File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-03-01.214, message 45


Date: Fri, 28 Feb 1997 14:30:19 -0500 (EST)
From: Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: M-I: Marx was not an economic determinist


I strongly recommend Marcus Roberts' "Analytical Marxism: A Critique". The
only thing wrong with this book is that it uses far too many words in its
effort to take apart AM. This, no doubt, has something to do with its
legacy as a dissertation. 

In a discussion of Roemer, Roberts makes a point that could be the subject
of an entire book: 

"In his writings on French and English politics, Marx proved to be well
aware that no abstract theory could produce the complex conjunctural class
maps required for the analysis of determinate social formations. In these
historical works, Marx presents us, with not just two polarised classes,
but a complex topography of fractions, factions, social categories, strata
and other actors on the political stage. The remnants of feudalism haunted
the dawnings of capitalism in min-nineteenth-century France; the major
classes were not monolithic entities with indistinquishable interests and
objectives--for example, the interests of finance capital and industrial
capital were often in conflict. Similarly, in his analysis of English
capitalism, Marx recognised that common interests had driven the principal
classes-- landowners, capitalists and proletarians--into a variety of
political alliances for the attainment of proximate objectives: for
example, capitalists and workers fought for the introduction of the Ten
Hour Bill. In an illuminating discussion of Marx's politics, Gilbert [A. 
Gilbert, "Marx's Politics"] that Marx's own political activities 'fail to
jibe with economic determinist preconceptions'. For example, Marx led the
radical wing during the German democratic revolution in the belief that,
despite its economic backwardness, Germany was not only ripe for
democratic revolution, but also for an 'immediately following' proletarian
revolution, and he organised his first communist rally not in England,
among the industrial workers of London or Manchester, but in Germany,
among the peasants of rural Worringen." 

While this was directed against Roemer and AM in general, these comments
would apply to a tendency deep within academic Marxism as a whole. There
is a tendency to overemphasize study of texts like Capital and Grundrisse,
Dialectics of Nature, etc. that are deeply rooted in the German
philosophical tradition, or in the political economy of Ricardo and Adam
Smith, and are examined at the expense of Marx and Engels' more
journalistic undertakings. 

The point is that the full dialectical interplay of society, economics,
politics and history is most evident in a work like the 18th Brumaire and
nowhere else. If you treat Marx like a sociologist the way that Erik Olin
Wright, an AM sociologist does, you will tend to fixate on the definition
of classes.  Classes, however, are not categories that can be isolated
>from history and society and studied like an insect under a microscope.
Nor can you find much help in Marx in *defining* exactly what socialism
is. The best you can do is read his articles on the Paris Commune. The
point, of course, is not to use these writings as a blueprint but as a
guide in understanding the revolutionary process as it unfolds.

What AM represents is the most reductionist approach to Marx imaginable.
The Marx of AM is a Marx who is just another sociologist like Max Weber or
an economist (and a bad one in their eyes) like Ricardo. AM has many
defects, but this is among the worst. 

More to come in my witty and informative report on Jon Elster to follow in
a few days. 

Louis Proyect


ps to Levy: That was some crushing riposte about my citation of other
people's articles on the Internet. One or two more blows like these and I
might leave radical politics for good. Who knows I might return to the
motorcycle-driving, beatnik-poetry writing days of my youth. Sigh, what a
wild kid I was. The looks of Brando and the repartee of Lenny Bruce. What
the hell were you doing when you were 16, Jerry? Reading Lenin? I was
smoking pot, playing the bongos and drinking cheap red wine by the bottle.
But today, in my 52nd year, I am a responsible citizen with a record of
accompishment in socialist politics.

You on the other hand, at the age of 50, seem to be trying to discover a
youth you never had.  But instead of doing something fun, you act like a
resentful adolescent.  You remind me of a kid I knew named Myron
Finkelstein. "Oh, those horrid kids from PS 117 with their Mickey
Mantle fan club. I'm going to put a stink-bomb in their locker when they
aren't looking." That was Myron. In your case, substitute Stalin for
Mickey Mantle and you get the same attitude. Lighten up, Jerry. We'll all
be dead soon.

I bet I can make you laugh. Why don't you invite me down to the squats on
the lower east side and I'll do my famous tushie dance. Have you ever seen
anybody smoke a cigar out of their rear-end before? You and your anarchist
pals are in for a treat.




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