On Mon, 9 Oct 2000 19:28:23 EDT JKSCHW at aol.com writes:
> In a message dated 10/9/00 1:23:27 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> ForstaterM at umkc.edu writes:
>
> << Plekhanov's work (_Fundamental Problems of Marxism_, _Materialist
>
> Conception of
> History_, etc.) is often considered a classic example of economic
> determinism in
> the Marxist tradition. There are other related notions, e.g.,
> technological
> determinism, mechanistic materialism, etc. Then there is "last
> instance"
> determinism (Hindess and Hirst?); and then overdetermination
> (Resnick and
> Wolff). Mat >>
>
> Obviously the best modern version of Plekhanov is G.A. Cohen, Karl
> Marx's
> Theory of History. This created a good deal of criticism, including
> Richard
> Miller's ib Analyzing Marx and Wright, Levine, and Sober,
> Reconstructing
> Marx.
BTW Cohen himself has in more recent times critcized the theory which he presented in *Karl Marx's Theory of History*, for example see his recent *If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You are So Rich?* However, Cohen presents his criticisms in the form of a critique of historical materialism itself, and not really questioning whether or not his interpretation of historical materialism was necessarily the most plausible one.
IMO *Karl Marx's Theory of History* suffers from most of the most of the same deficincies that Plekhanov or Kautskys' interpretations suffered from. On the other hand, it should also be said that Cohen's relentlessly rigorous approach to the analysis of historical materialism does present us with a model for how to do Marxist scholarship at a very high level and so remains of value on that ground. It also continues to serve as a springboard for many if not most contemporary scholarly discussions of historical materialsm (which can be seen if one persuses back issues of Science & Society for instance).
Jim Farmelant
--jks
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