Since the continental tradition(S) upheld some variants of Marx and
Marxism, we don't usually think of Marxist philosophy as belonging to
any of the Ango-Analytic versions of philosophy, especially within
currents that tried to define and delimit 'social science'. However,
the first piece here looks to put Cohen up against Althusser (and
Althusser was clearly an 'influence' on Cohen). The second piece is an
artefact about the demise of analytical Marxism and what Cohen
proposed next.
You need a subscription to get the first article on pdf. I am checking
to see if I can get it through my library.
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a739400331
Louis Althusser and G. A. Cohen: a confrontation
Author: Grahame Lock
DOI: 10.1080/0308514880021
Publication Frequency: 4 issues per year
Published in: journal Economy and Society, Volume 17, Issue 4 November
1988 , pages 499 - 517
Subjects: Economics; Political Economic Anthropology; Theory
Political Sociology;
Formats available: PDF (English)
Article Requests: Order Reprints : Request Permissions
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Abstract
The paper compares and confronts the work of two of the most
distinguished living Marxist philosophers: G. A. Cohen from the
English-speaking world, and Louis Althusser from France. It develops a
critique of certain of Cohen's theses from the standpoint of ideas
present in the work of Althusser. But it also problematizes certain
presuppositions common to the work of both - in particular, the notion
that historical development (transition or revolution) should be
explained in terms of some general theory of non-correspondence
between productive forces and production relations: the difference
being simply that, within this scheme, Althusser accords explanatory
primacy to the latter, Cohen to the former. Cohen's and Althusser's
accounts of technological innovation and development are also
compared, in connexion with the contrasting place which they attribute
to the notice of human rationality on the one side and class struggle
on the other.
--
http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/default.asp?channel_id=2188editorial_id=10428
Analytical Marxism - an ex-paradigm? The odyssey of G.A. Cohen
Marcus Roberts
In 1978 G.A. Cohen published Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence.
That this landmark work set out to defend (something like) the
orthodox historical materialism of the Second International was
surprising enough; that its author situated himself within the
`analytical' tradition - and therefore engaged, and sought to defeat,
Acton, Plamenatz, Popper et al. on their own methodological terrain -
was surprising indeed. It is testimony to Cohen's analytical acuity
that, from such unpropitious materials, he fashioned not a mere curio,
but arguably the most accomplished defence of `technological
determinism' ever produced, and one of the most important works of
Marxist philosophy to have emerged from the Anglo-American academy. In
fact, its publication heralded the emergence of a sui generis Marxism
designated by its progenitors - prominent amongst whom, alongside
Cohen, were Jon Elster, John Roemer, Adam Przeworski and Erik Olin
Wright - as `Analytical' or `Rational Choice' Marxism. The architects
of this new `paradigm' insisted that a necessary condition of
Marxism's salvation was its importation into the tradition of
analytical philosophical method, `positivist' social science, and -
or, at least, so argued Elster, Roemer and Przeworski - that version
of rational choice theory originating in the Marginalist revolution of
the 1870s and providing neo-classical economics with its definitive
axioms. As one commentator observed, `Cohen and his co-thinkers ...
casually crossed the supposedly impassable border between Marxism and
the academic mainstream in philosophy and social theory.'
After nearly two decades, few Marxist `insights' have survived the
attempt to `reconstruct' it. Most of the Marxist heritage -
Marxism-Leninism, Trotskyism, Western Marxism and Structuralist
Marxism - had been consigned to the Humean flames from the outset. So,
too, had Marx's `multiply confused' anatomy of the capitalist mode of
production. As for `Marx's theory of history' in its technological
determinist incarnation, Cohen has long since confessed to doubts as
to its defensibility; few Marxists - even amongst his co-workers - now
share the slightest doubts about its indefensibility; and, anyway,
Cohen himself no longer considers it to have any purchase upon the
crucial problems confronting socialists at the close of the twentieth
century. He argues that the pre-history of the historical materialist
programme has nothing very interesting to tell us regarding either the
constituency, agency and strategy of any prospective transition to
socialism, or the motivational and institutional structures of a
feasible socialism. Thus, in the introduction to Self-Ownership,
Freedom and
