Některé metodologické problémy sociální mobility

Social mobility is a frequent subject of sociological study and concrete investigation. Marxist sociology has a critical attitude to the concept of it as employed by bourgeois authors, pointing out the shortcomings in theoretical starting points and methodological approaches and in the application of a concrete technical methodo¬logical apparatus. It starts from the premise of understanding social mobility as a component of mutual dialectically-linked factors and relations, in which the most basic are the class factors, and from the connection with the broad socio-economic framework and concrete historical situations. This article deals with several methodological problems of social mobility and critically assesses their influence on theoretical conclusions. The hierarchization of society in non-Marxist studies is usually reduced to a scale of professions and social mobility in essence is identified with professional mobility. Determining the place of the individual professions, however, is difficult and one can-not overlook the dynamics and historical and social conditions of classification. A serious problem arises in measuring social mobility in which a broad range of mutually combined scales and indices are used. Both cause difficulties in trying to compare social mobility at various time intervals and in various countries. In making a comparison one can use a very global stratification which is oversimplified. Comparison between various social systems on the basic level of differentiation in: class relations is impossible because it assumes the application of analogical principles on basically different structures. The only realistic way is the so-called secondary level which reflects the economic and technical level of society. Here, too, however, the conclusions must be judged critically. Concrete empirical data on social mobility is usually an argument for an ideologically coloured theory on „open" societies, which without class transformations give all members equal opportunities for social advancement. Mirrored in this tendentious fiction are the theoretical and methodological shortcomings of non-Marxist sociology. The dynamics of social movement is fully comprehensible only with the help of the dialectical method which in connection with a comprehensive class explanation of social stratification is the basic foundation for an interpretation of mobility in Marxist sociology.