K problematice historismu v marxistické sociologii

This study is devoted to the ontological prerequisites and methodological principles of Marxist historism, primarily its specific manifestation in Marxist sociology. The question is first asked as to the purpose of studying the past and, in this connection, the problem of historical analogies is analyzed. Then the relation of theoretical statements and historical generalizations is examined in a polemic against vulgar historism and against those conceptions which assume that histrical generalization in sociology is an expression of its scientific immaturity. The problem of historism is by no means an academic one. The author therefore submits to analysis the reasons why non-Marxist sociology turns away from historism. The author thinks the reasons for this are that bourgeois- sociology concentrates on examining present-day social structures which it wishes to explain from their present-day functions and overlooks their historical development. Other reasons are to be found in one-sided empiricism and the practicism of non-Marxist ist sociology as well as in the emphasized psychologism of some of their schools. The study also examines problems of the relation of social historical and psychological time and the problem of so-called social memory. The second part of the article recapitulates the basic methodological principles of Marxist historism: the demand for a genetic structural analysis, the demand for a historical approach to social reality, the principle of logical correction of the historical process and the principle of comprehensive analyses. In conclusion the article characterizes the differences between historism and a sociological approach to the study of sociál reality and indicates concrete methodological problems whose solution requires the collaboration of historians and sociologists.