Date: Mon, 13 Jan 1997 22:43:04 PST
Subject: Re: M-I: The Soviet working-class
From: farmelantj-AT-juno.com (James Farmelant)


On  Sun, 12 Jan 1997 14:52:11 -0500 (EST)
 Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu> wrote:
        <snip>


>>Justin's rather puzzled remarks about the whole question of "class" in 
>the
>former Soviet Union got me thinking. To what extent does this 
>difficulty
>have to do with the rather peculiar brand of Marxism he subscribes to,
>namely analytical Marxism. This form of Marxism has had its heart 
>ripped
>out, namely the question of class.
>
>There's something out there called "Rational Choice Marxism" that 
>fellow
>market socialist John Roemer has pioneered. Ellen Meiksins Wood new 
>book
>"Democracy Against Capitalism" has some interesting observations on 
>the
>way that this school treats history.
>
>Roemer believes that history is mostly about evolution of property
>relations, in which "progressively fewer kinds of productive factors
>remain acceptable as property." These changes are related to 
>*efficiency.*
>The transition from feudalism to capitalism can be explained as a
>elimination of one form of property rights (serfdom) to another (wage
>labor) in the name of the advancement of the forces of production. The
>*class struggle* is simply a mechanism in this process, but the 
>underlying
>process runs much deeper. As Roemer says in "Free to Lose", "the 
>reason
>such an evolution occurs lies much deeper [than the class struggle]:
>evolution occurs because the level of production of the technology
>outgrows the particular form of the social organization, which comes 
>to
>constrain and fetter it."
>
>The class struggle merely serves to facilitate technological change. 
>Wood
>observes that the class struggle enters the picture as a "rational 
>choice"
>since that choice is the more progressive mode of production. This
>approach to history raises some thorny questions. Is the reason for
>revolution the desire to introduce a more efficient mode of production 
>or
>is it to escape exploitation. (This question I may add has some 
>bearing on
>our current cyberseminar. Think about it.)
>
>Is class struggle necessary or not? And if not, what is the mechanism 
>of
>historical change? As Wood puts it, "We have lords and capitalists
>competing to give more attractive terms to producers, to serfs who 
>might
>want to become proletarians; and we have serfs escaping from
>lords--apparently without constraints, and willingly giving up their
>rights of possession--as soon as a more attractive option comes along, 
>but
>*struggle*...?"

I have not read Wood's book but I have seen article "Rational Choice
Marxism:Is the Game Worth the Candle? (with a Postscript 1994) in the book Rational Choice Marxism eds. Terrell Carver and Paul Thomas (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania
University Press, 1995) in which she presents a critique of Roemer.   She
examines Roemer's textbook Free to Lose and finds it beset by
contradiction. Roemer on the one hand presents his theory of class and
exploitation which is grounded in rational
choice theory while on the other hand he adheres to G.A. Cohen's
technological
interpretation of historical materialism.  But Roemer's theory of class
and exploitation
which is based on a methodological individualism while Cohen's version of
historical
materialism relies upon functional explanations instead.  This of course
means that the theory of history in contrast with the theory of class
and exploitation is based on a
"methodological collectivism."  Wood is not at all convinced that despite
Roemer's best efforts a reconciliation is possible. In fact she questions
whether Roemer's
rational choice theory of class and exploitation is compatible with
"...any explanation of history."

A possible answer to this dilemma may lie in the selectionist
interpretation of historical materialism that Alan Carling offers in his
article "Analytical Marxism and Historical Materialism: The Debate on
Social Evolution," in Science & Society (Spring 1993).  There he offers
a defense of a version of what is known as the Primacy Thesis (that is
the thesis that the forces of production possess explanatory primacy
over the relations of production) which he calls Competitive Primacy
which holds that the primacy of the forces of production will hold sway
when there is competition between two regimes of production with higher
and lower levels of development of the forces of production and that
everything else being equal the system of production with the more
developed forces of production will prevail over the whose forces are
less developed.  

Carling draws explicit anologies between his thesis of Competive Primacy and Darwinism in biology. For Carling just as Darwinism marries a genetic
account of the origins of species to a selectionist account of their
subsequent fates so the Marxist theory of history in his view likewise
relies upon class struggle to explain the origins of new modes of production and selection pressures to explain their subsequent history in a
context of competition with rival modes of production (and with nature).
In Carling's view one advantage of this interpretation of historical
materialism is that it 
places much less of an explanatory burden on the rational choices of
indiviual economic actors which  Wood (and Louis) see as a major difficulty in Roemer. 

                                          James F.

>Justin Schwartz's Marxism is a Marxism derived from this intellectual
>milieu. That is what leads to almost ritualistic combat between him 
>and
>the classical Marxists on the list, such as Carrol Cox and myself. 
>These
>debates can only go so far, because they are based on a totally 
>clashing
>understanding of what it means to *do Marxism*.

   <snip discussion of Elster>
>One of the reasons I think it is important for us to have these
>discussions from time to time is that it allows us to examine a 
>sub-genre
>of Marxism in a laboratory setting. While it unlikely that analytical
>Marxism or its offspring will ever be the sort of thing that gets
>inscribed on the banner of revolutionary fighters in places like 
>Nigeria
>or South Korea, it is useful to study this particular specimen of 
>academic
>Marxism in a setting like this. We are after all in a struggle to win 
>the
>young intelligentsia to genuine Marxism, one that has *class* at its
>heart, and what better place to do it than on the 
>marxism-international
>list.
>
>Louis Proyect
>
>


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