ONCE MORE ON THE ARROWS, CYCLES,
AND CUNNING OF HISTORY

Science & Society derived its very name, in the confident days of its origins, from the effort to apply a scientific attitude and method to the study of society, i.e., to human history: to tease out the regularity and directionality in a reality that often seems profoundly, if not infinitely, multiform and contingent. We are therefore especially pleased to present this selection of papers from a conference on historical materialism, marking the 25th anniversary of G. A. Cohen's influential Karl Marx's Theory of History.

Cohen's book is widely regarded as a founding document of the school known as "analytical" or "rational choice" Marxism, and a retrospective on it thus affords an opportunity to evaluate, and absorb the contributions of, this approach. Acknowledging the importance of Cohen's work in stimulating debate and progress in historical materialism — perhaps especially in challenging its practitioners to work out rigorous definitions, conceptualizations and validity criteria for all claims made — the contributors to this project nonetheless present a range of views on Cohen's position, and offer a range of alternatives. The core message, then, is in no way panegyric; Cohen's legacy may well lie in directions not anticipated by him, an example perhaps of the cunning of criticism.

Details about this special issue are in the Guest Editors' "Introduction." Without the work of the guest editors of our special issues, we would not be able to achieve the breadth and depth of coverage evident here, and as always our deepest thanks go to Alan Carling and Paul Wetherly for their persistent and loving efforts in producing the conference, and this issue.

D. L.

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INTRODUCTION

Rethinking Marx and History

The papers collected together in this Special Issue of Science & Society constitute, in large part, the proceedings of a one-day conference of the Marxism Specialist Group of the UK Political Studies Association, held in 2003. It was decided to mark the 25th anniversary of the publication of G. A. Cohen's Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence¹ by devoting the conference to a re-examination of this seminal work. We are grateful to Professor Cohen for participating in the conference and for his written and verbal responses to the papers.

Cohen's book (hereafter KMTH) was a powerful defense of a particular, "old-fashioned," interpretation of Marx's theory of history with functional explanation at its heart but, as Paul Nolan states in this volume, "there is hardly an important topic in Marxist social theory on which the book does not have something illuminating to say." In addition to its enormous contribution in reasserting the coherence and defensibility of Marx's theory of history, Cohen's book was also important because of its foundational status within the contemporary strand of Marxist theorizing known as Analytical Marxism.² These two contributions are, of course, intimately related: it was the analytical approach that enabled Cohen to set out the theory in a coherent and defensible form. However KMTH revived rather than closed debate on Marx's theory of history, and the analytical method remains controversial within Marxist circles. In Cohen's provocative view, Analytical Marxism is the only philosophically respectable kind there is.³ If this is accepted then the only way of presenting and defending Marx's theory of history is on analytical lines, such as in KMTH. Of course, one could be an Analytical Marxist without believing the central theses of the theory of history to be defensible or plausible, but if one does believe these things it must be on the basis of analysis: all else is mere "bullshit."⁴ That is Cohen's view, but there are still plenty of Marxists who are not persuaded by the analytical approach but who, not unnaturally, resist the characterization of their own approach as "bullshit." There is irony here in that, on the one hand, KMTH has done so much to reinstate an old-fashioned version of the theory of history yet, on the other hand, Cohen has been attacked by old-fashioned Marxist critics for doing so on the basis of what they regard as an alien method. The point is that both the plausibility of the central claims of Marx's theory of history, and the admissibility of analysis as a method for assessing this plausibility, remain open to debate. In this context it should be emphasized that the contributors to this collection do not occupy a shared position in this debate. What unites them is that they are all committed to working within the Marxist tradition, and they share an interest in (Cohen's interpretation of) Marx's theory of history. But they differ in their assessments of the plausibility of the central claims of the theory and related arguments, and in their attitudes to the analytical approach.

The authors take their point of departure from different aspects of this complex legacy. There are four papers concerned directly with the theory of history, seeking to recast or refine it, or to extend its explanatory reach.

Paul Nolan criticizes the account of microfoundations contained in KMTH, especially its over-reliance on human rationality as the driving mechanism, and goes on to advocate a novel "Darwinian" alternative. According to Nolan's reading, the historical ascendancy of certain modes of production depends on the differential reproductivity of human groups, caused in turn by the differential economic productivity of the modes of production practiced by the relevant groups. This mechanism appears to apply for most of human history, prior to the demographic revolution of late modernity. It is in the latter context, ironically, that greater elbow room might exist for the rational-choice process projected by KMTH, mistakenly in Nolan's view, across the whole span of history:

What may have begun as a process involving uninformed, and therefore effectively random, choices with subsequent selection (through differential reproductive success and cultural inheritance) may, as our knowledge and self-knowledge grows, increasingly become a process involving a consciousness of the competitive situation and informed choices, with a decreasing role for subsequent quasi-Darwinian selection. Eventually perhaps adaptation through differential reproductive success would (largely) disappear from human history, and productive development and social change could be explained entirely through a rational-choice mechanism. (Nolan, this issue.)

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1. Cohen, 1978 & 2000. The conference was held at Leeds Metropolitan University on September 2, 2003. Papers presented at the conference and included here in revised form are those by Callinicos, Carling, Llorente, Nolan and Wetherly. We are grateful to the Editorial Board of Science & Society for encouraging submission of a selection of the conference papers and inviting us to act as guest editors, and to three anonymous referees who commented on all the papers. To find out more about the Marxism Specialist Group go to the Political Studies Association's website (www.psa.ac.uk).

2. Carling and Wetherly (1992) provide an outline of historical materialism that closely follows and critically evaluates Cohen's interpretation. For discussions of Analytical Marxism see Mayer, 1994; Roberts, 1996.

3. The papers in this collection by Callinicos and Carling go some way to trace the development of Cohen's thought after publication of KMTH and to confront his understanding of and commitment to Analytical Marxism. See also Cohen, 1995 (especially ch. 2); Cohen, 1996.

4. This view is set out in Cohen's introduction to the 2nd edition of KMTH, published in 2000. Also see his "Commitment Without Reverence" in Imprints (Cohen, 1997).

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