On Mouzelis’ Theorized Pragmatism

In the academic history of post-Marxism,Mouzelis is a very important figure.Post-marxist Choice: The Construction of Social Order is one of his theoretical masterpieces,but few people in China have covered it.Mouzelis tried to introduce the post-Marxist method into sociology and political science,and put forward the theoretical and pragmatic method to reinterpret the formation,structure and transformation of human society,which opened up a new vision for Marxism in sociology and political science dimension.The background of theoretical pragmatism is the new changes of capitalist society and the problem of "economic reductionism".Before formally putting forward the theory,Mouzelis first criticized the previous methods to solve the "economic reductionism",mainly criticized Laclau and Murphy’s "joint" concept and Parkin’s closed class theory,pointing out that these two theories were supposed to solve the problem of "economic reductionism",but they fell into different degrees of reductionism in solving the problem.Therefore,the first thing Mouzelis should do is not to let his theory also fall into the trouble of reductionism.He first distinguishes different types of reductionism,believing that the distinction can avoid the problem of reductionism in his theory.Later,Mouzelis put forward the theory of theoretical pragmatism along with the trend.First of all,this theory is a kind of theoretical integration,which integrates the whole logic of Marxism and Weber’s political theory as the basic framework of the theory,which is a method focusing on practical application.At the same time,in terms of the specific content of the application of the method,Mouzelis advocates a comprehensive study of the composition of society from the three aspects of technology,possession and ideology,and believes that this can transcend the dilemma of "economic reductionism" and achieve a new perspective of social explanation.The biggest difference between the theoretical pragmatism proposed by Mouzelis and other post-Marxists is that he does not reject the holism logic method of Marxism.He believes that the Marxist approach is still very effective in solving social problems.But at the same time,Mouzelis,like the general post-Marxist scholars,has some misunderstanding of Marxism,especially mistakenly thinks that Marxism has the problem of "economic reductionism".What needs to be pointed out here is that although there is indeed a decisive role of economic factors in Marxism,it is not the only one.Obviously Mouzelis ignores that the decision is a concrete and dialectical process.This is mainly because he did not have a thorough understanding of Marx’s theory,and thus produced a wrong understanding of traditional Marxism.Therefore,when we look at post-Marxism,we should not only recognize the theoretical contribution of Mouzelis,but also recognize his shortcomings and shortcomings.