[Marxism-Thaxis] Karl Popper and Analytical Marxism
The following is an e-mail that I sent to Alan Carling of Bradford University. I haven't received any response from him as of yet, but maybe people on this list might wish to comment. Jim Farmelant - Alan, I have recently been reading Malachi Hacohen's book *Karl Popper: The Formative Years, 1902-1945* and that has led me to ponder a bit the influence of Popper on Analytic Marxism. Some of the key texts of AM such as Jerry Cohen's *Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence* and Jon Elster's *Making Sense of Marx* have no references to Popper in them but one cannot help thinking that these books were written directly or indirectly in response to Popper's criticisms of Marxism. In particular Elster's book with its espousal of methodological individualism and its contention that much of what is worthwhile in Marx stems from his use of a methodological individualism seems very Popperian in character. In fact, one cannot help thinking that perhaps Elster was attempting to create a kind of Marxism that would have been acceptable to Popper. Jerry Cohen likewise makes no reference to Popper ( he does refer to the logical positivists, to whom Popper was opposed) in his book, but it would appear that he was among other things attempting to recast historical materialism in such a form as to rebut Popper's charge that it could not be branded as unfalsifiable and hence unscientific or pseudoscientific. It is also noteworthy that many of the Analytical Marxists have seemed to share views concerning dialectics that were similar to the ones that Popper espoused in his essay What is Dialectic? Like Popper, they are skeptical of the dialectics of nature, and indeed of most Hegelian or Hegelianized formulations of dialectics and its relations with formal logic, history, and the natural sciences. And Popper's contention that most of what is valid and uselful in dialectics can be reduced to the method of trial and error, that is to what we can call selectionism, looks a great deal like your own viewpoint. And indeed over time Popper became increasingly committed to expanding reliance upon selectionist explanatory models, so that his selectionism not only encompassed his philosophy of science (conjecture refutation model), but also his epistemology (which became known as evolutionary epistemology), his political philosophy (the open society allows selectionism to operate at the social and political levels in a non-lethal, non-violent manner), his philosophy of history (he seems to have held a selectionist evolutionist view of history, similar to Hayek's), and even to his cosmology. Jim Farmelant Dear Jim As you will have gathered, I reached the position that the only plausible version of historical materialism is a selectionist one through an engagement with Jerry Cohen's work, and Analytical Marxism more generally. It was only subsequent to that realisation/discovery that I saw a parallel with the work of the 'bourgeois' social selectionists you mention. I am a bit surprised by that since I had read Dawkins' *The Selfish Gene* long before I say your SCIENCE SOCIETY article back in 1993, and I had read one or two books (whose titles now escape me) on social evolutionism which approached it from a selectionist standpoint. And I was also familiar with BF Skinner's radical behaviorism which attempted to develop a selectionist account of operant learning. Skinner also BTW proposed a selectionist account of social evolutionism too - see his 1981 paper - Selection by Consequences. Science, 213, 501-504. Also see online (http://www.psych.nwu.edu/~garea/table.html http://www.bfsr.org/element1.html). And I had a slight familiarity with Popper's evolutionary epistemology which is selectionist. So I was (and am) a bit surprised that none of these people got mentioned at least in passing in your 1993 article. Thanks for the Skinner reference. I suppose it is a bit surprising that I was so ignorant, but this sadly is the truth of the matter. I am sure that the fact that evolutionary ideas were in the air in the 70s and 80s had an impact on the way Cohen formulated his ideas, and thus on my reception of Marxist theory. But you must remember that the Selfish Gene was off-limits for any self-respecting leftist and/or social scientist at that time (at least in any circles with which I had contact. Your intellectual environment sounds more balanced). It was simply assumed (without adequate justification, of course) that sociobiology and all its works was both facile and dangerous. I didn't actually open the Selfish Gene until the 90s, and when I did, I was intrigued that it wasn't nearly as bad as I had imagined, and contained that fascinating final 'meme' chapter which says a lot of the things that social scientists would want to say against reductionist sociobiology. That
[Marxism-Thaxis] Sam Pawlett on Confessions of a Philosopher
- Forwarded message -- From: Sam Pawlett [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed, 01 May 2002 10:40:45 -0700 Subject: Confessions of a Philosopher Confessions of a Philosopher by Bryan Magee. Weidenfeld and Nicholson.502p1997 This is an intellectual autobiography written by one of the best and most well known philosophers working outside the academy. A better title may have been My Philosophical Development as the book contains little autobiography understood in the traditional sense and a lot of exegesis and some original thinking on Magee's favorite philosophers (mostly Kant, Schopenhauer and Popperhis own philosophy a confused amalgam of these three as well as with Fabian Socialism) Magee can lay claim to being one of the last professional public philosophers left in the world, trying desperately to revive or continue a tradition that has over the course of history produced the best philosophers with the exception of Kant and a few others. The fact that Magee never earned a doctorate yet has been a fellow of Yale, Cambridge and Oxford universities speaks for his abilities (or for his social circle). Readers may find Magee arrogant, elitist and self-absorbed but much of this goes with the genre of autobiography. The title of this book is an interesting one, for Confessions was the name of St. Augustine's masterpiece. August company indeed. The book is touted as an introduction to the major dozen or so philosophers of the Western tradition as well as some of the trends within analytic philosophy such as logical positivism and linguistic philosophy, the two traditions that Magee was educated in and has subsequently rebelled against. Given the genre Magee is writing in, his treatments of these philosophers is necessarily incomplete containing many omissions including some of their major doctrines and arguments. Magee writes about what interests him, which is fine in autobiography but inexcusable if one is trying to present an introduction to philosophy for the layman. Magee focusses heavily on metaphysics and epistemology with little attention to aesthetics and philosophy of science and no attention to ethics and moral/political philosophy. Magee considers these latter fields boring'. Philosophy ,in his opinion, can shed no light on ethical questions. This is unfortunate because the greatest philosophers in history were mostly system builders who spent a lot of time and words on ethical, political and aesthetic questions. Magee has authored the definitive English language study/exegesis of Schopenhauer, a brilliant, powerful and enigmatic yet extremely reactionary philosopher. However, Magee in this book spends two chapters explaining Schopenhauer's metaphysics and epistemology with scarcely a mention of his philosophy of pessimism, his doctrine of the will or his extremely offensive views on women, race and politics in general. Magee spends an almost equal amount of time on Kant and his first Critique. His is a decent interpretation placing Kant into an overall context showing that Kant's goals were something more than the standard interpretation that states Kant was only interested in answering questions like is synthetic a priori knowledge possible'. Readers with no background in either thinker will find these parts of the book tough going. Although Magee rightly considers Marx one of the greatest thinkers of history, he offers up no exegesis or consideration of Marx's work or subsequent writers working in the Marxist tradition. Magee merely, over and over, refers readers to Karl Popper's Open Society and Its Enemies for the definitive intellectual refutation of Marx and Marxism. The unsavoury nature of the USSR and other so-called socialist or Marxist states is ,for Magee, the empirical refutation of Marx(ism). Generally, Popper's criticisms are considered to be off mark, attacking a straw man relying on the problem of induction to refute the historical laws that Marx was purported to have come with. This sets standards too high as the problem of induction is probably intractable. While Magee is right that a lot of Marxist work is of poor quality, he should at least consider G.A. Cohen, a leading academic philosopher who has written a tightly argued book reconstructing the second international Marxism that Magee takes to be definitive as Marxism. Further, Magee should consider that , the only philosopher bashed and misunderstood more than Marx is Popper himself. Indeed Popper bashing has to some degree taken over from Marx bashing, as an excellent and highly lucrative career choice among prospective academics. Many of these so-called critics are as wrong about Popper as they were and are about Marx. Magee's confession contains a good deal of critical commentary on the state and nature of academic philosophy. This is one of the most enjoyable parts of the book (aside from his account of his quite close personal relationships
[Marxism-Thaxis] Dropping out for a while
Hi there.
Unfortunately, cos of a death in the family I willbe spending a fair bit
of time in Sydney for a while. Therefore I will tomorrow temporarily
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For those concerned, pls note new phone no. 02-9587-9049
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Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Karl Popper and Analytical Marxism
This is about the struggle in the superstructure, but requires rather detailed knowledge of current participants for anyone to intervene on. I do not know Alan Carling's position but you imply it includes one that is critical of dialectics. It may not be surprising therefore that he has not seen the opportunity or the attraction of making a quick reply to your subtle letter. Generally I have assumed that Analytic Marxism was a product of the pressure of bourgeois ideology on the left in the superstructure and an attempt to avoid McCarthyite repression. This post would explain how impassioned opponents of the law of value and dialectical materialism have been on various lists: a passion that seems oddly in contrast to their apparent openness and reasonableness on other things. Surprisingly someone got expelled, admittedly for being rather clumsy about it, from the marxism and sciences list for opposing these attacks on dialectical materialism. In order to engage with the issues Jim raises, I would need to know key points from Popper's essay What is Dialectic? to which Jim refers. I try to keep a few texts of the loathsome Popper for reference in an argument but I have not got this one. However a google search for Popper What is Dialectic produced these passages from an email discussion: I interpret Popper to be making this argument: Hegel's dialectic depends on contradiction, but contradiction is impermissible in science, therefore Hegelian doctrine is not compatible with science. and this quote from Karl R. Popper's _The Open Society and Its Enemies_ (Volume 2: Hegel and Marx; The Rise of Oracular Philosophy: Chapter 12. Hegel and The New Tribalism). [Hegel] taught that Kant was quite right in pointing out the antimonies, but that he was wrong to worry about them. It just lies in the nature of reason that it must contradict itself, Hegel asserted; and it is not a weakness of our human faculties, but it is the very essence of all rationality that it must work with contradictions and antimonies; for this is just the way in which reason _develops_. Hegel asserted that Kant had analysed reason as if it were something static; that he forgot that mankind develops, and with it, our social heritage. But what we are pleased to call our own reason is nothing but the product of this social heritage, of the historical development of the social group in which we live, the nation. This development proceeds _dialectically_, that is to say, in a three-beat rhythm. First a _thesis_ is proffered; but it will produce criticism, it will be contradicted by opponents who assert its opposite, an _antithesis_; and in the conflict of these views, a _synthesis_ is attained, that is to say, a kind of unity of opposites, a compromise or a reconciliation on a higher level. The synthesis absorbs, as it were, the two original opposite positions, by superseding them; it reduces them to components of itself, thereby negating, elevating, and preserving them. And once the synthesis has been established, the whole process can repeat itself on a higher level tha has now been reached. That is, in brief, the three-beat rhythm of progress which Hegel called the 'dialectic triad'. I am quite prepared to admit that this is not a bad description of the way in which a critical discussion, and therefore also scientific thought, may sometimes progress. For all criticism consists in pointing out some contradictions or discrepancies, and scientific progress consists largely in the elimination of contradictions wherever we find them. This means, however, that science proceeds on the assumption that _contradictions are impermissible and avoidable_, so that the discovery of a contradiction forces the scientist to make every attempt to eliminate it; and indeed, once a contradiction is admitted, all science must collapse. But Hegel derives a very different lesson from his dialectic triad. Since contradictions are the means by which science progresses, he concludes that contradictions are not only permissible and unavoidable but also highly desirable. From this it would seem that at his best Popper is criticising the idealism inherent in Hegel on which he has a point. But presumably the fear of loss of tenure would make it difficult for members of philosphy departments in the USA to give a comprehensive answer. Even know this pressure is apparent in email marxism where lists may at best be only agnostic about key features of marxism such as dialectical materialism and the law of value (if they are not crudely and undialectically dogmatic) Chris Burford London ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
