Re: A reading list for Anthony

[Jim Farmelant <farmelantj@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 25 Nov 2000 11:59:36 -0500 Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
> Now, on the substance. Carling would obviously argue along these
> lines
> because he is an Analytical Marxist. AM is the school out of which
> Brenner
> himself has emerged and Carling has put forward a synthesis of Cohen
> and
> Brenner in an attempt to soften the impact of 'technological
> determinism'
> found in Cohen. Needless to say, all of these characters are deeply
> into
> "stagist" Marxism that systematically excludes the 'combined and
> uneven
> development' that was a hallmark of Trotsky's thinking and which is
> ultimately rooted in Marx's own writings, particularly with respect
> to the
> German revolution.

I think that you may be guilty of reifying AM into a single
undifferentiated
mass.  There do seem to be some significant differences
between the views of Cohen and those of Brenner or Carling.
One of the things that the two latter figures appear to be attempting is
to correct the former's tendency to conflate historical materialism
with a technological determinism that as you correctly point
out excludes the law of uneven and combined development.
Essentially, Cohen in his *Karl Marx's Theory of History*
replicated the views of Plekhanov & Kautsky, and thus suffered
from most of the same deficiencies that those two Second
International Marxists suffered from.

I can see that you don't place great stock in Carling's (or Cohen's)
discussion of functional explanations but the reason
why they place such great emphasis on it is because they
contend that historical materialist explanations are in fact
functional explanations.  One may disagree with this but
it is not a view that is easily dismissed.

Jim F.

>
>
> Louis Proyect
> Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/

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