On Analytic Marxism's Displacement of Dialectics

In each sense of 'analytical', to be analytical is to be opposed to a form of thinking traditionally thought integral to Marxism: analytical thinking, in the broad sense of 'analytical', is opposed to so-called 'dialectical' thinking, and analytical thinking, in the narrow sense of 'analytical', is opposed to what might be called 'holistic' thinking. The fateful operation that created analytical Marxism was the rejection of the claim that Marxism possesses valuable intellectual methods of its own. Rejection of that claim enabled an appropriation of a rich mainstream methodology that Marxism, to!its detriment, had shunned....I said (see section 1 above) that analytical Marxists do not think that Marxism possesses a distinctive and valuable method. Others believe that it has such a method, which they call 'dialectical'. But we believe that, although the word 'dialectical' has not always been used without clear meaning, it has never been used with clear meaning to denote a method rival to the analytical one.[1] There is no such thing as a dialectical form of reasoning that can challenge analytical reasoning. Belief in dialectic as a rival to analysis thrives only in an atmosphere of unclear thought. G.A. Cohen "Introduction to the 2000 edition" (2000 [1978]) Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence, xvii-xxiii.

Cohen takes non-trivial pride in having helped  found the method of analytic marxism (see p. xvii & xxiii).  This is explicitly opposed to, and intended to displace, what is known as dialectics. Dialectics is dismissed for being unclear . In the quoted passage, and later in the introduction, he suggests dialectics is only taken seriously in a context pervaded by unclarity such that resistance to analytic marxism (by those wedded to dialectic) exhibits "irrational obscurantism." (xxiv) Presumably, the footnote [1] is supposed to illustrate the lack of clarity. It reads,  "I do not think that the following, to take a recent example, describes such a method: 'This is precisely the first meaning we can give to the idea of dialectic: a logic or form of explanation specifically adapted to the determinant intervention of class struggle in the very fabric of history.' (Etienne Balibar, The Philosophy of Marx p. 97.) If you read a sentence like that quickly, it can sound pretty good. The remedy is to read it more slowly." (p. xxiii) 

As regular readers know, I am a bit allergic to the habit, cultivated by my analytic peers, to quote exemplary sentences (generally by continental philosophers) out of context, add some snark (here disguised as sincere advice), and say, see. Perhaps, Balibar's work on Marx is as shallow as Cohen suggests.  But the choice for Balibar (an academic best known by me for his work on Spinoza) is revealing because it is neither Marx nor an accomplished revolutionary practitioner of dialectics, say, Rosa Luxemburg, who calls the "dialectical materialist method of historical analysis" one of two "principles" of the "essence" of Marxism ("Foreword to the Anthology The Polish Question and the Socialist Movement.")

Let's stipulate that clarity is an important intellectual virtue even within Marxism. And if you are already socialized in a certain intellectual habitus, it is perfectly legitimate to take it for granted (even for polemical purposes). But, speaking strictly as a bourgeois intellectual, it is an odd choice for a Marxist to rest one's case on. Let me explain.

For Carnap, whose socialist commitments were not disguised, clarity is, in fact, a property or by-product of formal systems.* Carnapian clarity is really a second-order property of an otherwise esoteric, expert practice.  But if one is interested in revolutionary or even emancipatory politics,  it is not obvious that such clarity is the ruling virtue (as opposed to virtues that motivate action, or enable the proletariat to fulfill their revolutionary potential).  I don't mean to deny that for Carnap, presumably, anybody can be trained to become such an expert. And there is an attractive feature of communism -- emphasized, say, by Ernest Mandel in The Economic Formation of the Economic Thought of Karl Marx 1843 to Capital -- that under communism everybody will be intellectually literate. But that's supposed to be the end-point of the revolution not the (prefigurative) means. 

Be that as it may, the introduction I quoted from is a later addition. In Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence, Cohen does not (as far as I can tell) engage with the question at all.** I have been unable to find any place where Cohen does the intellectual work to show with some care what's wrong with dialectics. Throughout the book he cites his own (1974) "Marx's Dialectic of Labor;" this paper explicitly sets aside anything that non analytic Marxists might mean by dialectic and only focuses on "the descriptive residue" of the concept.

Earlier yet, in 1969, Cohen did a lovely review essay, worth re-reading for many reasons, "Critical Theory: The Philosophy of Marcuse," of Marcuse in New Left Review . This is a more general critique of (what Perry Anderson has called) Western Marxism to move from to "the aspirations of people" (and being a spokesman for them) to a focus on "culture" (and ideology). In this piece, Cohen suggests there is an authentic Marxist spirit from which Marcuse has deviated. An example of this more authentic Marxism (by Cohen's lights in 1969) is Karl Korsch.+ 

As it happens, Korsch is a lucid writer. And in his (1923) Marxism in Philosophy he offers a useful diagnosis of the motives of those who reject dialectics and a hint of what it might be:

Setting aside any philosophical considerations, it is therefore clear that without this coincidence of consciousness and reality, a critique of political economy could never have become the major component of a theory of social revolution. The converse follows. Those Marxist theoreticians for whom Marxism was no longer essentially a theory of social revolution could see no need for this dialectical conception of the coincidence of reality and consciousness: it was bound to appear to them as theoretically false and unscientific.-- [Emphases in original.] Translated by Fred Halliday.

In context, it is clear that the coincidence of consciousness and reality -- hereafter: the coincidence thesis -- is a constitutive feature of dialectics, but does not exhaust it. That consciousness and reality coincide is a position associated in different ways and with different political sensibilities with Platonism, Spinozism, and Hegel. It is easy to make fun of, but it is not unintelligible or, if you try working through it, nor obscure. (It is a bit tricky to learn to embrace the coincidence between epistemic and ontic perspectives if you have been taught this is a blunder.) Somewhat amusingly in Spinoza the epistemological and metaphysical achievement (recall this post on Tarski) of such coincidence is itself associated with full clarity. Korsch doesn't claim that Marxist dialectic is itself clear, but he thinks it is clear that the coincidence thesis is necessary for the way in which a critique of political economy could become a part of a theory of social revolution. And this, in turn, is a key feature to generate (the right sort of) revolution. 

Let me take stock. I have not here tried to articulate a full theory of dialectics. (That's for another time and perhaps not my role in life.) I have also not discussed the merits of analytic marxism. More narrowly, while Cohen is an early mover in analytic marxism, he is fairly late in the history of analytic philosophy. And so this makes one wonder if anybody in the analytic tradition did the serious work of showing by way of argument what's wrong with dialectics. This question is especially urgent because there are many indications that marxism is receiving renewed consideration within analytic philosophy or at least by our students.

To find such an attempt, we must look, I assume to Vienna (in the 1920s-30s) or New York (in the late 1930s), or perhaps Lodz (in the 1930s). As it happens, Cohen echoes in uncanny fashion -- the lesser,  lazy polemics*** of -- Ernest Nagel's treatment of dialectics; Nagel presents (recall) dialectics like the early moderns treat the terms of scholastic philosophy: as fundamentally unintelligible. And so, we seem to be stuck in an eternal return of name-calling. However, Nagel was intimately familiar with Sidney Hook's (1939) "Dialectic in Social and Historical Inquiry," (published in JPhil) which presents itself as doing such thankless work, and, perhaps, the only such effort in the analytic tradition (now broadly conceived).++ I shall turn to it soon in order to establish whether Nagel's (and so by extension) Cohen's polemics rest on intellectual granite or quicksand.

 

 

*Quine, by contrast (recall), has a tendency, as Greg Frost-Arnold has shown, (i) to associate clarity with more general forms of intelligibility. In later years, Quine might argue that (ii) his program (developed in Word & Object) of the philosopher regimenting scientific language to exhibit its ontological commitments, may also be aiming at a species of clarity (about the 'ontology' of science), alongside systematicity.  He also (iii) came to think of clarity as a more general theoretical virtue of a system. 

**Janosch Prinz called my attention to Sayer, S. (1984). Marxism and the Dialectical Method: A Critique of G.A. Cohen. Radical Philosophy 36, pp. 4-13; reprinted/revised as Sayers, Sean (1990) Marxism and the Dialectical Method: A Critique of G.A. Cohen. In: Sayers, Sean and Osborne, Peter, eds. Socialism, Feminism and Philosophy: A Radical Philosophy Reader. Routledge, London, pp. 140-168. This piece nicely argues that in so doing Cohen really distorts Marx. It is an interesting question, one Sayer doesn't quite confront, whether Cohen's distortion may be (sorry for the serious joke) dialectically necessary.

+He quotes a passage from Korsch without giving a citation. Presumably the readers of the New Left Review back in 1969 would have automatically recognized Karl Korschs (1938) Karl Marx, but I was grateful for Google's assistance.

***Cf. The standard set by Carnap on Heidegger, which is (recall) a work of poetics (and here).

++I welcome other suggestions. .Nagel (a scientific pragmatist) is central to the future trajectory of analytic philosophy (despite now being understood primarily as a philosopher of science and teacher of Suppes and Levi). Hook is now largely sidelined as a Deweyan pragmatic naturalist.

Comments

[Matt]

"I have been unable to find any place where Cohen does the intellectual work to show with some care what's wrong with dialectics."

It's been several years since I've read it, and I suppose it's debatable whether the discussion proceeds with "some care" or not, but in _If You're an Egalitarian, How Come you're So Rich?_, especially in the chapters on the development of socialism and Hegel in Marx, Cohen discusses "dialectics" a fair amount. This obviously post-dates KMTH by many years, but not the 2nd edition, (IYAE is based on lectures given in 1996) and so not that introduction, as they came out pretty close together.

(I've been, pretty slowly, and mostly for "fun", reading the Cambridge Companion to Marx over the last month or so. Stylistically, the papers are all pretty clearly written and argued, but I'll admit that none of the discussions of "dialectics" have made it seem like a plausible and interesting approach, with this perhaps especially applying to the chapter most directly focused on it, "Logic: Dialectic and contradiction" by Lawrence Wilde. That doesn't mean that there's nothing to it, of course, but it also doesn't encourage.)

[Eric Schliesser]

Hi Matt, yes, Cohen mentions Marx's relationship to Hegelian dialectics a bit If You're an Egalitarian, How Come you're So Rich?. But somewhat oddly, the discussion leaves out some of the features that are generally taken to be most obscure (and revolutionary)and, when I double checked, I could not find a critical treatment of why today we should stick to the empirical residue. So, I treat this as confirming my general argument. I'd be happy to be pointed to passages that suggest otherwise.

[Matt]

It's been too long since I've read IYAE for me to have a strong memory of it, and I'm not super keen to re-read it. I am, for somewhat different reasons than suggested in this post, not a huge fan of G.A. Cohen, but I did think the idea that he didn't discuss dialectics sounded odd and unfair, which is why I mentioned the discussion there.

As for analytic Marxism more generally, I'm probably more inclined to the criticism that takes up the first 48 pages or so of Elster's _Making Sense of Marx_. I'm no Marx expert, but the discussions I've read of "dialectics" by supporters and from the parts of Marx I've read haven't made me think there is much there, and I'm sympathetic to Elster's account that what is useful can, and should, be put in more rigorous and helpful forms, with the rest safely tossed aside. I'm open to being convinced otherwise, but I haven't seen anything to suggest that I should be so far.

[Eric Schliesser]

1. You misrepresent my post, Matt. I never claimed he doesn't discuss dialectics; the dismissive comments and rejections are discussions. I am just noting that the dismissals are unearned (in so far as argument is supposed to the way our labor earns our keep).

2. I also agree that Elster's discuesses dialectics at length in Making Sense of Marx. But you haven't actually pointed to the winning arguments or anything like that. (Let alone helped anybody reconstruct them.) You thereby instantiate the very feature of what I am objecting to.

3. I happen to agree that section 1.5 of that book is among the better efforts by any analytic marxist to engage with dialetics. And maybe I'll be motivated to write up why it, too, fails at what it sets out to do.

3. It is an interesting sociological fact that Cohen -- who certainly mentions Elster plenty in the very passages I quote from above -- didn't feel the need to point to Elster's treatment of dialetics as a methodological source/inspiration/authority.

4. Finally, I am not interested in making dialectics convincing to you (or anybody); that's not my role in life.

[Matt]

I'm happy to let others judge the fairness of your presentation, Eric (though I'll note that it's not the first time I have thought you've presented authors unfairly on the blog), but beyond that, I'll also note that it's certainly not any more reasonable to suggest that I present, or reconstruct, "winning arguments" in blog comments - "that's not my role in life" than for you to provide them in a blog post. I certainly didn't see any here, either.