Re: [Marxism] Latest issue of Science & Society (April 2006)

[Simon Kennedy <simonmotorbike@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Really, this is old hat: Cohen's carefully constructed arguments fell apart in 
a matter of years, and left little of use to Marxism. It was an arid debate 
when it happened three decades ago, and definitely not worth rehashing.

  For the diehards, the latest issue of Historical Materialism journal carries 
my response to the articles that have just appeared in Science and Society.

  http://www.brill.nl/m_catalogue_sub6_id17936.htm

  I'm not sure that it's good form to post the whole article on the net, but 
here is some of the conclusion:

  Perhaps we can take instruction from the stuttering end of the project begun 
by Karl Marx?s Theory of History. Maybe it is time to close the book on grand 
schema that ascribe history a single fundamental dynamic manifest in social 
forms that have essentially identical operative structures, and in doing so lay 
to rest nineteenth century ideas of progress and their attendant productivist 
politics. This model, so central to traditional historical materialism, should 
be dispensed with. It denies the multiplicity of directions for history and is 
therefore is a radical constraint on future alternatives.
  The work was undoubtedly an impressive achievement. In 1978 it was a novel 
and stimulating research project, but, even within its own terms, has not been 
able to sustain its arguments. The particular value of analysis as a method of 
examination has not been denied; indeed, it is assumed as absolutely necessary 
and used in criticising Cohen?s explanations. The Analytical Marxists hold no 
monopoly. Expanding their single direction of explanation to encompass the 
determining effects of the social does not preclude sensitivity to micro 
foundations, forgo reason or degrade social science, quite the opposite. 
Similarly, there is nothing necessarily wrong with models in themselves, but 
there are dangers in defending explanatory structures that impose stasis on 
dynamic historical forms. By way of an alternative we have suggested that there 
should be a necessary connection between concepts of form and content in the 
theories that try to explain the world. Breaking down statements
 into their component parts in order to provide proper explanation is 
insufficient, for Marxism aspires to account for an external reality that is in 
a state of change, and for relations that are neither contingent nor completely 
?conceptually separate? In this sense the label Analytical semi-Marxism is a 
good one for Cohen: it describes the limitations, restrictions and 
insufficiency of his methods.
  A work that begun as a response to Marxism?s critics within the universities 
never succeeded in out-growing its conditions of production; indeed, it is even 
beginning to disappear here, as modern writing on both Marxism and history make 
increasingly fewer references to the work and the school. For those committed 
to a socialist practice shaped by Marxist theory, it is time to move on. The 
most current undergraduate primer on Marxism and history in the Bay Area 
college libraries, Perry?s Marxism and History, makes no mention of Cohen and 
Analytical Marxism at all.

  Simon Kennedy

                
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