Now onto the next mention of Marx. in “Who Shall Survive?” It comes up in the same section Sociometry, Sociology and Scientific Socialism, page 18. Moreno describes the advent of sociometry in the USA.
… United States of America is a commonwealth in which small groups enjoy (or at least en- joyed at the time when sociometry emerged) a greater degree of independence of action than in France, Germany and Soviet Russia, and therefore more easily amenable to open experiments with small groups and genuine small groups research-and negatively, the absence of an over-all religious or cultural ideology as Marxism, Catholicism or Nationalism which might have been so overpowering as to hinder the growth and outbursts of small- group “spontaneity .”
Its a bit painful, after having identified Marxism as a scientific socialism, to see Moreno renegrade it to cultural ideology. Nevertheless misrepresentation in that way is common. It makes sense that the USA is in
Its supreme political position after the First World War made it into an enormous sociological island, open to everything novel, people, ideas, and almost carelessly embracing and permitting every form of social experimentation.
In a paradise for small groups, Marxism is out of the way and the time is right for the birth of sociometry.
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This post is part of a series.
See Intro Marx and Moreno Monograph