This chapter traces the trajectory of sociology’s encounter with Marx. A century ago, sociologists saw Marx as outside sociology. Then, during most of the twentieth century, his social theory was tied – unjustly – to monstrous regimes that governed in his name, while sociologists focused upon his dialectical perspective, his theory of the state, his humanistic standpoint, and other aspects ignored by dogmatic Marxism. Recently, social theorists have returned to Marx’s notion of capitalism as a global system, to his theory of class polarization and of economic crisis, and to an interrogation of his theoretical corpus in light of contemporary concerns with race, gender, and the legacies of colonialism.
Kevin B. Anderson is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Lenin, Hegel, and Western Marxism (1995), Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islamism (with Janet Afary, 2005), and Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies (2010/2016).