I am not a methodological individualist (and neither is Elster any more); moreover, even if the only sensible version of MI is true, which I doubt, it does not have any or many of the implications that Elster tried to draw from it. Elster sometimes talks as if we faced the choice: explain history by referring to supra-human persons like The Proletariat, or get rid of all social relations and talk only about individuals and their beliefs. This is obviously a false dichotomy. Even if we can explain social relations in individual terms in principle, that doesn't mean that there are no social relations, and more than the fact that we can explain cell behavior in terms of biochemsitry means that there are no cells. At the risk of drawing Louis' ire, i will say that I have discussed this in my paper on Metaphysical Individualism (as I called it) ; if any cares, I will post the relevant section on the list. However, it's vulgar reductionist histomat to attribute Elster and Roemer's commitment to MI (never shared by Cohen, for example) to Thatcherism, the 80s, etc. They had been thinking about this stuff for a decade or more. These were ideas that had a history, you cannot read them off social conditions obstaining at their publicatuon date. Elster, Roemer, etc, were part of a hgroup that called itself the No Bullshit Marxism Group that met annually in London. They were unimpressed by what they saw as vague, windy, intellectually irresponsible talk in the new left of the late 60s and early 70s. They had been to grad school in political science (Elster), economics (Roemer), and (much earlier) philosiophy (Cohen), among other disciplines, and had been trained to formulate precise, testable statements and avoid the kind of schematism manifested here.They also had been trained to avoid a certain sort of grandstanding rhetoric long popular on the Marxist left; they adopted a neutral-toned academic rhetoric instead. Now, among the tools they had picked up in grad school and later reserach was rational choice theiory,w hich some might argue is an MI theory, and they thought that it could be put to work for the good guys. They looked to MI in particualr because they wanted what they called microfoundations for explantions, they wanted to be able tell the story about how the causal chains worked, rather than gesturing to Thatcher and the 80s, etc., as if that explained, e.g., why Marxists might find neoclassical tools attractive. I think they rather too quickly put together a package in which rational choice theory provided microfoundations for social explanation, but the impulse was sound. Cohen nefver wenta longw ith the rat choice, MI account. --jjks In a message dated 6/23/00 3:10:05 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: << lster's rejection of class is tied up with his disavowal of what he calls "methodological holism." Marx mistakenly believed that "in social life there exists wholes or collectivities." Elster opposes "methodological individualism" to this. In Chapter 2 of "An Introduction to Karl Marx", he identifies himself with the view that "all institutions, behavior patterns, and social processes can in principle be explained in terms of individuals only: their actions, properties, and relations." It is not too difficult to understand where this obsession with "individualism" comes from. The book was written in 1986 at a time when Reaganism and Thatcherism was in full bloom. >>
