Analytical Marxism - Is It Marxism?

[Oswy]

Elsewhere I've had 'Analytical Marxism' cited as an example of Marxism that rejects (?!) Marx.

Can someone offer a simple-language explanation of what Analytical Marxism is and where it 'fits' in relation to orthodoxy?

[JazzRemington]

It's just an application of a school of philosophy called analytical philosophy to Marx's writings. As such, it tends to reject some of his findings. G.A. Cohen and Jon Elster, for example, reject dialectics as fundamental to explaining change. Cohen simply takes a "technological" view of social change and Elster uses methodological individualism.

It doesn't add to praxis, but only a way of reading and understanding Marx.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Jaz is spot on here.

However, it is largely a dead 'movement' now; here is what I have posted on Wiki on this topic (in response to Jim Far, who posts here):


In many respects Jim is correct, but I distance myself from the Analytic Marxists in that they were not analytic enough, and not fit to be called 'Marxist' (except perhaps for Wright, Sober, Carling and the early Cohen).

And I concentrate on classical dialectical materialism since this impacts directly on active revolutionaries, most of whom still accept this odd theory.

Academic Marxism is a political desert/backwater, and thus not worth wasting much time on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Analytical_Marxism

The article itself at Wiki is actually quite good, and well worth a read:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_Marxism