On Irony

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On Irony: An Invitation to Neoclassical Sociology

Gil Eyal, Ivn Szlnyi and Eleanor Townsley
Thesis Eleven 2003 73: 5
DOI: 10.1177/0725513603073001002
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ON IRONY: AN INVITATION
TO NEOCLASSICAL
SOCIOLOGY
Gil Eyal, Ivn Szlnyi and Eleanor
Townsley
ABSTRACT This article proffers an invitation to neoclassical sociology. This is

understood as a Habermasian reconstruction of the fundamental vision of the
discipline as conceptualized by classical theorists, particularly Weber. Taking
the cases of Eastern and Central Europe as a laboratory, we argue against the
idea of a single, homogenizing globalizing logic. Currently and historically what
we see instead is a remarkable diversity of capitalist forms and destinations.
Neither sociological theories of networks and embeddedness nor economic
models of rational action adequately comprehend this diversity. A neoclassical
approach enjoins an empirical research agenda comparing capitalisms, and an
ironic, historical approach to analysis to inform an immanent critique of capitalist possibilities.
KEYWORDS capitalism class cultural capital post-socialist status
I. SOCIAL THEORY AFTER THE FALL OF SOCIALISM:

RETHINKING THE CRISIS OF WESTERN SOCIOLOGY
The collapse of state socialism presents a challenge to sociology, and
in particular, to sociologys tradition of critical social analysis. Sociology and
socialism were twin-born in the massive social changes of the 19th century,
and their original visions shared premises and presuppositions. In particular,
both were critical of the anarchy of markets and, as an alternative, both
Thesis Eleven, Number 73, May 2003: 541
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Thesis Eleven (Number 73 2003)
advocated the collective rational ordering of society, aided and informed by

social science. The affinity between sociology and socialism was most evident
in the work of Saint-Simon and Comte who wanted to build an intellectually
and spiritually superior social order, but it was also apparent in the work of
Marx and Durkheim. For these latter thinkers, sociological theory formed an
alternative to liberal political economy just as socialism offered an alternative to capitalism. The other branch of classical sociology, represented by
Weber, was not as sanguine about the possibility of socialism. Weber subjected the ideals of collectivism to critical scrutiny from the perspective of
individual liberty (as did later thinkers like Mill and Popper). Despite disagreement about the desirability of socialism, however, Weber shared a
common critical vantage point with Marx and Durkheim, i.e. one informed
by an awareness of the possibility of a socialist alternative to capitalism.
In his The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology (1970), Alvin Gouldner
bequeathed to us an analysis of sociology that showed how the problematic
relation between socialism and sociology continued into the 20th century,
long after the classical social thinkers. True, the brutality and bleakness of
actually existing socialism tarnished the socialist vantage point for many intellectuals, but Gouldners analysis demonstrated nonetheless that the 20thcentury split between positivism and critical social science was precisely a
division over the issue of how socialist realities and possibilities were to be
weighed against each other. On one side, 20th-century positivists tended to
translate their horror of the dark side of actually existing socialism into an
uncritical acceptance and apologia for capitalism. The very meaning of
positivism changed. Where for Comte positivism was a rejection of negativism a call to be brave and to dare to think about a world that could be
better for 20th-century positivists, positivism became a description and
justification of the existing world as the only possible one. On the other side,
critical social science criticized actually existing socialism, not from the point
of view of the existing order of things, but on the basis of a vision of true
socialism. Theorists like the Western Marxists argued that the societies of
Eastern and Central Europe simply did not measure up to the ideal; they were
not sufficiently socialistic or worse, they were a version of state capitalism.
In this context, Gouldner argued that what was once a productive tension
between actuality and possibility had now bifurcated into a one-sided
emphasis on either inert actuality (positivism) or abstract possibility (critical
social science), both of which had lost any critical dimension.
We think Gouldners search for a way to rescue sociology from the
impasse between positivism and critical social science is relevant once again.
Our reasons are somewhat different than Gouldners however. In 1970,
Gouldner, like many other social scientists, believed that he was witnessing
the merging of capitalism and socialism what Daniel Bell (1973) called
post-industrial society. It was in this merger, he argued, that the critical
imagination of sociology was lost. Positivism and marxism mirrored each
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Eyal et al.: On Irony
other from across the divide, because both were ideological reflections of the
rise of a new class of intellectuals that would eventually replace the dominant
classes of both capitalism and state socialism.1 This was the coming crisis of
Western sociology: not only had sociology lost the critical vantage point it
once possessed in socialism, it had also lost the agent that could occupy this
vantage point, namely the Mannheimian socially unattached intellectual.
Gouldner argued nonetheless, that the critical potential of the sociological tradition could be reconstructed. Drawing a parallel with the Young
Hegelians and their reradicalization of Hegelian philosophy, he suggested
that sociologys radical potential lay in its commitment to reflexivity i.e. in
using the values and weapons of the intellectuals own culture of critical discourse against intellectuals themselves. If he or she is committed to reflexivity as a first principle, even the self-interested social scientist can arrive at
a radical vision of a better society because reflexivity means exposing his or
her own interests and modes of reasoning to self-critical scrutiny.
We think there is much to be learned from Gouldner. The crisis of sociology he predicted has arrived, although not exactly in the way he expected.
Instead of meeting socialism halfway, which seemed likely in the heyday of
social democracy, the capitalist world of 21st-century Western Europe and
North America is further away from socialism than it has been in the last 50
years. And instead of meeting capitalism halfway, which seemed likely in the
years of reform communism in Eastern Europe, postcommunist societies
pursue a wide range of new strategies to make capitalism. Indeed, rather
than a convergence of the two main social systems of the 20th century, the
21st century presents us with a dazzling variety of capitalisms all over the
globe. The only exceptions are the two tiny, moribund islands of actually
existing communism: Cuba and North Korea. So, world history has not
followed the trajectory predicted by Gouldner (and so many others). With
that stipulated however, it is true that the world is no longer divided between
two competing social systems, and that in the postcommunist context, sociology is showing signs of crisis.
The dominant ideology of 21st-century capitalism is globalization: a
worldview that asserts the existence of a single global capitalist logic. Sociology has lost its critical vantage point, then, not because of the convergence
of marxism and positivism, which Gouldner predicted, but because the perception of a monolithic globalization obviates the idea of a critical vantage
point. And this is a dual crisis because it was precisely this critical vantage
point that distinguished sociology from the other social sciences, and in
particular from economics.
In a world seemingly dominated by the globalizing logic of capitalist
markets and liberal culture, sociology struggles to distinguish its object,
methods, and social role. Indeed, many contemporary strands of sociology
are formulated as a conscious alternative to the dominance of neoclassical
economics. This is the case for economic sociology with its emphasis on
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embeddedness, of network analysts who purport to demonstrate how

markets are composed of networks of social relations, and also for neoinstitutionalist sociologists who emphasize the conventionalized and organizational substratum of economic relations. But we would argue that even the
most positivist sociology of the past, and even those theorists thought to be
the most antisocialist or the most non-political, distinguished themselves from
economics by an explicit or implicit criticism of a social order based purely
on markets. For example, Parsons emphasized socialization and culture over
economic expedience, and liberal thinkers were always suspicious of the
elements of collectivism and constructive rationality in his vision of the social
system (Wagner, 1994). Ironically, then, even the positivist sociological
escape route away from socialism partook in the disciplines critical heritage.
It defined social reality as distinct and more fundamental than the operation
of markets, and on this basis it could point to an alternative beyond the status
quo. With the fall of socialism, however, even the positivist escape route is
in danger of being overtaken by the socialist joke, i.e. that socialism is merely
a long detour from capitalism to capitalism, or, in this case, that sociology is
nothing but a long detour from liberal political economy to neoclassical economics.
Nothing symbolizes this dire possibility better than the ascendancy of
rational choice theory which threatens to erase the distinctions between
economics and sociology, merging them both into a systematic economic
description of the social (Gordon, 1991). Rational choice theory accommodates and marginalizes all the defenses erected against it embeddedness,
networks, institutions all are assimilable into the maximizing calculus of
rational actors. In a world without actually existing socialism, it appears that
the neoliberal version of capitalism reigns supreme across the globe.
Economic actors are disembedded, institutions are consciously designed, and
a price tag is put on traditions, path dependencies, and network ties so all
can fit within its maximizing calculus. In such a world, the escape route of
sociological positivism seems pointless as it circles back and ends at the same
place. The imperialism of capital is matched by the theoretical imperialism
of rational choice, and both point towards a single capitalist destination
the end of history
Should sociology accept this vision of triumphant capitalism? Must postsocialist sociology lose its object of analysis and its critical perspective? We
think not. Instead, we argue that the postsocialist crisis in sociology offers
opportunities for renewing the critical vision of the discipline. It offers sociology the chance to take stock and reconstruct its classical heritage, this time
outside the polarity of capitalism versus socialism, and armed with the critical
powers of ironic self-reflection. Just as economics returned to its classical
roots to reconstitute the discipline in the face of massive global market failure
in the 1970s, so we think sociology might profitably return to its classical
roots to reconstitute itself in the shadow of the fall of socialism. In economics,
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such a return implied a return to the notion of the self-interested individual.

In sharp contrast, however, in sociology such a return implies the question:
what are the origins of modernity, or of capitalism? Thus, we are not suggesting a return to the classical tradition conceived superficially as a theoretical toolbox from which to draw concepts and insights at whim. Rather,
we propose a reconstruction (in the Habermasian sense of the term) of the
fundamental critical vision of the classical sociological thinkers (Habermas,
1990).
In marked contrast to neoclassical economics, which posits a single
capitalist logic and a single mode of rational human action, what we call neoclassical sociology is a field of critical social analysis in which the method
of inquiry is ironic.2 Taking Gouldners analysis as our point of departure,
we observe that irony as long as it is rooted in self-irony is always undertaken in the reflexive mode. The researcher who engages in irony begins his
or her analysis by suspending his or her own values, judgments, and knowledge about the world, and accepting as valid the point of view of the other.
This is done in the understanding that his or her own values and those of
the other are relational, i.e. they only exist and take meaning in relationship
to each other, or to put it another way, in conversation with each other. This
is the reflexive premise of the ironic method, or to put it with Mannheim
([1936] 1985), this is relational analysis. The purpose of ironic analysis is to
show the temporary nature of both positions and their determination by the
relations that describe and constitute them.3 Thus irony begins with reflexivity but does not end there. A better world is still a goal of ironic analysis,
a goal pursued in the conversation between subject and object, between alter
and ego. Indeed, this is the radical promise of irony for critical social analysis.
Precisely because he or she does not need a critical vantage point, the ironic
analyst does not have to formulate a positive statement about the most desirable or the best solution. Ironic analysis only has to persuade the other that
there is a range of possible solutions and there are multiple ways to perceive
and rank those solutions as desirable. Being ironic, then, is the opposite of
being serious or earnest. Seriousness assumes faith in the supremacy of a
position. The ironic analyst does not occupy such moral high ground, and
wants to convince others that they do not occupy such high ground either.
It is for this reason that humor or jokes are important instruments in ironic
analysis.4 Irony is also distinct from cynicism. To invoke Mannheim again,
we would say that a cynical position is relativist while an ironic analysis is
relationist, by which we mean that ironic analysis accepts the possibility of
multiple truths, with each truth still distinguishable from untruth.
This article is an invitation to neoclassical sociology and therefore to
ironic analysis. While we coin the term neoclassical sociology, we do not
think we have invented a new field of inquiry.5 Rather, we present an examination and critique of sociologys response to a world without socialism and,
in particular, to the ever-powerful challenge of economics. In this effort, we
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seek to discover a way to balance the duality of affirmative and critical perspectives that has characterized the discipline from its inception. To this end,
the remainder of the article addresses three interrelated questions posed by
socialisms demise, each of which suggests directions for a reconstructed,
neoclassical sociology.
First, how should sociologists think about capitalism in the postsocialist era? How can we avoid reifying capitalism as a single homogenous
globalizing logic? We think the answer is a reconstruction of the Weberian
concept of capitalism, a comparative approach that conceptualizes capitalism
as a plurality of forms and destinations.
Second, does the end of actually existing socialism mean the end of
class analysis? Should we accept the claim that classes are disappearing or
dead (Inglehart and Rabier, 1986; Pakulski and Waters, 1996)? We do not think
so. Rather, we argue that the transition to capitalism in Eastern Europe
provides exciting new materials for a reconstructed class analysis, raising
important questions about the classness of collective actors and the role of
intellectuals in social change.
Third, is a critical social science possible in the absence of a socialist
alternative? Does the repudiation of socialism necessarily mean the repudiation of the role of the intellectual as social critic? Again, we think not. Rather
than retreating to the position of a sociological technician, or collapsing sociology into moral critique, we propose that the sobering experience of the
demise of the teleological intellectual be used to formulate a new mode of
critical intellectual engagement, namely, irony.
II. HOW SHOULD SOCIOLOGISTS THINK ABOUT CAPITALISM
IN THE POSTSOCIALIST ERA?
The basic premise of neoclassical sociology is that since the possibility
of a socialist alternative can no longer be detected with the instruments of
social science, the task before us is the comparative analysis of capitalist
forms and destinations. This is a central argument in our book Making Capitalism Without Capitalists (1998), which analyzes transitions from socialism
to capitalism in Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Before turning to
our framework for the study of comparative capitalisms, however, we revisit
the question of how to think about socialism and capitalism in the postsocialist world.
The absence of a socialist alternative and the nature of
capitalism
We argue that the possibility of a socialist alternative can no longer
serve as the basis for a critical social science because we cannot currently
detect such an alternative empirically. Our premise is that critical social
science should be based on the detection of real alternatives, and a social
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alternative can be thought of as real only if there are social actors (other than
the social scientist) who are engaged in empirically observable collective
action of an emergent nature (Williams, 1980: 3249), i.e. collective action
that points toward an alternative social order. This position is empirical
without being positivist since reality is indeed praxis, and we (and our
analyses) are involved in it. We only add the weak empirical caveat that
socially transformative praxis must have an identifiable social agent.
In the current historical moment, we find no collective actor that is
willing to take on the project of building socialism. Not only is it the case
that workers no longer constitute a class agent mobilized for socialism,6 even
the intelligentsia is no longer interested in building socialism.7 Indeed, as an
empirical matter we observe that the consciousness of the leading fractions
of the intellectual class in western capitalism as well as the former socialist
countries of Eastern Europe are marked precisely by the experience of disillusionment with socialism. Although they were historically identified with
building socialism, disillusionment now permeates intellectual identities and
worldviews so profoundly that we think it is unlikely that these class fractions will become carriers of a socialist project in the foreseeable future.
To be clear: we are not arguing that the absence of a proximate socialist alternative means socialism is impossible in principle, or that socialism
will not be built in some future we are unable to see. We have no crystal
ball and social science has a bad track record of prediction. Nor do we think
that the absence of a socialist alternative means that marxism is dead or
irrelevant. On the contrary: in a world dominated by capitalist financial
markets, where the livelihoods of millions are contingent on the mysterious
movement of stocks and currencies, marxism has much to contribute to the
ethical critique of capitalism. No longer required to justify the practicalities
of building socialism, whether in the form of the Gulag or the inefficiencies
of socialist planning, marxism may experience a renaissance. Our point is
simply that the probability of finding collective actors mobilized to build a
socialist society in the near future are extremely slim, especially in Eastern
Europe.
If we are correct that there is no proximate socialist alternative in the
new world order, then does it follow that capitalism defined as a single,
homogeneous, global logic is the only game in town? We do not think so.
To accept such a proposition is both ahistorical and naive. Instead, following Weber ([19045]1958: 1331), we suggest that capitalism comes in many
forms, and that a comparative analysis of multiple capitalisms and their consequences is the critical task facing sociologists today.
Weber offers a generic definition of capitalist economic action as the
building block for a comparative analysis of capitalisms: action is capitalist if
it is oriented towards profit through peaceful means, and if it applies rational
criteria to measure inputs expended against benefits accrued. No other more
concrete criteria of capitalism are required by this definition. Whether or not
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an economic system is capitalist then, is a matter of degree; it is more capitalist to the extent that it is organized to render the calculation of costs and
benefits rational. Of course, since calculation is a social practice, capitalist
rationalization implies a host of social institutions and a corresponding set of
productive relations that reproduce them. Among these one would usually
include individual private property in the means of production, the separation of direct producers from the means of production, and price-regulating
markets (Weber, [191521]1978: 915, 139395; [1927]1981: 2768; Callon,
1998). But capitalist economic action can also take place under conditions
where property is not fully private, where labor is not separated from the
means of production, or outside of price-regulating markets (Weber,
[19045]1958: 1331; [191521]1978: 63540, 139395; [1927]1981: 3356;
Polanyi, [1944]1957). Thus, it is possible to think about multiple forms of capitalism as historically specific assemblages of various elements differing in the
type and in the extent to which they enable rational economic calculation.
This understanding is in tension with Webers other argument that
modern Western capitalism is the most rational or powerful combination of
these various social institutions and productive relations. There is, after all,
his famous proposition that modern Western capitalism is an iron cage of
individual private property and self-regulating markets into which agents are
locked because these arrangements provide for the most rational profitseeking behavior. Here, Weber suggests strongly that modern Western capitalism functions as the terminus of history, and thus, this is precisely where
we part ways with Webers analysis. Indeed, we think Weber was empirically
wrong and that capitalism did not develop in a unilinear way as the iron
cage metaphor suggests. Shortly after Webers death, some of the elements
he considered to be essential characteristics of the highest form of capitalist
development for example, self-regulating markets were replaced, or at
least marginalized, by massive regulatory state intervention (Polanyi,
[1944]1957). Fifty years later, self-regulating markets became dominant once
again, due to attacks on the welfare state and the influence of neoclassical
economics. But this happened in a context thoroughly different from the one
Weber imagined a context of massively transformed property relations,
large corporations, shareholding, institutional ownership, and mutual funds
or pension funds capital (Bell, 1973; Gates, 1998). So, although we follow
his interpretive, historical approach to the analysis of capitalism, we argue
that Webers generic concept of capitalism must be reconstructed against the
grain of his iron cage metaphor.8
This is what we do in our book, comparing transitions to capitalism in
Eastern and Central Europe to explore how various elements are combined
in different cases. Specifically, we describe and analyze the interrelations
between property relations, the means and degree of state regulation and
planning, the degree of development of capital and labor markets, the nature
of welfare state institutions and the disposition of surplus labor, the
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availability of intellectual technologies of calculation, the nature of interorganizational relationships, the type of capitalist actors and their degree of
classness, and the modes of justification of profit-seeking behavior.9 In this,
we adopt Webers ([190317]1949: 339) assumption of multiple rationalities
rather than a single unifying capitalist rationality, and we follow his methodological commitment to a developmentalist rather than an evolutionary mode
of explanation ([190317]1949: 50112). It is on this basis that we propose a
comparative framework for analyzing the diversity of capitalist forms and
relations, and we argue such a framework is absolutely necessary if we seek
to pursue a critical sociology in the face of triumphalist claims of the end of
history.
The globalization-convergence thesis
Since 1989, a new orthodoxy of neoliberal popularizers and neoclassical economists has interpreted the term globalization to mean a process of
convergence on a single homogenous world capitalist system. This system is
understood to be governed by the unified systemic logic of competitive
global markets, bolstered by international economic agencies such as the IMF
and the World Bank. This systemic logic, which approximates the neoliberal
doctrine, weakens states and dilutes the significance of differences between
national economies, pushing them inexorably towards convergence (Ohmae,
1995; Reich, 1992; Schmidt, 1995).10 We think that this globalization-asconvergence thesis has several conceptual and empirical shortcomings.
First, the arguments plausibility rests heavily on an implicit sense of the
end of history; on the idea that the process of globalization is unique to the
postmodern era, that it is driven by factors that have not existed before, and
that it is irreversible. This is false. Even a cursory glance at the historical
record reveals that what we are witnessing today is, at best, a second round
of globalization, if not a more cyclical phenomenon (Hirst and Thompson,
1996; Schumpeter, [1942]1976; Wallerstein, 2000; Weiss, 1998). Processes of
globalization operated in full force from the late 19th century to the First
World War, a period that witnessed a dramatic increase in the volume of
foreign trade, the rise of international currency markets, and mass movements
of immigrant labor between continents. Even more importantly, we observe
that shortly thereafter, these processes were reversed, blocked, or at least
slowed by the growth of protectionism, restrictions on immigration, and state
intervention (Polanyi, [1944]1957). There is no reason to think that this could
not happen again; indeed, there are some indications that it is already occurring. Powerful antiglobal movements are countering the current round of
globalization. For example, the last decade has witnessed the creation of
more new nation states than in any single previous decade (Mann, 1997). In
addition, there has been an increase in national conflicts, and arguably, a
strengthening of national consciousness everywhere. Strong regional trends
also work against unfettered global capitalism. With respect to commodities
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trading, for example, there is evidence that what we are witnessing is not
globalization at all, but rather the formation of regional blocks (NAFTA, EU,
Southeast Asia), between which there is only minimal trade (Fligstein, 2000;
Hirst and Thompson, 1996; Weiss, 1998).
To give the globalization thesis its due, it is probably most accurate
when applied to international currency markets and the movement of financial capital. These have become truly global and, more importantly, instantaneous, i.e. shrinking the timespace horizon of economic action (Giddens,
1998; Harvey, 1989: 16072, 284307). But even here, we do not see evidence
that convergence is propelled by the impersonal economic logic of capitalism
per se. Rather, the recent round of convergence was orchestrated by international economic agencies in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis. And,
while global financial markets brought formidable pressure to bear on the
Southeast Asian states, the direction of this pressure towards the greater
homogeneity of financial institutions was shaped by concrete actors, by
theories of the essence of the crisis, and by the rhetoric of transparency
deployed by the Fed and the IMF to delegitimate these countries existing
policies (Stiglitz, 1999). In this context, it is impossible to verify the globalization-as-convergence thesis empirically, since the theory itself has played a
central role in defining the situation it purports to explain, shaping the very
outcomes it predicts.
In short, although we claim no special expertise on the points reviewed
above, we note that they cast doubt on the thesis of globalization-asconvergence. Moreover, where we do profess some detailed knowledge, that
is, in our analysis of the transitions from socialism to capitalism in post-1989
Eastern and Central Europe, we find that the evidence weighs quite strongly
against the unitary view of global capitalism.
Eastern Europe: the historical laboratory
In a very real sense, the countries of Eastern and Central Europe served
as the laboratory of global capitalism in the 1990s. Western neoclassical economists were given free rein to impose their capitalist blueprint, and they did
so with alacrity. Far from producing a single, homogenous result, however,
the laboratory has produced capitalist systems that vary widely. For example,
former socialist societies in Eastern and Central Europe vary in the extent to
which they receive foreign investment and engage in foreign trade, thus they
vary precisely in the degree to which they can be considered global. Instead
of homogenization and convergence, then, we observe that the transition to
capitalism in the former socialist world is marked by divergence.11
In our book, we try to explain this diversity, arguing that the pivotal
causal mechanism that distinguished transitions in different countries was
intraclass conflict within the late communist dominant class. The outcomes
of these intraclass conflicts were decisive for the subsequent course of transition and capitalist development in different Eastern and Central European
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countries, since they explain in each case who the agents were who led the
transition, and what kind of capitalism they tried to create.
In Russia, and also to a large extent in Rumania, Bulgaria, Serbia,
Ukraine, and Belarus, the victorious fraction of the late communist dominant
class was composed of party bureaucrats. During the transition to capitalism,
these actors converted their political offices into private property. They were
less interested and, arguably, less capable of building capitalist institutions
such as free markets in labor and capital. So, in these countries we find capitalists without capitalism: former communist officials amassed private
fortunes in the course of the transition but now operate in the context of
weak or non-functioning market institutions. The most spectacular case is
Russia where one finds a strong propertied bourgeoisie operating in a context
marked by the failure of monetary consolidation, the replacement of market
by barter, and the enserfment of workers (Bonnell, 1999; Burawoy and
Krotov, 1992; Woodruff, 1999). The resulting situation is what Burawoy
(1996) calls involution, i.e. a form of adaptation to the imposition of capitalism from above, in which precapitalist actors and institutions use barter,
household production, and clientpatron relations to either insulate themselves from the logic of the market or defensively adjust to its pressure. To
use Polanyis ([1944]1957) terminology, the failure or weakness of market
institutions is corrected by institutions of reciprocity, which embed economic
relations in a movement contrary to the disembedding logic of markets and
money.
In contrast, the countries of Central Europe experienced a different transition process, and they appear to be headed in a different direction than
Eastern European involution. In Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and
to a lesser extent in Slovakia, and the Baltic states, the bureaucratic fraction
of the dominant class did not emerge victorious in the intraclass struggles of
late communism. Instead, bureaucrats were defeated by a coalition of technocrats, former dissident intellectuals, and members of the educated middle
management of socialist enterprises. By its very nature, this coalition was
incapable of engaging in mass conversions of political offices into private
property. That is, many of its members never held political office under communism, and those who did were constrained by the fact of the coalition
and, in particular, the scrutiny of a free press and democratically elected parliaments. At the same time, the ideological bonds uniting this intellectual
coalition were grounded in the idea of building market institutions as an
ethical mission as a means of purging society of the evils of communism.
Thus, transitional societies in Central Europe saw the early development of
labor and capital markets, a strong emphasis on monetary consolidation and
on price liberalization. The transformation of property rights, by contrast, was
comparatively slow. Early in the transition, this created diffuse ownership
rights, giving managers wide latitude to control firms, with the state still functioning as the final support, particularly in terms of bailouts of privatized
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firms.12 Later, these countries saw the coalition of managers and technocrats
strike profitable deals with foreign business partners, who took over the
newly privatized firms and gave the managers and technocrats well-paid
managerial positions in what were now foreign-owned firms. During both of
these changes in ownership relations, however, we emphasize the absence
of a domestic bourgeoisie. This is a particularly glaring feature of the Central
European transitions, especially when they are compared to the development
of predatory capitalist classes in countries like Russia. There is an absentee
capitalist class in Central Europe, in the form of foreign ownership by multinational corporations, but its alliance is with domestic technocrats and
managers who also control the state. Thus, we argue that the Central
European transition produced capitalism without capitalists, since these
countries developed market institutions quickly but no domestic propertied
bourgeoisie. The resulting developmental trajectory is not one of involution,
but one of dependent development (Evans, 1979); most economic growth
is taking place in export-oriented foreign-owned firms with the encouragement of state actors. While domestic markets remain modest, these countries
are undergoing an export-led industrialization, typically in high technology
sectors.13
The conclusion we draw from this most privileged historical laboratory
of Central and Eastern Europe then, is that origins, trajectories, and above
all, class actors, matter a great deal in shaping the type of capitalism produced
in the transition from socialism. We conclude further that this evidence casts
doubt on the argument of a single, homogenous, global capitalism. To be
clear: we do not deny the possibility that at some point in the future these
societies may converge on the neoliberal vision of capitalism, but to engage
in such speculation is futurology, not sociology. The epistemological status
of the globalization-as-convergence argument, to our mind, is identical to that
of the marxist insistence on the existence of a socialist alternative: there is
no empirical evidence for it in the present. Indeed, all empirical evidence
points to the contrary, with Central Europe, Eastern Europe and even China
more different now than they were 20 or 50 years ago.14
Sociological responses: network analysis, embeddedness, and
the new institutionalism
This complex historical diversity of capitalist forms is precisely what is
not apprehended in the mainstream sociological response to the crisis caused
by the fall of socialism; namely, the response offered by neo-institutionalist
sociology and network analysis. This perspective contends that there is a
more concrete, and more fundamental level of social reality in which the
abstract market mechanisms theorized by neoclassical economics are
embedded; a level of reality composed of networks, conventions, imitation,
and habits, rather than the rational maximizing action of individuals or the
forces of supply and demand (see for example, Granovetter, 1985; Meyer and
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Rowan, 1977; White, 1992). As we intimated earlier, however, we consider

the response of neo-institutionalist sociology and network analysis to be the
contemporary escape route of sociological positivism and, as such, limited.
These approaches are positivist because their response to the crisis of postsocialist sociology consists in defining the sociological enterprise as the study
of certain timeless social mechanisms, such as networks and interaction. This
strategy avoids what we argue to be the main task of a critical sociology
to produce an analysis that responds to the historical specificity of our times.
Just as earlier sociological positivism drew implicit and unacknowledged vigor from the existence of the socialist alternative, we think that neoinstitutionalist sociology and network analysis are marked by an implicit and
unacknowledged concession that such an alternative no longer exists. Gone
are the grand social systems of a thinker like Parsons. Instead, neoinstitutionalist sociology and network analysis strike a retreat to the level of
the concrete, everyday, interpersonal, and habitual. Thus, instead of
contesting the meaning of rationality, they deny its significance and emphasize blind imitation (Meyer and Rowan, 1977). Instead of contesting the
notion of a single capitalist logic, they evade the issue altogether and emphasize embeddedness (Granovetter, 1985). Instead of responding to proclamations that classes are disappearing, they collapse the notion of social structure
into the methodological individualism of networks. We contend that all of
these intellectual choices involve an implicit concession to rational choice
theory and neoclassical economics: imitation is rational under the assumption of bounded rationality (Simon, 1982); networks are assets manipulated
by the maximizing individual; and embeddedness simply denotes the
brackets around the rational choice calculus, the assumption of all else being
equal . . ..
The transition to capitalism in Eastern Europe provides an empirical
laboratory to assess the utility and critical potential of these positivist
approaches, just as it does for the globalization-as-convergence thesis. So, for
example, if we apply neo-institutionalist sociology and network analysis to
a case like Russia, where there are capitalists but no fully-fledged capitalism,
we find economic integration is occurring through networks, embeddedness,
and reciprocity, i.e. precisely through those mechanisms highlighted in neoinstitutionalist and network-analytic approaches. We do not think this is a
vindication of these approaches, however. On the contrary, it reveals their
lack of critical historical relevance. Such positivist analyses fail to observe the
sociohistorical consequences of embeddedness and networks in the context
of the postsocialist transition to capitalism. Such analyses are unlikely to
observe that Russias economic system is on a path of involutionary economic
development toward political capitalism (of the type Weber identified in 19th
century Prussia) and, in this context, the political culture is likely to be
authoritarian and work against the development of liberal democratic institutions (Schlucter, 1985). Our point is that while it is possible at a certain
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level of abstraction to treat embeddedness and networks as invariant conditions of economic action, this approach is unlikely to offer historical insight.
It is unlikely to support the kind of historical comparisons between different
types of capitalism and their consequences that are the order of the day if
sociology is to continue its critical mission.
Put another way, we argue that sociological theories of embeddedness
and networks tend to take the nature of social actors as given or unproblematic. In this, these theories are like neoclassical economics. Neither
perspective closely examines the role of social actors, particularly collective
actors, in the transition from socialism to capitalism in Eastern and Central
Europe. On the one hand, neoclassical economists (and many sociologists)
think the crucial issue of the transition is institution building. They think that
if they design the correct set of institutions, preferably copied from the West,
this guarantees a smooth transition to market capitalism. To this day, neoclassical economists engage in endless justifications explaining why their
transition programs have not worked (Aslund, 1995). On the other hand, the
crucial issue for network analysts is path dependency. Here the focus is on
how the survival of institutions and network ties from the communist period
limits the development of pure market relations (Stark, 1992). In the absence
of an analysis of actors, however, path dependency remains an inert notion,
incapable of accounting for the contrast between the dynamism of the Central
European economies and the stagnation of the Eastern European ones. It is
against both of these perspectives then, that our approach to the analysis of
comparative capitalism focuses on actors. We argue that the social positions,
trajectories, worldviews, identities, and alliances of the actors who envisaged
and implemented the capitalist project in Eastern and Central Europe have
been absolutely decisive for the types of capitalism that have emerged in
these countries.
Comparative capitalisms
Our analysis of comparative capitalism in contemporary Eastern and
Central Europe also suggests that we aim our new critical lens at the history
of capitalism, rereading what we thought we knew about Western capitalism
from the historically novel angle of postsocialism. We are not arguing that
capitalism has become more diverse since the demise of socialism, but rather
that we are more capable of seeing and appreciating its diversity. Previously,
the existence of a socialist alternative obscured the importance of capitalist
diversity. So, although a wealth of scholarship existed documenting divergent and unique trajectories of capitalist development in the past, for example
in Japan or Southeast Asia (e.g. Dore, 1973), these differences have been
undertheorized. The dominance of marxist world system theories and neoliberal globalization theories has meant that these rich historical accounts were
never used to inform a sustained comparison of the divergent routes of capitalist development, nor were they theoretically integrated back into the
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concept of capitalism. Indeed, in contrast to the theoretical development in

the field of comparative democratic and authoritarian political regimes (e.g.
ODonnell and Schmitter, 1986), we would observe that the theoretical
development of the field of comparative capitalism is dismal (for an exception see Fligstein, 1996).
With the demise of socialism, however, we think the field of comparative capitalism will inform a new critical social science. Instead of being
drawn into the extortionist logic of choice that dictates that one either stands
for capitalism or for socialism, no matter what their varieties and costs, with
the fall of socialism we are released from this false polarity. Now we recognize the critical value of distinguishing types of societies and processes of
social developments, and mapping their likely consequences. In this we
follow Weber, who compared different capitalist formations around the world
and throughout history in an effort to address a pressing political choice
facing the society in which he lived. Specifically, Weber wanted to show that
political capitalism, in both its ancient form and the Prussian version that
marked German society in his day, imposed severe costs on social development, blocking industrialization and political liberalism. We tend to share the
harshness of Webers judgment with respect to the contemporary form of
political capitalism in Russia. Like Weber we think the social costs of political
capitalism are heavy. This is the sort of calculus we believe critical social
theory can and should provide, using the tools of empirical social science so
that social actors can assess the costs and benefits of different social arrangements and courses of action for themselves. We return to a discussion of the
social role of critical sociology in the final section of the article.
III. DOES THE END OF ACTUALLY EXISTING SOCIALISM

MEAN THE END OF CLASS ANALYSIS?
Another casualty of the end of history proposition has been class
analysis. We hear everywhere that classes are declining or dead, and that the
East European transition to capitalism proves it. And it is accurate to say that
the demise of socialism poses a challenge not only to marxism but also to
sociologys rich tradition of class analysis. The main reason is that the postcommunist transition is the first time in history that capitalism has developed
in a society that had formerly abolished private property, and which did not
have even an embryonic class of private proprietors. This is the central puzzle
of our book and why we entitled it Making Capitalism Without Capitalists.
This label best describes the Central European case, but it also identifies the
universal circumstance in which the initial stages of the transition from socialism to capitalism occurred following 1989. Previous theories of the transition
to capitalism provide little insight into this unique circumstance because they
invariably assume that a propertied class always exists before there is a
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capitalist system. For example, the debate on the transition from feudalism
to capitalism revolved around whether this agent was an urban commercial
bourgeoisie or an entrepreneurial landed nobility (Ashton and Philips, 1985;
Dobb, 1946; Holton, 1985; Sweezy, 1942). Such an agent was everywhere
absent at the outset of the postcommunist transition, and indeed, until much
later in Central Europe. In the postcommunist context then, class analysis
might seem to be irrelevant to the emergence of capitalism. Into this analytical lacuna the end of history argument rushes once again. It proclaims
the end of classes, positing the main question of the transition to be: how
do we design the correct capitalist institutions to foster entrepreneurship and
civil society? Instead of this, we propose the empirical question: who are the
agents and forces that shape the transition?
We contend that the question of agents is crucial; indeed, the central
claim of our book is that the transition to capitalism in Central Europe was
a class project of the intelligentsia.15 While some intellectuals and technocrats
have presented their role in the transition to capitalism as that of a proxy for
a propertied bourgeoisie which had not yet emerged, we argue that these
intellectuals are far better characterized as a cultural bourgeoisie, or Bildungsbrgertum (Kocka, 1993). By this, we mean that these fractions of the
intelligentsia were class agents defined by the structural characteristic of possessing cultural capital rather than economic capital, and by the historical
project of building a bourgeois civilization, i.e. of building capitalist market
institutions, liberal democracy, the rule of law, and civil society.
This concept of a cultural bourgeoisie requires us to break with traditional class analysis in two ways. First, intellectuals have typically been
analyzed as a new class when they exhibit anticapitalist or postcapitalist
characteristics. The concept of the new class has been applied either to the
role of intellectuals in socialist systems (Djilas, 1957; Konrd and Szlnyi,
1979; Machajski, 1937) or to situations where they emerged as a subversive
force within capitalism (Bell, 1973; Burnham, 1941; Gouldner, 1979). In cases
where intellectuals do not stand in opposition to the capitalist project, or
where they advocate capitalism, this is taken as evidence that intellectuals do
not constitute a class, since they do not act in their own interests (e.g. Brint,
1985). In a second sociological tradition, classes are defined as collective
actors whose interests are rooted in the economic system; their positions are
defined either in terms of property relations or market position. In this
perspective, cultural markers of distinction play a secondary role, at best, in
class structuration (Giddens, 1973: 99117). The notion of a cultural bourgeoisie breaks with both these traditions of class analysis and points toward
a reformulation. First, we argue that thinking about cultural capital as a basis
of class position implies a more general concept of classness which has
application far beyond the analysis of the transition in Eastern and Central
Europe. Second, we suggest that thinking about intellectuals as a capitalist
agent means paying attention to the specific power that intellectuals wield,
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namely discourse, and on this basis, rethinking the role of intellectuals in

social change more generally.
Classness
We trace the idea of classness to Weber (again!), taking as our point
of departure his distinction between class and rank as alternative concepts
describing social structure. Rank refers to a society composed of estates,
understood as hierarchies in which personal ties of loyalty and obedience
connect members, and in which ones station in life is relatively fixed by law
and tradition. Class society, in contrast, is composed of classes, defined as
categories of actors who do not form a community (in Webers sense of the
term), and whose members are not bound to each other by personal ties or
fixed in place by law and tradition. Rather, in class societies, actors display
probabilities to act on the basis of shared market position. This analytical distinction can be described as a continuum. To the extent that very clear and
binding rules of inclusion and exclusion define individual membership in a
community, one is closer to the rank pole of the continuum. To the extent
that such rules do not exist but individuals still act in a concerted manner on
the basis of shared interests, one is closer to the class pole of the continuum.
In specific empirical circumstances, social actors may be characterized by
their different positions along the continuum; that is, by their different
degrees of classness or rankness.
Building on this idea, we suggest that Webers analytical distinction
between rank and class is usefully elaborated by Bourdieus theory of the
different types of capital (Bourdieu, [1983]1986; Eyal et al., 1998: 6670).
Thus, rank society can be understood as a stratification order where social
capital is dominant. Estates, after all, are hierarchical networks composed of
patronclient relations, in which individuals operate according to ascribed
social characteristics. Class society, in contrast, defines a stratification order
in which economic capital is dominant, and money rather than nobility
acquires symbolic power and sets the rate of conversion for all other types
of capital.
What of cultural capital? Our argument is that cultural capital occupies
a middle position on the rankclass continuum. On the one hand, a stratification order where cultural capital is dominant typically gives rise to groupings that resemble estates. Such groups usually practice professional closure
through some form of credentialing, and they cultivate elaborate internal hierarchies. From the moment they are achieved, credentials function ascriptively
to entitle their bearers to goods and privileges (Collins, 1979). Of course, the
credential must first be achieved in competition and legitimated by the
ideology of meritocracy, and with respect to this ideology what Gouldner
called the Culture of Critical Discourse (CCD) intellectuals resemble a class.
That is, they are a collective actor brought together not by concrete ties, but
by abstract relations and probable shared interests. We contend, therefore,
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that because the intelligentsia is a category defined by the possession of

cultural capital, it should be seen as a class actor, albeit a class actor characterized by a relatively low degree of classness.
It is precisely this social location between rank and class that describes
the contradictory, hybrid nature of the intelligentsia, and that makes it a
collective actor with great transformative potential. This can be seen clearly
in late communist societies where the intelligentsia was probably the only
actor capable of, or interested in, effecting a transition from socialism to capitalism; that is, a transition from a rank order where possessing social capital
in the form of party membership and party network ties conferred the most
advantage, to a class society (albeit with a low degree of classness) in which
cultural capital is dominant, and economic capital is ascendant.
Intellectuals in the capitalist transition
How have Central European intellectuals become capitalist agents, and
in what sense is capitalism an intellectual class project? This is a counterintuitive puzzle, particularly when we recall that many of Central Europes
liberal intellectuals were just as enthusiastic about socialism earlier in their
careers as they are about capitalism now. Many of them were once committed to the goal of reforming socialism, as new left intellectuals, as technocrats interested in efficiency and scientific planning, or as reformers
working inside the communist party. Thus, the temptation might be to see
the current zeal for capitalism among Central European intellectuals as a case
of bad faith; one might argue they are no more than ideologues-for-hire providing services to capitalism in exchange for economic security. We think this
temptation should be resisted for three reasons. First, as we argue in our
book, there was no dominant capitalist class to command the services of the
intellectuals during the postcommunist transformation. Moreover, Central
European intellectuals were probably the strongest they had ever been,
holding more official positions and wielding more social power than ever
before. Second, there is no intrinsic reason why capitalism would require the
sort of ethical justification these Central European intellectuals articulated.
Capitalism is a self-legitimating system. It works without requiring that
workers or entrepreneurs believe in its superior moral nature. Therefore, the
moral zeal and faith in the superiority of capitalism that marked the postcommunist transition must be traced to the biographies and worldviews of
Central European intellectuals themselves. And this is our third point: an
analysis of these biographies and worldviews reveals not just a few scattered
intellectuals in high positions who embrace capitalism, but shows instead that
capitalism is a class project of the intelligentsia, i.e. a collective action to build
a new social order.
Central European intellectuals are no strangers to transformative social
projects. Three decades ago, the socialist intelligentsia undertook a collective
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project to reform and humanize socialism. They sought to become the new
dominant class of a rationalized socialism, exercising power as teleological
redistributors (Konrd and Szlnyi, 1979). Slowly, they turned away from
this project as they came to realize that the bureaucratic character of socialism made such rationalization impossible. It is only in the long path out of
this failed class project, after a decades-long process of negotiation, conflict,
and struggle, that the Central European intelligentsia has come to embrace
the project of building civil society and capitalism. Analyzing this process,
we argue that the current capitalist project of the intelligentsia has been
adopted for the same reasons that the socialist one was. That is, the project
of building capitalism was undertaken, not on behalf of other classes, but
precisely because the Central European intelligentsia was searching for a new
social role and a new way of valorizing cultural capital (Eyal et al., 1998:
4685, 13542).
To elaborate this proposition fully, we argue, we need to think about
the class power of intellectuals in a new way. Previous class analysis of intellectuals has tended to think of the valorization of cultural capital narrowly,
associating it with social closure based in the monopoly of relatively esoteric
discourse. This understanding of intellectual power and intellectual class
capacities indicated a permanent conflict between the quest for professional
autonomy, on the one hand, and the commodification of professional
services in market capitalism, on the other (Gouldner, 1979: 1827). Consequently, socialism seemed much more conducive to intellectual class formation, because the mechanism of economic exploitation, redistribution, also
created a position that intellectuals could occupy as central planners with a
monopoly over esoteric, teleological discourse (Djilas, 1957; Konrd and
Szlnyi, 1979). In both cases, however, we think the analysis of the valorization of cultural capital was limited. Cultural capital is, after all, discourse.
For discourse to operate as capital, i.e. to be converted and accumulated,
monopoly limiting access to non-certified members is only one condition.
The other condition is a certain degree of generosity. That is, for discourse
to work as capital it must be able to persuade the largest number of speakers
to adopt its rules, to speak its language, to employ the perspective it offers,
and to pose problems and justify assertions in the way it does (Foucault,
1982; Gouldner, 1979; Rose, 1992). From this perspective, we argue that the
Central European intelligentsia became a cultural bourgeoisie and undertook the project of making capitalism and civil society, because they discovered in such a project the possibility of articulating a new and powerfully
rational discourse. In the process of transition, the Central European intelligentsia imposed new standards of rationality, and persuaded all other actors
to speak the new language that they had invented. It is precisely in this way,
that the intelligentsia as a class actor took center-stage in the Central
European transition to capitalism (Eyal, 2000).
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Marxist and weberian theories of social change

This understanding of discourse as the basis of intellectual class power
has implications for classical marxist and weberian theories of social change.
Marxist theory explains social change in terms of struggles between antagonistic classes over economic interests, while weberian theory is notoriously
vague, offering the nebulous notion of charisma as the revolutionary force
in history. In our book, we propose a synthesis and revision of these theories:
social change is indeed made by classes in conflict, as Marx argues, but the
carrier of social change is usually an intellectual class actor; specifically, intellectuals broach change using cultural capital, which functions in the same
way that Weber argues charisma does.
How is cultural capital like charisma? First, because cultural capital
occupies a middle position between rank and class, groups defined by the
possession of cultural capital may develop collective interests in either a
stratification order based on rank or one based on class. Put another way,
intellectuals in any given stratification system always have an interest in the
contrary principle of stratification. So, for example, intellectual critiques of
socialist rank order were often based on appeals to merit and talent, while
intellectual critiques in class societies are often based in ideologies of social
closure, such as professional autonomy or academic freedom. Note, however,
that in both kinds of stratification order, where intellectuals function as a
collective actor, they are marked by a low degree of classness (or rankness).
This suggests an explanation of the fundamental yet ephemeral nature of
intellectual class power in revolutionary transformation; because the possessors of cultural capital constitute a weakly formed collective actor, betterformed actors always eventually take their place.16
Second, the transformative, charismatic capacity of cultural capital is
fundamental to its nature as discourse. Inventing a new kind of discourse
tends to have revolutionary consequences because it imposes a new mode
of speaking and of perceiving the world; it has the power of world-making
(Bourdieu, 1987a; Goodman, 1978) and world-destroying. At the same time
that discourse imposes a certain vision of the world as true, it also classifies,
names, and invokes new social actors, classes among them. In this way, discourse divides the world into the true and the false, the harbingers of the
future and the relics of the past. Those who speak in the old ways suddenly
find themselves impugned as immoral and irrational. It is not simply that they
articulate a different opinion; they are incompetent in the most profound
sense of the term since they do not speak the new discourse they do not
understand the real truth.17 From this perspective, it becomes clear how
cultural capital as discourse can produce radical change, similar to the burst
of charisma that Weber described. It is even possible to account for Webers
ambiguous insistence on the importance of the charismatic individual in
social change. Discourse, although it is a collective product, tends to consecrate certain spokespersons, virtuosi who embody its charismatic qualities.
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Thus, as Weber perceived, a charismatic individual very often triggers the

making of intellectual classes and the formulation of transformative discourse;
it is difficult to deny the importance of a Mao Tze Tung.
However, just as the role of charisma is temporary as change is quickly
institutionalized and the revolution betrays its sons so too, the rule of
cultural capital is ephemeral. The power of cultural capital is the power of
discourse, and discourse, as Foucault explains, cannot be possessed. The
power of truth is such that the truthful are also subject to it, and sooner or
later, new truths, new versions, and new reflexive twists come to challenge
the one Truth. The more it is proclaimed, repeated, and consecrated, the less
convincing it is to those conversant with the rules of the Culture of Critical
Discourse. Thus in the transition in Central Europe, as soon as intellectuals
fulfill their historic mission and the new social structure is in place, the discursive power of the intellectuals who led the transition becomes less important. Intellectuals are slowly relegated back to their positions as members of
a comparatively privileged estate. And as soon as this happens, space is
opened up where intellectuals begin to disagree with each other again. They
attach themselves to a variety of different classes as organic intellectuals, and
a plurality of discourses emerges once again. The classness of intellectuals
under these conditions is even lower than it was during the period of transition, and correspondingly their capacity for ethical nuance is greatly
enhanced. It is also at this point that the ironic critique that we recommend
becomes possible. All this describes the universal nature of the intellectual
class, whose rule is based in the enormous but temporary power of cultural
capital, and which is therefore bound to abolish itself in the same moment
that it becomes dominant.
This reinterpretation and synthesis of theories of social change highlights Bourdieus point that classes are first and foremost classes on paper.
One should not overemphasize structural conditions in the making of classes;
the discursive power of intellectuals, what Bourdieu calls symbolic power,
is no less important (Bourdieu, 1991). In the transition from socialist rank
order to capitalist class society we see this: we find intellectuals playing a
crucial role as they name, classify, and make new classes and class positions.
While a marxist might argue that intellectuals only seem to make classes when
in fact they are ideologues who speak for and about classes already formed
in the womb of the previous society, we find this unconvincing. Such an
analysis may well characterize the role of intellectuals in the French or other
classical bourgeois revolutions, but it is manifestly inaccurate for the 1989
revolutions, or indeed for the Bolshevik revolution. No capitalist class
preceded the collective action of intellectuals in the post-1989 Central
European transitions to capitalism. On the contrary, a capitalist class was
invented and called forth by these very intellectuals. We are not being postmodern. We are not arguing that classes simply come into being if you name
them, without the necessary structural conditions, but strictly speaking such
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conditions need not include the existence of classes, even in their embryonic
form. Socialist economic systems were in deep structural crisis by the 1980s,
and this crisis was the material foundation on which the new critical discourse of the intellectuals was constructed. However, it would be naive and
misleading to assume that the nomenklatura was already an embryonic
propertied bourgeoisie, and that intellectuals were unwittingly articulating its
future interests. It actually required immense imagination to invent the idea
of a new bourgeoisie in the context of late communist society. Indeed, if
anyone had suggested in 1980 that a transition from socialism to capitalism
would occur within 10 years in Eastern Europe, they would have been
laughed out of court, even by Western anticommunists and certainly by the
finest minds in social science. So, to be very clear: to emphasize the role of
discursive power in making classes does not mean that classes are unimportant, nor is it a sophisticated backhanded way of saying that classes are
disappearing. Instead, we are proposing a renewal of class analysis that
identifies discourse as a central moment in the process of making classes.
Another case: class analysis in 20th-century capitalism
Our rethinking of the class concept and the role of intellectuals in social
change also suggests a historical reanalysis of the nature of intellectual class
action in western capitalism. Using our analytical framework, we can expand
our analysis of intellectual class action not only as it manifests in bursts of
anticapitalist agitation, but also in intellectual efforts to reform and rationalize capitalism.
A case in point is the rise of managerialism in the United States in the
early 20th century. Pace Burnham (1941), we think the significance of this
case is not that managers were poised to take power away from capitalists
and establish their own class domination, but rather, that managers aimed to
rationalize capitalism by persuading all other class actors to speak the new
managerialist discourse (Shenhav, 1999). From this perspective, Berle and
Means (1931) argument and the 60-year debate about ownership and control
(Zeitlin, 1974) is beside the point. Managers power did not rest solely on
their ability to limit discourse, certainly not initially, and hence the fact of
control was not necessarily the most significant dimension of managerial
power. Rather, the managerial revolution was about propagating and generalizing the discourse of managerialism; it was about persuading owners,
trade unionists, and everyone else to speak the discourse of managerialism.
In this way, managerialism altered the balance of class forces because it
inserted managers between capital and labor, reducing the classness of both.
The new center of negotiations between owners and workers became
productivity, and as wage gains became linked to productivity increases
(Block and Burns, 1986), managers emerged as professionals of productivity
measuring it, fostering it, organizing in order to attain it, motivating workers
to attain it, and so forth. In the same process, the class struggle was
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decomposed into two component struggles: a struggle between owners and

managers over issues of rational management and efficiency, on the one
hand, and a struggle between managers and workers over discipline, motivation, and knowledge, on the other. This is the way managers sought to
rationalize capitalism, organizing the hegemony of capital in face of opposition by capitalists themselves.
It does not follow then, that simply because managers failed to wrest
class power away from capitalists, managerialism is a failed new class project
(Martin and Szlnyi, 1988). We argue precisely the opposite. Just as the
perspective of neoclassical sociology allows us to see the intellectual class as
co-founder of capitalism, civil society, and modernity in contemporary
Central Europe, so the managerialist movement in the early 20th-century
United States can be seen as a successful class project because it effectively
imposed its new discourse and altered the balance of class forces by transforming the classness of contending classes. In both cases, the absence of
the socialist alternative permits us to think more broadly about the class
power of intellectuals and their role in social change. The neoclassical
perspective allows us to see that the collective action of intellectuals does
not always necessarily point towards the transcendence of capitalism, but
also towards its transformation and rationalization into a diversity of forms
and destinations.
IV. IS CRITICAL SOCIAL SCIENCE POSSIBLE IN THE ABSENCE
OF A SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE?
Does it follow from our analysis that critical social science is impossible? Can we do without the socialist vantage point of classical theory, or do
we need to fabricate real socialist utopias to ground a new critical sociology?
Our answer is that the disappearance of a socialist alternative is actually a
great opportunity for critical social science. It means the disappearance of
any obligation or temptation for sociologists (and critical intellectuals in
general) to play the role of high priests in some emerging or actual social
order. Indeed, we now have the opportunity to turn the postsocialist
demotion of intellectual claims and aspirations into an intellectual strength
to embrace the critical power of irony.
This new form of critical imagination is not the whim of a few disgruntled intellectuals. It is an historically determined objective opportunity
afforded by the same collective experiences we analyzed above; collective
experiences which have transformed many formerly critical intellectuals into
ideologues of capitalism, and many others into utopian socialists. We propose
that this same experience of disillusionment with actually existing socialism
can also inspire a new form of critical reflection. This is particularly important at the current moment in which the strong polarities of the embattled,
transformative discourse of the transition are dissipating and giving way to a
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plurality of more nuanced viewpoints. Now we should suspend the attitude

of a convert and ask ourselves: If we believed in (democratic, self-managing,
humane) socialism for so long but now think we were fundamentally wrong,
is it possible we could be wrong again? Is the real lesson of the past that we
should not take our intellectual infatuations or ourselves too seriously?
In 1961, after just enough time had passed so the polarities of communisms transformative discourse were weakening, Leszek Kolakowski
wrote an essay that asked what the role of intellectuals should be in mature
communist society. We think his essay is timely again as we inquire into the
possibilities for critical social science in the shadow of the fall of socialism.
Kolakowski distinguished three different roles that intellectuals could
play: priest, jester, and philosopher king. The priest is usually critical, since he
or she specializes in developing a utopian or transcendent vision of a more
desirable, more rational, and morally superior society, which is then contrasted with existing society.18 The priests is not the only possible critical
perspective, however. The jester produces ironic critique, but it differs from
priestly ire in that it is oriented empirically rather than morally, and thus it
offers immanent rather than transcendent critique.19 As immanent critique,
the jesters analysis never contrasts the present with a vision of a more rational
or more just society. Rather, the jester exposes the arbitrariness of the present,
emphasizing that what appears rational, inevitable, just, and pure is accidental, temporary, absurd, and hybrid (Jacobs and Smith, 1997). Different
from both priest and jester, the philosopher king typifies the intellectual as a
ruler who tries to impose on earth the perfect regime envisioned in thought.
Like the priest then, the philosopher king offers transcendence, but unlike
the priest the philosopher king does not perform a critical role. The jester
presents an even sharper contrast with the philosopher king: not only is the
jester critical but also empirical, and therefore non-transcendent.
A fourth intellectual role that can be added to Kolakowskis typology
is that of an engineer, or better, Webers idea of a magician (Weber,
[1922]1964; Bourdieu, 1987b). We think this is how most social scientists in
the United States see themselves. The magician/engineer is aligned with the
jester, in the sense that the technical attitude is also empirical, and is thus
opposed to the transcendental stance of the philosopher king and the priest.
But the magician/engineer also differs from the jester in several respects. As
Weber notes, the magician is strongly constrained by the demands of clients
to fulfill specific requests. This is also the situation confronting the engineer.
The jester, in contrast, is not answerable to the specific demands of particular clients, but to a public. The jesters task is to surprise the public, to formulate ideas they have not imagined, or to state out loud what they are not
willing to admit. The only way for the magician or engineer to protect themselves from the demand constraints of clients is through the complexity and
esoteric nature of their expertise, their complicated models and technology.
Thus magicians/engineers must take themselves and their models very
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seriously, and this works against their capacity for self-irony. We think this
is a fair description of most positivist social science, which although it is the
ally of critical neoclassical sociology, has difficulty subjecting its own fundamental assumptions to scrutiny or ironic self-reflection.
Figure 1 is an attempt to systematically summarize our distinctions
between different kinds of intellectual roles. Beginning with the typology of
roles in Webers The Sociology of Religion ([1922]1964), we follow Bourdieus
(1987b) analysis of the ideal types of priest, philosopher king, magician, and
jester to characterize the contemporary field of social science inquiry. This
field of cultural production is described by the intersection of two relations.
The first relation that defines the field as we have represented it is the
contradiction between critical and affirmative positions. This is the tension
between those who are proximate to temporal power on the one hand, and
by this we mean political power that is extra-intellectual; and those who lay
claim to pastoral power, on the other hand, which is specifically understood
to be intellectual power arising from the command of cultural capital, or as
Gouldner might have it, power arising from a superior grasp of and commitment to the Culture of Critical Discourse. The philosopher king and the
magician always dabble in temporal power either as dictators, technicians,
or partisan advisors. In contrast, the priest and the jester do not aspire to
temporal power but articulate a critique of the status quo, which attempts to
influence others by sheer intellectual force of argument.
The second relation that structures the field of sociocultural inquiry is
Figure 1. The field of social scientific inquiry in the shadow of the fall of socialism. The prophet does not appear in this figure. Prophecy describes the charisma
of cultural capital in periods of social change during which time the social relations
in the field of intellectual production are characteristically held in abeyance.
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the contradictory interests of suppliers and consumers of cultural goods. By

cultural goods, we mean products of intellectual practice such as knowledge,
salvation, professional services, technical expertise, or art. In general, suppliers of such goods are interested in independence from demand. Suppliers
want to shape consumer tastes but they do not want to cater to the demands
of specific clients. This is essentially what the priest and philosopher king
do, they tell people what they should aspire to or they try to convert them
to their vision of otherworldly salvation or pure aesthetic ideals. In contrast,
consumers of cultural goods are interested in getting their needs and wishes
satisfied. Consumers would like their tastes to shape intellectual production.
This describes the context in which magicians (engineers) and jesters work:
they cater to popular demand or specific clients by providing this-worldly
salvation or entertainment. In contrast to priests and philosopher kings then,
jesters and magicians are more dependent on client demands.
Once we have defined this field of intellectual production, we can use
it to array the classification of various research agendas and academic projects
that are at play in the analysis of the transition to capitalism in Central and
Eastern Europe, and in the contemporary field of sociohistorical inquiry more
generally. We borrow heavily here from Michael Burawoys new classification
of theoretical perspectives, amending it somewhat in light of our disagreements with him.20 We identify four or five paradigms, acknowledging freely
that the edges are blurry, which is why we have drawn them as fuzzy,
extended, intersecting ellipses. Indeed, the term paradigm is not really
appropriate since each of these groupings refers simultaneously to research
programs, concrete groups of intellectuals, and intellectual projects, and the
historical trajectories of these programs, intellectuals, and projects, and the
interactions of all of these with each other over time. Nonetheless, there is
an understanding that these groupings constitute relatively well understood
and continuous lines of inquiry, groups of intellectual biographies, and intellectual projects over time.
Beginning with postsocialist theory, we would observe that it is critical
and utopian since it remains distant from political power and attempts to
shape consumers tastes. The trajectory it has charted in the last century is
an upward one from a position closest to the philosopher king to a more
priestly role. In its enduring critique of capitalism as well as in its struggles
against stalinism and other abuses of actually existing socialism, postsocialist theory remains resolutely opposed to any affirmation of the status quo. At
the same time, however, postsocialist theory may be becoming more dependent on consumers tastes and therefore more empirical in its methods. It has
neglected consumers to its own cost in the past, and it now needs to strike
alliances with postcolonial and postmodern theories and practitioners who
occupy a great deal of the critical space in the field of social scientific inquiry.
In contrast to postsocialism, we characterize neoliberalism as the contemporary expression of the philosopher king. Thus neoliberal dissidents in
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Eastern Europe and neoconservative intellectuals in the United States

commonly profess to know what is moral, while neoclassical economists and
monetarists assert what is true and efficient. As social scientists, many of these
intellectuals are not interested in dictating to the world, and this is particularly true as we move out of economics and into the rational choice
movement in sociology. While these intellectuals remain relentlessly noncritical, they adopt methodological individualism not because it helps them
impose their vision on the world but because it produces empirical results.
In this, they display their willingness to cater to consumers tastes and distinguish themselves from their more theoretically inclined philosopher kinglike colleagues in neoclassical economics.
Turning next to neoclassical sociology, where we locate ourselves, we
note that there is wide variation in the orientation to the status quo and therefore a broad range of intellectuals included in this grouping. While some neoclassical analysts are jesters and very critical of the status quo, and here we
think of a writer like Foucault, other neoclassical analysts are more affirmative, more willing to connect with temporal power and play the role of technicians. What unites these positions, however, is the rejection of any
intellectual claim to represent others or to tell them what to do. Neoclassical
sociology claims to provide tools for analysis that are useful for social actors,
either because they dispel mystifications or because they allow social actors
to measure, calculate, and explain their lives and social worlds.
Similar to critical neoclassical sociology, postmodernism at its best
displays a commitment to immanent critique, without claiming to represent
social actors or consumers. The danger of postmodern critique, however, is
a collapse into cynicism. We understand the distinction between irony and
cynicism to be that irony is dialogic, while cynicism is monologic. Cynicism
does not think that there is anybody to talk to but irony wishes to dislodge
the interlocutors from their received truths in order to converse further. That
is why postmodernism is located between independence from and dependence upon consumers. On the one hand, postmodernism is not interested
in shaping consumer taste, but on the other hand, it is also not willing to
listen or cater to clients; this is particularly true of the more obscure side of
cultural studies. Nonetheless, postmodernism is generally critical, although
some of its everything goes rhetoric is likely to descend into an affirmation
of the status quo. Hence we have represented postmodernism diagonally in
the social scientific field.
To these four paradigms taken from Burawoys recent classification,
we add the fifth grouping of economic sociology. In many respects, we think
this is a more important paradigm in the space of inquiry engaged by the fall
of socialism than is postmodernism. (Indeed, we include postmodernism
with some misgivings, since in many respects in this particular representation
postmodernism is the critical side of economic sociology. After all, both
share the attempt to avoid the antinomies of modernity and to find a third
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way between market and plan, rationality and irrationality, etc.) We also
include arrows on Figure 1 to convey a sense of dynamism, as individuals
and concepts travel on certain trajectories. For example, the neoconservatives are shown as having descended from critical to affirmative space in the
field as they traveled the road from Trotskyism to neoliberalism over the
course of the 20th century. Arrows also denote certain transactions across
boundaries; so for example, some of the concepts of economic sociology and
rational choice theory are paired concepts, each mirroring the other and
thus reinforcing both.
Reviewing the current possibilities in the field of sociocultural inquiry
represented in Figure 1, we argue that in the shadow of the end of socialism neoclassical sociology and the ironic method offer the most compelling
and fruitful vantage point for a critical social science. Importantly, we feel
comfortable with irony because it disengages us from a universalistic moral
stance. While the priest may argue that we are morally irresponsible, we
respond that the position of the jester is more rigorous than that of priest,
since the jester follows a situated ethics of responsibility as distinct from the
priests overarching ethics of conviction (Weber, [1906]1958: 143). What the
priest labels irresponsible is precisely what we understand to be the ironic
capacity to appreciate ones mistakes. The jesters best jest is always aimed
at him- or herself. The jester never takes him- or herself too seriously, so his
or her critical position is therefore more flexible and open to nuance than
the priests can ever be. However noble the priests intentions, he or she
cannot escape the burden of persuading people that the ethical superiority
of the utopian future is worth certain sacrifices. In contrast, the promise of
neoclassical sociology as ironic critique is simply that the critical theorist will
not turn his or her gaze away from the sacrifices being made at each step of
the way. He or she will not push the flock ahead to the Promised Land, but
will take pains to describe the social costs of each step and who will bear
them. This means that the critical social scientist must attend to the openness
of the present, to the multiple trajectories it contains as in the framework
of multiple capitalisms.
To be clear: the task of the critical theorist is to describe and appraise
the possible alternative trajectories of social development empirically; to
show that what exists is not inevitable; that alternative forms of conduct are
open to social actors; to elucidate the costs and consequences of these forms
of conduct; and to do all this without positing which of them is correct or
desirable. A critical scientific social theory leaves it to social actors themselves
to weigh whether or not they are willing to pay the costs of particular courses
of action. Put another way, ironic critique aims to expose the arbitrariness of
the present, uncovering its hybrid and accidental origins (Foucault, 1977)
without trying to dictate to social actors what to do. The purpose of such
irony is to enrich public dialogue by casting doubt on what was taken for
granted before the dialogue began; this is precisely the role of the jester. As
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Habermas (1972) contends, the human interest represented by social science

is critical communication a project of exchange and dialogue between
social scientists and social actors that is meant to increase rationality, in part,
by increasing the reflexive capacities of social actors. Irony serves the social
scientist well in such an endeavor, since it requires him or her to engage in
constant autocritique, not to take him- or herself too seriously, and to remain
open to dialogic possibilities.
Gil Eyal is Associate Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. He is the

author of The Origins of Postcommunist Elites: From the Prague Spring to the Breakup
of Czechoslovakia (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 2003).
Ivan Szlnyi is William Graham Sumner Professor of Sociology and Professor
of Politcal Science at Yale. He is Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
and Ordinary Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He is author or coauthor of Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power (Harcourt and Brace, 1979), Urban
Inequalities under State Socialism (Oxford, 1983), Socialist Entrepreneurs (Polity Press
1988), Making Capitalism without Capitalists (Verso, 1998) and Theories of the New
Class A Critical Appraisal (Minnesota, forthcoming).
Eleanor Townsley is a comparative-historical sociologist whose interests
include US intellectuals, the comparative study of the new class, and the sociology
of gender. She is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Mount Holyoke College.
Notes
1. Gouldner argued that the power of the new class derived from its monopoly
on specialized professional knowledges, as well as from its control over the
means of cultural legitimation, what he called the culture of critical discourse
(CCD). This he defined as an historically evolved set of rules, a grammar of
discourse, which (1) is concerned to justify its assertions, but (2) whose mode
of justification does not proceed by invoking authorities, and (3) prefers to elicit
the voluntary consent of those addressed solely on the basis of arguments
adduced [italics in original] (1979: 28). Gouldner argued that the CCD was the
basis of intellectual class identity and that it was often arraigned against
traditional authority and social institutions. In the West, where the CCD was
objectified as cultural capital in the form of credentials and was justified by
the highly successful ideology of professionalism, the New Class carried increasing weight in social affairs. New Class personnel were crucial components in
the functioning of modern states, economies, and universities in which
knowledge had become indispensable and the power of the old bourgeoisie
was waning. Hence, New Class members were in a position to press their claims
to disrupt, subvert, and cause trouble for the old moneyed class with little
fear of retribution (Gouldner, 1979: 1920).
2. Neoclassical economics is serious and anti-ironic. There is only one truth and
there is only one system. There is one capitalist logic and one set of rules for
acting in a rational economic manner. Those who do not follow the rules are
irrational. Ironically precisely in the sense of the term we use in this article
marxism converges with neoclassical economics in the common assumption
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3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
of a single global capitalist logic. The only difference between the two schools
of thought is that one thinks it a desirable development and the other, an
undesirable one. In contrast, neoclassical sociology operates with the assumption of capitalism as multiple destinations. Whether or not the capitalism that
is now emerging in Russia will converge with capitalism as we know it from
the United States or Western Europe must be explored empirically rather than
assumed by theoretical fiat.
This is where our understanding converges with postmodern analyses of irony.
See for example Hutcheon (1992, 1995) and in particular the discussion of the
differences between premodernist, modernist, and postmodernist irony.
The typical form of a joke is a question to which the listener assumes an obvious
answer. A good joke provides an unexpected answer which is as plausible as
the one the listener had in mind. We say someone lacks a sense of humor when
he or she fails to understand jokes. A person without a sense of humor is serious
and insists that his or her own beliefs cannot be made the subject of jokes; that
his or her position cannot be questioned in this manner. This is why we cannot
conceptualize irony without self-irony. If one loses humor about oneself and
ones own position then there is no irony or reflexivity.
Indeed, we acknowledge and thank Victor Nee for the term neoclassical
sociology.
We do not deny the realities of capitalist exploitation or suggest that the working
class does not exist or that it is disappearing. In contemporary Eastern Europe,
however, we do observe that the working class is demobilized, with little
capacity for collective action. Elsewhere in the world, when the working class
does act collectively, it engages in trade union struggles rather than building
revolutionary class consciousness. On this, see our response to Michael
Burawoy in the recent review symposium in the American Journal of Sociology
which included our book: Eyal et al., 2001.
We think that by now the historical record demonstrates beyond doubt that a
socialist project is impossible without the collective action of the intelligentsia,
or at least a sizable fraction thereof. There are no historical cases where the
working class has been able to carry and implement a socialist project without
the support of radical intellectuals, but there is, on the other hand, a wealth of
evidence to indicate that a radical intelligentsia is a class actor capable of
carrying and implementing a socialist alternative even where a working class
does not exist (e.g. China). Here we rely on the rich tradition of analyzing
socialism as the creation of a new class of intellectuals (Bakunin, 1966; Djilas,
1957; Gouldner, 1979; Konrd and Szlny, 1979; Machajski, 1937; Nomad,
1937, 1959).
This theoretical choice is precisely what distinguishes our position as neoclassical sociologists from Webers position as a classical sociologist. Webers
slippage from multiple rationalities and trajectories to a single capitalist destination of history was symptomatically historically constrained: first, it reflected
his sense of western superiority, and thus the condition of European hegemony
over the rest of the world; second, it was an ideological reflection of the political
choice between capitalism and socialism that he believed he faced. Weber was
no simple-minded ideologue of liberal capitalism. He is better characterized as
a liberal in despair, fully aware of the price that would have to be paid for
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9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
35
liberal capitalism (Mommsen, 1984). But faced with the choice between capitalism and socialism, he opted for the former. This was clear in his late essays
about socialism in Russia (Weber [19056, 1917]1995), but we also think this
political dilemma found its way into his description of capitalism, urging him
to depict it as more formidable and inescapable than it appeared on the basis
of his empirical analyses. Since we write at a time when the opposition between
socialism and capitalism no longer has the same urgency, we think sociology
should no longer be constrained by the extortionist logic of the choice between
them.
The conceptual status of such assemblages is not very different from what an
earlier generation of marxists termed social formations, and what the regulation school today calls modes of regulation (Harvey, 1989: 1212). It strikes
us, however, that Webers methodology offers a more flexible analytical
framework for comparison. Concepts like regimes of accumulation tend to
assume a systemic principle operating behind the backs of actors, totalizing
their various responses, because they attempt to distinguish economic types
according to the mode in which they handle the endemic crisis tendencies of
capitalism. Methodologically this means that actual cases must correspond to
types. In the weberian scheme in contrast, one compares actual cases with an
analytical typology in order to evaluate the likely consequences of conditions
in each case, asking how they affect the rationality of economic actors (Roth,
1971).
On the left side of the ideological divide, the reception of the globalization-asconvergence thesis has been more complex, and we cannot do it justice here.
Some, notably world-system theorists and international political economists,
have articulated a similar, though darker, version, in which the unified systemic
logic of global capitalism is conquering the globe and finally confirms Marxs
prediction. This version is particularly suited to utopian socialism, which gains
strength from being contrasted with the distopic view of capitalism, and has
arguably served to inspire the recent attacks on the IMF and WTO in Seattle
and elsewhere. But many other marxists have been much more suspicious of
the convergence thesis, and in fact supply us with ammunition against it. For
a brief presentation of the internal debate, see Hirst and Thompson (1996).
For explanations of the diversity of transition paths see Fish (1998) and King
(2000). Note however, we do not think the diversity of transitions to capitalism
in Eastern and Central Europe reflects a return to presocialist differences, as
has been suggested by some authors (e.g. Rothschild, 1989).
David Stark (1996) called this recombinant property, and we have analyzed it
elsewhere (Eyal et al., 1997) as managerialism. In retrospect it seems to have
been a temporary snapshot of a particular strategy of transition. On this point
see Hanley et al., 2002.
This describes the Hungarian case particularly well; no other country of
comparable size has such massive foreign ownership, which seems to be
responsible for substantial levels of economic growth. Poland and the Czech
Republic are the closest to Hungary in this respect, with Slovenia, Slovakia, and
the Baltic Republics following somewhat behind.
The cases of the Chinese and Vietnamese transitions to capitalism further
support our argument about the diversity of capitalist forms. These countries
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have approached transition in a wholly different way than Central and Eastern
Europe, and they have done so with remarkable success. Simply put, the
distinction here is between capitalism from above and capitalism from below.
In the first case, the Central and Eastern European countries embarked on a
strategy of transition that prioritized the privatization or reorganization of the
huge state sector, and this priority meant that the process was controlled by the
victorious fraction of the dominant class. In China and Vietnam, on the other
hand, the emphasis was not on transforming the state sector, but on encouraging the emergence of entrepreneurship from below in specially designated
developmental zones, which also enjoy foreign investment. Note, however,
that this highly successful strategy, which creates socialist entrepreneurs
(Szlnyi, 1988), depends on political conditions in which the communist party
still maintains the state sector and shields the emerging private sector. The other
precipitating condition is the influx of foreign capital, in particular, that from
relatively small sources in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Capitalist development in
mainland China then, seems (ironically) to follow the pattern that characterized
post-Second World War Taiwan: authoritarian government stimulating growth
in the small businesses sector in the context of a tightly controlled influx of
foreign investment. It bears little resemblance to capitalism in post-1989 Eastern
or Central Europe. And, none of the three types of capitalism correspond to
the version of neoliberal capitalism that is held out as the global norm today
as the model towards which all systems are converging.
15. We focus on Central Europe here to the exclusion of the East European and
Russian cases (i.e. of capitalists without capitalism) because the latter pose less
of a puzzle. The role played by nomenklatura members who turned themselves
into private capitalists allows us to think of them as a capitalist class in-themaking. For those familiar with discussions of the transition from feudalism to
capitalism, the analogy to tax-farming nobles and officials who utilize their
position in the old regime to become rentier capitalists will be obvious
(Staniszkis, 1991).
16. The possessors of cultural capital are truly Marxs universal class then, since
they tend to abolish themselves and their own class rule after the revolution.
They might also be understood as Webers historical switchmen, operators who
switch civilizations from one form of social structure and principle of stratification to another, but who, when the train has jumped tracks, stay behind. Their
class power never lasts. Thus Gouldner was correct when he argued that intellectuals were a flawed universal class but he was wrong about why: he thought
they were flawed because they were self-interested and would set up their own
class domination; we suggest that they are flawed precisely for the opposite
reason, because they are weakly formed as a class and cannot sustain their class
rule in the long run (Gouldner, 1979: 835).
17. Bourdieu calls this symbolic violence and it appears self-evident that it would
characterize the assumption of power by fascists or communists. We would
observe, however, that the liberal intellectuals who took power in Central
Europe after the fall of communism also tended to be illiberal toward those
who disagreed with them: they immediately castigated opponents as incompetent, as relics of the past, as sliding back into communism, or of
totalitarianism (for a good example, see Klaus, [1991]1992). It is ironic to find
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this kind of symbolic violence when the new victorious discourse is a liberal
one.
18. As Kolakowski says: [t]he priest is the guardian of the absolute; he sustains the
cult of the final and the obvious as acknowledged by and contained in the
tradition ([1961]1968: 33).
19. As Kolakowski formulates it: [t]he jester is he who moves in good society
without belonging to it, and treats it with impertinence; he who doubts all that
appears self-evident. The jester . . . observe[s] . . . from the sidelines in order to
unveil the non-obvious behind the obvious, the non-final behind the final . . .
([1961]1968: 334).
20. These are taken from a course syllabus to be taught at Central European
University this year, which Michael Burawoy has kindly shared with us. On our
disagreements, see note 5.
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Thesis

On Irony: An Invitation to Neoclassical Sociology

>> Version of Record - May 1, 2003

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ABSTRACT This article proffers an invitation to neoclassical sociology. This is

KEYWORDS capitalism class cultural capital post-socialist status

I. SOCIAL THEORY AFTER THE FALL OF SOCIALISM:

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advocated the collective rational ordering of society, aided and informed by

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Eyal et al.: On Irony

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embeddedness, of network analysts who purport to demonstrate how

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Eyal et al.: On Irony

such a return implied a return to the notion of the self-interested individual.

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Thesis Eleven (Number 73 2003)

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Eyal et al.: On Irony

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Thesis Eleven (Number 73 2003)

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Eyal et al.: On Irony

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Thesis Eleven (Number 73 2003)

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Eyal et al.: On Irony

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Thesis Eleven (Number 73 2003)

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Eyal et al.: On Irony

Rowan, 1977; White, 1992). As we intimated earlier, however, we consider

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Eyal et al.: On Irony

concept of capitalism. Indeed, in contrast to the theoretical development in

III. DOES THE END OF ACTUALLY EXISTING SOCIALISM

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namely discourse, and on this basis, rethinking the role of intellectuals in

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that because the intelligentsia is a category defined by the possession of

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Eyal et al.: On Irony

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Marxist and weberian theories of social change

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Eyal et al.: On Irony

Thus, as Weber perceived, a charismatic individual very often triggers the

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Thesis Eleven (Number 73 2003)