File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1997/marxism-thaxis.9710, message 191


From: "David Bedggood" <dr.bedggood-AT-auckland.ac.nz>
Date: Mon, 20 Oct 1997 14:56:48 1200+
Subject: Re: M-TH: Re: G.A. Cohen Interview in Philosophers' Web Magazine


Good to see you weighing in with some of your old shit [sorry 
Thaxadoms but see reference below] Justin. Here's some of my old shit 
[oops].  Lets see whose shit really smells [oh no!]. By the way 
Justin, are you still on M-I or has your nose got so sensitive these 
days that you can't stand the stench of down to earth political cut 
and thrust? [see, I didnt mention shit in that sentence]
> 
> James F. recites against G.A. Cohen's recent turn to political philosophy
> Marx's comment in Critique of the Gotha Program about paying too much
> attention to issues of distribution rather than production. I think this is
> a mistaken attack on lots of grounds:
> 
> 1. Marx was attacking a specific document with particular flaws, viz., the
> Gotha Program of the SDP, strongly influenced by Lasalle. It does not
> follow without a lot of argument that anyone who pays attention to issues
> of distributive justice is subject to whatever force Marx's attack on the
> Goths Program may have.

It does if ALL of your attention is now given over to issues of 
distributive justice. For that is the hall mark of pre-Marxism 
socialism [who knows even the Goths] -that of morality and 
statistics,  Lassalle then, and Cohen it seems today..
> 
> 2. In fact Cohen's trajectory makes a lot of sense. Formerly he thought
> socialism was inevitable. This is a corollary of _Karl Marx's Theory of
> History._ After a great deal of discussion of that thesis he came to think
> (or realize) that it was untenable: historical materialism can only show
> that socialism is possible, not inevitable. In that case, if one supports
> it, it needs justification over the other possibilities. So what's
> retrograde about justifying it?

It may make a lot of sense,  but that is not to excuse it. Cohen's
super-deterministic evolutionary marxism was out of its time by a 
generation anyway. Now he wakes up to the post-communist 
retreat into market socialism, and discovers [again] that socialism 
just might be possible.  Well hooray for Cohen. But sad day for the 
working class if it is taken in by "all this old crap" [I have lost 
the Marx reference for this]. 
> 
> 3. James F. cites Cohen's engagement with Nozick, Dworkin, Rawls, etc. as
> evidence of Cohen's turn from the left. This is rather odd. What are we
> to make of, for example, Marx's sustained engagement with Smith, Ricardo,
> Malthus, Nassau Senior, etc.? Is James F's idea that Marxist need pay no
> attention to their ideological antagonists? 
>
Yes, but get your trajectory right Justin. As somebody once  said 
"direction is everything".  Marx cut his teeth on the old political 
economists, he didnt go back to reading them seriously late in life 
after deciding perhaps that socialism just might be unnecessary yet 
still possibly possible.

> 4. James F. also seems to accept as unproblematic Marx's ridiculous claim
> that getting the mode of production right will settle the distributive
> questions, as if, for example, the issue of ownership of the means of
> production were not a question of distribution. (Incidentally this has
> been John Roemer's main distributive concern.) And as if once that were
> settled there would be no further difficult distributive questions.

Ridiculous shit [sorry Thaxadoms no excuse this time] this stuff 
about modes of production. Fancy Marx saying that relations of 
production determine relations of distribution when they are the same 
thing. How clumsy and thoughtless of Marx to leave such an obvious 
opening for the Cohens and Schwartzs to drive a bus through. Marx 
talked about relations of production as distribution of the means of 
production, too bad he just forgot that this invalidated his whole 
theory of society.

> So I don't think these comments will do at all. There are legitimate
> concerns to be raised about Cohen's recent work, as indeed about his older
> work, but James has failed to raise them.
> 
No these comments will not do at all. It was unthinking of James to 
raise them without checking  with Justin first  what the real 
legitimate concerns with Cohen might be. But no doubt James 
can speak for himself.

Dave.
 
> On Sat, 18 Oct 1997, James Farmelant wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > Concerning G.A. Cohen's interview in the Philosophers'  Web
> > Magazine I would say it clearly reflects the trajectory that has
> > characterized
> > the evolution other major Analytical Marxists in recent years--from
> 
> ***
> 
> > most
> > recent book  *Self-Ownership, Freedom and Equality*  (Cambridge:
> > Cambridge University Press, 1995).  In that latter book Cohen discusses
> > the ethical justification of socialism over capitalism within the context
> > of liberal analytical political philosophy as represented by the work of
> > John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, and Robert Nozick.  In fact Cohen in that
> > book goes to great pains to rebut the arguments that Nozick laid down
> > on behalf of laissez-faire capitalism in his *Anarchy, State and Utopia*
> > and to defend a concept of social justice as 'equality of opportunity
> > of welfare' that is derived from an 'immanent critique' of Dworkin.
> > 
> > In the Philosophers' Web Magazine interview it is evident that Cohen's
> > critique of capitalism focuses mainly on issues of income distribution.
> > While this puts Cohen well within the mainstream of left-liberal
> > political philosophy (ie. Rawls and Dworkin) it also places him far from
> > Classical Marxism.  Marx in his *Critique of the Gotha Program* 
> > criticized
> > socialist critiques of capitalism that focused too much on distributional
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> 


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