Abstract
This paper is a comparative study of the reception and canonization of Karl Marx and Max Weber as 'classical sociologists' in one national sociology. It makes two main arguments: 1) peripheral sociologies show diminishing variance from and resistance to the internationally dominant sociological canons as the 20th century progresses, especially due to the advance of professionalization. 2) The canonizations of certain sociologists are not independent of each other, but rather they are subjected to a mutually reinforcing or excluding (the case here) dynamic.
The paper documents the complicated historical trajectories of both canonizations. There was an intense reception of Marx in the Czech socialist thought since the late 19th century, but not in sociology which had an anti-Marxist bent (see Th.G.
Masaryk's The Social Question: Philosophical and Sociological Foundations of Marxism, 1896). Marx was beginning to enter the canon of Czech sociology after 1945 when the country fell under the Soviet influence and sociology was replaced by Marxism-Leninism.
Paradoxically, the proper entry of Marx into the canon took place in the 1960s as a new Czech sociology was taking shape - as a project of combining Marxist social theory with Western sociology. After 1989 the appeal of Marxism in Czech sociology went into deep decline, but Marx remained in the canon and his status rose after the crisis of 2008.
Czech sociology received some important impulses from Max Weber's work early on (in 1920s and 1930s) owing to its close ties to the German intellectual world. A more sustained reception was prevented by the surge of nationalist antagonisms.
After 1945 Weber's status was the inverse of Marx's. Czech Marxist sociology recognized Weber as a major author in the 1960s because of his extraordinary standing in Western sociology, but his work remained controversial and little known.
Weber rose to a certain prominence in the 1990s to be overshadowed by Marx again in the most recent years.