Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence

by G.A. Cohen

Book Overview

First published in 1978, this book rapidly established itself as a classic of modern Marxism. Cohen's masterful application of advanced philosophical techniques in an uncompromising defense of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0198271964
• ISBN13: 9780198271963
• Release Date: January 1978
• Publisher: Clarendon Press
• Length: 369 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Classic defense of the economic determinist interpretation

Cohen's classic book is a defense of the Second International thesis that the productive forces (roughly technology and labor power) are the "motive forces" of history. In the first version of the book this idea, widely disputed among Marxists, was intended to show that socialism was the necessary culmination of a history of increasing development of the productive forces. This is a difficult thesis to maintain today, and indeed in more recent work, some of which is embodied in the second edition of the book, Cohen retracts it, suggesting only that the development of the productive forces makes socialism possible. (Subsequently he seems to have backpedaled even on this.) The implications of the weakening of historical materialism (along with a sharp critique of Cohen's original view, one that he now largely accepts) were offered by Wright, Levine, and Sober in their Reconstructing Marxism, an essential companion piece to Cohen's book. They essentially involve taking apart the optimistic claims that Marxism offers an integrated scientifically based program of social change that inspires optimism about progress towards socialism. Cohen's main thesis, as an interpretation of Marx and as a _defense_ of Marx, seems much less plausible than, for example, the alternative "class struggle" interpretations of historical materialism urged, for example, by Robert Brenner or (formerly) Richard Miller in his Analyzing Marx. Nonetheless, Cohen's book remains a model of clarity, depth, and ruthlessly honest exposition that shows up the places where it runs into problems. It contains must that is salvageable, not least an interpretation of what it is for the economic to be "primary" in terms of a theory of functional explanation, on which the ideological superstructure and the state are explained in part in terms of their functionality for the economic base, and revolutionary social change due to "fettering" of the productive forces understood in terms of dysfunctionality. People who like their Marx fuzzy and obscure enough to avoid intelligible criticism (Althusserians, for example) have never liked this book, but if Marxism _as a theory_ has a future in the wake of collapse of the Marxism _as a movement_, Cohen here set the standard for what that theory should look like in procedure and rigor if not necessarily in its substanative claims. Serious study of Marx's theory of history starts here.

A Strong Defense

In the Base-Superstructure debate that has been raging for a while, and still is, within modern Marxism, GA Cohen's Defense of Karl Marx's Theory of History is one of the more powerful blows struck and deserves to be read.Cohen is a supporter of "the primary of productive forces" (the word primacy here being used to avoid the label of being a determinist or vulgar marxist) and argues to uphold the base-superstructure metaphor which Marx set forth in the 1859 preface to the Contribution to Political Economy. In a nutshell, the metaphor basically said that the base of all society is the economic structure, where everything else (legal and political institutions, for example) rise as a superstructure on this base. The implication is that the most influential thing in society is indeed our economic system. The further implication here, and surely what Marx was trying to say, is that capitalism is the defining aspect of everything and essentially the primarily determining entity in society.GA Cohen upholds this metaphor by first scouring the 1859 preface, then other Marx works and finally arguing for the legitimacy of the "primary of productive forces" himself. His arguments are concise and powerful. If you are a serious student of Marxism, the read is basically mandatory and helps break the illusion that there is really one theory of Marxism and thats it. Cohen's interpertation of Marx tends to be the one that most people identify Marx with themselves and also tends to paint Marxism as cold and determinist (despite his attempts to keep away from the dreaded title).However, if you are going to read this, be sure to read Althusser, Williams and Lukacs. These are the other three major points on the debate and reading them will give you a rounded perspective on the entire thing. I tend not to agree with Cohen (though that doesn't show in my rating) and think that if you read a lot of Marx, you can see he himself differing from Cohen. The famous 11th statement in his Thesis of Feurbach sums it all up:"The philosophers have only interperted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it."Cohen's views on the economic base's primacy doesn't leave much room for this statement to be anything other than a hollow statement.