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Marxists seek to combine ontological, epistemological and methodological insights when exploring the social world and, as is sometimes the case, the natural world (on the latter see, for example, Levins and Lewontin 1985). While Marxists recognise that all three areas are linked together, they also recognise differences between them. Marxists who explore the ontology of the world highlight those observable and unobservable exploitative social structures that mediate human behaviour in class societies. At a high level of abstraction exploitative social structures are defined primarily by a relationship in which those who own and control the means of production can extract unpaid surplus labour from those who work for owners and controllers. Marxists who explore epistemology are interested in highlighting those ideas that help to sustain, justify and legitimate particular ideas that ideologically misrepresent or distort the reality of exploitative social structures and practices. Marxists who explore questions of method wish to develop a framework that will guide an explanation and understanding of exploitative social structures and practices as well as those ideas that justify exploitative social structures and practices. A key methodological resource for Marxists, in this regard, has been that of abstraction.

DOI: 10.1057/9780230502079_3

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