, from which the evolution of the
economic formation of society is viewed as a process of
natural history, can less than any other make the individual
responsible for relations whose creature he socially remains,
however much he may subjectively raise above them (Marx,
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1972: 10).
The idea that individuals are the personifications or bearers of
class relations (and structures in general), remaining their
"social creature" no matter what claims for independence they may
put forth, is unacceptable both within social science and idealist
Marxisms. Nevertheless, it is crucial for understanding both the
specificity of the historical materialist conception of macro-
micro linkages, and the power of neoclassical models and rational
choice "Marxism;" the latter is grounded on the conflation of
structural with individual rationality. As Kieve (1982) and Gode-
lier (1972) have argued (following Marx's critique of political
economy), it is possible to "deduce" the characteristics of the
economic system from formally rational behavior as long as the
different positions and objectively rational options open to eco-
nomic agents, the structure of the economic system, and the hier-
archy of needs created by that system are subrepticiously brought
into the analysis under the guise of constraints confronting
actors and subjective preferences ("taste") guiding their actions.
To argue that the concept of rationality relevant for under-
standing individuals' rational economic or social actions is not
an individual attribute, but a property of structures, is not
equivalent to denying the possibility that individuals may act
rationally. As stated above, rationality is the general form of
intelligent behavior; but not all instances of individual rational
behavior reflect a coincidence between individual and structural
rationality. In other words, what is rational from an individual
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standpoint may or may not coincide with what is rational from a
structural standpoint although, as long as societies are not
experiencing rapid social change, the probablity that systemic and
individual rationality may coincide for the majority of people is
relatively high. On the other hand, even behavior that departs
from the canons imposed by systemic rationality may contribute to
reproduce the system through its unintended or latent effects.
People do not intentionally reproduce social structures but such
structures are both unavoidable effects and necessary conditions
of their "contingent acts of freedom:" individual freedom, under
capitalist conditions, is "the precise effect of its ineluctable
relation to history, the phenomenal form of its real necessity"
(Eagleton, 1985: 73). Macro level processes that determine the
parameters or content of rational economic and social behavior
are, consequently, supervenient on their micro-realizations. For
example, individual capitalists may rationally behave as person-
ifications of capital or rationally choose others to be the
bearers of such relations, while they themselves may spend their
time enjoying art and living like lords. Individual workers may
rationally behave in ways subservient to capitalists' demands or
may rationally choose to withdraw their labor, forming a commune,
going on strike, or dropping out to join the illegal economy.
Regardless of all the contingent acts of freedom that theoretical-
ly, and in practice, can compel individual workers and capitalists
to stop being bearers of class relations, the class structure
remains invariant as long as the balance of power between classes,
and the material and subjective conditions constraining the
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behavior of the majority of the population, remain relatively
unchanged.
While the privileging of the micro over the macro is rejected
by historical materialism by pointing out the objective, social
nature of formally rational action and subjectivity, the over-
socialized concept of man (option 4) and the idea that rational
individuals behave in socially approved ways because of external
social control (option 5) are also found wanting. Against the
oversocialized concept of man, historical materialism opposses the
notion of man as the ensemble of social relations, not the passive
product of a socialization process but actively engaged in trans-
forming himself and the world at the crossroads of his multiple
and crosscutting insertions in the social structure. This means
that as social structures change, as a result of intended and
unintended effects of individuals' behavior, individuals also
change, becoming receptive to new ideas, developing new ways of
interpreting their world and giving new contents to formally
rational behavior. Individuals do not merely reproduce social
structures; they also endeavour to change them by reflecting,
through "contingent acts of freedom," the unfolding of a new
historical necessity.
Option five is characteristic of deterministic readings of
Marxism which stress the unfolding of the logic of structures and
contradictions independently of the consciousness of social
agents. For example, Godelier (1967) argues that if socialism
ever comes to pass, it will be simply because of the objective
properties of a historically developed contradiction between the
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forces and the relations of production which will cause the
structural compatibility between emergent new socialist relations
of production and the giant socialized productive forces created
under capitalism (Godelier, 1967: 364).
While the internal dynamics or contradictions within the
capitalist mode of production are indeed considered by historical
materialism to be the unintended and unintentional emergent pro-
perties of capitalist structures and processes, this does not
necessary entail the reduction of social change to a mechanical
process independent of human agency. A dialectical understanding
of the relationship between structure and agency is inherent in
Marx's work and has been succintly captured in the often quoted
(but seldom seriously heeded) statement from The 18th Brumaire:
Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as
they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen
by themselves, but by circumstances directly encountered,
given, and transmitted from the past" (Marx, 1969: 15).
From this standpoint, what happens at the micro-level of analysis
is shaped by its macro-level conditions of emergence, reproduction
and change. The issue of the nature of human agency and its modes
of intervention is not one that can be decided by fiat among
social scientists; it is decided by the nature of the historical
conditions within which human agency operates. When Marx and
Marxists stress the supervenience or irreducibility of the
structures crucial to defining a mode of production and its
dynamics to the individuals that reproduce those structures, they
are arguing that under capitalist conditions human freedom rests
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upon structures of unfreedom. The level of reality in which
market, social and political relations unfold and human creativity
produces material and intellectual products to satisfy ever
changing material and spiritual needs rests upon structures of
production and class relations that severely constraint most
people's physical and intellectual development and forces millions
to survive under extreme deprivation. Structures of domination and
exploitation are constantly reproduced through "contingent acts of
freedom;" conversely, these acts reflect the necessity of their
underlying conditions of emergence and reproduction.
CONCLUSION
This dialectics of freedom and necessity establishes the
conditions for the creative use of sociological insights in the
process of understanding both macro and micro-level phenomena.
Sociological perspectives can help establish, together with
rational choice and other micro level theories, the micro foun-
dations of those macro-level phenomena amenable to such reduction.
Historical materialism, on the other hand, can elucidate the macro
level structural and ideological constraints that determine the
historically specific content of individuals' rational and inter-
pretive actions, their objective, unintended historically specific
effects (which can reproduce and undermine the stability of that
reproduction process), and the conditions that generate new social
relations, new modes of existence and, unavoidably, new forms of
thinking, new criteria of rationality, new values and new needs.
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MACRO-MICRO LINKAGES IN THE CONTEXT OF HISTORICAL MATERIALISM
Martha E. Gimenez
Department of Sociology
University of Colorado
Boulder, Colorado 80309
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FIRST DRAFT: PLEASE DO NOT CITE WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE
AUTHOR.
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