Re: Rational Choice/Analytical M.

[djones@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (rakesh bhandari)]

Note on "Left Instrumentalism: A Critique of Analytical and Rational Choice
Marxism", a chapter from Stephen Eric Bronner's profound *Of Critical
Theory and Its Theorists. Blackwell, 1994.

This chapter follows Bronner's many chapters in which the project of
critical theory is unfolded; based on this discussion, Bronner attempts to
show that "(t)he claim that the proponents of analytical or rational choice
Marxism [AM--rb] somehow continue this critical tradition is simply wrong."
(265)  In his criticism of AM, Bronner emphasizes the absence of a
"normative stance" which "can illuminate the 'unncecessary' character of
existing socio-political constraints and call for the resolution of
contradictions with an eye to extending both formal and substantive
freedom." (264)  Bronner also emphasizes the absence of a serious
discussion of the role of the subject and consciousness in terms of
questions of alienation, cultural critique, psychological repression and
forms of state coercion--in other words with the problem of how the
mediated totality of advanced capitalism had threatened the integrity of
the individual and undermined the bases of resistance. (265)

At several points, Bronner recognizes important contributions by AM, but
his criticism is very sharp, especially of the AM commitment to
"methodological individualism"--which claims to "reinstate the very subject
which collectivist theories have expelled."  Bronner probes however the
serious confusion over what is meant by an 'individual'.

Towards that end,  he discusses "the rather elementary philosophical
mistake" of "identifying the formally discrete entity with the subject and
*individuation* with the "*individuality* that actually defines the
uniqueness and experience of a given actor or person."  The argument is too
carefully articulated to express in summary form; Bronner is concerned to
show that by reducing the subject to an irreducible element within a
neo-classical equilibrium framework, AM cannot adequately explain the
constitutive role of ideology or inter-subjectivity; and that AM is forced
to invalidate, presuppose or transvalue into intrumental action what it can
only recognize as "irrational" factors.

Developing the argument, Bronner concludes "even the best thinkers of
rational choice Marxism find themselves desperately grasping at an
indeterminate entity--a subject that is really not a subject at all--whose
motivations are imputed and then definitionally exhausted by an arbitrary
mathematical game with fixed rules dependent upon a causality blind to
issues of meaning, dignity and the will to resist." (271)

The result is the failure to understand revolutionary action itself, not
only  the meaningfulness of the action to the participant.  Bronner gives
the following example:

"Especially since its calculable short-term economic enticements to poorer
allies were minor, the explanation of mass support for the bourgeoisie's
struggle against the artistocracy necessarity demands reference to a set of
normative values.  And these derive, not from contemplative materialism,
but from the idealist tradition and the commitment to democracy." (274)

Bronner continues that  "(mass) movements are inherently infused with a
speculative sense of purpose which differs qualitatively from one to
another, and from this it only follows that a basic perversion of the
historical understanding iwll take place when fascism is analyzed within
the same game theoretical frame of reference as, say, the action of those
now nearly forgotten Chinese students in Tiananmen Square.  Indeed the
refusal to delineate that difference or the ways in which divergent
ideologies impact on the constitution of social reality will have itself
have political implications."

Bronner concludes: "Because the old guarantees are dead, a willingness to
address the conditions for political judgement has become crucial.  But
insofar as it denies the speculative moment, that is precisely what
rational choice Marxism cannot do.  Its back turned on the need to
articulate any 'practical criterion,' which might inform socialist or
progressive politics, the failure of this new trend in Marxism to serve as
a critical philosophy is precisely what undermines its presentions to
provide a general theory." (275)

For my part, I don't think the question of political judgement can be
discussed without the value-theoretical analysis of the limits of reformist
politics and of the "economic law of motion."  In other words, the question
of political judgement is not only a speculative or a purely normative
matter matter, and it is significant that while Bronner notes that it is
well-known that rational choice Marxists have never engaged Marx's value
theory, as explicated and developed by II Rubin and Rosdolsky and Mattick
(278-9), Bronner himself does not discuss anywhere the importance of
Mattick's work as to the question of political judgement, especially as to
the evaluation of what Lukacs called "the pacifists and humanitarians of
the class struggle."  (see below)

While the normative content of critical theory is not to be denied, the
most important element for correct political judgement can only be
awareness of the failure to act decisively-- that is,  theoretical
knowledge of the the law of accumulation and the tendency towards
catastrophe and barbarism (Luxemburg, Lukacs, Grossmann, Mattick).

In his chapter "Class Consciousness" in *History and Class Consciousness*,
Lukacs argued:

*Only the consciousness of the proletariat can point to the way that leads
out of the impasse of capitalism.*  As long as this consciouness is
lacking, the crisis remains permanent, it goes back to its starting point,
repeats the cycle until after infinite sufferings and terrible detours the
school of history completes its education and confers upon it the
leadership of mankind....The pacifists and humanitarians of the class
struggle whose efforts tend whether they will or no to retard this lenghty,
 painful and crisis-ridden processes would be horrified if they could but
see what sufferings they inflict on the proletariat by extending this
course of education..." (76)

I surely agree with Bronner that rational choice has an important role to
play in the determination of the obstacles threatening the realization of
internationalist, egalitarian and democratic aims.  And Bronner is
doubtless right to argue that "it is impossible to justify a commitment to
such concerns" from the standpoint of AM.

But the central theoretical question remains the consequences of failing to
advance such aims in a revolutionary manner, and the more well-understood
the barbaric consequences are, as predicted by value-theoretical analysis,
perhaps the more willing people will be transcend their short-term material
interests, qua rational actors, to overcome those obstacles, uncovered by
rational-choice theorists.

I have enjoyed my readings in critical theory, but this is the time to make
available all of Grossmann's and Mattick's writings.  They will help to
shorten the course of education.  Especially when people of the brilliance
of Bronner take to explicating them.

rakesh






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