File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-02-25.170, message 63


Date: Sun, 23 Feb 1997 19:25:26 -0500 (EST)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: M-I: Analytical Marxism?


Hi, everybody, I'm back! 

I was visiting a most wonderful person for the last 9 days or so and lost
interest in the Marxism lists temporarily. I did manage to take a peek at
an interesting book on the plane there and back, and during frequent trips
to the bathroom on a day my tummy was upset. This is called "Analytical
Marxism: A Critique" by Marcus Roberts. (No, this is not the fabulous
blind pianist who plays with Wynton Marsalis occasionally. He is rather a
teaching fellow in the Philosophy Department at the University of Essex.) 

Now this Analytical Marxism (AM) is an intellectual fad that never really
caught on, except with one or two left-leaning professors here and there,
including our own very controversial Justin Schwartz. Did you ever lie
awake at night wondering where Justin acquired his donnishness and love of
abstraction? Well, it's all on account of AM and nothing else.

I plan to take this AM stuff apart over the next few weeks or so. I'm
going to start with Jon Elster who no longer seems to take to the pulpit
on behalf of AM. I won't let him cover up his sordid past, however. I'm
taking him to task for ideas that he no longer believes in, namely
Rational Choice Marxism, a subspecies of AM. 

(This Rational Choice business had me confused when I first heard about
it. I thought it might of had something to do with Albert Ellis' Institute
for Rational Behavior in NYC, a place where you go to get rid of neurotic
behavior. I used to go there myself until Prozac made me better.) 

After I'm done with Elster, I'm going to give G.A. Cohen a good bashing.
(Justin calls him Gerry Cohen; I wouldn't be so presumptuous myself. The
only Gerald I know is Jerry Levy, who won't call himself Gerry under any
circumstances. Karl Carlisle, on the other hand, calls him Gery. Go figure
that one out. Two raving maniacs who deserve each other.) 

Then it's on to the dreadful John Roemer. Oooh, is he in for a tongue-
lashing. 

The nutty thing about AM is that the highly educated professors who
invented it seem hardly interested in a mass following. Now you can see
the postmodernist influence in mass culture. Just take a look at the
Village Voice and the shit hits you in the face nearly every page you
turn, especially when you read some recent Yale graduate's write-up of the
latest hip-hop band. Where do you go to find AM popularized? Popular
Mechanics? Field and Stream? Beats me. I guess you have to matriculate at
Oxford or Cambridge to be admitted to this exclusive club. 

I'm going to draw on Marcus Roberts' book for much of my critique, as well
as some promising articles by Ellen Wood and Michael Leibowitz. I also
will try to read as much AM as I can without gagging. The problem with
Roberts' book is that it started out as a Ph.D. thesis and it shows. It is
jargon-ridden and assumes that the reader is familiar with a number of
relatively obscure references ("functionalism", etc.).

Worst of all, the author is not much of a Marxist himself. In the preface
he says, "I am not allied to any alternative version of Marxism judged to
be in good order (although I do remain committed to socialism as a
political project). Moreover, it would be beyond my powers to provide any
clear guidance as to how, if at all, Marxism might be extricated from the
Analytical Marxism impasse. In summary, my own (current) view is that the
development of this paradigm provides further evidence that Marxism is a
degenerating research programme, but this does not rule out a comeback in
the future.)" 

What nerve! A degenerating "research" programme?!? What does this guy
think he is dealing with, a branch of the social sciences like
anthropology or sociology? Marxism is for making revolution. If that isn't
what you're interested in, then go someplace else.

I'll do a much better job than Roberts. I promise. I won't use words like
"deploy" every other page the way he does. Nobody "presents" arguments in
his academic prose, they "deploy" them, like battleships or helicopters.
Egad! 

I embark on this noble and selfless project in order to combat a deviant
strand of academic Marxism that nearly nobody takes seriously. I am
willing, in that vein, to have a good laugh at their expense. I promise
lots of yuks, especially when I get to that horse's ass John Roemer. I
don't know if Justin Schwartz will be around for much of this discussion
since something tells me he's busy in law school studying torts or
something.

(Why would anybody want to be a lawyer, I wonder? My friend's sister only
wants to date lawyers but me and her find them to be an odious crew all in
all. You know who appears to be a really big creep, by the way? The late
William Kunstler's partner, an attorney by the name of Ron Kuby who wears
a stupid pony-tail. Kunstler's widow is suing to keep Kuby from using
Kunstler's name in his practice. I hope she wins.) 

Oh, yeah. What was I talking about? Soviet History? I forgot... Oh, now I
remember: Analytical Marxism. Okay, here's the deal. What AM stems from is
a view of society that omits *class*. Society is composed of individuals. 
It owes more to Hobbes than Marx. 

Have you ever wondered why Justin Schwartz could come out with such
embarrassingly reactionary remarks on the need to force "lazy workers" to
produce? It all comes from Hobbes and is filtered through the class
prejudices of Anglophone bourgeois professors like John Roemer who like to
kid themselves into believing that they are Marxists. That's basically the
approach I will be following over the next few weeks. AM, watch out!!! 


Louis Proyect



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