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Karl Marx's Theory of History Paperback – March 25, 2001

by G. A. Cohen (Author)

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First published in 1978, this book rapidly established itself as a classic of modern Marxism. Cohen's masterful application of advanced philosophical techniques in an uncompromising defense of historical materialism commanded widespread admiration. In the ensuing twenty years, the book has served as a flagship of a powerful intellectual movement--analytical Marxism. In this expanded edition, Cohen offers his own account of the history, and the further promise, of analytical Marxism. He also expresses reservations about traditional historical materialism, in the light of which he reconstructs the theory, and he studies the implications for historical materialism of the demise of the Soviet Union.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

Winner of the Isaac Deutscher Memorial Prize

"Cohen's blend of sound scholarship and acute philosophical reasoning has produced a work with which anyone seriously interested in understanding Marx must come to terms."--Peter Singer, New York Review of Books

"A clear, definite, and well-reasoned interpretation of what the theory really is. . . . Admirably argued and generally exhilarating."--Anthony Quinton, The Times Literary Supplement

"[Karl Marx's Theory of History] is an ambitious and impressive work. . . . Cohen writes with limpidity, verve, and honesty."--William H. Shaw, American Historical Review

From the Back Cover

"An admirable and formidable book."--E. J. Hobsbawm

"Every sentence has the feel of having been deeply thought through over a long period of time."--Gareth Stedman Jones

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Product details

Series: Princeton Paperbacks
Paperback: 430 pages
Publisher: Princeton University Press; Expanded ed. edition (December 15, 2000)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0691070687
ISBN-13: 978-0691070681
Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1.2 x 8.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #979,710 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #640 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Ideologies & Doctrines > Radicalism
- #1642 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Ideologies & Doctrines > Communism & Socialism
- #2845 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Political

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Interesting

ByR. AlbinTOP 1000 REVIEWERon February 26, 2017

Format: Paperback

An interesting, rigorous, and somewhat demanding effort to defend Marx's theory of history. As Marx nowhere laid out his theory of history systematically, this is partly an effort to synthesize diverse writings to present a coherent theory. This is simultaneously also an effort to modernize Marx by stripping away some of the more obscure features of Marx's thought such as the use of "dialectic"and some of more cloudy Hegelian teleology. A good deal of the book is careful argument to refute other interpretations of Marx. While indispensable in the context of Cohen's goals, some of the sectarian wrangling is a bit hard to follow.

Cohen succeeds in presenting a coherent and Marxian theory of history. This has a strongly technological determinist flavor with changes in so-called "productive forces" as the main motor of human history. Much of Cohen's discussion is a sophisticated effort to justify Marx's Base and Superstructure model. In a complex but interesting argument apparently analogous to some explanations in biology, Cohen defines relationships between productive forces and production relations, the latter being the networks of power controlling productive forces, as generating the social superstructure. The latter, however, interacts in complex ways with production relations. A good deal of Cohen's arguments hinge on the nature of "functionalist" explanations and devotes a whole chapter to an abstract discussion of functionalist explanations.

How convincing is the Marx-Cohen model? Cohen's arguments are sophisticated and rigorous. I suspect that most objective readers will be convinced that Marx did offer a coherent theory and will finish this book with enhanced respect for Marx's analysis of capitalism. Important aspects of the model itself, however, continue to strike me as excessively deterministic and Cohen's efforts to avoid this potential defect by use of functionalist explanations, while coherent, seems to vague to be a really useful approach. This book was published originally in the late 1970s and the later chapters include some later writings by Cohen in which he responds to criticisms and somewhat weakens the model.

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Classic defense of the economic determinist interpretation

Bycutting-edgeon January 16, 2006

Format: Paperback

Cohen's classic book is a defense of the Second International thesis that the productive forces (roughly technology and labor power) are the "motive forces" of history. In the first version of the book this idea, widely disputed among Marxists, was intended to show that socialism was the necessary culmination of a history of increasing development of the productive forces. This is a difficult thesis to maintain today, and indeed in more recent work, some of which is embodied in the second edition of the book, Cohen retracts it, suggesting only that the development of the productive forces makes socialism possible. (Subsequently he seems to have backpedaled even on this.) The implications of the weakening of historical materialism (along with a sharp critique of Cohen's original view, one that he now largely accepts) were offered by Wright, Levine, and Sober in their Reconstructing Marxism, an essential companion piece to Cohen's book. They essentially involve taking apart the optimistic claims that Marxism offers an integrated scientifically based program of social change that inspires optimism about progress towards socialism. Cohen's main thesis, as an interpretation of Marx and as a _defense_ of Marx, seems much less plausible than, for example, the alternative "class struggle" interpretations of historical materialism urged, for example, by Robert Brenner or (formerly) Richard Miller in his Analyzing Marx.

Nonetheless, Cohen's book remains a model of clarity, depth, and ruthlessly honest exposition that shows up the places where it runs into problems. It contains must that is salvageable, not least an interpretation of what it is for the economic to be "primary" in terms of a theory of functional explanation, on which the ideological superstructure and the state are explained in part in terms of their functionality for the economic base, and revolutionary social change due to "fettering" of the productive forces understood in terms of dysfunctionality. People who like their Marx fuzzy and obscure enough to avoid intelligible criticism (Althusserians, for example) have never liked this book, but if Marxism _as a theory_ has a future in the wake of collapse of the Marxism _as a movement_, Cohen here set the standard for what that theory should look like in procedure and rigor if not necessarily in its substanative claims. Serious study of Marx's theory of history starts here.

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Most recent customer reviews

The starting point for all critics of Marx

This book has some virtues, in terms of clarity of exposition, but as a reading of Marx it leaves a lot to be desired.Read more

Published on August 20, 2005 by Dave Death

A Strong Defense

In the Base-Superstructure debate that has been raging for a while, and still is, within modern Marxism, GA Cohen's Defense of Karl Marx's Theory of History is one of the more...Read more

Published on February 25, 2004

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