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What Is Analytical Marxism?
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12656 |
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Section : |
Modern Thought
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| Issue
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6 / 1987 |
4,966 Words |
| Author
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Steven B. Smith
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One of the more striking features of contemporary academe has been the development of "analytical Marxism," a hybrid of analytical philosophy and Marxism. It is no different in character from a host of other attempts to combine Marx with major figures or movements of culture, for example, Freud and psychoanalysis. Analytical Marxism participates in the fashionable tendency toward eclecticism. But what distinguishes analytical Marxism is a political amnesia, ignoring the problems for which Marx has been most famous.
At one time, those subscribing to Marxism did so because of their commitment to a particular sort of social change. Marxists believed that alienation or exploitation was the central feature of the liberal capitalist order, which could be corrected only through the purgative influence of violent revolution. Analytical Marxists, by contrast, are less interested in substantive commitments to Marx's social vision than with Marxist logic or methodology. Though previous Marxist theoreticians were concerned with general questions of logic or methodology, they did not permit this to become their central focus.
Thus the term analytical has nothing to do with any particular doctrine attributed to Karl Marx but instead emphasizes the problem of clarity. In the Anglo-American world, Hume addressed the issue first. Empiricists (and later positivists) demanded proper standards of clarity, plausibility, and scientific adequacy. Empiricists accused Marx of an obscurantism and metaphysical obtuseness that were the result of his German philosophical heritage. Karl Popper's famous attacks on Marxism in The Open Society and in The Poverty of Historicism were regarded for many years as the decisive refutation of Marx from a broadly analytical point of view.
Recently, however, the tide has begun to shift. Analytical philosophy and Marxism, once mortal enemies, are now partners in a joint venture. The intention of this undertaking, as stated on the dust jacket of Jon Elster's latest book, is to free Marxist theory "from the increasingly discredited methods and presuppositions which are still widely regarded as essential to it" so that "what is true and important in Marxism will be more firmly established." But what is "true and important in Marxism" remains a disputed topic even among analytical Marxists. Thus their formulation merely begs the question. What is a true and important insight for some remains an embarrassing holdover for others, making talk of establishing Marxism more firmly premature at best.
There have been three attempts recently to reconstruct Marxism along analytical lines by people who identify themselves as Marxists. In all three cases the association with Marxism has become problematic, despite the continued tributes to Marx by all three interpreters. G.A. Cohen defends Marxism as a form of technological determinism along broadly functionalist lines. Jon Elster makes Marx responsive to the imperatives of social choice and microeconomic theory. Jurgen Habermas teaches Marxism the language of "speech act" theory and the philosophy of language. When played against one another, these interpretations indicate how in each case analytical Marxism promises more than it delivers.
G.A. Cohen
The central document of analytical Marxism still remains G.A. Cohen's Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defense, published
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