Jim Devine wrote:
>
>
> The first part makes sense to me. I think that the concept of altruism
> (usually meaning self-sacrifice to help others) is impoverished. You are
> accurate to reject the individualism/altruism duality. People have what
> Elster calls "mixed motives," though his vision seems limited, too.
FWIW, Elster has moved away from rat choice and is now focused on
social norms and his latest book is on emotions. He now thinks that RT
is limited in what it can explain both on the macro and micro social
level. All psychological theory, I think, should be of the mixed motives
variety since several motives and desires together may cause a person to
act or think in a certain way.
One of the problems of trying to bring aspects of rat choice theory into
Marxism is that the meth individualism and the more wholistic approach
of most Marxists cannot both be true simultaneosly. For example, in MI
social outcomes are explained as the effects of by-products of
individual action but social wholes are not ontologically real. If
social wholes exist then meth individualism is false.
Elster used the PD in an interesting way in a Marxian theory of the
state arguing, that the goal of the state is to get the capitalist class
to co-operate but the working class to defect (as a whole).
Sam Pawlett
