The latest issue (April 2006) of the Marxist quarterly, Science & Society features papers from a symposium that was held back in 2003 on the twenty-fifth anniversary of G.A. Cohen's book, Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence. These papers by David Laibman, Paul Nolan, Renzo Llorente, Alex Callinocos, and Alan Carling explore varous aspects of the interpretation of historical materialism that was put forth in Cohen's book and what relevance it may have for contemporary Marxists. Some of the writers like Carling and Nolan take up the issue of explanatory mechanisms in the materialist theory of history, and they make the case that Darwinian biology provides historical materialists with an appropriate model as to how such mechanisms ought to be understood. Carling, in particular, with his Thesis of Competitive Primacy, has long been known as an advocate of a selectionist interpretation of historical materialism, that models itself explicitly after Darwinian biology. Carling recognizes that there is a certain kinship between his Darwinian historical materialism and the memetics of Richard Dawkins and Dan Dennett, but sees their work as limited by their failure to take on Marxist insights.
Alex Callinicos' paper "G.A. Cohen and the Critique of Political Economy," praises Cohen's KMTH but takes issue with Cohen's rejection of the labor theory of value. In Callinocos' opinion, this rejection has prevented Cohen from engaging recent work in Marxistpolitical economy that builds directly on the labor theory of value, and so has undercut the promise that his 1978 book had opened up for Marxists. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
