Analytical Marxism

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The Analytical Marxism is a philosophical and sociological mindset of Marxism , which was widespread in the 1980s, primarily in the English language. He tries to work on Marxist questions with methods of analytical philosophy , rational choice or neoclassical approaches. It is brought into close association with the academic September group and, in the narrower sense, is also referred to as Rational Choice Marxism . This group referred to itself as "Non-Bullshit Marxism" and was, in the words of David Miller , characterized by "clear and rigorous thinking about questions that are usually blanketed by ideological fog" .

The 1978 publication of Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defense by Gerald A. Cohen can be seen as a decisive impetus for the development of this trend . In addition, the work of John Roemer and Jon Elster were important for the establishment of Analytical Marxism. The former took to reconstruct the Marx economic theory in the vocabulary of the neo economic theory attempt, the latter turned to methods of making and game theory to Marx's theory, starting with the class struggle based and within the meaning of methodological individualism to undergo reconstruction . What the three of them had in common was the conviction that Marxism did not have to develop its own methodology, but had to seek confrontation and debate with the current state of research in the various scientific disciplines.

The best-known members of the group, besides Cohen, Roemer and Elster, were above all Adam Przeworski , Erik Olin Wright , Philippe Van Parijs , and Robert-Jan van der Veen . In the 1980s and 1990s, the group held meetings in London, initially annually and later every two years. It is characterized by the rejection of dialectics and the attempt to detach Marxist thinking from the influences of Hegel. The aim is to recapture Marx's thinking by means of analytical thinking.

In the Federal Republican debate, especially in the 1970s and 80s, individual scholars endeavored to interpret Marx based on analytical-philosophical standards. Above all, Ulrich Steinvorth , Christof Helberger, Joachim Nanninga, Jürgen Schampel and Winfried Vogt should be mentioned here . A Federal Republican theorist who can currently be assigned to an analytical Marx approach is Marco Iorio - he also relies explicitly on Cohen and Elster. However, German Analytical Marxism lacks the politically oriented reference that the works of z. B. Roemer or Cohen, who understood themselves explicitly as socialists.

On the whole, Analytical Marxism, both in its Anglo-American and German versions, was received extremely critically in (West) Germany. Above all, Klaus Müller criticized the technological determinism of Cohen's conception of historical materialism as well as the methodological individualism of Elster and others, Max Koch rejected the class concepts of Roemer and Wright because of their general theory of exploitation, which completely abstracts from the capitalist exploitation process and turns the concept of exploitation into a metaphor Degrade, while Ingo Elbe accuses the German contributions to Analytical Marxism of missing the problem horizon of Marx's theory of value , but at the same time recognizes certain 'metatheoretical' merits in the criticism of Hegelianizing dialectical conceptions.

Marco Iorio speaks of a noticeable disintegration of this school of Marxism, although a "new Marx research on an analytical basis" still exists. All three 'founding fathers' turned to non-Marxist theories and concepts. Cohen later mainly dealt with the issue of justice, Roemer argued independently of Marxist approaches for a market socialism and with Elster neither Marxist nor socialist ideas had played a role in the end.

Fonts

  • A. Carter: Marx: A Radical Critique. Westview Press, Boulder 1988, ISBN 0-710-80449-0 .
  • T. Carver, P. Thomas (Eds.): Rational Choice Marxism. MacMillan, London 1995, ISBN 0-271-01463-6 .
  • GA Cohen : Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defense. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1978, ISBN 0-691-02008-6 .
  • GA Cohen: History, Labor, and Freedom: Themes from Marx. Oxford University Press, Oxford 1988, ISBN 0-19-824816-4 .
  • GA Cohen: Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1995, ISBN 0-521-47751-4 .
  • GA Cohen: Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defense. Extended edition. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2000, ISBN 0-19-924206-2 .
  • GA Cohen: If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich? Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 2000, ISBN 0-674-00218-0 .
  • I. Elbe : Marx in the West. The new Marx reading in the Federal Republic since 1965 2nd edition Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2010 ISBN 978-3-05-004920-5 .
  • J. Elster : Making Sense of Marx. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1985, ISBN 0-521-29705-2 .
  • J. Elster: An Introduction to Karl Marx. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1986, ISBN 0-521-33831-X .
  • D. Gordon: Resurrecting Marx: The Analytical Marxists on Freedom, Exploitation, and Justice. Transaction Publishers, New Jersey 1991, ISBN 0-88738-390-4 .
  • C. Helberger: Marxism as a method. Scientific studies on the method of Marxist political economy , Fischer Athenaeum, Frankfurt / M. 1974, ISBN 3-8072-5005-0
  • P. Hirst: GA Cohen's Theory of History. In: Marxism and Historical Writing. Routledge, London 1985, ISBN 0-7100-9925-8 .
  • ZI Husami: Marx on Distributive Justice. In: M. Cohen, T. Nagel, T. Scanlon (Eds.): Marx, Justice, and History. Princeton University Press, Princeton 1980, ISBN 0-691-02009-4 .
  • M. Iorio: Karl Marx - History, Society, Politics , de Gruyter, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-11-017849-4
  • M. Koch: On the structural change of a class society. Theoretical discussion and empirical analysis Westfälisches Dampfboot, Münster 1994 ISBN 3-929586-34-7 .
  • A. Levine, EO Wright: Rationality and Class Struggle. In: New Left Review. 123, 1980.
  • TF Mayer: Analytical Marxism. Sage, Thousand Oaks, Calif. 1994, ISBN 0-8039-4681-3 .
  • D. Miller: In: London Review of Books . October 31, 1996.
  • K. Müller: Analytical Marxism. Technical way out of the theoretical crisis? In: Prokla No. 72/1988.
  • J. Nanninga: Exchange Value and Value. A linguistic-critical reconstruction of the foundation of the critique of political economy , Diss., Hamburg 1975
  • A. Przeworski : Capitalism and Social Democracy. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1985, ISBN 0-521-26742-0 .
  • M. Roberts: Analytical Marxism: A Critique. Verso, London 1996, ISBN 1-85984-855-9 .
  • J. Roemer : A General Theory of Exploitation and Class. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1998, ISBN 0-674-34440-5 .
  • J. Roemer (Ed.): Analytical Marxism. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1986, ISBN 0-521-31731-2 .
  • J. Schampel: The fairy tale of goods. About the symbolic character of the commodity in "Capital" by Karl Marx , Königstein / Ts. 1982
  • U. Steinvorth: An analytical interpretation of Marx's dialectic , Meisenheim am Glan 1977, ISBN 3-445-01441-8
  • F. Tarrit: A Brief History, Scope and Peculiarities of "Analytical Marxism". In: Review of Radical Political Economics. 38, 4, 2006.
  • P. Van Parijs: Marxism Recycled. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1993, ISBN 2-7351-0536-9 .
  • W. Vogt; Theory of the capitalist and a laborist economy. Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verl. 1986, ISBN 3-593-33631-6 .
  • A. Wood: Karl Marx. Routledge, New York 2004, ISBN 0-415-31698-7 .
  • EO Wright : Autobiographical Essay. (PDF; 256 kB) In: Stephen Turner, Alan Sica (Ed.): A Disobedient Generation. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, Calif. 2003, ISBN 0-7619-4275-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ GA Cohen: Karl Marx's Theory of History.
  2. ↑ D. Miller. In: London Review of Books. 1996.
  3. ↑ a b Marco Iorio: Analytical Marxism, in: Michael Quante / David P. Schweikard (ed.): Marx Handbuch. Life - Works - Work, Stuttgart 2016, p. 349f.
  4. ↑ Müller, Analytischer Marxismus, p. 43ff.
  5. ↑ Koch, On the structural change of a class society, pp. 72f., 84f.
  6. ↑ Elbe, Marx im Westen, pp. 125-138, 265-282
  7. ↑ Marco Iorio: Analytical Marxism, in: Michael Quante / David P. Schweikard (ed.): Marx Handbook. Life - Works - Work, Stuttgart 2016, p. 351.