FAREWELL TO MARXISM? - 2

FAREWELL TO MARXISM? - 2

As Western Marxism turned from a dialogue

with the working class to a dialogue with bourgeois

theories of philosophy, sociology, and economics,

it has become more concerned with academic

respectability than the challenges of history.

Typical in this respect is analytical Marxism,

which seeks to bring Marxism into the last quarter

of the twentieth century by assimilating neoclassical

economics, analytical philosophy, game

theory, and stratification theory (Cohen 1978;

Elster 1985; Roemer 1986, 1988; Wright 1985,

Przeworski 1985). The goal is to establish a true

Marxist science by marrying the techniques of

modem social science to all that is valid and useful

in Marxism. But in attempting to consummate

the truth of all previous Marxisms, analytical

Marxism takes Marxism out of history,

eclipsing the historical challenges that have been

the "motor" of its theoretical growth. Insulating

itself from its own historicity while making fetishes

of clarity and rigor, analytical Marxism

atrophies as science.

In the face of contemporary proliferation of

anomalies, analytical Marxism retreats from history,

whereas an equally important modem trend

is to become absorbed by history. From this

perspective, the weakness of working-class . -

movements and a dwindling commitment to socialism

leads Marxists beyond Marxism to indiscriminately

embrace new social movements

which have a nonclass or multiclass character,

such as feminism, civil rights, environmental and

peace movements (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985;

Boggs, 1986). Such "post-Marxism" replaces the

primacy of economic exploitation with multifarious

forms of domination, and instead of a classless

socialism, its goal is radical democracy

(Bowles and Gintis 1986). Post-Marxism gets

lost in the web of history where everything is

important and explanation is therefore impossible.

It possesses neither a negative heuristic which

protects hard-core assumptions nor a positive

heuristic with its exemplars and problem-solving

machinery. Indeed it makes a fetish of opposition

to all heuristics, and therefore has neither a means

of selecting anomalies from history nor a mechanism

for absorbing them. Without heuristics post-

Marxism is rudderless. It has no internal history

and therefore fails to grow as a science.