Analytical Marxism

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

What is Analytical Marxism?

Note: I'd like to know what it is without pointless one-liners that criticise it for being a part of analytical philosophy as opposed to continental philosophy.

[blake 3:17]

I haven't read him but Gerry (or GA) Cohen's philosophical projects seem worth exploring.

I'd the same question as you, and tried a couple of defences and critiques and was completely lost. In the abstract they didn't make much sense to me, but my philosophical are in aesthetics and ethics. Reading some exegetical work on Cohen indicates that he had an ethical project in mind, something much more interesting to me than epistemology.

[TheIrrationalist]

What I understand about Analytical Marxism is that they rejected dialectics and replaced it with methods akin to (surprise surprise!) methods of analytical philosophy. Analytical Marxism was centred around the September Group and G.A. Cohen, whose book Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence laid the foundation of Analytical Marxism.

That is the most I know about Analytical Marxism, as I know it isn't very hot subject among Marxists.

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

So what are the 'flaws' within dialectical materialism (and Hegelian dialectics) that have resulted in it being rejected by people?

[TheIrrationalist]

The whole analytical tradition of philosophy has always been at odds with Hegelian dialectics. Analytical Marxists criticise dialectics for its "Hegelian obscurantism" and the natural law like inevitability of dialectics. They saw dialectics as unnecessary in justifying historical materialism instead of using methods of logic and mathematics, methods common to the analytic tradition. For example in place of dialectics G.A. Cohen used linguistic and logical analysis to defend historical materialism. Also they stressed clarity in language, so Hegel is a no-no

[blake 3:17]

Here's an obituary of Cohen from Monthly Review. It made a couple of things clearer to me:

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2009/farmelant080809.html

[blake 3:17]

So what are the 'flaws' within dialectical materialism (and Hegelian dialectics) that have resulted in it being rejected by people?


I think very few people here are Dialectical Materialists.

Explaining online why I am not is about the last thing I want to do, other than back taxes. It'd be like explaining why I am not a Christian or an Existentialist. I am familiar with the ideas and have no particular interest in proving them wrong. If they work for you, great!