On The Value And Defect Of Cohen’ Defence For Marx’ Historical Materialism

The publication of Karl Marx’s Theory of History：A Defense (1978) by Cohenmarks the existence of analytic Marxism. Cohen’s book expounds the historicalmaterialism, which is regarded as one of the three representative achievements of theanalytic Marxist school. Therefore, the study of his theory can reflect to a larger extentthe idea of this school.This dissertation centers on the Cohen’s defense for Marxist historical materialism,including the content and approaches Cohen applied in the defense. The paper falls intothree major parts. The first part introduces analytic Marxism the in general, the schoolwhich Cohen belonged to, and the background situation where the defense arose, whichinvolves Cohen’s feelings--Marxist family, educational settings for Marxism and politicalenvironment under McCarthyism. In addition, the major issues in the defense are listed asfollows: Marxist unclear statements; misinterpretation of Marxist historical materialismby revisionists like Kautsky, Stalin, and Bernstein as mechanical “economicdeterminism” and “historical idealism” with a strong fatalist color; Althusser’sambiguous and obscure discourse on Msrxist Capital; and “legitimate crisis” of historicalmaterialism proposed by some scholars, etc., all of which are pushing historicalmaterialism into crisis. As a consequence, the primary task for Cohen is to clarifyhistorical materialism, maintain its basic concepts and retain its truthfulness.The second part mainly introduces the basic thoughts of Cohen and expounds thecontent of Cohen’s defense and the methods he applied, which are the major concern inthe dissertation. More specifically, this part deals with Cohen’s clarifying of the conceptsin historical materialism (productivity, production relations, economic base andsuperstructure) and of the basic propositions (the first proposition and the developingproposition) as the solution to the crisis that historical materialism faced, with theapproaches in functional analysis and analytical philosophy as his defense methods.In the third part, the author’s evaluations to Cohen’s defense for the historicalmaterialism are expounded, which lead to two directions: one is to give high credit toCohen’s defense from a positive aspect; another is to make the objective analysis andcriticism towards the defects and contradictions arising in his defense for historical materialism.