EDITORIAL PERSPECTIVES (continued)
Alan Carling shares Nolan's worry that the rationality mechanism is
insufficiently robust to sustain the historical role reserved for it by Cohen, but
extends the concern to embrace late modernity as well. Carling's alternative,
which has been canvassed previously in this journal (Carling, 1993) and
elsewhere, involves a mechanism of Competitive Primacy, which is not as
"full-blooded" in its Darwinism, to use Nolan's useful phrase, as his own
mechanism. Competitive Primacy holds that there is a differential
reproduction of social forms that favors historically those forms associated
with higher economic productivity. The mechanism operates through
processes of economic competition, military conflict, ideological struggle,
differential socialization and so forth. It is "Darwinian" by analogy, because
it involves processes of social selection that are analogous to natural selection.
But it does not involve the differential reproduction of social forms and
institutions by means of the differential (biological) reproduction of the
human individuals that carry the given forms and institutions. The originality
of Nolan's contribution to the debate lies in his emphasis on the latter
process.
David Laibman's version of historical materialism is closer to Cohen in
re-asserting the central role of intentionality. He insists, however, that
human consciousness, as embodied in the uniquely human labor process,
leads to mediated effects on both forces and relations of production; that its
impact on social evolution is therefore anything but simple and linear. In
Laibman's view, the relation between intentional action and the pervasive
problem of incentive and control in class-antagonistic modes of production
makes possible a theory of stages — "a full, stadially elaborated model of social evolution" — which, far from denying the complexity and variety of history, can in principle make it possible for complexity and variety to be fully
grasped and understood.
Laibman distinguishes five "traditional" stages of historical development: primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, and (modern)
communism. For each mode of production, combining productive forces and
production relations in a "consistent, well-articulated whole," the precondition, contradiction and contribution of its development is identified in
Laibman's theory. But the point, for Laibman, is to develop a theory that is
both "hard" and "soft" (or strong and weak), avoiding both extreme
intentionality and, so to speak, extreme non-intentionality. This means that
although the stages comprise an "absolutely determinate ladder" this is only
at the level of what Laibman terms the abstract social totality. This
establishes that the stages are not just arbitrary but constitute an
"overarching structure of history," yet this is consistent with variation in the
path and rate of development at more concrete levels of analysis. Thus the
theory of stages identifies potentials only, potentials that have to be realized
through human agency.
Paul Wetherly is also concerned with the explanatory architecture of
the theory of history, but his concern is centered on the logical relationship
between functional claims, rather than with microfoundations per se. He
points out that the base-superstructure connection received relatively little
attention in Cohen's original work, and that the subsequent debate also focused mainly on the forces and relations of production. At the same time
Marxist writing on the state has tended to make little reference to Cohen's
work. "Thus those interested in the theory of history have not been very
much interested in the state, while those concerned with the state have not
been very much concerned with the theory of history" (Wetherly, this issue).
"Going against the tide," Wetherly tries to establish a better connection between the state and history, precisely by examining how the theory of the
state fits into the larger theory of history.
Wetherly's central theme is that the two stages of functional explanation in the theory of history are transitive, "meaning that the support given by
property relations to production relations consists in allowing or stabilizing
precisely the facts about production relations that are required by the productive forces for their development" (this issue). This means that "the level of
development of the productive forces alone cannot explain why a certain type
of economic structure endures stably, since an appropriate superstructure
must also be in place." In other words, the explanation of relations by forces
(stage 1) depends upon the explanation of superstructures by relations (stage
2). The theory of the state (in so far as the state is superstructural) thus assumes a greater significance for the theory of history than is commonly realized. It is as important logically as the forces-relations dialectic to the validity of the Marxist theory of history, and the theory as a whole will remain significantly incomplete unless the stage 2 explanation can be reinforced.
Wetherly asks therefore in his final section whether the rationality argument
used by Cohen to support the stage 1 explanation can be stretched to perform
a similar service for stage 2.
Cohen's influence over the last 25 years has derived not just from the
intellectual quality of his work, but from the fact that it is steeped in Marx's
texts. Whatever detractors within the tradition have made of some of his
general positions, it has been difficult to fault his scholarship. The stance of
faithfulness to the canon is made explicit in the dual constraint, announced at
the very outset of the first edition of KMTH: to respect "on the one hand, what
Marx wrote, and, on the other, those standards of clarity and rigor which
distinguish 20th-century analytical philosophy" (Cohen, 2000, ix). Two of
our contributors especially aim to follow Cohen's lead in this regard.
Renzo Llorente examines the division of labor as a concept, both at a
philosophical level at which he criticizes Cohen's interpretation of Marx, and
at a more empirical level in relation to the work of Richard Arneson. It is
argued that attention in the round to what Marx wrote on this subject leads to
an interpretation that differs from Cohen's:
Cohen's claim that Marx advocates the abolition of the division
of labor, while consistent with one well-established tradition of
Marx exegesis, is untenable, mainly because it is based more or
less exclusively on a single passage from The German Ideology,
a passage which, moreover, is at odds with nearly all of Marx's
later pronouncements on the problem of the division of labor
(not to mention his conception of the industrial and
technological preconditions of communism). Against Cohen, I
maintain that the only plausible interpretation — that is, one
that takes into account all that Marx wrote on the topic as well as
the bearing of his mature thought — holds that what Marx in
reality proposes is the abolition of what he called the
manufacturing division of labor in particular, and the
mental/manual division of labor more generally. (Llorente, this
issue.)
Llorente conducts this exercise in scholarship not just for its own sake, but as
the springboard for an intervention into contemporary debates in political
philosophy, related in this case to Arneson's liberal scepticism about the
existence of any "right to meaningful work." Llorente argues that the demand
for the abolition of the division of labor, if it is correctly understood, implies
a demand for working conditions that support such attributes as self-esteem
and self-direction, and promote more generally the conditions for the
workers' cognitive and psychological health. The conclusion to the second
part of his paper encapsulates nicely the blend of classical roots and contemporary applications envisaged under Cohen's dual constraint:
Insofar as the Marxian critique of the division of labor consists,
as I have argued, in a defense of the right to meaningful work,
there should be no doubt that this critique retains much of its
validity today, well over a century after it was first formulated.
Alex Callinicos concentrates on questions of political economy, especially
those centered on the distinction between the material and social, and related
themes in the labor theory of value. Like Llorente, Callinicos argues that Cohen has failed to do justice to the original texts; and this, despite another of
the headline claims from the first edition of KMTH, that "the abidingly important Marx is to be found in Capital and the writings preparatory to it" (Cohen,
2000, x).
Callinicos traces the ways in which Cohen thinks through the conceptual distinctions of the labor theory of value, especially that between
exchange-value and use-value, and in the process thinks himself out of most
of the received subject matter of Marxian political economy, especially the
theory of crisis. The purpose of Cohen's critical endeavor is to extract the
rational kernel of Marxism — the theory of history — from Capital, and to
give an account of historical change that is increasingly distanced from the
conceptual apparatus of value theory.
But for Callinicos, the price to be paid from this departure from the
canon is very high, and confirms his fundamental doubts about the analytical
program as a whole. Cohen's strictures against "bullshit Marxism," and a
hardening of attitudes that have led him in turn to associate acceptable methodology with methodological individualism, methodological individualism
with rational choice, and rational choice, finally, with reason itself, have left
Cohen in a false position, both intellectually and politically. The "reduction
program" described in the Preface to the Second Edition of KMTH is "very
strong," in Callinicos's opinion, and "pretty wild stuff." Cohen's stance has
become dogmatic, denying legitimacy to other points of view, and the "non-bullshit" slogan is "insufferably smug." Neither is it clear for whom else Cohen speaks, since there are fully-fledged Analytical Marxists, especially the
empirically oriented Erik Olin Wright and Robert Brenner, who do not share
his views, and whose intellectual practice does not conform with Cohen's prescriptions. The political cost of this attitude is to isolate Cohen from the revival of political economy that is occurring in connection with the movements
against global capitalism. And this helps to reproduce the ineffectiveness of
Marxist thought, in contexts where it ought to flourish.
Alan Carling is finally concerned with the same issue of Marxian recovery, in posing the "theory and practice" question to the theory of history. Like
Callinicos, he traces the phases in Cohen's intellectual emancipation from a
traditional assumption, in this case the assumption that socialist practice
relies on the truth of historical materialism. And like Callinicos, he concludes
that Cohen has gone too far. Competitive Primacy provides a defensible version of historical materialism with clear implications for socialist practice,
even if these implications are difficult to reconcile with the anti-market aspects of the Marxist value base.
The contributors to this Special Issue come to the theory of history with
different preoccupations and differ in their assessments of Cohen's interpretation and defense of Marx. They also evince differing attitudes to the whole
movement of Analytical Marxism, which Karl Marx's Theory of History
largely founded and of which Cohen remains a provocative advocate. The
Special Issue as a whole, dedicated to rethinking Cohen on Marx and history,
constitutes a tribute to Cohen's work, recognizing the enduring importance
and influence of KMTH more than 25 years after the event.
| |
Alan Carling
|
| |
Paul Wetherly |
