Louis writes:
G.A. Cohen's Marxism is a curious business. He tries to restore Marxism to
its "orthodox" roots but his project ends up as a defense of a "stagist"
conception rather than of anything Marx had in mind. Once he establishes
this rather bogus "orthodoxy", he speculates on the political consequences.
His speculations have very little to do with the actual history and dynamic
of the revolutionary movement.
>>
And he offers a number of concrete criticisms, most of which I agree with, of
Cohen's early "inevitabilism," without, however, acknowledging that the view
that socialist revolution was inevitable was common currency for most AMrxist
for most of the history of Marxism. I agree with him that the view is false
and lands you in various antinomies, not the least of which is, why bother to
fight in that case. And in general I agree that it was a wrong foot start to
attempt to reconstruct even the most plausible version of technological
determinism as a theory of history.
Louis sneers at the attempt to make tech determinism go. It is worth saying
that in writing off 2d and 3d International Marxism, one is writing off a
lot; that is, after all, a great lot of the history of the movement; from
that perspedtive, it wasn't a bad thing tp see how good the most plausible
version of the theory might go. Moreover, Cohen bacled off from the
inevitabilist claims after being subject to severe criticism that was enabled
in partr because he sharpened up the premises enough for us to be able
identify precisely where the theory goes wrong.
All that said, I stick by my claim that there is a lot of good stuff even in
KMTH that can be salvaged from the wrck of tech determinism, including an
objective account of class, an interesting theory of materiality, a useful
reading of commodity fetishism, and lots of other good stuff. And, moreover,
like most carefully thought through and exactly worked out pieces of thinking
on important subjects, the book is rewarding if only to figure out where one
disagrees with it. Louis has at least done Cohen justice in paying him honest
and careful if hostile attention, unlike some some of his detractors.
I will say only more more think: Louis seems to have a gripe with the very
idea of doing fairly absatrct theory of history. He thinke we should stick to
doing history and not worry about the theory of it. I have no objection to
doing history, but it sees to me that a major appeal of Marxist thought is
that it offers the only credible theory of history we have. By "we" I mean
everyone; historical materialism has no serious competitors. I agree that
Cohen got the theory wrong, but he made a really impressive and rewarding
attempt to make plausible an account that has been tremendously important in
the tradition, and he should be read thoroughly and criticized carefully with
an eye to what we can learn from him. which is a lot, not least in how to do
this sort of work.
--jks
