Jerry Cohen, RIP

[JimFar]

The Canadian/British political philosopher, G.A. Cohen (1941-2009), probably best known as the author of the book, Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence, died this morning, reportedly of a stroke.

http://colinfarrelly.blogspot.com/2009/08/ga-cohen-1941-2009.html

[Hit The North]

R.I.P. analytical Marxism.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Thanks for that Jim; BTB's comments are particularly insensitive.

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By the way, Jim, I have a new e-mail address which I'll send you in the next few days. Busy moving my site right now, and have yet to set it up!

My other e-mail addresses still work, but I can no longer reply to anyone using them.

[RevolverNo9]

!

That's a real shame, I'm very sorry to hear that. As an individual he was a wonderful, kind and very funny man. This is a loss.

[Hit The North]

Thanks for that Jim; BTB's comments are particularly insensitive.

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Sorry, Rosa, I didn't know you were so emotionally attached to analytical Marxism.

My only point was that Cohen, as far as I know, was the last surviving advocate of this variant.

As for the man himself, I didn't know him; I think that his Karl Marx's Theory of History is interesting in parts but he's far from my favourite academic Marxist, so his death has no emotional punch for me, I'm afraid.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

BTB:


Sorry, Rosa, I didn't know you were so emotionally attached to analytical Marxism.

I am emotionally attached to it slightly less than you are to mystical Hegelianism.


My only point was that Cohen, as far as I know, was the last surviving advocate of this variant.

As for the man himself, I didn't know him; I think that his Karl Marx's Theory of History is interesting in parts but he's far from my favourite academic Marxist, so his death has no emotional punch for me, I'm afraid.

Whether or not you are right, and whether or not you have no emotional attachment to him, your comment about the death of a fellow Marxist was insensitive.

[scarletghoul]

How was it insensitive Rosa? It was a very respectful comment that you appear to have misunderstood (probably because you can't grasp the dialectic nature of this situation)

RIP Mr Cohen

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

SG:


How was it insensitive Rosa? It was a very respectful comment that you appear to have misunderstood (probably because you can't grasp the dialectic nature of this situation)

1) There's nothing 'dialectical' to grasp here, and there's nothing at all to grasp in 'dialectics' in general (unless you can show otherwise).

2) In a post about the death of a fellow Marxist, posting this is indeed insensitive:


R.I.P. analytical Marxism.

Better to say nothing.

Had the death, say, of Tony Cliff been announced like this:



R.I.P. State Capitalist theory

BTB would rightly have been incensed.

[Guerrilla22]

R.I.P Jerry you surely will be missed.

[JimFar]

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By the way, Jim, I have a new e-mail address which I'll send you in the next few days. Busy moving my site right now, and have yet to set it up!

My other e-mail addresses still work, but I can no longer reply to anyone using them.

I don't think it would be out of place to begin discussing evaluations of Jerry Cohen's work. One person that I know who was a long time admirer of Cohen (and for many years considered himself to be an Analytic Marxist) wrote the following assessment:
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Unless I missed it the death the other day of Jerry Cohen attracted no comment on a list devoted to Marxist philosophy. I know that as first a founder of analytical Marxism, then as a refugee from Marxism to liberal egalitarianism, he was not favored among the participants here. But IMHO he was one of the most influential and important Marxist thinkers of the latter half of the 20th century, and his legacy requires comment.

Not much time here but I will note a few thoughts;

- In the context of a sharp decline in the quantity and quality of Marxist theory, Cohen and the AMs stood for the disconnection of theory from practice, the entrenchment of Marxism as another academic exercise. In some ways this was not their fault giving the collapse of Marxism as a movement and a force in the world.

- Cohen helped bring a level of rigor and precision in Marxist thinking that had been sorely lacking for a very long time. If it's complained that his work lacked popular accessibility, what are we to say about Adorno, a favorite here who gets wide discussion?

- Cohen's major work on Karl Marx's Theory Of History is very valuable, but went down the wrong track in reviving a stagist, mechanical, primacy of the productive forces 2d Internat'l conception of historical materialism. (Possibly due in part to his roots in the Canadian CP.)

True, Marx gave that view a lot of space, but Cohen almost totally neglected Marx's alternative class struggle view, which I think is more true and valuable and gets no less, arguably more, space. Brenner is far better on this (and no less rigorous).

- Cohen's turn to traditional style moral philosophy as important, first as a complement to his idea of historical materialism, then as a replacement for Marxism and materialist analysis, was a major retrogression. No doubt there is more ethics in Marx and Marxism than Marx cared to admit, but Marx pointed the way in integrating these into materialist analysis.

Cohen's own positive ethical views were, moreover, disappointingly primitive and underdeveloped. See his awful Egalitarianism book, but also earlier papers on exploitation and his paper critiquing value theory -- a real train wreck. And I don't accept value theory myself! I haven't carefully read the last book in Rawls.

Btw in that book Cohen lists as the big three books on political philosophy Rawls' A Theory of Justice, Hobbes' Leviathan, and Plato's Republic. Marx's Capital doesn't make his cut. Given Cohen's a priori turn to liberal morality, Marx might be happy to be left out.

- Cohen was nonetheless a major influence, one of the few really original thinkers in late 20th century Marxism, along with perhaps Althusser -- who, it might argued, paralleled him in a French sort of way. The people we tend to discuss, Marx, the Western Marxists, all had their roots and did much or all of their important work before 1950.

It says something about the state of Marxism that Cohen and Althusser are among the giants of postwar Marxism.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Thanks for that Jim. I agree with the above assessment of Cohen's KMTOR, and regret the fact that he drifted away from Marxism proper.

[JimFar]

Short obit for Jerry Cohen here:

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/farmelant080809.html

[Invariance]

The only elements of analytical Marxism I am aware of is their rejection of the LTV in favor of methodological individualism - rational choice theory / game theory. In that sense, I don't think it was something progressive (not specifically abandoning the LTV, but substituting it with microeconomic methodology). That, and technological determinism, which I think is a distortion of Marx's theory of history.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Invariance, the only strength of Analytic Marxism was its turn to Analytic Philosophy (allied to the root and branch rejection of Hegel), and with that, modern logic. However, its practitioners were only half-hearted in this regard, and becasue of that, the 'movement' failed. Had they been more consistent, and had they pushed the programme through rigorously enough, they'd have abandoned the things you mention (methological individualism, technological determinism, and the rejection of the LTV).

In my own work, I am trying to rectify these fatal weaknesses.

[Of course, there was also an important political dimension to their failure, too.]

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Excellent obit, Jim!

KMTOH was an important punctuation mark in my own intellectual development, nearly as significant as that which had been provided me by reading Marx, Wittgenstein and Frege.

[Luís Henrique]

Well, the death of people is (short of a few actual monsters like Himmler or Beria) seldom an occasion for commemoration. So, whomever Cohen was and whatever he did, the proper feelings of sadness and nostalgy, plus the normal solidarity towards those who face the "misterious and common destiny of all that is alive" apply.

Regarding "analytical Marxism", the best comment on it probably was styled by Daniel Bensaid:


Analytic, with no doubt. But Marxist, exactly in what?

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Rosa, why do you think that Analytic Philosophy is incompatible with methodological individualism?

Luís Henrique

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

LH:


Rosa, why do you think that Analytic Philosophy is incompatible with methodological individualism?

Because of the very strong holist tradition in Analytic Philosophy, based first of all in Frege's context principle, and in Wittgenstein's extension of this to discourse in general, emphasising that meaning and language (logic, the arts, science, etc., too) are not indivdualistic enterprises but social practices. In that case, 'rationality', for example, cannot be an individual skill, but is a feature of our social life. In that case, 'rational economic man/woman' is a by-product of a bourgeois view of the world, and not a reflection of genuine social relations.

I have to say that this is a minority view in analytic philosophy, but then analytic philosophers in general (led by Quine, and other American philosophers) have retreated from their earlier anti-metaphysical stance, and have adopted a more openly bourgeois/metaphysical view of the social and natural world.

[Luís Henrique]

Because of the very strong holist tradition in Analytic Philosophy, based first of all in Frege's context principle,

Would you mind to explain what is Frege's context principle?


and in Wittgenstein's extension of this to discourse in general, emphasising that meaning and language (logic, the arts, science, etc., too) are not indivdualistic enterprises but social practices.Interesting. Can you recommend me Wittgenstein's texts where he extends Frege's context principle to discourse in general?


In that case, 'rationality', for example, cannot be an individual skill, but is a feature of our social life.I see. In what sence rationality is a feature of social life, as opposed to an individual skill? Because, evidently, individuals are able to behave in rational or irrational ways; what is being argued is that the judgement on whether such behaviour is rational or not is social rather than aprioristic, or that the behaviour of each individual, even if deemed "irrational" by others is in fact part of a greater, collective rationality?


In that case, 'rational economic man/woman' is a by-product of a bourgeois view of the world, and not a reflection of genuine social relations.Do Frege or Wittgenstein formulate this in these terms, or is this your, or yet another thinker's, conclusion on the base of Frege/Wittgenstein reasoning? Do Frege or Wittgenstein actually use such terminology?

Now, if I correctly interpret your paragraph, the myth of the "rational (maximising) individual" is the product of bourgeois social relations? Or is it not the product of any social relations at all? Does the adjective "genuine" here play an actual role in your construction? Is it meant to be opposed to "bourgeois"? And would "bourgeois" in this sence be interchangeable with "false" or "inauthentic"?


I have to say that this is a minority view in analytic philosophy,Even so, it is "a very strong" (holistic) "tradition", so you can possibly point us other authors who pertain to this (very strong, if I understand correctly) tradition? I find it curious that apparently none of the "Analytic Marxists" (all of whom, if I am correctly informed, capitulated to methodological individualism) belong to such tradition - did they write on this tradition, and why instead of taking advantage of it, they instead in fact retroceded to methodologic individualism?


but then analytic philosophers in general (led by Quine, and other American philosophers) have retreated from their earlier anti-metaphysical stance, and have adopted a more openly bourgeois/metaphysical view of the social and natural world.That's interesting - to what would you attribute such turn? Does it have to do with the hegemony of methodological individualism in the Academy? Or could it be linked to some internal aspect of Analytic Philosophy?

(By the way, where do you situate such theories such as "rational choice" or "game theory" regarding methodological individualism? Is this approach inherent to them, or is it possible to rescue some of "game theory" insights within a different methodological frame?)

Luís Henrique

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

LH:


Would you mind to explain what is Frege's context principle?

[This idea had already appeared in embryonic form in several medieval authors, in Leibniz and then in Kant (in the priority of the judgement) and Hegel, but in a confused, semi-psychologistic form. Oddly enough, it also appeared in Jeremy Bentham! But these theorists did not have a clear or consitent view of this idea, and many of their other theses were diametrically opposed to it.]

Frege was concerned to oppose the traditional view that words gained their meaning individually by acting as the names of ideas, concepts, things, objects, etc.

Based on Plato's idea that the smallest unit we can say anything is a sentence containing a noun and verb, he argued that it is only in the context of a sentence/proposition that a word has a meaning:


"[N]ever ask for the meaning of a word in isolation, but only in the context of a proposition." [Frege (1953) The Foundations of Arithmetic, p.x.]

"[W]e ought always to keep before our eyes a complete proposition. Only in the context of a proposition have the words really a meaning."

This was a direct challenge to atomistic theories of meaning that had dominated 'western' thought for 2400 years (despite the above qualifications).

What Frege is after is that the semantic role of a word (the syntactic role it plays in contribution to the sense of a proposition), whether it be an noun, verb, definite description, or whatever, is the key to our ability to use it and communicate.

Traditional theory had assimilated all words to names, or even proper names, and then the temptation to theorise that these were the names of objects, ideas or concepts (abstractions in the mind, etc.) became overwhelming. This sent philosophical psychology, metaphysics, logic and epistemology off on a 2000 year long wild goose chase.

Frege argued that if this were the case, then each person would have a different understanding of the words they used (since they were allegedly the names of ideas in the mind, etc. which no two people can share, or, rather to which no one else has access), and thus communication would fail.

Wittgenstein pushed this much further (it is central to his argument against the possibility of there being a private language, for example).


"Only propositions have sense; only in the nexus of a proposition does a name have meaning." [Wittgenstein (1972) [I]Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, §3.3, p.25]

"An expression only has meaning in a proposition."

"For naming and describing do not stand on the same level: naming is a preparation for a description. Naming is so far not a move in the language-game -- any more than putting a piece in its place on the board is a move in chess. We may say: nothing has so far been done, when a thing has been named. It has not even got a name except in the language-game. This is what Frege meant too, when he said that a word had meaning only as part of a sentence." [Wittgenstein (1958) [I]Philosophical Investigations, §49, p.24.]

So, for Wittgenstein, names are only names because of the role they play in sentences and in our lives in general. They get their meaning from their syntactic role. Moreover not all words can be names, for if they were, sentences would be lists, and lists say nothing. For example:

London, Lenin, Amazon, Venus, Socialist Worker, Coronation Street, Tony Benn, Proxima Centauri.

This says nothing, and can only be made to say something if it is articulated with words that are not names.

This new logic has a profound influence on the way we interpret logic in general, science, mathematics, language, and practically everything else that traditional philosophers have studied -- and this constitutes the core of Wittgenstein's criticism of traditional philosophy, and mine, too. This is what makes it so revolutionary, since no one had pushed this as far as Wittgenstein did.

How this is so, I have worked out in great detail here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2003_01.htm

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2003_02.htm

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page%2012_01.htm

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page_13_03.htm

I'll respond to the other things you say tomorrow.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

I can in fact deal with this tonight:


Interesting. Can you recommend me Wittgenstein's texts where he extends Frege's context principle to discourse in general?

It dominates his Philosophical Investigations.

But you will find more references here:

http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/page_13_03.htm

In Note 24.


I see. In what sense rationality is a feature of social life, as opposed to an individual skill? Because, evidently, individuals are able to behave in rational or irrational ways; what is being argued is that the judgement on whether such behaviour is rational or not is social rather than aprioristic, or that the behaviour of each individual, even if deemed "irrational" by others is in fact part of a greater, collective rationality?

Well, 'rationality' is itself a socially-conditioned word, and we do not teach ourselves what it means, we are taught it by those who have gone before us. It's part of our socialisation.


Do Frege or Wittgenstein formulate this in these terms, or is this your, or yet another thinker's, conclusion on the base of Frege/Wittgenstein reasoning? Do Frege or Wittgenstein actually use such terminology?

Apologies, no this is my way of expressing this. However, Marx says rather similar things, but in an older and more traditional idiom:


The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men, appear at this stage as the direct efflux of their material behaviour. The same applies to mental production as expressed in the language of politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics, etc., of a people. Men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc. -- real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these, up to its furthest forms. Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process. If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process. [Marx and Engels (1970) The German Ideology, p.47. Bold added.]

Only now, after having considered four moments, four aspects of the primary historical relationships, do we find that man also possesses 'consciousness,' but, even so, not inherent, not 'pure' consciousness. From the start the 'spirit' is afflicted with the curse of being 'burdened' with matter, which here makes its appearance in the form of agitated layers of air, sounds, in short, of language. Language is as old as consciousness, language is practical consciousness that exists also for other men, and for that reason alone it really exists for me personally as well; language, like consciousness, only arises from the need, the necessity, of intercourse with other men. Where there exists a relationship, it exists for me: the animal does not enter into 'relations' with anything, it does not enter into any relation at all. For the animal, its relation to others does not exist as a relation. Consciousness is, therefore, from the very beginning a social product, and remains so as long as men exist at all.

Consciousness is at first, of course, merely consciousness concerning the immediate sensuous environment and consciousness of the limited connection with other persons and things outside the individual who is growing self-conscious.... On the other hand, man's consciousness of the necessity of associating with the individuals around him is the beginning of the consciousness that he is living in society at all.... [Ibid., pp.50-51. Bold emphases added.]

One of the most difficult tasks confronting philosophers is to descend from the world of thought to the actual world. Language is the immediate actuality of thought. Just as philosophers have given thought an independent existence, so they were bound to make language into an independent realm. This is the secret of philosophical language, in which thoughts in the form of words have their own content. The problem of descending from the world of thoughts to the actual world is turned into the problem of descending from language to life.

We have shown that thoughts and ideas acquire an independent existence in consequence of the personal circumstances and relations of individuals acquiring independent existence. We have shown that exclusive, systematic occupation with these thoughts on the part of ideologists and philosophers, and hence the systematisation of these thoughts, is a consequence of division of labour, and that, in particular, German philosophy is a consequence of German petty-bourgeois conditions. The philosophers have only to dissolve their language into the ordinary language, from which it is abstracted, in order to recognise it, as the distorted language of the actual world, and to realise that neither thoughts nor language in themselves form a realm of their own, that they are only manifestations of actual life. [Marx and Engels (1970), p.118. Bold emphases added.]

The object before us, to begin with, material production.

Individuals producing in Society -- hence socially determined individual production -- is, of course, the point of departure. The individual and isolated hunter and fisherman, with whom Smith and Ricardo begin, belongs among the unimaginative conceits of the eighteenth-century Robinsonades, which in no way express merely a reaction against over-sophistication and a return to a misunderstood natural life, as cultural historians imagine. As little as Rousseau's contrat social, which brings naturally independent, autonomous subjects into relation and connection by contract, rests on such naturalism. This is the semblance, the merely aesthetic semblance, of the Robinsonades, great and small. It is, rather, the anticipation of 'civil society', in preparation since the sixteenth century and making giant strides towards maturity in the eighteenth. In this society of free competition, the individual appears detached from the natural bonds etc. which in earlier historical periods make him the accessory of a definite and limited human conglomerate. Smith and Ricardo still stand with both feet on the shoulders of the eighteenth-century prophets, in whose imaginations this eighteenth-century individual -- the product on one side of the dissolution of the feudal forms of society, on the other side of the new forces of production developed since the sixteenth century -- appears as an ideal, whose existence they project into the past. Not as a historic result but as history's point of departure. As the Natural Individual appropriate to their notion of human nature, not arising historically, but posited by nature. This illusion has been common to each new epoch to this day. Steuart avoided this simple-mindedness because as an aristocrat and in antithesis to the eighteenth century, he had in some respects a more historical footing.

The more deeply we go back into history, the more does the individual, and hence also the producing individual, appear as dependent, as belonging to a greater whole: in a still quite natural way in the family and in the family expanded into the clan [Stamm]; then later in the various forms of communal society arising out of the antitheses and fusions of the clan. Only in the eighteenth century, in 'civil society', do the various forms of social connectedness confront the individual as a mere means towards his private purposes, as external necessity. But the epoch which produces this standpoint, that of the isolated individual, is also precisely that of the hitherto most developed social (from this standpoint, general) relations.

The human being is in the most literal sense a Zwon politikon not merely a gregarious animal, but an animal which can individuate itself only in the midst of society. Production by an isolated individual outside society -- a rare exception which may well occur when a civilized person in whom the social forces are already dynamically present is cast by accident into the wilderness -- is as much of an absurdity as is the development of language without individuals living together and talking to each other. There is no point in dwelling on this any longer. The point could go entirely unmentioned if this twaddle, which had sense and reason for the eighteenth-century characters, had not been earnestly pulled back into the centre of the most modern economics by Bastiat, Carey, Proudhon etc. Of course it is a convenience for Proudhon et al. to be able to give a historico-philosophic account of the source of an economic relation, of whose historic origins he is ignorant, by inventing the myth that Adam or Prometheus stumbled on the idea ready-made, and then it was adopted, etc. Nothing is more dry and boring than the fantasies of a locus communis. [Marx (1973), pp.83-85. Bold emphasis added.]

The main point here is this: In all these forms -- in which landed property and agriculture form the basis of the economic order, and where the economic aim is hence the production of use values, i.e., the reproduction of the individual within the specific relation to the commune in which he is its basis -- there is to be found: (1) Appropriation not through labour, but presupposed to labour; appropriation of the natural conditions of labour, of the earth as the original instrument of labour as well as its workshop and repository of raw materials. The individual relates simply to the objective conditions of labour as being his; [relates] to them as the inorganic nature of his subjectivity, in which the latter realizes itself; the chief objective condition of labour does not itself appear as a product of labour, but is already there as nature; on one side the living individual, on the other the earth, as the objective condition of his reproduction; (2) but this relation to land and soil, to the earth, as the property of the labouring individual -- who thus appears from the outset not merely as labouring individual, in this abstraction, but who has an objective mode of existence in his ownership of the land, an existence presupposed to his activity, and not merely as a result of it, a presupposition of his activity just like his skin, his sense organs, which of course he also reproduces and develops etc. in the life process, but which are nevertheless presuppositions of this process of his reproduction -- is instantly mediated by the naturally arisen, spontaneous, more or less historically developed and modified presence of the individual as member of a commune -- his naturally arisen presence as member of a tribe etc. An isolated individual could no more have property in land and soil than he could speak. He could, of course, live off it as substance, as do the animals. The relation to the earth as property is always mediated through the occupation of the land and soil, peacefully or violently, by the tribe, the commune, in some more or less naturally arisen or already historically developed form. The individual can never appear here in the dot-like isolation...in which he appears as mere free worker." [Ibid., p.485. Bold emphasis added.]

Here, too, is Engels:

Much more important is the direct, demonstrable influence of the development of the hand on the rest of the organism. It has already been noted that our simian ancestors were gregarious; it is obviously impossible to seek the derivation of man, the most social of all animals, from non-gregarious immediate ancestors. Mastery over nature began with the development of the hand, with labour, and widened man's horizon at every new advance. He was continually discovering new, hitherto unknown properties in natural objects. On the other hand, the development of labour necessarily helped to bring the members of society closer together by increasing cases of mutual support and joint activity, and by making clear the advantage of this joint activity to each individual. In short, men in the making arrived at the point where they had something to say to each other....

"First labour, after it and then with it speech -- these were the two most essential stimuli under the influence of which the brain of the ape gradually changed into that of man, which, for all its similarity is far larger and more perfect.... [Engels (1876) The Part Played By Labour..., pp.356-57. Bold emphases added.]

While I would not express these ideas this way (for example, Marx uses the word 'consciousness' in a traditional sense), they conform to what I want to say, and they clearly anticipated Wittgenstein's own work.


Now, if I correctly interpret your paragraph, the myth of the "rational (maximising) individual" is the product of bourgeois social relations? Or is it not the product of any social relations at all? Does the adjective "genuine" here play an actual role in your construction? Is it meant to be opposed to "bourgeois"? And would "bourgeois" in this sense be interchangeable with "false" or "inauthentic"?

Well, I used the word 'genuine' since the ideological stance of bourgeois theorists prompted them to think of every person as an isolated individual, and not an expression of the actual social relations that existed at the time.

And I prefer not to use 'false' etc., since feudal and ancient aristocratic views of men/women were different, but were no less ideologically distorted (in a different way, naturally). So, I used 'bourgeois' to refer to a particular form of ruling-class thought.


Even so, it is "a very strong" (holistic) "tradition", so you can possibly point us other authors who pertain to this (very strong, if I understand correctly) tradition? I find it curious that apparently none of the "Analytic Marxists" (all of whom, if I am correctly informed, capitulated to methodological individualism) belong to such tradition - did they write on this tradition, and why instead of taking advantage of it, they instead in fact retroceded to methodologic individualism?

Well, these thinkers all tend to be Wittgensteinians, and of a left-leaning persuasion, and these 'Analytic Marxists' all ignored this Frege-Wittgenstein tradition, easily the most important seminal influence on Analytic Philosophy in general.

These other authors are: Saul Kripke, Meredith Williams, David Bloor (and those influenced by the latter), etc. You can find reference to their work in the essays I linked to earlier.


That's interesting - to what would you attribute such turn? Does it have to do with the hegemony of methodological individualism in the Academy? Or could it be linked to some internal aspect of Analytic Philosophy?

Well, I have a theory I am working on to explain this, but I will only post details when I have worked it out more fully.

You can find more details in the latter half of:

Peter Hacker: Wittgenstein's Place In Twentieth Century Analytic Philosophy (Blackwell, 1996).


By the way, where do you situate such theories such as "rational choice" or "game theory" regarding methodological individualism? Is this approach inherent to them, or is it possible to rescue some of "game theory" insights within a different methodological frame?

I think that game theory is inherently individualistic at present; whether it can be revised holistically, I cannot say. 'Rational choice' is similarly compromised, I think, too.

[Luís Henrique]

Frege was concerned to oppose the traditional view that words gained their meaning individually by acting as the names of ideas, concepts, things, objects, etc.

Based on Plato's idea that the smallest unit we can say anything is a sentence containing a noun and verb, he argued that it is only in the context of a sentence/proposition that a word has a meaning:

That's good enough in the precise field it is designed to operate in, namely, that of linguistics. Now I am not sure at all that the extension of this to fields like physics, economics, or sociology is warranted, and much less that Frege or Wittgenstein proposed that it was.

After all, different sciences have different objects; not bein a holist or a "methodological totalitarian", I don't take for granted that all objects have the same, or even an analogous, structure (I am not certain that methodological individualism is not the correct approach in physics, for instance), and I know from experience that attempts to transpose uncritically the theoretical apparatus from one science to others is a sure way to failure (examples being Comte's "social physics", Marr's "proletarian linguistics", Lyssenko's "dialectical biology", Dawkins "memetics" or genetic cosmogenesis, etc).

Plus it still doesn't say much about linguistics (though I would agree that nothing substantive can actually be said on the field before Frege's principle is assumed). While the word "London" may have different meanings in different contexts:

London is the capital of the United Kingdom.
London wrote wonderful, if brutal, short stories.
London contested vehemently the Iraqi motion in the United Nations.

It is still true that it cannot have some meanings:

*He ate London with strawberries.
*I London you so much!
*He was so London that Jerry Cohen passed away.

(In fact, it is true that it cannot play some roles in a sentence, such as in the second and third examples above).

Explanations for this, and much more, are not contained in Frege's principle.

Then there is the fact that politics or economy are not linguistics, people aren't words, and the relation between words within sentences are not remotely comparable to the relations between people (I would be very surprised if Frege or Wittgentstein came with the idea that the subject "oppresses" the verb, or that "proletarian words" such as prepositions and articles need to revolt against bourgeois words such as substantives and adjectives).

This is to say, the extension of linguistic concepts to the field of social sciences is not going to give us a much better results than the extension of concepts from physics or evolutionary biology. Indeed, I fear it has been tried, for instance by Lévy-Strauss, with (conservative, comformist) results that have been adequately criticised by Perry Anderson.

So while you may be right in what you say about this, I am still not convinced that this makes linguistic (functionalist? structuralist?) approach more adequate in social sciences than methodological individualism.

Luís Henrique

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

LH:


That's good enough in the precise field it is designed to operate in, namely, that of linguistics. Now I am not sure at all that the extension of this to fields like physics, economics, or sociology is warranted, and much less that Frege or Wittgenstein proposed that it was.

After all, different sciences have different objects; not bein a holist or a "methodological totalitarian", I don't take for granted that all objects have the same, or even an analogous, structure (I am not certain that methodological individualism is not the correct approach in physics, for instance), and I know from experience that attempts to transpose uncritically the theoretical apparatus from one science to others is a sure way to failure (examples being Comte's "social physics", Marr's "proletarian linguistics", Lyssenko's "dialectical biology", Dawkins "memetics" or genetic cosmogenesis, etc).


Well, as I argue (in extensive detail) in those essays to which I linked, how we view language affects how we view the specialised languages of science, mathematics, social science, political theory, etc. And that affects how we interpret their results.

Now, as you point out, Frege and Wittgenstein did not extend their ideas into such areas (except mathematics), but I have done, and will continue to do so.

And, of course, I am not proposing that we "transpose uncritically the theoretical apparatus from one science to others", but since the new logic I mentioned affects every conceivable language, it cannot but affect how we interpret these other fields.

And, neither Frege, Wittgenstein nor myself are doing linguistics.


Plus it still doesn't say much about linguistics (though I would agree that nothing substantive can actually be said on the field before Frege's principle is assumed). While the word "London" may have different meanings in different contexts:

London is the capital of the United Kingdom.
London wrote wonderful, if brutal, short stories.
London contested vehemently the Iraqi motion in the United Nations.


It is still true that it cannot have some meanings:

*He ate London with strawberries.
*I London you so much!
*He was so London that Jerry Cohen passed away.

(In fact, it is true that it cannot play some roles in a sentence, such as in the second and third examples above).

Explanations for this, and much more, are not contained in Frege's principle.

Well, you must recall that the way I expressed it was in a highly compressed form, but fully-worked out it can cope with the things you mention. The point is that howsoever we give sense to the meaning of our words, we cannot do so except in the context of a sentence. Frege is not saying that just any old sentence will do, since he himself pointed out that many sentences make no sense.

So, his principle is a necessary not a sufficient condition.


Then there is the fact that politics or economy are not linguistics, people aren't words, and the relation between words within sentences are not remotely comparable to the relations between people (I would be very surprised if Frege or Wittgenstein came with the idea that the subject "oppresses" the verb, or that "proletarian words" such as prepositions and articles need to revolt against bourgeois words such as substantives and adjectives).

I am not sure, from these comments, that you have got the point!

Nor did I suggest this:


I would be very surprised if Frege or Wittgenstein came with the idea that the subject "oppresses" the verb, or that "proletarian words" such as prepositions and articles need to revolt against bourgeois words such as substantives and adjectives

So, I am not sure either why you mentioned it!


This is to say, the extension of linguistic concepts to the field of social sciences is not going to give us a much better results than the extension of concepts from physics or evolutionary biology. Indeed, I fear it has been tried, for instance by Lévy-Strauss, with (conservative, comformist) results that have been adequately criticised by Perry Anderson.

Who wants to extend linguistic concepts into the social sciences? Not me.

As I say, I think you have badly missed the point.


So while you may be right in what you say about this, I am still not convinced that this makes linguistic (functionalist? structuralist?) approach more adequate in social sciences than methodological individualism.

Again, why are you supposing that I am trying to do this?

[Luís Henrique]

It dominates his Philosophical Investigations.

Thank you. I am not really sure that I will actually study this, since I find his prose quite arid, and from your previous post I was given the impression that his relation to Marxism is indeed quite distant, but linguistics is something that interests me in and of itself, any relations to politics and revolution apart, so perhaps.


Well, 'rationality' is itself a socially-conditioned word, and we do not teach ourselves what it means, we are taught it by those who have gone before us. It's part of our socialisation.

Certainly, but aren't there some kinds of behaviour that would be universally considered "irrational" (such as psychotic behaviour, for instance)? Or is rationality completely relative, and we could have a "Clans of the Alphan Moon" world in which schyzophrenic reasoning would be considered the norm, and "normal" behaviour would be considered demented? Wouldn't that have material repercussions (in production, for instance) that could be assumed to place "objective" restrictions to such relativism?


Well, I used the word 'genuine' since the ideological stance of bourgeois theorists prompted them to think of every person as an isolated individual, and not an expression of the actual social relations that existed at the time.

I see. So you believe that the bourgeois see in speculum per aenigmata, that their theories do not reflect (or "express", in your words) the relations that they beleive they do, but rather other relations (their appropriation of means of production, for instance)? In other words, that they not say what they intend to say, but they instead speak of what they want to silence about?


And I prefer not to use 'false' etc., since feudal and ancient aristocratic views of men/women were different, but were no less ideologically distorted (in a different way, naturally). So, I used 'bourgeois' to refer to a particular form of ruling-class thought.

Fair use, but in anyway I suppose that to you the bourgeois consciousness is a form of false consciousness, as opposed to a genuine, or true, consciousness?


Well, these thinkers all tend to be Wittgensteinians, and of a left-leaning persuasion, and these 'Analytic Marxists' all ignored this Frege-Wittgenstein tradition, easily the most important seminal influence on Analytic Philosophy in general.

Which I find extremely odd, and a subject of investigation of itself. Of all "analytical philosophers", those with a Marxist background should be the most able to reject the methodologically individualist aspects of analytical philosophy... and yet all of them failed to do it; instead they all seemed to go from Marxism to methodological individualism via Analythic Philosophy.

(Evidently, some times appearances do cause delusions; perhaps this is one such occasion.)


These other authors are: Saul Kripke, Meredith Williams, David Bloor (and those influenced by the latter), etc. You can find reference to their work in the essays I linked to earlier.

Mkay, I am going to try some of them.


Well, I have a theory I am working on to explain this, but I will only post details when I have worked it out more fully.

That will certainly be interesting.


You can find more details in the latter half of:

Peter Hacker: Wittgenstein's Place In Twentieth Century Analytic Philosophy (Blackwell, 1996).

Thank you!


I think that game theory is inherently individualistic at present; whether it can be revised holistically, I cannot say. 'Rational choice' is similarly compromised, I think, too.

For instance, the much incensed Richard Dawkins makes extensive use of Game Theory in his The Selfish Gene (it seems to me an abuse, as are his "market" analogies - both Game Theory and the market require rational maximisers as subjects, which genes, selfish or not, cannot be accused of being). As this book is unhappily quite influential, including in the left, perhaps this is an interesting discussion to bring about.

Luís Henrique

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

LH:


Certainly, but aren't there some kinds of behaviour that would be universally considered "irrational" (such as psychotic behaviour, for instance)? Or is rationality completely relative, and we could have a "Clans of the Alphan Moon" world in which schyzophrenic reasoning would be considered the norm, and "normal" behaviour would be considered demented? Wouldn't that have material repercussions (in production, for instance) that could be assumed to place "objective" restrictions to such relativism?

Sure, but who said otherwise? Not me.


So you believe that the bourgeois see in speculum per aenigmata, that their theories do not reflect (or "express", in your words) the relations that they believe they do, but rather other relations (their appropriation of means of production, for instance)? In other words, that they not say what they intend to say, but they instead speak of what they want to silence about?

No, I meant what I said. You appear to want to read into my words far more than there is there.


Fair use, but in anyway I suppose that to you the bourgeois consciousness is a form of false consciousness, as opposed to a genuine, or true, consciousness?

No, I do not like the phrase 'false consciousness' for reasons I have outlined here before.

Check this out:

http://marxmyths.org/joseph-mccarney/article.htm


Which I find extremely odd, and a subject of investigation of itself. Of all "analytical philosophers", those with a Marxist background should be the most able to reject the methodologically individualist aspects of analytical philosophy... and yet all of them failed to do it; instead they all seemed to go from Marxism to methodological individualism via Analytic Philosophy.

Well, they wrote at a time when the Wittgenstein/Frege wing was in head-long retreat, and the atomistic, ahistorical and individualistic theories of Quine and Chomsky were in the ascendant.

In other words, they capitulated to this reactionary turn of events.


For instance, the much incensed Richard Dawkins makes extensive use of Game Theory in his The Selfish Gene (it seems to me an abuse, as are his "market" analogies - both Game Theory and the market require rational maximisers as subjects, which genes, selfish or not, cannot be accused of being). As this book is unhappily quite influential, including in the left, perhaps this is an interesting discussion to bring about.

Indeed, this is integral to much recent right-wing biology and (evolutionary) psychology.

[Luís Henrique]

Well, as I argue (in extensive detail) in those essays to which I linked, how we view language affects how we view the specialised languages of science, mathematics, social science, political theory, etc. And that affects how we interpret their results.

I see. But our use of language is quite automatic; does our comprehension of how it works actually improve our use of it (Our comprehension of the physics involved in walking, for instance, does not seem to improve our hability to walk)?


Now, as you point out, Frege and Wittgenstein did not extend their ideas into such areas (except mathematics), but I have done, and will continue to do so.But this extension, as far as I gather, includes an application of their ideas to the language of politics (for instance), but not to politics itself?


And, of course, I am not proposing that we "transpose uncritically the theoretical apparatus from one science to others", but since the new logic I mentioned affects every conceivable language, it cannot but affect how we interpret these other fields.Well, I am quite happy to know that you don't want to make such transposition, but then I have to ask, is it true that "since the new logic I mentioned affects every conceivable language, it cannot but affect how we interpret these other fields"? It is one thing to say that applying this instrumental to, say, Winston Churchill "Finest Hour" speech will give us an improved comprehension of what Churchill wanted to say, what he effectively said, and why was it so influential; another thing is whether it is going to give us an improved comprehension of the subjects addressed by Churchill in such speech.


And, neither Frege, Wittgenstein nor myself are doing linguistics.
Well, you certainly deal with some basic aspects of the field, namely semantics and syntax.


So, his principle is a necessary not a sufficient condition.Yes, that is what I understand. I am not sure, however, how his principle is a barrier against methodologic individualism, especially in different fields of knowledge.


Who wants to extend linguistic concepts into the social sciences? Not me.

As I say, I think you have badly missed the point.Maybe so. But in that case, if I get the point, I miss the relation between Frege's principle and methodologic individualism; conversely, if I get the mentioned relation, I miss the point.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

No, I meant what I said. You appear to want to read into my words far more than there is there.

Well, there is a reason that I ask: to verify if I am correctly understanding what you are saying. You seem to me to say that the bourgeois discourse does not "express" genuine social relations (the ones, I suppose, that the bourgeois is talking about); but that it is a "by-product" of a bourgeois view of the world (which, as a Marxist, I suppose is in turn a "product" of the actual relations the bourgeois maintains with society). So, I understood that you were saying that the borgeois discourse does not "express" the relations which it is talking about, but, instead, perhaps as a "symptom", it "expresses" in a different way something it has no intention of talk about. It indeed seemed an interesting idea; sorry that I misatributed it to you.


No, I do not like the phrase 'false consciousness' for reasons I have outlined here before.Well, then perhaps you shouldn't use the word "genuine" when contrasting the word "bourgeois"; it gives the impression that "bourgeois" can be used as opposed to "genuine", whose most common antonym is "false".


Well, they wrote at a time when the Wittgenstein/Frege wing was in head-long retreat, and the atomistic, ahistorical and individualistic theories of Quine and Chomsky were in the ascendant.

In other words, they capitulated to this reactionary turn of events.

This is a possible explanation, though it brings up the question of why Marxists would only be interested in Analytic Philosophy during a "reactionary turn of events".


Indeed, this is integral to much recent right-wing biology and (evolutionary) psychology.

That's my reckoning, though I am by no means an expert in the area. I find it quite shocking to see the market model being used as an analogy for genetic phenomena - the inappropriate reasoning which was once copied from natural science into economics, being now copied back into natural science, in an even more inappropriate way. To the applause of leftists, no less, since and because Dawkins doesn't believe in God.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

Check this out:

http://marxmyths.org/joseph-mccarney/article.htm

From it:


There he describes the conflict between material forces and relations of production and goes on to refer to the ‘legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic---in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out’. What is most striking about this reference for present purposes is that so far from associating ideology with cognitive deficiency it associates it rather with cognitive achievement, the ‘becoming conscious’ of the fundamental social conflict.

Maybe I have been excessively influenced by the post-Marx atmosphere, but to me what McCarney is saying here makes no sence at all. Marx says, "legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic---in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out", and McCarney goes on to say that this "far from associating ideology with cognitive deficiency it associates it rather with cognitive achievement"?!

Come on. The way I read it is exactly that this means a cognitive deficiency: men understand the "conflict between material forces and relations of production" in terms of law, politics, religion, etc., because they aren't able to see them for what they are.

Perhaps he is right, but the example he chooses makes me rather skeptic...

Luís Henrique

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

LH:


But our use of language is quite automatic; does our comprehension of how it works actually improve our use of it (Our comprehension of the physics involved in walking, for instance, does not seem to improve our ability to walk)?

Once more you misunderstand; as I have shown here several times, how we interpret language when in the grip of, say, a philosophical theory affects how we interpret the world and what to do about changing it.

The same applies in other areas (in mathematics, science, etc.), except here the affects are more high-level, and less immediately practical.


But this extension, as far as I gather, includes an application of their ideas to the language of politics (for instance), but not to politics itself?

Once more, how we interpret language theoretically affects how we view political theory itself, and that has an effect in turn on political action.

If you doubt this, I have, in the essays to which I linked above, tried to show how this is so in connection with Marxist politics (other political theories I have no interest in, except in so far as they affect what we do).


Well, I am quite happy to know that you don't want to make such transposition, but then I have to ask, is it true that "since the new logic I mentioned affects every conceivable language, it cannot but affect how we interpret these other fields"? It is one thing to say that applying this instrumental to, say, Winston Churchill "Finest Hour" speech will give us an improved comprehension of what Churchill wanted to say, what he effectively said, and why was it so influential; another thing is whether it is going to give us an improved comprehension of the subjects addressed by Churchill in such speech.

Why on earth do you suppose I want to make an intervention in this area?

Anyway, do you suppose Churchill was not influenced by bourgeois individualism, and that this had no effect on his other beliefs and what he felt he had to say in politics?


Well, you certainly deal with some basic aspects of the field, namely semantics and syntax.

This is philosophical semantics and syntax, not seemingly similar areas in linguistics. If you pick up any book on philosophical logic (written by someone who does philosophy they way I do) and any book on theoretical linguistics, you will, no doubt, see a clear difference.

You can find such books listed in several of my essays.


I am not sure, however, how his principle is a barrier against methodological individualism, especially in different fields of knowledge.

Well, I thought I explained that.




But in that case, if I get the point, I miss the relation between Frege's principle and methodological individualism; conversely, if I get the mentioned relation, I miss the point.

It's his principle as applied by Wittgenstein, not the principle on its own. I had to explain his principle to set the latter half of my account about Wittgenstein up.


Well, then perhaps you shouldn't use the word "genuine" when contrasting the word "bourgeois"; it gives the impression that "bourgeois" can be used as opposed to "genuine", whose most common antonym is "false".

The antonym of 'false' is 'true'; the antonym of 'genuine' is 'bogus' or 'counterfeit'.

However, these contrasts are far too stark, and if I were to write an essay on this (as I will do in a few years) I would qualify what I have to say far more carefully. Until then I am quite happy with the words I have so far chosen.


This is a possible explanation, though it brings up the question of why Marxists would only be interested in Analytic Philosophy during a "reactionary turn of events".

Marxist theorists have always been so susceptible, just as their ideas are heavily influenced by their class origin and position (as petty-bourgeois or de-classé theorists). This is, however, a problem of social psychology, an issue I am quite happy to leave to the professionals.


That's my reckoning, though I am by no means an expert in the area. I find it quite shocking to see the market model being used as an analogy for genetic phenomena - the inappropriate reasoning which was once copied from natural science into economics, being now copied back into natural science, in an even more inappropriate way. To the applause of leftists, no less, since and because Dawkins doesn't believe in God.

Indeed, and you will find my opinion on this in my essay thirteen part three (link in an earlier post).

Even worse, Dawkins's arguments against belief in the existence of 'god' are quite lame.


Maybe I have been excessively influenced by the post-Marx atmosphere, but to me what McCarney is saying here makes no sense at all. Marx says, "legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic---in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out", and McCarney goes on to say that this "far from associating ideology with cognitive deficiency it associates it rather with cognitive achievement"?!

Come on. The way I read it is exactly that this means a cognitive deficiency: men understand the "conflict between material forces and relations of production" in terms of law, politics, religion, etc., because they aren't able to see them for what they are.

Perhaps he is right, but the example he chooses makes me rather skeptic...

Well, this essay is a shortened version of his book ([I]The Real World of Ideology), so you might have to read it to get the point.

However, do not hold me to everything he says (especially the things you point out), even though my own ideas in this area were heavily influenced by him.

[Luís Henrique]

Well, I thought I explained that.

And I thought I have explained what my difficulties with your explanation are.

First, I don't see a proper relation between Frege/Wittgenstein's realisation that words have no (precise) meaning without context and a negation of methodological individualism. I am not sure that what is valid concerning words and their place within sentences applies to human individuals within human societies. At best, this is an analogy; and one dealing with so many differences and nuances that I doubt it is a convincing one.

Second, I fear that a proper negation of methodological individualism in the field of social science (economics included) demands much more than the realisation that human beings only "make sence" (to keep your analogy with words) in context, ie, society. After all, bourgeois theorists are pretty able to theorise that - functionalism is a bourgeois social theory, structuralism is a bourgeois social theory (one, I suspect, that is founded in an analogy, or some analogies, between societies and language). So, either more is necessary than Frege's principle as extended by Wittgenstein to refute methodological individualism, or (and?) refuting methodological individualism is not enough to counterpose bourgeois ideology (in fact, there are bourgeois theorists - Foucault comes to mind - that are almost sadistic in their thorough negation of any appearance of subjectivity and freedom).


[I am not claiming that either Frege or Wittgenstein were aware of 'methodological individualism' -- a theory I do not think was invented at the time -- only that their approach to language is a barrier to it.]
As a label, perhaps it is quite recent. As a methodological practice, it is much older than both Wittgenstein or even Frege - I would argue that Locke was a methodological individualist, even if he never used the phrase.


The antonym of 'false' is 'true'; the antonym of 'genuine' is 'bogus' or 'counterfeit'.

However, these contrasts are far too stark, and if I were to write an essay on this (as I will do in a few years) I would qualify what I have to say far more carefully. Until then I am quite happy with the words I have so far chosen.Fair enough; as I pointed, this will raise some confusion, which you will have the patience to dispell.


Marxist theorists have always been so susceptible, just as their ideas are heavily influenced by their class origin and position (as petty-bourgeois or de-classé theorists). This is, however, a problem of social psychology, an issue I am quite happy to leave to the professionals.
This may be a problem of social psychology, but it also may be a problem of the internal gearing of their ideas. It is remarkable that such kind of capitulation affected much less (or at least much later) Marxists that weren't influenced by Analytic Philosophy, even if the same problems concerning sociology of knowledge apply to them.


However, do not hold me to everything he says (especially the things you point out), even though my own ideas in this area were heavily influenced by him.I don't, but his take on the concept of ideology and its use by Marx remains quite unconvincing to me.

ETA: Oh, yes, this:


Anyway, do you suppose Churchill was not influenced by bourgeois individualism, and that this had no effect on his other beliefs and what he felt he had to say in politics?

As far as I understand, Churchill was a bourgeois individualist, or more properly, an individualist bourgeois. There is still a difference between studying a speech by Churchill (or Lenin, or Robespierre, if your problem is with this precise individual) as a subject in itself, and studying the matters such speech addressed.

Luís Henrique

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

LH:


And I thought I have explained what my difficulties with your explanation are.

Well, it turned out you have misconstrued what I had said. So, these alleged 'difficulties' do not relate to what I have posted.


First, I don't see a proper relation between Frege/Wittgenstein's realisation that words have no (precise) meaning without context and a negation of methodological individualism. I am not sure that what is valid concerning words and their place within sentences applies to human individuals within human societies. At best, this is an analogy; and one dealing with so many differences and nuances that I doubt it is a convincing one.

In fact, they have no meaning at all.

And, who said this set of ideas 'negates' methological individualism? Not me.

What it does do is render it non-sensical.


Second, I fear that a proper negation of methodological individualism in the field of social science (economics included) demands much more than the realisation that human beings only "make sence" (to keep your analogy with words) in context, ie, society. After all, bourgeois theorists are pretty able to theorise that - functionalism is a bourgeois social theory, structuralism is a bourgeois social theory (one, I suspect, that is founded in an analogy, or some analogies, between societies and language). So, either more is necessary than Frege's principle as extended by Wittgenstein to refute methodological individualism, or (and?) refuting methodological individualism is not enough to counterpose bourgeois ideology (in fact, there are bourgeois theorists - Foucault comes to mind - that are almost sadistic in their thorough negation of any appearance of subjectivity and freedom).

Well, this is your way of expressing something else. Once more, it does not relate to anything I have said.

There is no point in this discussion continuing if you keep trying to translate what I have posted into a different idiom.


As a methodological practice, it is much older than both Wittgenstein or even Frege - I would argue that Locke was a methodological individualist, even if he never used the phrase.

Indeed, but to call this 'methodological individualism' would be anachronistic.

I prefer a better phrase: 'bourgeois individualism'.


I don't, but his take on the concept of ideology and its use by Marx remains quite unconvincing to me.

Well, you've not read is his book.

[Luís Henrique]

OK, then we shall not discuss this anymore. Thank you for your time.

Luís Henrique

[YKTMX]

A great Marxist and a great writer. I'm not convinced that the analytical Marxist project, on the whole, has been good for socialist politics or Marxist theory, but Cohen's work was always useful. His book on the concept of self-ownership was very valuable, I think.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Here's an obit from Alex Callinicos:


Alex Callinicos

Remembering Jerry Cohen

This has been a bad summer for left wing intellectuals. The radical political economists Giovanni Arrighi and Peter Gowan died within a few days of one another in June. And then last week the socialist philosopher GA “Jerry” Cohen died suddenly at the age of 68.

Jerry is best known for his 1978 book Karl Marx’s Theory of History—a Defence. This restated and defended the materialist theory of history that Marx developed in The German Ideology and succinctly outlined in the 1859 Preface To A Contribution To The Critique Of Political Economy.

In this view of history, societies rise and fall in as much as they tend to develop the productive forces. Most of the Marxist left from Marx’s time onwards had largely taken this orthodox historical materialism for granted.

Cohen described the book as “homage to the plain Marxism” that he had learned from his parents and the broader Communist community to which they belonged during his childhood in Quebec at the height of the Cold War.

By the 1960s and 1970s, however, this “plain Marxism” was unfashionable. Many of those radicalised by the mass movements of the time dismissed the emphasis on the development of the productive forces in the 1859 Preface as “technological determinism” that gave no importance to ideas or to class struggle.

Cohen’s book also cut against the grain of the contemporary left in a second way. The rediscovery of Marxism during the 1960s and 1970s typically favoured one or other philosopher from continental Europe, notably Georg Lukács, Theodor Adorno and Louis Althusser.

By contrast Cohen developed his interpretation of Marx by drawing on the analytical philosophy dominant in US and British universities. This emphasised explicitly defining concepts and spelling out the steps in an argument.

Original

Jerry carried off this project in such a clever and original way that he helped to shift the balance of argument back to recognising the fundamental role of the development of the productive forces in bringing about historical change.

A less fortunate offspring of the book was the emergence of a school of “Analytical Marxism”. This was a group of talented but ambitious scholars who sought to make Marxism compatible with mainstream approaches in English-speaking philosophy and social science.

Bizarrely, this particularly involved trying to marry Marx to “rational-choice theory”. This is a very influential academic doctrine that seeks to reduce social life to the actions of self-interested individuals.

Not surprisingly, very little of Marx survived processing by rational-choice theory.

Jerry’s position was more nuanced. Having initially resisted the turn to rational-choice theory, he later capitulated to it. But he never completely abandoned the Marxism he had defended in his first book.

Cohen’s later work was closer to more mainstream political philosophy. He concentrated particularly on developing a theory of social justice in which the ideal of equality played a central role.

One could interpret this shift as an embrace of the academic establishment. Jerry was Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at Oxford University until his retirement last year, and sometimes he seemed a little too comfortable with Oxford’s peculiarly privileged life.

But Cohen’s commitment to socialism remained much more than theoretical. He strongly criticised New Labour’s backsliding from the idea of equality. And he retained something of the style of his Communist upbringing.

I can remember debating with Jerry at the Socialist Workers Party’s annual Marxism festival in the 1990s. To illustrate an argument, he sang the old American union song “Solidarity Forever”.

There aren’t many philosophers, at Oxford or elsewhere, who would or could do that. I shall remember Jerry Cohen for his unique mixture of analytical brilliance and gut socialism.

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=18754

[Luís Henrique]

And, dogmatist that you are, you decided to reject it years ago and with-hold your labour from the revolutionary movement as a consequence.


Whatever heinous sins I have or have not committed, you are still a terminal ditherer and cannot make your mind up whether or not you accept classical DM (or even versions of it propounded by every leading SWP-theorist, past and present).

I thought it was Jerry Cohen who died and whose work was being discussed in this thread, not Bob The Builder or Rosa Lichtenstein.

Luís Henrique

[Hit The North]

Luis, you are correct. I apologise and I've split the offending posts into the trash.

Please continue... :)

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

And in this new spirit of intra-SWP comradeship, I have removed my comment above about BTB reading Callinicos's obit.

[gilhyle]

I only ever met Gerry Cohen once - as I think I have mentioned on this board before. He was a pleasant man and a civil conversationalist.

However, I came away convinced that I had met a man with not one whit of interest in the history of Karl Marx's own ideas. His focus was completely on how to construct a left social democrat materialist conception of history in the Comtean or benthamite traditions. Marx was just an iconic space within which to draw that theory up.

I think this made sense in terms of his own personal background, but in terms of the history of ideas, Cohen's book ushered in the beginning of the end of the 1970s renaissance in Marxist ideas.

It would be wrong to charge him with causing that - it was coming anyway. But his represented a new subservience of Marxism to academic disciplines to which it does not belong. In his wake, aspirant Marxists tried all the harder to fit in to dominant paradigms in history, economics, sociology and philosophy. He convinced many that there was a crude materialist conception of history just around the corner if only we could think more clearly.

It was naive - well meaning no doubt - and diversionary.

Of course it had a silver lining. The academic marxist tradition it ushered in facilitates a map of the phenomonelogy of Marxism in its most simplistic analytical forms and the twenty years of work in that style are ample evidence of the variants on that type of thinking.

But Mr Cohen achieved little of lasting intellectual worth.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Thanks for those comments, Gil, but I can't agree wth this, and neither can many others:


But Mr Cohen achieved little of lasting intellectual worth.

[gilhyle]

time will tell - but its not really a damming indictment, few of us achieve anything of lasting intellectual worth

[blake 3:17]

Thanks for the Callinicos obit. He's an intellectual smasher. His book on Althusser seemed prety good until he reduced Althusser's thought to simple historical Stalinism which somehow indicted Althusser for all the failures of the KPD to respond properly to Naziism. Yawn.... I've tried to read Bensaid's critiques of analytical Marxism and find his arguments dull and obscure. I'll give Cohen a spin.

Edited to add: Chess, evolutionary psychology, and many of the uncomfortable truths of actually existing class struggle I have all made me a lot more open to some version of a game theory Marxism.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Bad move, since game theory is predicated on bourgeois individualism.

[blake 3:17]

And here I thought you'd be happy I was interested in Cohen. I'll go cry in my soup.

What;s your take on Ellen Wood?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Much of her work is excellent.

Especially this:

Citizens To Lords. A Social History Of Western Political Thought From Antiquity To The Middle Ages (Verso, 2008).

[blake 3:17]

Cool. I've only read The Retreat from Class and the debate she started in Against The Current on capitalist development and Eurocentrism. Also mailed her copy of a left mag I did circulation for.

That Bensaid stuff still makes me mad!

Edited to add: Just enjoyed the Anti-Dialectics at Marxism 2007.

[Calmwinds]

Analytic Socialism cannot be dead, for I and others are still alive!

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Good to hear; but what form does this commitment to 'analytic socialism' take?