In a message dated 6/23/00 10:40:39 PM Eastern Daylight Time, JKSCHW writes: << A lot of other people, "put the issue [of functional explanation] on the table." For example, see Rader, Melvin. 1979. Marx's Interpretation of History (New York: Oxford). Of course, Rader didn't do so using false precision the way GA Cohen did. He also doesn't go for technological determinism.. What's false about Cohen's precision? I don't care for technological determinism, but I thought Rader's book was dull and second rate. >I don't think he showed that historical materialist explanations were functional ones any more than Stinchcombe did. It's simply a matter of his interpretation, together with assertion. I am at a loss. Of course it his interpretation. But anyone who has accused Cohen of mere assertation, of arguing without reams of exacting textual support, hasn't read him. Besides, he was obviously right: Marx argues that, e,g., ideology promotes ruling class rule, a functional explanation of why certain ideas become dominant. There is no other plausible account of what Marx thinks ideology is and does. Moreover, functional explanation allows us to say in what sense class is primary to ideology and get ideology can affect the social relations. >Further, it's a matter of his debate with Elster (who rejects functional explanation) more than anything else. It's an argument among a small group of academics. So? Did your last paper shake the might proletariat? I mean, come on, Jim, everything that acade,ics talk about is an argument among a small group of scholars. >That you admit that GAC failed to show how functional explanations are valid is quite a concession. Why, then, should anyone pay attention to Cohen? That was not his only contribution. He set a model for how to discuss Marxist ideas intelligibly and exactly. In setting out the technological determinist model more clearly and deeply than anyone else has done, he provided useful, although debateable, accounts of notions like class, materialism, commodity fetishism, most of the central ideas of Marxism. Even when you disagree, his analyses are deep and revealing and seeingw here they fo wrong suggests avenues for thinking about the questions that you would not have otherwise found. But Cohen is hard work. You can't just skim him. You have to work through it, page by page, argument by argument. In addition, Cohen has written useful and important articles about books in ethics and political theory strictly so called. --jks
> A lot of other people, "put the issue [of functional explanation] on the table." For example, see Rader, Melvin. 1979. Marx's Interpretation of History (New York: Oxford). Of course, Rader didn't do so using false precision the way GA Cohen did. He also doesn't go for technological determinism.. What's false about Cohen's precision? I don't care for technological determinism, but I thought Rader's book was dull and second rate. >I don't think he showed that historical materialist explanations were functional ones any more than Stinchcombe did. It's simply a matter of his interpretation, together with assertion. I am at a loss. Of course it his interpretation. But anyone who has accused Cohen of mere assertation, of arguing without reams of exacting textual support, hasn't read him. Besides, he was obviously right: Marx argues that, e,g., ideology promotes ruling class rule, a functional explanation of why certain ideas become dominant. There is no other plausible account of what Marx thinks ideology is and does. Moreover, functional explanation allows us to say in what sense class is primary to ideology and get ideology can affect the social relations. >Further, it's a matter of his debate with Elster (who rejects functional explanation) more than anything else. It's an argument among a small group of academics. So? >That you admit that GAC failed to show how functional explanations are valid is quite a concession. Why, then, should anyone pay attention to Cohen? That was not his only contribution. He set a model for how to discuss Marxist ideas intelligibly and exactly I wrote: > explanations of this sort involve an obnoxious form of teleology. if you > don't introduce the dysfunctional mechanisms in conjunction >with the functional ones. Justin writes: >I agree. It's part of my criticism of Cohen in that he cannot make this >distinction, although he does insist in another part of his account on the >distinction between relations of production that are functional for and >those that fewtter or are dysfunctional for the forces of production. if he can't make the distinction, all he's got is a functional explanation, which lands him smack dab in the middle of the functionalist camp. > > functionalism and functional explanation are the same thing if > dysfunctional mechanisms -- i.e., the way in which capitalism is a >contradictory system -- are ignored. >No, because you might think that there are many social phenomena that have >neither a functional nor a dysfunctional explanation. Functionalism I take >to be doctrine that everything is functional. No, the star functionalist, Talcott Parsons, saw some phenomena as nonfunctional. For example, he starts with the "fact" that children are born as barbarians, with none of society mores drilled into them as yet. This is a nonfunctional phenomenon. It creates a tension, obviously. Then various social institutions (schools, etc.) have the function of "solving" the tension. As a functionalist, he does not feel obligated to explain how such institutions, though later sociologists did so, without really abandoning functionalism. Parsons never allowed for dysfunctional phenomena -- except for outside agitators and the like, what orthodox economists (functionalists all) call "exogenous shocks." BTW, for anyone who's interested, here's a list of Stinchcombe and Cohen's functional mechanisms, dealing specifically with capitalism and in terms of the attainment of capitalist class goals: 1. Purposive: far-sighted capitalist elites promote the development of the productive forces or certain superstructural institutions (such as religion) in order to stabilize the system. This might be called the "Rockefeller Foundation" mechanism. 2. Evolutionary: variation in institutions (either random, i.e., independent of the environment, or due to experiments as an effort to survive) is gradually weeded out (selected) by competition under conditions of scarcity. 3. Unplanned side-effects: "Without planning, people may find consequences of behavior satisfying. Thus, church services might be maintained without much planning to achieve theological ends, because people find the social interaction or the respectability, satisfying" [Stinchcombe, 1968: 86]. Here are the dysfunctional mechanisms I could think of, ignoring exogenous shocks (outside agitators): 1. Purposive: an elite may be ignorant of functional needs, incompetent, short-sighted, self-interested, and/or internally divided. (This might include the "President Dan Quayle" mechanism.) 2. Evolutionary: variation and competition under conditions of scarcity may be destructive. (as capitalist competition sometimes is, especially when it turns into international wars.) 3. Side-effects: individuals may act in terms of their own self-interest, ignoring the destructive externalities of this type of action. 4. Class antagonism: the organization and resistance of the direct producers may prevent the realization of ruling-class interests. More generally, the conflict between the dominant and the dominated societal interests may prevent the former from achieving their goals. 5. Uneven development: because of the relative independence of different layers in society from each other, they develop at different speeds and different ways. Thus they can come into conflict. The above is from an unfinished manuscript of mine that's gathering dust (and the gnawing criticism of the electronic mice) until I get back to it. I presented the paper at the Association for Economic and Social Analysis conference "Marxism in the New World Order Conference: Crises and Possibilities" in Amherst, Massachusetts, on November 14, 1992. >>
