## 1. Analytical Marxism


### 1.1 Components



The arrival of analytical Marxism is often dated by the appearance, in
1978, of *Karl Marx's Theory of History. A Defence* by
G.A. Cohen (1941-2009). This particular label seems to have been
coined by Jon Elster (1940-), and first appears in print as the
title of a collection published in 1986 and edited by John Roemer
(1945-). Those three figures--Cohen, Elster, and
Roemer--are plausibly seen as the founders of analytical Marxism
as a self-conscious intellectual current.



The label "analytical Marxism" requires some unpacking.
Its component terms obviously get used in a wide variety of ways, and
the combination looks an unnatural one to some.



Analytical Marxism often describes itself as the self-conscious
product of Marxist and non-Marxist traditions, and the
"analytical" modifier is provided by the latter.
"Non-Marxist" is intended as a neutral descriptive term.
It is not, for instance, equivalent to the pejorative use of
"un-Marxist" by what--equally
pejoratively--might be called "true believers".



This dual inheritance takes a very particular form. Analytical Marxism
is not a miscellaneous assembly of Marxist and non-Marxist elements,
but rather embodies a distinctive division of labour between these
two.


### 1.2 Structure



The division of labour internal to analytical Marxism runs between, on
the one hand, its (non-Marxist) analytical *methods* (the
plural is important), and, on the other, its (Marxist) *substantive
concerns* and *normative commitments*.



Perhaps the only methodological commitment that analytical Marxists
share is a negative one. They deny that there exists a distinctive and
valuable Marxist method, one which is *both* useful
*and* exclusive to Marxism (unavailable to non-Marxists).
Analytical Marxists adopt non-Marxist mainstream methods whenever and
wherever appropriate, and they maintain that, to the extent that,
historically speaking, Marxism rejected a range of analytical
methods--on the grounds of their putatively non-Marxist
("undialectical" or "individualistic")
character--this was to the detriment of Marxism's
engagement with its own substantive and normative concerns (G. Cohen
2000b: xviii).



The positive methodological commitments of analytical Marxism vary
significantly, and some generalisations--about aspirations to
precision, or rigour in argumentation, for instance--are not
especially illuminating. That said, characteristic, if not
constitutive, preferences, organised by discipline (and associated
with Cohen, Elster, and Roemer, respectively) would include: in
Philosophy, "those standards of clarity and rigour"
associated with the techniques of logical and linguistic analysis that
predominated in the Anglophone philosophical world in the twentieth
century (G. Cohen 1978: ix); in Politics, political science treatments
of action, choice, and strategy, and especially those which utilise
decision theory or rational choice theory; and, in Economics, the
major contributions of neoclassical economics, especially the
mathematical modelling of general equilibrium and cooperative game
theory (Roemer 1982). Whether these various methods have much in
common is not certain. Erik Olin Wright suggests that they share: a
commitment to conventional scientific norms; an emphasis on the
importance of systematic conceptualisation; a concern with
fine-grained specification of theoretical arguments; and a willingness
to take the relationship between social processes and the intentional
actions of individuals seriously (1994: 181-191).



The substantive concerns of analytical Marxism are broadly shared with
classical forms of Marxism. They consequently range widely, but
certainly include an interest in: historical explanation, class
structure, and exploitation. What is potentially distinctive here is
the analytical Marxist treatment of those, and other, classical
Marxist topics.



The normative commitments of analytical Marxism are also broadly
shared with classical forms of Marxism. The status and role of
normative commitments in Marxist theory are much argued about, but it
seems certain that--whatever their preferred
self-descriptions--Marxists do have characteristic normative
commitments. What is potentially distinctive here is that analytical
Marxists acknowledge this, and see a need for further reflection on
the relevant values and commitments. Analytical Marxists typically
embrace values associated with socialism, such as equality and
community, and endorse normative claims such as that existing
capitalism is flawed, and that some non-capitalist alternative would
be preferable.



More generally, this preliminary division of Marxism into
elements--some of which can be rejected and others improved
upon--reveals a further characteristic feature of the
understanding and approach of analytical Marxism. In their various
critical reflections on what is living, and what is dead, in classical
Marxism (see, for instance, Elster 1985), analytical Marxists
typically resist treating Marxism as a theoretical entity so
systematic that it can only be swallowed, or rejected, as a whole.


### 1.3 Bullshit



In trying to characterise an intellectual current, it can help to
identify those it is opposed to, or consciously contrasts itself
with.



Cohen, Elster, and Roemer, all participated in an annual workshop
usually known as the September Group. That Group initially also
referred to itself as the "Non-Bullshit Marxism Group".
The label is intended both to be humorous--there was even a faux
heraldic crest complete with cod Latin tag "*Marxismus sine
stercore tauri* [Marxism without the shit of the bull]" (G.
Cohen 2013: 94)--and to convey some truth. It is also an
aggressive characterisation, in that it implies that some kinds of
Marxism are of the bullshit variety.



The best-known philosophical discussion of bullshit is, of course,
that of Harry Frankfurt (2005). Cohen extended Frankfurt's
pioneering analysis to a variety of bullshit neglected in the
latter's original essay. A variety which: naturally inhabits the
academy and not ordinary life; consists of the output (the bullshit)
not the process (the bullshitting); is related to the (*OED*)
dictionary definition of bullshit as "nonsense" or
"rubbish"; and which further specifies the relevant
nonsense as being by nature unclarifiable (G. Cohen 2013: 107 fn.27).
It is the last of these characteristics--the "unclarifiable
unclarity"--which appears central to this variety of
bullshit, and which is purportedly celebrated by some of its producers
and consumers.



Cohen goes on to affirm and defend the historical and empirical claim
that "bullshit Marxism" flourishes in French intellectual
culture. (He had judged this second part of his discussion
as "too speculative", and it was only published
posthumously [G. Cohen 2013: viii].) In the 1960s, he read a great
deal of French Marxism, especially work by Louis Althusser and his
followers. At the time, Cohen found much of that material hard to
understand, but located the blame for those difficulties entirely
within himself. Moreover, whenever he finally managed to extract a
reasonable idea from this Althusserian literature, he was
inclined--precisely because of that effort and
investment--to consider it more important and interesting than it
actually was. This psychological mechanism--"a blend,
perhaps" of "adaptive preference formation" and
"cognitive dissonance reduction"--may be widespread
(2013: 95). Despite this youthful attraction, Cohen did not succumb to
Althusserianism, because, as he puts it: 



> 
> 
> I came to see that its reiterated affirmation of the value of
> conceptual rigour was not matched by conceptual rigour in its
> intellectual practices. (2013: 95) 
> 
> 
> 



And Cohen explicitly identifies this youthful "misguided
Althusserian dalliance" as lying behind his own subsequent and
fierce intolerance of bullshit (2013: 95).



The same phenomenon--the Althusserian promise of theoretical
rigour, and the purported failure to deliver it in practice--may
also have found biographical expression in Elster's early
graduate career. Not feeling at home with the Althusserian Marxists at
the Ecole Normale Superieure, Elster ended up writing his
dissertation under Raymond Aron.



In a distinct but related account, Erik Olin Wright characterises
"full-blown" bullshit Marxism as beset by three
intellectual "sins". First, "obfuscation", understood
as offering arguments and analyses which sound profound, but which are
resistant to clarification. The objection here is not to the use of
technical, or quasi-technical, vocabulary as such, but rather to its
use to obscure. Second, "intellectual dishonesty",
understood as the refusal variously: to clarify arguments in ways that
are open to challenge; to acknowledge gaps in one's
understanding or knowledge; or to concede that there exist reasonable
grounds for disagreement. This can take the form of what might be
characterised as sincere dogmatism, but more often involves something
closer to "bad faith", in which authors repress their
genuine doubts and qualifications when presenting their own views in
public. The third is an "ideological style of
argumentation" in which "a correct understanding of a
subject" is conflated with "Marx's understanding of
that subject"; that Marx endorsed such and such a claim being
treated as a conclusive argument in its favour (Kirby unpublished:
24-25 in
 Other Internet Resources).
 Wright's account of bullshit is more expansive than
Cohen's--not least, in venturing into the character of the
bullshitter--but the idea of "obfuscation" looks to
be a close relative of "unclarifiable unclarity".



Note that the distinction between bullshit Marxism and non-bullshit
Marxism is not an exhaustive one; that is, there are varieties of
Marxism which are neither analytical nor bullshit. However, Cohen does
provocatively suggest that, once analytical Marxism has a clear
presence in the world, what might be called "pre-analytical
Marxism" is no longer a stable outcome--it must tend to
"either become analytical or become bullshit" as the case
may be (G. Cohen 2000b: xxvi).


### 1.4 Further Disambiguation



Analytical Marxism, so understood, is not to be confused with adjacent
intellectual movements that have shared the same, or a closely
related, label, and with which they may have some affinity. Two
earlier and non-Anglophone examples might be noted here.



First, a Japanese school of Marxist economics, also known as
"analytical Marxism", developed in the 1930s and was
associated with the work of Shibata Kei and others based at Kyoto
University. Shibata pioneered the critical use of tools of modern
neoclassical economics to the problems of Marxist economics; in
particular, contributing to a mathematical theorem which maintains
that viable innovations in production methods will only increase or
maintain the equilibrium rate of profit (Howard & King 1992;
Negishi 2004; Rieu 2009).



Second, is a Polish school of "analytical-linguistic
Marxism", associated with the work of Adam Schaff and
Wladyslaw Krajewski in the 1960s. It is said to have
resulted from a "collision" between Marxism and the Polish
tradition of analytic philosophy (Skolimowski 1967), and involved, in
particular, attempts to incorporate analytical tools into Marxist
treatments of semantics and epistemology (Wozniak 2022).



These, and other, adjacent movements are not discussed further in this
entry.


## 2. History


### 2.1 Origins



This is not the place for a thorough historical account of analytical
Marxism. However, it might be helpful to say something about its
origins and relation to the annual workshop of the September
Group.



Analytical Marxism is sometimes conflated with participation in the
September Group. This is both understandable and unfortunate. It is
understandable because of the close overlap between the two; many of
the best-known analytical Marxists (including the founding trio) were
participants in the Group. And it is unfortunate because the two
entities are distinct; their fates may often have overlapped but they
are not synonymous.



First, analytical Marxism existed prior to, and independently of, the
September Group. Each of the three founding figures had put
"analytic methods" and Marxism together in their own work
before they met the other two (see G. Cohen 1978, Elster 1978, and
Roemer 1977), and before the formation of the Group.



(Biographically speaking--in understanding their positive
response to analytical methods--it may also be significant that
those three founding figures learnt their Marxism independently of,
and prior to, their exposure to the analytical methods of their
respective academic disciplines. Thus Cohen and Roemer were
independently raised in North America by pro-Soviet parents, whilst
Elster came from "an intellectual left-wing family"
associated with the Norwegian Labour Party (G. Cohen 2000b: xx; Roemer
2019b
 [Other Internet Resources];
 and Elster 2018: 201).)



Second, much analytical Marxist work is by individuals who are not
participants in the September Group. A list of some of these, drawn
from assorted secondary literature, might include: Alan Carling,
Norman Geras, Andrew Levine, Daniel Little, Richard Miller, Charles
W. Mills, Richard Norman, Jeffrey Reiman, Debra Satz, David
Schweickart, William Shaw, Tommie Shelby, Elliot Sober, Ian Steedman,
Nicholas Vrousalis, Robert Paul Wolff, and Allen Wood. All of those
have been characterised as producing work, at some point, in the
analytical Marxist mode, albeit that the list includes individuals who
would not identify themselves as analytical Marxists, and others who
have themselves criticised narrower versions of the tradition, such as
rational choice Marxism (Wolff 1990)).



Some will also think the relevant conflation mistaken because the September
Group is a diverse grouping of analytical Marxists and fellow
travellers. "Fellow travellers" is intended here,
non-pejoratively, to refer to individuals sympathetic to, and
intellectually cooperating with, but not themselves identifying,
either as analytical Marxists, or, indeed, as Marxists of any stripe.
It might appear counterintuitive to characterise these fellow
travellers as analytical Marxists, but the present entry operates on
the basis of an expansive notion of analytical Marxism which includes
all those working in the relevant mode--both "fellow
travellers" in the September Group, and non-participants in the
September Group--and attaches no special weight to
self-identification.


### 2.2 September Group



Despite those caveats, the September Group did provide an
institutional focus and momentum that was crucial to the early
evolution of analytical Marxism.



The "prehistory" of the September Group centred on two
London meetings of Marxist and Marxist*ant* scholars working on
exploitation--convened at the initiative of Elster, and with the
support of Cohen--in September 1979 and 1980. It was then decided
to meet annually but no longer limit the discussion to exploitation.
Consequently, the third meeting might be identified as the point at
which the September Group had properly formed. It was attended by
"the most dedicated" of those who had attended the first
two meetings, plus "one or two" new invitees (G. Cohen
2000b: xix).



Between 1981 and 2002, membership of the Group was "remarkably
stable" (G. Cohen 2000b: xix). These annual early
meetings--usually, but not always, held in London--are
remembered as intense and rewarding occasions, at which half of the
group would pre-circulate papers, which were then introduced and
commented on by someone other than the author (Wright 2005a,
343-344).



In 2000 the Group included (with then current academic affiliations in
parenthesis): the economist Pranab Bardhan (Berkeley); the economist
Samuel Bowles (Amherst); the historian Robert Brenner (Los Angeles);
the political philosopher G.A. Cohen (Oxford); the political
philosopher Joshua Cohen (Cambridge, Mass.); the political philosopher
Philippe van Parijs (Louvain-la Neuve); the economist John Roemer
(Yale); the political philosopher Hillel Steiner (Manchester); the
political philosopher Robert Jan van der Veen (Amsterdam); the social
scientist Erik Wright (Madison). Only two of that list had not been
participants in 1982: Bowles had joined in 1987 and Joshua Cohen in
1996 (G. Cohen 2000b: xix).



The academic location of analytical Marxism is often noted, and
sometimes linked with its purported distance from practical, real
world, concerns. One critic refers to "the donnish remoteness of
the whole project" (Roberts 1996: 219), and another maintains
that its "standards of judgement" and "sense of
proportion" are "derived not from the political arena but
from the Senior Common Room" (E. Wood 1989: 88). The gender
composition of the September Group is also sometimes raised as a
concern, and its early practices would certainly appear to have
reproduced, rather than challenged, the contemporary marginalisation
of women in the relevant academic disciplines (Wright 2005a: 344).



There is also critical interest in the ideological composition of the
Group. Descriptions of the Group as involving "a set of
Marxists, or semi-Marxists" (G. Cohen 2013: 95), and as composed
of scholars of "Marxist or quasi-Marxist stripe" (G. Cohen
2000b: xix), might be thought not to capture, either its early
diversity, or the direction of its subsequent evolution. Wright
characterises the politics of participants as ranging: 



> 
> 
> from fairly traditional commitments to revolutionary democratic
> socialism to the Greens to what might be termed left-wing
> libertarianism. (1994: 181) 
> 
> 
> 



Amongst proponents of the latter, Steiner characterises his own views
as "[b]asically left-wing, though in a sense which has been
largely unfashionable for most of this century" (Ricciardi 1997:
38), whilst Van Parijs describes himself as a person emphatically of
the left, but as someone who has "never defined myself as a
Marxist", adding that he had always felt "extremely
comfortable" within the September Group precisely "because
it included fellow travellers and not just analytical Marxists"
(1997: 17). At one point, the possibility of
"political-ideological criteria for "membership" in
the annual meeting" was discussed, but the Group agreed that
what really mattered was not a commitment to a particular set of
political positions, but rather "the possibility of constructive
dialogue among the participants" (Wright 1994: 181 fn4).



The biggest internal disruption in the Group's early history
consisted in the dramatic departure, in 1993, of Elster (the original
convener) and the political scientist Adam Przeworski (who had joined
in the second year). Its causes remain uncertain. The
"leavers" expressed criticisms of the evolving
intellectual character of the group, and Przeworski suggested that
insofar as its original purpose was the critical evaluation of
Marxism, that task had been completed, and that "[w]e ultimately
found that not much of Marxism is left and there really wasn't
much more to learn" (2007: 490). Indeed, Elster would
subsequently characterise analytical Marxism as a rare case of
"intellectual autophagy", which had succeeded in revealing
that "non-bullshit Marxism" was largely "an empty
set" (2011: 163). Marx's only remaining contribution of
value was now said to concern, not his substantive views, but
"his normative conception of the good life as one of active and
joint self-realization" (2011: 163). In contrast, some
"remainers" viewed these departures as reflecting external
factors, especially the complex impact of the demise of the Soviet
Union on a certain generation of leftists. "Complex", not
least, in that its demise was seen as involving both the removal of a
hideous regime and the loss of a non-capitalist space (G. Cohen 2009b:
352).



Those contemporary tendencies--the perceived waning of both the
value of Marxist ideas, and the availability of non-capitalist
alternatives--perhaps impacted more widely on the dynamism and
focus of the Group. In 2000 participants debated whether to continue.
Some thought the decision to carry on (meeting biannually) was
motivated as much by fellowship as strictly intellectual pay-offs
(Wright 2005a: 345). Others affirmed the continuing intellectual
benefits of a group of "people from different academic
disciplines who have a radical orientation and who can fertilize each
other's thoughts" (G. Cohen 2009b: 352).



The September Group is now widely seen to have evolved away from a
primarily Marxist orientation and towards other concerns. Wright
suggested that whilst the group still shared an egalitarian approach
to social justice: 



> 
> 
> the specific preoccupation with Marxism as a source of ideas and
> debates for advancing that normative agenda was no longer so
> important. (2005a: 345) 
> 
> 
> 



That tendential evolution was reflected in, and perhaps amplified by,
the arrival of new participants (with then current academic
affiliations in parenthesis), including the political scientist
Stathis Kalyvas (Yale) and the philosopher Seana Shiffrin (UCLA). Even
those who identified as Marxists were less likely to think of Marxism
as "a comprehensive theoretical paradigm capable of constituting
a general theory of history and society" (Wright 2005a:
342). The simple passage of time also left its mark on the composition
and character of the Group (G. A. Cohen died in 2009, and Wright in
2019). This evolution remains tendential, in that there may be
exceptions, perhaps including Brenner's work on the transition
from feudalism to capitalism, and on the nature of contemporary
capitalism (1993, and 2002). However, Roemer has recently confirmed
that, although the Group continues to meet, "most of us no
longer identify as Marxists" (Roemer 2019b in
 Other Internet Resources).
 That "most" appears to include Roemer himself: 



> 
> 
> I tend not to call myself a Marxist anymore because I do not credit
> many of the ideas that Marx believed were at the center of his view:
> the labour theory of value, the falling rate of profit, and the claim
> that dialectical materialism is a special kind of logic. (Roemer
> 2020b: 135) 
> 
> 
> 



Of course, it is not certain that Roemer had previously subscribed to
those particular Marxist ideas either (see 1981), but the changing self-identification says something
nonetheless.



Whilst the September Group provided an institutional focus and
momentum that was crucial to the early evolution of analytical
Marxism, neither the past, nor the future, of these two entities is
identical.


## 3. Form


### 3.1. Methods



In considering the non-Marxist methods adopted by analytical Marxists,
it is important to emphasise the plural. The variety of methods and
approaches that analytical Marxists have adopted is striking. Nor is
this merely a question of the disciplinary divides mentioned above
(between Philosophy, Politics, and Economics). Once we move beyond
generalisations about clarity and precision, there is no clear
consensus within analytical Marxism about the merits of particular
"analytical" methods and approaches.



Two examples of methodological disagreement within analytical Marxism
are sketched here.


### 3.2. Methodological Individualism



The enthusiasm of many analytical Marxists--including Elster,
Przeworski, and Roemer--for the doctrine of methodological
individualism is widely known. Perhaps as a result, it is sometimes
thought that all analytical Marxists are committed to methodological
individualism, and that this doctrine forms a fault line between
analytical and other forms of Marxism. Both of these claims look
questionable.



The proper characterisation of "methodological
individualism" is contested (see entry on
 methodological individualism).
 It is understood here as a methodological position which maintains
that all macro-level social phenomena--political states, economic
classes, social processes, group norms, and so on--are in
principle reducible to micro-level explanation involving only
individuals and their properties (Elster 1985: 5).



So understood, methodological individualism may have fewer
implications than sometimes thought. For instance, there is no
necessary connection with rational choice explanations (see Wolff 1990). One might
think of the two theories as playing different roles: the first
arguing for explanations at the level of individuals; and the second
adopting a particular model of rational action at that level (Wright,
Levine, & Sober 1992: 126). Similarly, there is no necessary
connection between methodological individualism and what is sometimes
called "atomism"; namely, the claim that only
non-relational entities are explanatory (Wright, Levine, & Sober
1992: 110). Methodological individualists can allow that the
individual characteristics considered explanatory include inherently
relational properties (being an "employer", for
example).



Even so, methodological individualism remains a demanding doctrine. In
particular, its proponents insist on the indispensability of
micro-level explanations, and the desirability of dispensing with
"holist" accounts. Elster, for one, characterises it as
"a form of reductionism", recommending the move from the
aggregate to the less aggregate level of phenomena (1985: 5).



Methodological individualism also looks to have an historically
uneasy, if not downright antagonistic, relation with Marxism. First,
many of the most enthusiastic proponents of the former were fierce
critics of the latter (including Friedrich von Hayek and Karl Popper).
Second, if pre-analytical Marxists had expressed a view about
methodological individualism, then it would probably have been to
reject it (perhaps encouraged by Marx's emphasis on the
importance of social totalities, and his scepticism about explanations
based on "abstract individuals"). Third, analytical
Marxists have often raised methodological individualist concerns about
Marx's own attempts at social explanation; suggesting, for
instance, that Marx substituted "wishful thinking" for
"social analysis" in his account of the dynamics of
communist revolution (Elster 1988: 225).



However, analytical Marxists have also held that, whilst Marx often
(implicitly) denied methodological individualism, he was also
"at least intermittently" committed to it. That more
positive attitude is said to be evident, for instance, in some of his
anti-teleological remarks in the *German Ideology* manuscripts
(Elster 1985: 109). At a time when Elster insisted that "most of
the views" that he himself held to be "true and
important" could be traced back to Marx, he explicitly included
methodological views in that category, alongside substantive views and
values (1985: 531).



Other analytical Marxists--including Wright, Levine, and
Sober--have sought to resist the reductive ambitions of
methodological individualism, without embracing the position they call
"radical holism" (which seeks to eliminate the individual
level of analysis). Broadly speaking, the central issue
here--between Elster on the one hand, and Wright, Levine, and
Sober on the other--is whether the *only* good social
explanations are what J.W.N. Watkins calls "rock-bottom"
explanations in terms of individual actions, or whether
"half-way" explanations might not also be meaningful and
useful (Watkins 1957: 106). For the methodological individualist, to
explain a social phenomenon just is to provide an account of the
individual level mechanism that produces it. In the absence of such an
account, the phenomenon remains unexplained. However, Wright, Levine,
and Sober embrace a position they call
"anti-reductionism", which denies that all
"macro-level" social explanations are in principle
reducible to "micro-level" accounts in terms of
individuals and their properties (1992: 115).



This line of response draws on a distinction between two distinct
threads in the methodological individualist position: its ontological
claim that all macro-level social entities are constituted by
individuals; and its explanatory claim that all macro-level social
entities are ultimately explicable in terms of facts about
individuals. Accepting the truth of the former does not require one to
endorse the distinctive "reductive" ambitions of the
latter. And there might be good reasons for resisting the latter,
including: the possibility of regularities at the macro-level which
are *not* derivable from regularities at the micro-level; and
(more pragmatically) in the existence of cases where, although it
might *in principle* be possible to perform the derivation, the
benefits of doing so might be extremely limited. In both cases, there
are good reasons to preserve the "explanatory autonomy" of
the social (Little 1991: 183-195).



One kind of case which resists reduction is where there is no single
relation between the social phenomenon and individual properties,
because the relevant macro-level phenomenon can be realised in
multiple ways at the micro-level. Examples might include the idea of
"fittingness" in evolutionary biology, or of
"economic survival" (of capitalist firms) in economics
(Wright, Levine, & Sober 1992: 119). In such circumstances, no
particular micro-level account can be identified as explaining the
macro-level phenomenon, because the latter can be realised in multiple
combinations of the former. The provision of a micro-level account
might still be desirable--for instance, identifying a possible
micro-foundation might improve our confidence in the macro-level
explanation--but here it offers no support for a general project
of reduction (1992: 122). In short, Wright, Levine, and Sober
recognise that facts about social phenomenon might supervene on facts
about individuals and their interaction, without it being the case
that all social phenomenon can be explained in individualistic terms
alone. The question of how many social phenomenon are irreducible to
individual level properties looks to be an open empirical matter (List
& Spiekermann 2013).



There are complex issues in the philosophy of social science raised
here, but--irrespective of one's considered judgement about
the balance of argument--these disagreements confirm that a
commitment to analytical methods does not require endorsement of
methodological individualism. Wright, Levine, and Sober, for example,
have all produced work within the analytical Marxist tradition and yet
reject elements of this particular methodological doctrine.


### 3.3. Functional Explanation



The methodological diversity of analytical Marxism is also apparent in
disagreements about the legitimacy of functional explanation in the
social sciences. The initial context of this disagreement is provided
by Cohen's *Karl Marx's Theory of History. A
Defence* (1978).



Cohen and Elster had independently come to see that Marx, in his
theory of history, was, in some sense, committed to functional
explanation. They differ in that, whereas Elster deplores that
commitment and recommends an alternative game theoretic account, Cohen
defends this role for functional explanation and expresses scepticism
about the suitability of Elster's alternative (G. Cohen 2014:
284). (Note that only some elements of their debate are covered
here.)



Cohen identifies a number of explanatory connections between the
"ensembles" that appear in Marx's "1859
Preface": the productive forces; the relations of production;
and the superstructure. Consider an example involving the first two of
those ensembles. The productive forces are those facilities and
devices--means of production (including tools, raw materials, and
premisses) and labour power (including strength, skill, and technical
knowledge)--used to productive effect in the process of
production. They are said, on this account, to grow in power over the
course of human history. And the relations of production--the sum
total of which are said to constitute the economic structure (or
"base") of a given society--are the relations of
power that people enjoy, or lack, over those forces, over means of
production and labour power (G. Cohen 1988: 4).



In the context of the relationship between those growing forces and
the relations of production (the economic structure), Marx propounds
two claims which might look to be in tension with each other. First,
that the productive forces have explanatory primacy over the
relations; that is, that the level of development of the productive
forces explains the nature of the economic structure. And second, that
the economic structure has considerable effect on the forces; not
least, that the economic structure controls (facilitates or
frustrates) the development of the productive forces. It is this
combination of claims which confirms that the "first primacy
thesis"--that "the level of development of the
productive forces in a society explains the nature of its economic
structure" (G. Cohen 2014: 289)--is best understood as
functional in form.



A functional explanation is one in which something that has an effect,
is explained in terms of its effect. Cohen often uses an example from
evolutionary biology to illustrate this; namely, that "birds
have hollow bones because hollow bones facilitate flight". Here,
something (birds having hollow bones) which has a certain effect
(facilitating flight) is explained by the fact that it has that effect
("birds have hollow bones because hollow bones facilitate
flight"; G. Cohen 1988: 8). In short, where *e* is a cause
and *f* is its effect, functional explanations maintain that:
*e* occurred because it would cause *f*. Or, more properly,
functional explanations maintain that: *e* occurred because the
situation was such that an event like *e* would cause an event
like *f* (G. Cohen 1988: 8).



Functional explanation, so understood, renders these two
claims--namely, that the relations of production are explained by
the forces of production, and that the relations of production control
the development of the forces of production--consistent. For
instance, where relations of production endure (that is, exist in a
stable fashion), they do so *because* they promote the
development of the productive forces. And, where relations of
production are revolutionised (that is, where old relations are
abandoned for new ones), old relations cease to exist *because*
they *no* longer favour the forces, and the new relations come
into being (and/or come to preponderate) *because* they do
favour the forces. On this reading, the impact of the relations on the
forces is no embarrassment to Marx's theory of history because
of the functional manner in which it explains economic structures in
terms of productive forces. Economic structures rise and fall
according to whether they sustain or frustrate the development of the
productive forces. To be clear, the suggestion is not, strictly
speaking, that Marx propounds functional explanations, but rather that
the claims which he does propound put severe constraints on the kind
of explanation that is required, and that functional explanation is
the most plausible candidate meeting those constraints.



Elster takes issue with Cohen's twofold claim that, historical
materialism "cannot shed its commitment to functional
explanation", and that "there is nothing inherently
suspect in it" (G. Cohen 2014: 294). Elster maintains that the
conditions that justify the use of functional explanation in
evolutionary biology do not obtain in social theory, and especially
not in the context of historical materialism.



Elster insists that functional explanations of macro-phenomena are
methodologically acceptable only where it is possible to indicate, at
least schematically, the mechanisms at the level of individual
behaviour through which the aggregate behaviour emerges. That is,
macro-explanations require what he calls
"microfoundations" at the level of the processes of
individual choice and action. Indeed, it seems that
"holist" social explanations are not really considered
explanations at all. They involve--in this figuratively
mechanistic account--a black box whose internal workings are
hidden, when to explain just: 



> 
> 
> is to provide a mechanism, to open up the black box and show the nuts
> and bolts, the cogs and wheels, the desires and beliefs that generate
> the aggregate outcomes. (Elster 1985: 5) 
> 
> 
> 



In this context, Elster recommends that Marxism abandon
(insufficiently supported) functional explanation and utilise game
theoretic explanation in its place.



In response, Cohen makes two broad points.



First, Cohen maintains that, whilst providing
"microfoundations"--what he prefers to call
"elaborations" of a functional mechanism--would
improve a functional explanation, their absence does not necessarily
invalidate it. The nineteenth-century Darwinian claim that birds have
hollow bones because hollow bones facilitate flight, for example, was
already an "excellent" explanation, which was subsequently
rendered "even better" through twentieth-century
developments in the science of genetics (G. Cohen 1988: 12).
Marx's theory of history might be figuratively located at an
analogous position to that not-yet-fully-elaborated Darwinian
stage.



Second, Cohen judges the proposal to replace functional explanation
with game theoretic accounts as an unpromising one. Whilst game theory
can provide imaginative accounts of aspects of class struggle--of
alliances and revolution, for instance--class struggle is not the
most basic of the phenomena that historical materialism is trying to
explain. For Marxists, "class struggle has primary political
significance, but the political dimension of society is not itself
primary" (G. Cohen 1988: 17). Game theory might help explain the
immediate outcome of various political struggles, but whether those
outcomes stick, or not, is explained by the material conditions in
which they take place.



Again, there are complex issues in the philosophy of social science
raised here, but--irrespective of one's considered
judgement about the balance of argument--this dispute confirms
that analytical Marxism is home to disagreement and debate about
particular methods.


### 3.4. Dialectic



Commentators sometimes claim that analytical Marxism holds an
unremittingly negative view of "dialectic", with one
suggesting that: 



> 
> 
> a good test to follow if in doubt whether a particular writer supports
> the analytic school is to see whether he mentions dialectics with
> favour. If he does, he must immediately be crossed off the list. Even
> to cite the word at all counts against membership in the analytic
> school. (Gordon 1990: 22-3.)
> 
> 
> 



Both that claim and this test are rejected here. (This section draws on Leopold
2008.)



Analytical Marxists share the negative methodological view that there
is no distinctive Marxist method, no valuable tools and approaches
which are available only to Marxists. That view is perhaps most likely
to be resisted by "Hegelian Marxists" who identify
*the* Marxist method with some variety of dialectic. However,
it does not follow that analytical Marxists have to reject all talk of
dialectic. (There is, of course, also a potential irony in the
hostility of Hegelian Marxists to the embrace of non-Marxist methods
by analytical Marxists, given that their own preferred method
presumably owes much to its eponymous "bourgeois"
source.)



Many of the best-known analytical Marxists are proponents of what can
be called *modest* conceptions of dialectic. Consider, for
example, Elster's account of three dialectical strands in
Marx's work, of which two are judged valuable (Elster 1978:
chapters 3-5; Elster 1985: 37-48; and Elster 1986a:
34-39).



The first, and wholly unpromising, strand concerns dialectic as a
method of presentation. In parts of the *Grundrisse*
(1986-87 [1857-58]) and *Capital* (1996 [1867]),
for instance, Marx appears to adopt a "quasi-deductive
procedure", presenting certain results of his economic analysis
in a manner analogous to the developing categorical system of
Hegel's science of logic. Elster is deeply unsympathetic to this
method of presentation, purporting to find, both the relevant
passages, and their underlying motivation, scarcely intelligible
(1985: 37). (For a more positive account, see Arthur 2004.)



The second, and modestly promising, strand concerns the
"dialectical laws", associated with Friedrich Engels, but
also found in Marx's own work. In Engels' famous
formulations, these "laws" include: the "negation of
the negation"; the "transformation of quantity into
quality"; and the "interpenetration of opposites".
Elster scales down the status and explanatory reach of Engels'
account, suggesting that, rather than indicating laws of nature, we
think of these terms as describing "not infrequent patterns of
change" sometimes found in nature, society, and consciousness
(1985: 40). There is no suggestion that all developments, in those
various contexts, follow such patterns, and their extent is treated as
an open empirical question. However, with those, and other, cautions
in place, Elster suggests that these imprecise but suggestive ideas
can be illuminating.



For example, the "negation of the negation" describes the
third step of a triadic development from a stage of
"undifferentiated unity" (where some subject is undivided
from some object), through a stage of "differentiated
disunity" (where that subject is divided from the object in a
manner which creates discord), to a stage of "differentiated
unity" (where the distinction between subject and object remains
but harmony between them is restored). Analytical Marxists are happy
to allow that certain social and individual developments exhibit this
dialectical pattern. Cohen, for instance, describes a historical
development from pre-capitalist society, where collective structures
and consciousness inhibit individualism (a stage of undifferentiated
unity), through the divisions of capitalism, which stimulate an
unbridled individualism and undermine community (a stage of
differentiated disunity), to a communist future, which will preserve
(aspects of) individuality in a context of regained community (a stage
of differentiated unity). Note that society is said to undergo a
dialectical transformation here simply by virtue of experiencing the
relevant stages in turn. There is no suggestion of the development
being a necessary one, of each stage having to generate the next
(G. Cohen 1988: 185).



The third, and most promising, of the three dialectical strands is a
theory of social contradictions. Elster sees Marx as a pioneer in the
study of "real contradictions"; that is, situations in
(psychological or social) reality which can only be described in terms
of logical contradiction. The core idea here involves a contrast
between the local and the global, between what is possible for a
particular social agent and what is possible for all agents in that
social position. This core idea is judged both clear (impervious to
some standard "analytical" objections to dialectical talk)
and fertile (operationalizable and capable of generating substantive
social scientific results).



Elster outlines two variants of social contradiction:
"counterfinality" and "suboptimality". Only
the former is discussed here. Broadly speaking, counterfinality refers
to the discrepancy between individual intentions and actual results
which obtains when each individual acts upon non-universalizable
beliefs about the behaviour of others (see Van Parijs 1982, 592). In
what Elster calls "condensed jargon", counterfinality can
be described as "the embodiment of the fallacy of
composition" (1985: 44). Consider the following example of the
contradictory character of capitalist behaviour. In response, say, to
some exogenously induced fall in demand, each individual capitalist
reduces their own workers' wages in order to maintain profits. The
aggregative result, contrary to that intention, is a further reduction
of workers' buying power (and thus a further reduction also of
profits). Any capitalist might have succeeded were they the only one
to act, but when they all act in this way they fail (Elster 1985: 46).
These desires taken together are contradictory, in the sense that
there is no possible world in which all capitalists can have that
desire satisfied. Given certain structural contexts, those social
contradictions can cause social change; for instance, in certain
cases, generating collective action (perhaps including state
intervention) designed to overcome or mitigate those
contradictions.



There is no suggestion that only Marxists can identify or appreciate
these two kinds of modest dialectic. For instance, there is an
interesting parallel of "the negation of the negation" in
Alexis de Tocqueville's account of three "distinct and
often successive" stages in the relation between an individual
and religious belief (see Tocqueville 1835-40 [1994: 187]). And
Elster (1978: 106) notes that the concept of counterfinality was
developed by an intellectually highly diverse group of, both early
proponents (Bossuet, Mandeville, Vico, Adam Smith, Hegel, and Marx),
and more recent defenders (Oskar Morgenstern, Jean-Paul Sartre, Robert
Nozick, and Trygve Haavelmo).



Finally, no support is offered here to those insisting on the
existence of a radical gulf between "dialectical" and
"analytical" reasoning. The explicit assumption is that
dialectical talk can make analytic sense. Indeed, as Cohen remarks, in
a slightly more aggressive formulation, the idea that belief in
dialectic is a *rival* to analysis "thrives only in an
atmosphere of unclear thought" (G. Cohen 2000b: xxiii).



These modest conceptions will, of course, be too modest for some, but
they confirm that analytical Marxism does not reject the very idea of
dialectic.


## 4. Content


### 4.1 Marxist Substance



It is the substantive concerns of analytical Marxism which--along
with its normative commitments--are said to embody its Marxist
heritage (by comparison with its adoption of non-Marxist methods).



This section outlines some aspects of analytical Marxist treatments
of: historical explanation; class structure; and exploitation.


### 4.2 History



The present section sketches some aspects of Cohen's account of
historical materialism (1978), and of his subsequent reflections on
the explanatory scope of that theory (1988: 155-179).



Marx is said to understand history as, fundamentally, the growth of
human productive power, maintaining that forms of society, which are
organised around economic structures, "rise and fall according
as they enable and promote, or prevent and discourage, that
growth" (G. Cohen 1988: 3). The canonical text for this
interpretation being Marx's "1859 Preface" to *A
Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy*, which is
treated not as one piece of evidence amongst many, but as the text
providing the clearest theoretical statement of historical
materialism.



Cohen presents Marx as committed to the following claims, amongst
others:


* First, the Development Thesis: which claims that the productive
forces have an autonomous tendency to develop throughout history. The
productive forces are those facilities and devices--means of
production (including tools, raw materials, and premisses) and labour
power (including strength, skill, and technical knowledge)--used
to productive effect in the process of production. Growth here can be
measured by the decreasing amount of labour it takes with given forces
to produce what is necessary to satisfy the basic physical needs of
the immediate producers.
* Second, the First Primacy Thesis: which claims that the level of
development of the productive forces in a given society explains the
economic structure (the set of relations of production) that obtain in
that society. The relations of production--the sum total of which
are said to constitute the economic structure (or "base")
of a given society--are the relations of power that people enjoy,
or lack, over the productive forces, over means of production and
labour power (G. Cohen 1988: 4).
* Third, the Second Primacy Thesis: which claims that the
"base", understood as the economic structure of a given
society, explains the legal and political "superstructure"
in that society.
* Fourth, the claim that the kind of explanation involved in both of
these two Primacy Theses is functional explanation (see
 section 3.3).



To put a little flesh on those abstract bones, consider the following
elaboration of the First Primacy Thesis (Wright, Levine, & Sober
1992: 19). A given level of development of the productive forces is
only compatible with a certain type (or with limited types) of
economic structure. Since forces of production tend to develop over
time (see the "Development Thesis"), the forces eventually
reach a level where they are no longer compatible with the relations
of production under which they had previously developed. When such
incompatibilities arise, the relations are said to
"fetter" the development of the forces of production (G.
Cohen 1988: 109-123). This fettering leads to revolution, in
which social actors (classes) with the capacity to bring new relations
into effect emerge, and revolutionise the economic structure in ways
that restores growth in the productive forces.



This model of growing levels of productive power, and their associated
forms of society, is said to generate a four-stage periodisation of
progressive epochs in human history (G. Cohen 1978: 197-201). In
the first stage, the material position involves an absence of surplus,
and the corresponding social form is a primitive classless society
(productive power being too low to enable a class of non-producers to
live off the labour of producers). In the second stage, the material
position is a surplus large enough to support an exploiting class, but
too small to sustain capitalist accumulation, and the corresponding
social form is a pre-capitalist class society. In the third stage, the
material surplus is moderately high--high enough to support
capitalist accumulation--and the corresponding social form is
capitalist class society. Capitalism subsequently generates a growing
surplus such that it becomes itself unsustainable (for contested
reasons), leading to a fourth and final stage, where, on the basis of
a precondition of a massive surplus, a modern classless society
emerges.



Such an abbreviated summary ignores many interesting complexities and
changes in Cohen's views, but hopefully give some sense of its
character as a defence of a "traditional", even
"old-fashioned", conception of historical materialism
attaching explanatory primacy to the forces of production (G. Cohen
1978: x).



There is a huge critical literature on Cohen's reading of
Marx's theory of history. A thorough survey is scarcely possible
here, but most criticisms tend to cluster around three main kinds of
concern.



First, there are criticisms based on Cohen's treatment of what
might be called *textual* issues. For example, there is some
suspicion of what is seen as his *over*-reliance on the
"1859 Preface" (critics sometimes utilising Printz
1969). Or, to give another example, there are appeals to the lack of
fit between Cohen's interpretation and some of the more concrete
accounts of historical development found elsewhere in Marx's own
writings (Miller 1984: 188-195).



Second, there are criticisms pressing on *coherence* issues arising from
Cohen's reconstruction of Marx's theory. For example,
there is some scepticism about whether the "base" can be
distinguished from the "superstructure" in the way that he
requires (F. Cohen & Acton 1970; Lukes 1982). Or, to give another
example, whether Cohen's distinction between social and material
properties is conceptually flawed in ways that undermine his claims
about the primacy of the productive forces (Coram 1989).



Third, there are criticisms examining the empirical *truth* of
this account of Marx's theory. For example, there are doubts
about whether the historical record of pre-capitalist
societies--especially given cases such as the "long
period" in Chinese history, or the "second serfdom"
in Poland--offer support for the claim that there is little
productive regression in history (J. Cohen 1982: 266-268). In
addition, some historians are sceptical of whether, given
pre-capitalist relations, economic actors have the relevant incentives
to act in the ways--especially, in transforming property
relations--that Cohen's theory seems to require (Brenner
1985a, 1985b, and 1986). Or, to give a final empirical example, as
part of a wider insistence that Cohen's early work is flawed by
its lack of gender awareness, Paula Casal argues that his four-stage
periodisation of epochs (and associated producers) cannot survive
serious reflection on the economic position of women (2020).



These, and many other, critical questions are not pursued further
here. Instead, the remainder of the section considers the explanatory
scope of historical materialism.



Cohen accepts that Marx's theory makes some large and
controversial claims, but comes to think that these may be less
demanding than is often thought. Cohen distinguishes two
interpretations of historical materialism. On an *inclusive*
reading, the theory claims that material and economic developments
explain the principal features of other, non-economic developments.
However, on a *restricted* reading, the theory commits itself
to explaining non-economic phenomena only when, if they weren't
so explained, they would seem to control material development. The
theory, on this "restricted" reading, limits itself to
explaining non-economic phenomena which possess "economic
relevance" (G. Cohen 1988: 173). It seems likely that Marx and
Engels--perhaps under the influence of Hegel's philosophy
of history--assumed an inclusive reading, but Cohen suggests that
the restricted reading is consistent with the "1859
Preface", and may offer a better fit with historical
evidence.



An example can illuminate the difference between these two readings
(G. Cohen 1988: 160-165). Assume that the following increasingly
Weberian-looking claims are all true: first, that Protestantism took
hold and persisted for non-economic reasons; second, that
Protestantism had important consequences for European religious life;
and, third, that Protestantism had important consequence for European
economic life. Note that inclusive historical materialism is
challenged by both the conjunction of the first two claims, and the
third claim; whereas restricted historical materialism is challenged
only by the addition of the third claim to the first two. Moreover, on
Cohen's functionalist account, the latter can meet that
challenge: 



> 
> 
> if the features of Protestantism in virtue of which it had economic
> effects arose because of their tendency to have such effects. (1988:
> 176)
> 
> 
> 



Cohen was subsequently persuaded (by Wright) that this distinction
between restricted and inclusive historical materialism is
*better* understood in the light of a "prior
distinction" between Marxist theory of history and Marxist
sociology (G. Cohen 1988: 176-177). Marxist theory of history is
identified with the restricted variant, and the familiar Marxist
claims that the latter refrained from affirming (about the economic
explaining the principal features of non-economic life) are now
allocated to Marxist sociology. Where Marxist theory of history is
concerned with the issue of how social formations succeed one another,
Marxist sociology is concerned with how the elements within a social
formation are related. The latter, but not the former, insists that
non-economic structures and modes of consciousness are, in their broad
outlines, explained by material and economic factors. The two theories
are often conflated, but they are sufficiently distinct that they
require independent assessment (G. Cohen 1988: 178).


### 4.3 Class



The concept of class is central to the Marxist tradition. Of course,
many non-Marxist thinkers--including Ricardo, Weber, Durkheim,
and Bourdieu--also utilise some idea of class, but it is
typically conceptualised differently, and allocated a less important
role in their social theory. For Marxists, class is standardly defined
in an "objective" manner, and designates the social
position occupied by individuals within a network of relations of
production. Indeed, an objective account is necessary if certain
Marxist claims about the ways in which class conditions and shapes
"consciousness, culture, or politics" are to be sustained
(G. Cohen 1978: 73). And class, so understood, typically plays a
crucial explanatory part in Marxist accounts of, variously: the
character of, and development between, historical epochs; the
institutional form, and behaviour, of the state; and many of the
beliefs, and actions, of individual and collective agents.



Class is a recurring topic in analytical Marxist writings. Examples
include: Wright's account of the "middle class ";
Przeworski's analysis of the class basis of social democracy
(1985); Roemer's discussion of the relationship between class
position and exploitation status (1982); and Alan Carling's game
theoretic portrayal of relations between men and women as class
relations (1991: 253-299). This section outlines some aspects of
the first of those examples.



Wright has written at least five books on the subject, changed his
views over time, and collaborated in extensive empirical work using
modern sample survey methodology and multivariate statistical
techniques across countries (Wright 1989). This section only touches
on: the Marxist character of Wright's view of class structure;
his early response to the problem of "the middle class";
and his revised understanding of the relation between exploitation and
class.



Wright identifies six "conceptual constraints" that
diverse Marxist approaches to class--including his
own--typically respect (1985: 26-37). First, that the class
structure of a society is the "basic" determinant (1985:
28) of the limits of possible variation in class formations, class
consciousness, and class struggle. Second, that class structures
constitute the central organising principle of societies, shaping the
possible variations of "the state, ethnic relations, gender
relations, etc.", and offering the best way of identifying
historical epochs (1985: 31). Third, that the concept of class is a
relational one, classes are defined within social relations, and
especially by their relation to other classes (to be a feudal serf,
for instance, is to stand in a certain relation to a feudal lord).
Fourth, that the social relations which define classes are
intrinsically antagonistic; that is, classes have conflicting
interests, between which compromise or accommodation--but not
harmony--is possible. Fifth, that the objective basis of those
antagonistic relations is exploitation (Marxists do not, for instance,
merely claim that lords are rich and serfs are poor, but insist rather
that the former are rich because they appropriate a surplus produced
by the latter). Sixth, and finally, that the fundamental basis of
exploitation is located in the social organisation of production,
notwithstanding disagreements about how to locate classes within
relations of production (whether, for instance, ideology, property,
control, or something else, are crucial). The last four of these
constraints can be said to elaborate the structural properties of the
Marxist concept of class.



Wright's best-known early contribution to class
analysis--his model of "contradictory class
locations"--is preoccupied with theorising the class
character of "the middle class" within a Marxist
framework. The context here is the seeming tension between modern
historical developments and the classical Marxist idea of capitalist
society as increasingly composed of two hostile camps (capitalists and
proletarians) with any third class (the
"petit-bourgeoisie") as "transitional" in
nature (on its way to being squeezed out by the other two). That claim
about a pervasive tendency towards class polarisation would appear to
conflict with the huge growth of professional, managerial, technical,
and bureaucratic positions, in both modern corporations and modern states
(Wright 1985: 7-9). The resulting "problem of the middle
class" raises issues, not only about the accuracy of received
Marxist accounts of class structure, but also about the sociological
plausibility of their associated accounts of class formation, class
consciousness, and class struggle (since these newer groups do not
obviously share the interests and attitudes of traditional
proletarians).



Wright rejects Marxist responses which either deny the gap between the
polarisation account and empirical reality, or assimilate these new
social groups to the petit-bourgeoisie. Instead, his own early
approach abandons the assumption that the class locations of
individuals are mapped in a one-to-one relation to the actual class
structure of capitalism. Rather than assuming that individuals are
only ever capitalist, petit-bourgeois, or proletarian, Wright suggests
that some occupy positions that have "a multiple class
character; they may be in more than one class simultaneously"
(1985: 43). Those individuals occupy "contradictory class
locations"; or, more precisely, "contradictory locations
within contradictory class relations".



Wright's earliest attempts to operationalise this increasingly
differentiated account of the class structure of contemporary
capitalism focuses on whether individuals are self-employed, and
whether they supervise the labour of others. This resulted in a
simplified typology which added "managers" to the three
original Marxist classes (capitalists, petit-bourgeoisie, and
proletariat). His subsequent work further differentiated these new
social groups on the basis of the extent of individual control (full,
partial, minimal, or none) over money capital, physical capital, and
labour within production. The resulting contradictory class locations
now included: managers (simultaneously bourgeois and proletarian);
non-managerial technical/professional staff (simultaneously
petty-bourgeois and proletarian); and small employers (simultaneously
bourgeois and petty-bourgeois). By 1979, Wright had a schematic
typology that added five contradictory class locations to the three
original Marxist classes (Wright 1985: 48 figure 2.2).



After 1979, Wright's account evolved significantly in response
to criticisms, especially from Roemer. Wright now criticised his own
earlier view for emphasising domination, and downplaying exploitation.
Exploitation is understood here as diagnosing the ways in which income
inequalities are generated by inequalities in rights and powers over
productive resources; that is, the ways in which: 



> 
> 
> exploiters, by virtue of their exclusionary rights and powers over
> resources, are able to appropriate surplus generated by the efforts of
> the exploited. (Wright 2005b: 17) 
> 
> 
> 



This new account resulted in a typology in which ownership and
non-ownership of means of production are complicated by effective
control of "organisation assets" and "credential
assets", both of which can constitute a strategic basis for
generating higher incomes. Some of the resulting class locations are
occupied by individuals who are both exploited in one dimension
(because they don't own or control capital), and exploiters in
another (because they can leverage their organisational and credential
assets in the relevant ways). Wright's new typology of class
locations has twelve categories: three types of owner of means of
production (differentiated by their amount of capital); and nine
varieties of wage-earner (differentiated by organisation and
credential assets). The latter group contains a wide range of class
locations distinct from proletarians proper, including expert
managers, expert non-managers, semi-credentialled supervisors, and
more (Wright 1985: 88 table 3.3).



Critics have acknowledged Wright's theoretical ingenuity, but
sometimes identified a gradational neo-Weberian account of
stratification as really doing the work here, only partially concealed
behind Marxist rhetoric about exploitation (Mayer 1994: 137). Wright
concedes the similarity of appearances here--in particular, the
shared focus on the ways in which class determines "life
chances"--but insists on the distinctiveness of the two
theoretical frameworks. The Marxist character of his own account is
said to rest on the central role of exploitation--and the
distribution of the rights and powers of individuals over productive
resources--in determining the distribution of income and economic
activities (Wright 2005b: 16-19).



Finally, Wright also identifies possible continuities with his earlier
views. The idea of the "middle classes" occupying
"contradictory locations" is perhaps preserved in the idea
of those individuals having interests that conflict with both capital
and labour (Wright 1985: 87). The relevant groups are like workers in
that they are excluded from ownership of the means of production, but
they also have interests opposed to workers because of their effective
control of organisational and credential assets.


### 4.4 Exploitation



Exploitation is a highly contested concept. This section is intended
only to introduce some aspects of its treatment by analytical Marxism,
and not to rule out alternative usages.



The basic concept of exploitation involves some agent benefitting from
social interaction with another by taking advantage of that other,
sometimes (interestingly) in ways that are both mutually beneficial
and consensual (A. Wood 1995: 151). Of course, not all kinds of
"taking advantage" are morally problematic. To give a
standard example: there may be nothing wrong with a chess grandmaster
exploiting a weakness in their opponent's endgame. Consequently,
we might want to avoid "moralised" definitions of
"exploitation" which make it wrongful or unjust by
definition. That said, cases of "wrongful exploitation"
are of particular significance in the Marxist tradition, often being
treated as providing a reason for seeking to replace capitalist
economic arrangements with non-exploitative alternatives.



Marxist claims about exploitation are often said--by both
Marxists and their critics--to depend on the labour theory of
value. This is denied by Cohen who, in a well-known article, argues
that the relation between the two, despite their long historical
association, is one of mutual irrelevance (1988: 209). The labour
theory of value is understood here as a theory of equilibrium price,
whose central claim is that magnitude of value is determined by
socially necessary labour time. Cohen suggests that those Marxists who
have insisted on the labour theory as the basis of exploitation have
confused the idea of producers creating value with the idea of
producers creating that which has value (the product). This latter,
somewhat simpler, idea is the real basis of the charge of
exploitation. What matters for exploitation is not that capitalists
appropriate value created by workers, but rather that they appropriate
(part of) the value of what the worker produces.



In the place of arguments that make exploitation claims depend on the
labour theory of value, Cohen endorses the "Plain
Argument" (1988: 228):


1. The labourer is the person who creates the product, that which has
value.
2. The capitalist appropriates some of the value of the product.
3. The labourer receives less value than the value of what she
creates,



and


4. The capitalist appropriates some of the value of what the labourer
creates.
5. The labourer is exploited by the capitalist.



It is this Plain Argument which is said typically to motivate
Marxists, whatever their official view of the labour theory of
value.



Note that the claim that the capitalist appropriates part of the value
of the worker's product (step 4) is not (as it stands) a
normative one. For that appropriation to constitute wrongful
exploitation the normative dimensions of the step from 4 to 5 in the
Plain Argument would need to be fleshed out. The present section
outlines three candidate explanations of the relevant
wrongfulness--involving the ideas of unfairness,
instrumentalising vulnerability, and domination,
respectively--which have found support within analytical
Marxism.



The first, and best-known, analytical Marxist account maintains that
wrongful exploitation rests on the capitalist benefitting from prior
*unfairness*, in particular, benefitting from the injustice of
property relations. (This account is associated with Roemer, amongst
others, but note that many additional issues raised by the
latter's innovative work on exploitation--for instance, his
account of socialist exploitation resting on unequal ownership of
productive skills--are not discussed here (see Roemer 1982, 1986b,
1986c, 1988).)



Roemer develops a general theory of exploitation;
"general", not least, in aiming to capture both Marxist
and neoclassical accounts within the same framework. He proposes that
a group is exploited "if it has some conditionally feasible
alternative under which its members would be better off" (1986c:
103). Formally this involves specifying a game played by coalitions of
agents in an economy, and specifying payoffs if they withdraw.



We can say that capitalist exploitation obtains when capitalists are
made better off by the existence of workers, but workers are made
worse off by the existence of capitalists (Roemer 1996: 40). More
precisely, capitalists exploit workers if and only if the following
three conditions obtain. First, if workers were to withdraw from the
society, endowed with their per capita share of society's
alienable property (including means of production) then workers would
be better off (in terms of income and leisure) than they are at the
present allocation. Second, if capitalists were to withdraw under the
same conditions, then capitalists would be worse off (in terms of
income and leisure) than they are at present (because some of their
current share would go to workers). Third, if workers were to withdraw
from society with their own endowments (not their per capita share),
then capitalists would be worse off than at present (because they
would no longer be able to benefit from the workers'
labour).



For Roemer, exploitation *as such* is not morally
objectionable. In an adjacent context (1988: 129-130), he
describes a two-person economy where a fair initial distribution of
resources, but differing preferences for work and leisure: *X*
prefers to work hard and defer consumption while *Y* prefers
leisure and immediate consumption, which results in *X* being
able to hire *Y* under conditions such that (a) *X* is made
better off by this arrangement, (b) *Y* is not made worse off by
this arrangement; (c) *Y* could have freely chosen not to enter
into this arrangement; and (d) *Y* is exploited by *X* in
that *X* appropriates some of the labour time of *Y*. In
examples like these, Roemer maintains, exploitation exists but does
not appear morally objectionable or unjust.



For Roemer, exploitation is best understood as the distributive result
of inequalities in the distribution of productive assets and
resources. It is *unjust* only where it results from a prior
injustice in the underlying distribution of those assets and resources
(Roemer 1996: 96). He consequently recommends that Marxists should
drop their traditional focus on the micro level of the relationship
between classes in production, and attend rather to the macro level of
the distribution of property in society. It is unjust
distribution--specifically, the unjust capitalist monopoly of
effective control of the means of production--that generates (the
secondary phenomenon of) unjust capitalist exploitation, and which
should be the primary locus of any normative concern.



One critical concern about this account is that, although the existing
capitalist monopoly over the means of production may have come about
in a morally problematic way (not least, through violence and theft),
we can at least imagine (perhaps having read Nozick 1974) a capitalism
with a morally clean origin story, where the same inequalities emerge
from a just starting point and just subsequent steps (involving,
perhaps, voluntary choices and the right kind of luck). In such
circumstances, Roemer's three conditions might be met, but, on
his own account, there looks to be nothing wrongful about the result.
This might appear a surprising result in a Marxist account of
exploitation, and is perhaps indicative of a wider problem.



In this context, consider the paradigmatic example of exploitation
suggested by Nicholas Vrousalis (2013: 148); namely "the pit
case":



> 
> 
> *A* finds *B* in a pit that *B* cannot exit unaided.
> *A* can get *B* out at little cost or difficulty. *A*
> offers to get *B* out, but only if *B* agrees to pay a
> million euros, or to sign a sweatshop contract with *A*. *B*
> signs the contract.
> 
> 
> 



We do not seem to require to know how *B* came to be in the
pit--whether, for instance, it was through just or unjust
steps--in order to assess the offer as wrongfully exploitative.
It seems enough to notice that *A* could easily rescue *B*
without asking for anything, but instead takes advantage of
*B*'s vulnerability in order to improve their own lot
(Vrousalis 2013: 149). By analogy, asset injustice does not look to be
a necessary condition for wrongful exploitation.



A second analytical Marxist account maintains that wrongful
exploitation rests on capitalists enriching themselves by taking
advantage of the *vulnerability* of workers. (This model is
suggested by some of Wood's writings on exploitation (see
especially 1995).)



Wood maintains that exploitation in general "consists in the
exploiter"s using something about the person for the
exploiter's ends by playing on some weakness or vulnerability in
that person' (1995: 147). And he acknowledges that, so
understood, exploitation is not always wrongful (as, for instance, in
cases like the previously mentioned chess grandmaster).



Exploitation is wrongful, on this account, when exploiters enrich
themselves by taking advantage of the vulnerability of the exploited.
The wrongfulness here seems to involve the instrumental treatment of
others in ways which are humiliating or disrespectful. Wood maintains
that: 



> 
> 
> Proper respect for others is violated when we treat their
> vulnerabilities as opportunities to advance our own interests or
> projects. It is degrading to have your weaknesses taken advantage of,
> and dishonourable to use the weakness of others for your ends. (1995:
> 150-151)
> 
> 
> 



The relation between capitalist and worker would appear to exemplify
this account of wrongful exploitation. The vulnerability here arises
from the workers' propertyless condition, which compels them to
sell their labour power in terms advantageous to the capitalist. This
structural feature of the capitalist economy is not fundamentally
altered, and only lightly mitigated, by the existence of some
collective bargaining and government regulation (A. Wood 1995:
155). (Note that "wrongful exploitation" here might, or
might not, constitute an injustice on Wood's account.)



One critical concern about this pure vulnerability account is that it
might look too expansive; that is, it might look liable to indicate
falsely that exploitation is present in particular cases. It might,
for example, seem committed to the claim that a cancer doctor, who
makes a very comfortable living out of treating the seriously ill,
necessarily exploits their patients (Arneson 2016: 10). Those who
hesitate to endorse that claim may seek to resist such
implications.



A third analytical Marxist account treats the instrumentalization of
vulnerability as a necessary but not sufficient condition for wrongful
exploitation. The additional condition for exploitation to obtain is
that this instrumentalization of vulnerability occurs in a manner
which involves *domination*. (This model is suggested in some of
Wood's writings on exploitation (1972, 2014), as well as in work by
Vrousalis (2013, 2016).)



On this domination account, it is the abuse of power that is the real
wrong-making feature of exploitation; exploitation is paradigmatically
"domination for self-enrichment" (Vrousalis 2013: 131).
The relevant kind of domination obtains when the exploiter either
inflicts some "power-induced injury" to the status of the
exploited, or imposes some "servitude" on the part of the
exploited (Vrousalis 2016: 3). This refinement appears to address the
critical concern about the expansiveness of the pure vulnerability
account; for instance, domination looks to be missing in the case of
the cancer doctor and patient, but present in the relation between
*A* and *B* in the case of the pit.



To be clear, the present account is intended to give some introductory
sense of an ongoing debate about whether unfairness, the
instrumentalization of vulnerability, or domination, are at the heart
of wrongful exploitation. There is no suggestion here that any
consensus about the precise character of exploitation has emerged
within analytical Marxism.


## 5. Socialism


### 5.1 Embracing Design



Analytical Marxists have typically broken with Marx's
"utopophobia", rejecting his view that providing detailed
descriptions of the socialist future is undemocratic, impossible, and
unnecessary (Leopold 2016). Instead, analytical Marxists have embraced
the need for socialist design, and explicitly sought to develop
coherent and credible accounts: first, of the values of socialism;
second, of the institutional, and other, arrangements which might best
embody and promote those values; and third, of the forms that a
transition to those alternatives to capitalism might take (Elster
& Moene 1989).



The values endorsed by analytical Marxism are familiar from the wider
socialist tradition (see entry on
 socialism, SS3.1).
 They include: equality; community; democracy; individual freedom; and
self-realization. Within analytical Marxism, there is no general
agreement about the character, weight, or potential to conflict, of
these. However some examples of their elaboration by analytical
Marxists can be given.



*Equality* is understood by Cohen as "socialist equality
of opportunity" (distinct from bourgeois and left-liberal
variants of equality of opportunity). He construes this in a luck
egalitarian way, as seeking to correct for all unchosen disadvantage,
disadvantage for which the agent herself cannot be held responsible,
whether it reflects social or natural misfortune (2009a: 10-11).
*Community*, on Cohen's account, requires "that
people care about, and, where necessary and possible, care for, one
another, and, too, care that they care about one another"
(2009a: 34-35). Meaningful community is put under strain when
large inequalities obtain, and so this principle limits certain
inequalities that the egalitarian principle alone would permit.
*Democracy* can be understood as extending beyond the
political, narrowly construed, to require that people have
"broadly equal access to the necessary means to participate
meaningfully in decisions" affecting their lives as members of
society (Wright 2010: 12). *Individual freedom* is defended in
a variety of increasingly demanding ways, from negative liberty,
though non-domination, to the "real freedom" of having
security, self-ownership, and the greatest possible opportunity to do
whatever you might want to do (Van Parijs 1995: ch. 1). And
*self-realisation* is seen as valuable (for reasons involving
welfare and autonomy), even if considerations of feasibility and
desirability require some scaling down of the classic Marxist
requirement of "the full and free actualization and
externalization of the powers and the abilities of the
individual" (Elster 1989: 131).



Turning to the kind of institutions that might best embody and promote
these, and other, values, it might be said that analytical Marxists
typically proceed with a certain humility. In particular, they often
acknowledge the inhuman and irrational dimensions of many
twentieth-century varieties of actually-existing-socialism. Wright
figuratively warns that, rather than having detailed maps with clear
destinations and identifiable routes, contemporary socialists are in
the position of early explorers with a "compass" and some
sense of the direction in which they want to go (2006). And Cohen
wryly cautions that, although we have a reasonably clear sense of
socialist values "we now know that we do not now know" how
to design the social institutions that might best embody and promote
those goods (2009a: 81).



Two institutional examples of alternatives to capitalism--market
socialism and basic income--associated with analytical Marxism
are sketched here (see also Arneson 1992).


### 5.2 "Coupon Socialism"



Market socialism can take many different forms. John Roemer has developed,
and serially refined, a particular variant referred to here as
"coupon socialism" (1994a, 1994b, 1996). Coupon socialism
is an example of a kind of market socialism sometimes called
"shareholder socialism"; that is, a type of economic model
which combines a stock market with public ownership of firms (Corneo
2017: 184-197). Sceptics might characterise the result as
"capitalism without capitalists", but Roemer defends it as
a feasible and desirable attempt to combine: efficient market
mechanisms; some state planning over broad investment priorities; an
egalitarian distribution of property rights; and an egalitarian
distribution of profits.



Roemer is keen not to rerun earlier battles between socialism and the
market. Socialists, he insists, cannot afford to neglect the
importance of efficiency and innovation in generating sustainable
prosperity. He variously: allows that Soviet-style command economies
failed; presents Friedrich Hayek as winning the "socialist
calculation debate"; and recommends learning from the real-world
institutional "experiments" of contemporary capitalisms
(where ownership and control are already differentiated, and diverse
mechanisms--involving figurative "carrots" and
"sticks"--have been developed to tackle
principal-agent problems). A strong public sector is likely to be a
central ingredient of a socialist society, but socialists are
admonished to stop "fetishizing" public ownership, and to
be open-minded about possible ownership relations, judging them only
by their effects on equality and efficiency (Roemer 1994b:
454-457). Roemer's own earlier work on exploitation had
convinced him that property relations and asset inequalities--not
markets as such--are the real problems.



Coupon socialism aims to distribute the profits of firms equally
amongst citizens without unacceptable losses in efficiency compared to
contemporary capitalism. The model eliminates capitalist class
relations whilst retaining market mechanisms. Ownership is distributed
equally through arrangements which involve a stock market and
decentralised decision making. Its most striking institutional feature
is perhaps the creation of two kinds of money--call them
"dollars" and "coupons"--which are not
convertible by individuals (who cannot legally exchange coupons for
dollars or transfer coupons as gifts or bequests). Dollars are used to
buy all the commodities that you might currently purchase (including
labour power and consumption goods) except that they cannot be used to
buy ownership rights in listed companies. The latter can only be
purchased by individuals with coupons, and coupons are distributed to
individuals in an egalitarian manner. The shares are priced in coupons
but any subsequent dividend would be in dollars. At the legal age of
maturity, individuals receive their *per capita* share of the
total coupon value of the economy. It is assumed that most individuals
will invest their coupons in shares through mutual funds rather than
directly. A share of a firm entitles the mutual fund to a share of the
relevant firm's profits, and a share of a mutual fund entitles
the individual to a share in the fund's revenues (Roemer 1996:
20). The model effectively endows citizens at adulthood with a modest
income stream during their lives, generated from the profits of public
companies that are not directly owned by the state. The various
restrictions on the relevant property rights ensure that the scope for
accumulating wealth in means of production is limited. Differentials
in coupon wealth would exist, but the main causes of inequality would
be differential wages and savings behaviour.



Such a brief sketch of coupon socialism raises many questions (see
Wright 1995, and Veneziani 2021, for further discussion). These
include questions about its feasibility and desirability.



Feasibility worries often concern the economic details of the model.
Critics wonder variously about: the place of small private capitalist
firms (shops, restaurants, small manufacturers); the modesty of the
coupon-driven income stream; and the structures needed for raising
investment funds (through credit markets and other mechanisms which
allow companies to convert coupons into dollars subject to regulation)
(Corneo 2017: 184-197).



Desirability worries often concern the socialist credentials of the
model. Critics wonder variously about: the extent to which these
institutional arrangements might embody and promote an individualism
corrosive of community; or how far these arrangements might fail to
embody and promote the kind of control over work arrangements that
socialists have historically endorsed and sought to realise (Wright
1995).



More generally, much seems to depends on the intended aim of the
model. Should we think of coupon socialism as: an imaginative
theoretical demonstration that economic efficiency can be
conceptualised outside of capitalist private ownership; a deliberately
modest and accessible first step away from capitalist society towards
a more egalitarian future; or as the very best socialist arrangements
that are feasible? (These alternatives are not intended to be
exhaustive.)



Roemer has continued to work on issues of socialist design, focussing
more recently on the modelling of individual economic behaviour
(Roemer 2019a). Any coherent socio-economic system, he suggests,
requires "three pillars": a set of property relations and
institutions that organise the allocation of resources; a distributive
ethic that identifies a fair or just pattern of income and resources;
and a behavioural ethos that specifies how economic actors make
decisions. These three should work together, in that if economic
agents act according to the relevant ethos, then the relevant
institutional arrangements should implement the relevant just
distribution. Roemer now insists that the behavioural ethos is as
important as the other two pillars, and criticises earlier models of
market socialism--including coupon socialism--for having
changed the institutional arrangements of capitalism but kept its
behavioural ethos (Roemer 2019a: 179; see Carens 1981 for a possible
exception).



In capitalism, the behavioural ethos is said to be
"individualism" (the individual "goes it
alone"), where each actor is conceived as "being in
competition with all other actors, and the actions of all are
constrained by nature". In socialism, in contrast, the
behavioural ethos is cooperation, where citizens of a socialist
society are engaged in a cooperative enterprise to transform nature in
order to improve the lives of everyone (Roemer 2020a:
10-11).



More precisely, Roemer recommends a socialist model of cooperation
that he calls "Kantian optimisation". Kantian optimisation
challenges both the standard economic picture of individuals as
utility maximisers, and in the standard ways in which that standard
picture is adjusted for other-regarding motivations (Roemer rejects
the idea that Nash optimisation is the uniquely rational way to
optimise). In Kantian optimisation, individuals choose the action that
maximises their payoff, assuming that all other agents take the same
action. Very roughly, cooperation depends, not on altruism (which is
implausibly demanding), but on solidarity (the idea that we are
"all in the same boat") and trust (the idea that if we
take the cooperative action, enough others will do so as well). This
socialist model of cooperation is said to be realistic, in that it
respects certain behavioural results in both the laboratory and real
life (recycling and tipping, for instance (Roemer 2019a:
14-16)).



Roemer uses formal models--general competitive equilibrium and
game theory--to demonstrate some surprising payoffs for socialist
design once this model of cooperation is integrated into it. Not
least, he demonstrates that, under some fairly uncontroversial
assumptions, market socialist economies can rectify the unequal income
distribution of capitalism without paying a price in efficiency or
market failures (Roemer 2019a: 206-207, and Veneziani 2021). In
short, given Kantian optimisation, certain familiar problems in
socialist design may be less serious than were once thought (Roemer
2015: 107).


### 5.3 Basic Income



The idea of basic income has a long history (early forerunners include
Thomas Spence 1797 [2004] and Joseph Charlier 1848 [2004]), and some
confusingly close relatives (including basic endowment and a negative
income tax). Its most recent revival owes much to Philippe Van
Parijs. The core idea is deceptively simple and seductive. Basic
income consists in: 



> 
> 
> a regular income paid in cash to every individual member of a society,
> irrespective of income from other sources and with no strings
> attached. (Van Parijs & Vanderborght 2017: 4) 
> 
> 
> 



The proposal assumes a territorially defined political community, and
that recipients are fiscal residents. The regular payment is in cash
and not in kind (food, shelter, clothes, etc.). It is paid to each
individual, irrespective of their domestic arrangements (not, for
instance, only to "heads of households"). It is universal,
involving no means test, but paid, at the same rate, to rich and poor
alike. And it is an obligation-free payment, carrying no requirement,
in particular, for beneficiaries to work or be available to work.



Beyond that core idea, particular basic income schemes differ
considerably; not least concerning the level at which the basic income
is to be paid. To help calibrate alternatives, Van Parijs suggests
that an amount corresponding to a quarter of current GDP per
capita--which, in 2015, would have corresponded to $1163 per
month in the United States--would sit between
"modest" and "generous" versions of the
idea (Van Parijs & Vanderborght 2017: 11).



Since the model apparently assumes an economy dominated by
appropriately regulated capitalist markets, enthusiasm for a basic
income might be thought to sit uneasily with the normative commitments
of analytical Marxism. One response is to emphasise the ways in which
a basic income scheme might reduce our dependence on that market. It could
variously: strengthen the bargaining position of workers (against
their employers and others); effect a partial decommodification of
labour power (reducing the economic compulsion to sell the latter);
and make engagement in socially useful but unpaid activities much
easier (Wright 2005c). So understood, basic income answers questions
about both socialist transition and socialist design; a basic income
scheme might help us move away from a capitalist society, and form part of the
institutional structure of the non-capitalist alternative.



In a set of delightfully provocative essays written with Robert van
der Veen, Van Parijs took that suggestion--that a basic income
scheme might transform capitalism in a progressive direction--and ran
with it (Van der Veen & Van Parijs 1986a, 1986b, 2006). They laid out the
possibility of "a capitalist road to communism"; arguing
that welfare state capitalisms have the potential to move smoothly, if
slowly, towards Marx's own communist ideal. The communist
"realm of freedom"--understood here as involving
widespread material abundance, voluntary productive contributions
according to ability, and distribution according to need--is now
reached via the introduction of, and gradual increase in, a basic
income scheme in capitalist societies. It is not reached by the traditional
"transitional", or "strictly socialist", stage
involving state or social ownership of means of production. On this
account, that "strictly socialist" stage is redundant, and
can be skipped entirely (for critical comment, see Wright 1994:
157-172). 



Framed in this way, the case for basic income seems to rest on
controversial perfectionist assumptions; for instance, about the
disvalue of wage labour and value of unalienated activities (see
Kandiyali 2022). This might make it a hard sell in liberal
pluralistic societies committed to respecting a diversity of
conceptions of the good life, and Van Parijs has subsequently sought
to reposition the proposal.



The appeal of basic income is now said to rest on its emancipatory
potential, its ability to deliver "real freedom"--the
"genuine capacity" of individuals to act on their own life
plans free from certain debilitating pressures (including unemployment
and employment traps)--to all. Freedom considerations also, of
course, play a role in determining the *form* of basic income;
for instance, helping to justify its being a cash payment with no
restriction on what is purchased or when. The tightness of the
connection between basic income and this real libertarian foundation
might be doubted, but this is now Van Parijs' preferred
grounding.



So understood, basic income rests on a conception of social justice
which is both liberal, in not privileging particular contested
conceptions of the good, and egalitarian, in requiring justifications
for any derivation from a baseline equal distribution. Freedom is
treated not as a constraint on what justice requires, but as
"the very stuff that justice consists in distributing
fairly" (Van Parijs & Vanderborght 2017: 104). Basic income
is justified as a way of maximising the level of real freedom to those
with the least of it ("maximin real freedom"), or rather
"maximining" the "gifts" that form the
"material substratum" of such real freedom.
"Gifts" here refer to the immense stock of wealth for
which none of us are individually responsible, and which should be
treated as our common inheritance (Van Parijs & Vanderborght 2017:
104-109).



Criticisms of basic income are sufficiently many and varied to make
meaningful summary impractical. However, two familiar worries might be
noted.



First, a familiar desirability worry is that basic income involves an
apparent unfairness. In advocating unconditional benefits it violates
some conception of "reciprocity", allowing individuals to
receive a share of their society's income without making a
productive contribution in return (White 2003). Elster provocatively
describes basic income as a recipe for the "exploitation of the
industrious by the lazy" (1986b: 719). A number of responses are
available, including: conceding the validity of the concern, but seeing
it as outweighed by the practical difficulties of enacting
conditionality; or allowing that reciprocity considerations are
persuasive in the context of certain cooperative ventures, but denying
their relevance in the context of distributive justice.



Second, a familiar feasibility worry is that basic income schemes
might be unaffordable. In facilitating a move away from paid
productive activities, basic income risks undermining the very source
of funding on which it depends. Again, a number of responses are
available, including: claiming that perverse labour supply effects
might be reduced by taxing things other than individual income
(natural resources, financial transactions, consumption, and so on);
or stressing that the weight of this objection depends on the level at
which the basic income is set (uncertainty perhaps recommending that
we start low and introduce increases experimentally).


### 5.4 Transition



The lack of agreement about the shape of a desirable and feasible
post-capitalist future, might make discussion of how to reach that
goal look premature. However, preliminary reflection on the issue of
socialist transition--of how to get from "here" to
"there"--might still be useful. The many examples of
such reflection from within analytical Marxism include: Cohen's
discussion of the proletariat as a collective agent (2000a:
101-115); Adam Przeworski's account of the electoral
dilemmas of social democracy (1985); and Erik Olin Wright's
reflections on socialist strategy. An outline of the latter is
provided here.



Wright's ambition--looking both "behind" and
"ahead"--is to move beyond the tired and limited
contrast between "reform" and "revolution". He
offers a conceptual map of socialist--and, more broadly,
anti-capitalist--strategies that have been historically
important, as well as suggesting how they might be combined in a
strategic vision for those seeking to escape the harms of contemporary
capitalism (2010: 273-365).



Wright (2019: 38-53) identifies five "strategic
logics" embodied in anti-capitalist struggles (historical
examples of movements adopting them are in parentheses). The initial
pair of examples share a revolutionary goal--replacing capitalism
with a very different kind of economic structure--but have
competing accounts of how that might be
accomplished. First, *smashing* capitalism: according to which
"a decisive, ruptural break" with a system that is, at
root, unreformable is necessary (see early twentieth-century
revolutionary communism). Second,
*dismantling* capitalism: according to which democratic
politics facilitate state-directed reforms gradually replacing
capitalist elements with alternatives (see "democratic
socialism"). Third, *taming* capitalism: which typically
uses state policies of regulation and redistribution in order to
"neutralise" the harms of capitalism, without trying to
destroy their underlying causes (see post-war social democracy). Those
last two strategies rely heavily on the exercise of state power, and
in this respect differ from Wright's final two models. Fourth,
*resisting* capitalism: which involves more or less organised
attempts within civil society--and not primarily the
state--to alleviate the harms of capitalism (see trade unions,
boycotts, consumer movements, and anarchist-inflected social
movements). And fifth, *escaping* capitalism: which pursues a
more separatist strategy, not tackling capitalism directly, but rather
seeking to isolate a group from its harms (see intentional
communities, communes, and certain religious communities).



Wright locates these five "strategic logics" within a
schematic typology with two dimensions (2019: 53-58). The first
dimension differentiates between "neutralising harms" and
"transcending structures". The "taming" and
"resistance" models aim to neutralise harms; and the
"smashing", "dismantling", and
"escaping", models aim to transcend structures. The second
dimension differentiates between three "transformative
logics" using the metaphor of a "game". The
"ruptural" strategy seeks to change the game being played,
and is exemplified by the "smashing" model. The
"symbiotic" strategy seeks to change the rules of the game
being played, and is exemplified by the "taming" and
"dismantling" models. And the "interstitial"
strategy seeks to change the way in which one plays within a given set
of rules, and is exemplified by the "resisting" and
"escaping" models. Anyone seeking to visualise a grid with
these two dimensions will realise that one of the six resulting cells
is empty. No-one presumably uses a sledgehammer to crack a nut, or, a
little less figuratively, no-one thinking that the most effective way
of neutralising harms is to change the game itself.



Wright's evaluation of these historical movements is broadly
negative; they all seem to have either failed at the time, or to have
only limited current purchase. From the political vantagepoint of
developed capitalist countries: revolutionary communism and democratic
socialism have largely disappeared; social democracy has declined, and
lost its connection with labour militancy; and, whilst
"anarchist inflected social movements" survive as perhaps
the most dynamic form of anti-capitalism, they often remain
disconnected from political projects and parties. Wright appears most
critical of the ruptural strategy, doubting that democratic support
for a sharp break and rapid transition is sustainable given the nature
of the "transition trough"--a concept adopted from
Przeworski--faced by the middle classes, in particular (2010:
308-320). (A "transition trough" refers to the
*initial* decline in production and living standards that is
likely to follow a ruptural break with capitalism. Depending on the
depth and extent of these troughs, it might not be in the material
interests of individuals to support a ruptural path to socialism even
where they plausibly believe that the material conditions of life
under socialism will eventually come to exceed those of
previously-existing capitalism.)



Looking forwards, Wright recommends the strategy of *eroding*
capitalism (2019: 59-64). Existing economic systems are said to
combine capitalism with other economic arrangements, including what we
might call proto-socialist alternatives (embodying democracy,
equality, and community). The eroding strategy combines elements of
interstitial and symbiotic approaches. In the former mode, it involves
a "bottom-up" strategy focused on civil society,
participating in various marginal alternative economic activities. In
the latter mode, it involves a "top-down" strategy focused
on the state, seeking to secure and expand those alternatives through
law and public policy. The ambition of this mixed approach is
gradually to allow proto-socialist economic relations and practices to
succeed and displace their capitalist counterparts.



The strategic vision of eroding capitalism corresponds only
uncertainly to real world movements, but Wright suggests that certain
movements in Latin America and Southern Europe (including Podemos in
Spain) may capture something of its spirit. He also portrays it as
analogous to the process by which capitalism itself historically
displaced feudalism. Proto-capitalist forms of economic life emerged
in the niches of feudalism, and slowly grew to the point where they
displaced the dominant feudal structures. Political upheavals occurred
as part of this process, but they typically served to consolidate and
rationalise socioeconomic changes that had already taken place (Wright
2019: 61).


## 6. Overarching Criticisms



This entry already contains many examples of criticisms of particular
authors and particular arguments within analytical Marxism. However,
these were not typically targeted at the intellectual current as a
whole. Indeed, some were advanced from perspectives sympathetic to the
approaches, concerns, and commitments, of analytical Marxism. However,
there are also less sympathetic critics willing to move beyond
specific authors and arguments, and issue a negative verdict on
analytical Marxism as such. These comprehensive criticisms are varied,
but might be grouped roughly according to which of the three sources
and component parts of analytical Marxism forms their central
target.



A first group of comprehensive criticisms focus on the methodological
claims of analytical Marxism. The diversity of positive methodological
approaches amongst analytical Marxists has been emphasised here, but
there remains a shared (negative) premise; namely, that there is no
distinct and valuable Marxist method. And there are critics
who--holding that there is such a method, and that it is superior
to the "bourgeois" tools adopted by analytical
Marxism--reject that premise. For example, they might maintain
that Marxism is necessarily committed to a "dialectical"
approach--sometimes based on a wider philosophy of
"internal relations"--which analytical Marxists are
bound to reject (Sayers 1984, 2015). Or, they might suggest that
"analytical" and "Marxist" are rival
methodologies embodying a tension that can only be resolved fully by
one side routing the other; on this account, some September Group
participants are portrayed as remaining true to their analytical
methods by slowly abandoning their Marxism (Roberts 1996: 14).



A second group of comprehensive criticisms focus on the substantive
concerns of analytical Marxism. The critical suggestion here is
typically that in translating the substantive concerns of traditional
Marxism into the language and frameworks of "mainstream social
science", analytical Marxism has lost what was valuable about
them (Levine 2003: 123). For instance, it is suggested that analytical
Marxism's treatment of exploitation, class, and history,
involves an abstract, individualistic, and ahistorical, framework that
makes its conclusions hard to distinguish, in many respects, from the
theories of "bourgeois social science" (E. Wood 1989: 55).
Or, in an another variant, that analytical Marxists seem to have lost
sight of, or never really appreciated, the centrality of the
"system of labour" to Marx's substantive account of
human society (Chitty 1998: 40).



A third, and final, group of comprehensive criticisms focus on the
"normative turn" of analytical Marxism, reacting against
the suggestion that the predictive failures of classical Marxism might
have amplified the need for normative clarification and argument (G.
Cohen 2000a: 103-4). One variant insists that Marxism neither
has, nor needs, a normative theory. Marx is rather to be commended for
holding that normative theory is pointless because it is
motivationally ineffective or unnecessary (Leiter 2002, 2015). Another
variant criticises the content, rather than the fact, of analytical
Marxist commitment to normative theory. For instance, normatively
speaking, it suggests that analytical Marxism has increasingly
"fused and interpenetrated" with left-liberalism, to a
point where it is difficult to tell them apart (Bertram 2007:
137).



These comprehensive criticisms are not directly challenged here.
However, there are reasons, at least, to hesitate before endorsing
them.



First, it might simply be too early for comprehensive criticism.
Attempts at the latter sometimes fail to consider that only a very
provisional assessment of analytical Marxism as a research programme
might be appropriate at this point. After all, many participants in
the first wave of analytical Marxism--including Brenner, Roemer,
and Van Parijs--continue to produce significant and interesting
work. In addition, there are more recent contributions which offer the
possibility of a constructive future development of the paradigm.
Consider, for example, the "Afro-analytical Marxism"
outlined and endorsed by Tommie Shelby (2021). Very roughly, Shelby
approves of analytical Marxism's methodological combination of
analytical and empirical rigour, together with its substantive
interest in exploitation and ideology, but regrets--and seeks to
make good--its failure, both to theorise racism and racial
hierarchy, and to examine the place of the black radical resistance in
the fight for social justice and a "post-capitalist"
future (2021, and Mills 2003: 155). More generally, the future of
analytical Marxism looks open; its research programme does not appear
closed to future development, nor has it been replaced decisively by a
competitor. The intellectual merits of intellectual
traditions--think of utilitarianism, for instance--are not
always exhausted by one's judgement of the first group of
authors with whom they are associated. Simply put, it might be better
to leave the full autopsy until the death of the patient is more
certain.



Second, some of these comprehensive criticisms might appear to be
*unproductively* preoccupied with the Marxist credentials of
analytical Marxism. "Marxism" is treated stipulatively as
an honorific, and then this analytical variant is located beyond the
pale--exposed as not Marxist, or not Marxist enough, or not
Marxist in the right kind of way, or even "anti-Marxist"
(Lebowitz 1988: 195; Hunt 1992: 105).) Of course, this issue--of
whether, and to what extent, analytical Marxism is Marxist--can
take a legitimate form. It might, for instance, form a step in a more
substantive argument, or the context might be one in which proper
labelling is an appropriate concern (intellectual history, for
instance). However, in the absence of further argument, these
criticisms can appear to adopt an inappropriately
"religious" approach to the evaluation of an ongoing
research programme. Cohen expresses regret that, historically, it was
the label "Marxism"--rather than, say, that of
"scientific socialism"--that came to be associated
with the relevant concerns and commitments. After all, it is typically
religions, rather than sciences, which are named after their founders.
Progressive disciplines are not expected to *preserve* the
theses of their founders (G. Cohen 2000b: xxvii). We do not, for instance, ask
physicists whether they are still sufficiently Galilean (assuming, for
the sake of the example, that Galileo founded physics)?



Third, and finally, some of these comprehensive criticisms look
ungenerous and one-sided, making little effort to consider the
potential achievements here. More positively, analytical Marxism might
be said to have established itself as an intelligent and valuable form
of "Enlightenment Marxism". Its enthusiasm for clarity in,
careful elaboration of, and honesty about, arguments, constitute
contextually-important reminders of significant intellectual virtues.
Substantively, its evolving treatment of core Marxist
concerns--including historical development, class, and
exploitation--reflect and confirm an openness to science, reason,
and empirical evidence. As such, analytical Marxism recognises and
continues certain valuable, and often neglected, elements of
Marx's own thought (Little 1986). In addition, analytical
Marxism aspires to advance our understanding of the social world
without abandoning, or obscuring, or disparaging, the role of
normative theory. Finally, its rejection of Marx's
"utopophobia" is well-founded, and its corresponding
efforts to explore and promote alternatives to capitalism, in ways
which balance the concerns of desirability and feasibility, are
imaginative and thought-provoking. Analytical Marxism, it might be
suggested, rightly takes its place as one current of thought, in a
wider radical stream, striving to understand social oppression, and to
contribute to its reduction and elimination (G. Cohen 2001: 14).