Functionalism is your term, not mine. I think functional explanations are legitimate, and historical materialist explanations are broadly functionalist. That is why I think it right to sat that, e,g,, racism is explained in part because it swerves ruling class interests, i.e., is functional for them. I don't say everything is functional for something; sometimes there are dysfunctional social phenomena that threaten a mode of production. That is how change happens, or one way it does. I talk about this stuff in my paper Functional Explanation and Metaphysical Individualism (on Cohen and Elster), Philosophy of Science 1993.
Although I think that Cohenite forces-of-priduction HM is a valid and extextaully based account of Marx, I am a class struggle HM-ist. I put class relations as primary before forces of production. Briefly, in my account, class relations provide a structure taht selects functionally useful institutions and practices (liked racism_. These are learned, and inherited, hence Lamarkian (acqwuired characteristics are inherited). Internal instabilities (dysfunctionalities) may arise when the class relations cannot reproduce themselves without producing system-underming patterns. The best account we have of this is Brenner's story about the rise of capitalism in England, heavily debated here some time ago. I think this qualifies as a historical amterailsim in the Marxian tradition.
I think the proof of the pudding is in the eating. There is no plausible rival that has been remotely as fruitful a historical reserach program as historical materialism. EP Thompson (the writer who taught me to think about history), Hobsbawm, Genovese, back when he was good, Christopher Hill, Marc Bloch, GEM de Stee Crois, MI Finley, Roidney Hilton, Brenner himself--the great HM--were (are) good because of their HM. Of course they were nor orthodox. Neither, in case you had not noticed, am I. It;s sort of pathetic to see you atry to pry them away from the deep theoritrical commitment taht anim,ates their work, and suggest that their graet work does not vindicate the principles that inform it.
> >I am not sure I understand you correctly here. Are you saying you are not
>a structural functionalist a la Talcott Parsons [Parsonian functionalist]
>or are you sayiong that you would differentiate yourself from the so-called
>French "structuralists" as some sort of generic category, in the way that a
>Foucault often makes a functionalist, almost Weberian argument [Parisian
>functionalist]? It's not clear to me from the context.
Neither. I don't go in for Parsons or the French stuff, though I like Foucault for some things.
. . . I must agree with Poulantzas: once you jettison the primacy of
>class struggle, if only in the 'last instance,' you have abandoned the
>terrain of Marxism and historical materialism. The claim of a Cohen that
>one could abandon the primacy of class struggle, and replace it either with
>the primacy of the forces of production>Justin: > My point way that class
>relations provides an overarching explanatory > structure that accounts for
>why various ecletic causes have their eclectic > effects. The way it
>provides that structure is via a quasi-Darwinian > (really Lamarckian)
>filter of the sort described.
>
>I read this statement as the application of Darwinian [or Lamarckian]
>natural selection to history as a metaphor for the development of
>historical process. Certainly this choice of metaphor will allow for
>positive developments in a theory of history [appreciation for the role of
>randomness, the removal of teleology, etc. -- although I would think that a
>Lamarckian perspective would obviate the role of revolutionary change in
>favor of a more steady, continuous evolution], but I don't see how it can
>be properly called historical materialist in the Marxian sense. Historical,
>yes;
. . . I am prepared to
>accept a certain form of the primacy of class at this historical
>conjuncture. What I do not accept is a need to make this anymore than a
>pragmatic judgment at this point in history: once we go beyond the
>pragmatic position, and try to establish such broader grand historical
>narratives, we inevitably move onto very troublesome terrain, where we get
>into the metaphysical arguments concerning human nature, or historical
>determinism, or the functionalist, and therefore, circular, narratives of
>historical development which tell us very little of what we need to know.
>Why go there?
Well, I am a pragmatist, so if we can go that far, that will suit me. For the rest, Troublesome terrain doesn't bother me. I am also a philosopher, so I like arguments about human nature, determinism, and the like. And I don't think you acn avoid them anyway.
What does historical
>materialism, in any of its forms, give us that we need and can't get from a
>simply pragmatic analysis of political forces?
An explanation of the general trajectory and direction of human history; an account of the conditions of the possibility of socialism; an explanation of the realtions of dependence between the main features and institutions ins ociety; and explanation of and a guide to social change--it tells us taht we cannot change society by merely changing ideas, and that the ruling classesa re not our friends,a monmg other things. That is jsut for starters. But isn't that enough?
And when it is a matter of
>just doing good historical scholarship, outside of any political concerns,
>what does it add? Do you really think that an E. P. Thompson or an Eugene
>Genovese needed historical materialism to do their research? If anything,
>the best historians in the Marxian tradition do their best history when
>they move away from the orthodoxies of historical materialism.
You don't get it, do you, Leo? If EP THomspon heard you say that he was "just doing good scholarship outside of any political concerns," he would flay you alive, and he was a bitter man with a sharp tongue. If Bob Brenner is still lurking on the list, maybe he can give you a word about apolitical scholarship.
>>
>Well, of course, [my view] is not an alternative in the sense of an
>alternative 'grand narrative,' for it does not seek to establish one. But
>why should this be an act of desperation? If you can accomplish the
>political qua analytical goals you need with a considerably more modest
>explanatory framework, why the need to take on the explanation of all human
>history?
>
Why not take one if you have it?
--jks _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com