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On Taking Historical Materialism Seriously

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2010

Kai Nielsen
Kai Nielsen
Affiliation:
University of Calgary
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Extract

In the first chapter of Karl Marx's Theory of History, G. A. Cohen contrasts Marx's image of history with Hegel's, contrasts, that is, a powerful form of historical idealism with historical materialism. Historical idealism stresses the “dominion of thought” (Gedankenherrschaft); social change, on such an account, is to be explained principally in terms of changes in consciousness, the course of history being determined by fundamental ruling ideas and conceptions. This view is to be contrasted with historical materialism. The central vision of history in Hegel is formulated as follows by Cohen, “History is the history of the world spirit (and, derivatively of human consciousness) which undergoes growth in self-knowledge, the stimulus and vehicle of which is a culture, which perishes when it has stimulated more growth than it can contain” (26). Marx's vision, a historical materialist vision, is identical in structure with Hegel's, but endows the structure with a new content. This can be seen from the parallel formulation of it, given by Cohen: “History is the history of human industry, which undergoes growth in productive power, the stimulus and vehicle of which is an economic structure which perishes when it has stimulated more growth than it can contain (26).

Type
Critical Notices/Etudes critiques
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , June 1983 , pp. 319 - 338
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1983

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References

1 All references to Cohen, G. A.'s Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978)Google Scholar are given in the text. Other references are in the end-notes.

2 This stress, as will become apparent later in this essay, meshes nicely with Yu. I. Semenov's instructive account of the development of socio-economic formations and world-history in his “The Theory of Socio-Economie Formations and World History”, in Soviet and Western Anthropology, ed. Gellner, Ernest (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), 29–58.Google Scholar

3 Cohen, G. A., “Functional Explanation, Consequence Explanation and Marxism”, Inquiry 25/1 (March 1982), 28–33.Google Scholar

4 Ibid., 28.

5 Cohen, G. A., “Functional Explanation: Reply to Elster”, Political Studies 28/1 (March 1980), 129–130.Google Scholar

6 Cohen, Joshua, “G. A. Cohen: Marx's Theory of History”, The Journal of Philosophy 79/5 (May 1982), 253–273Google Scholar; Levine, A. and Wright, E. O., “History and the Forces of Production”, New Left Review 123 (September–October 1980), 47–69Google Scholar; and Fisk, Milton, “The Concept of Primacy in Historical Explanation, Analyse & KritikGoogle Scholar, forthcoming.

7 See the references in the previous footnote.

8 See references in footnote 6.

9 Joshua Cohen details things like that. See Cohen, , “G. A. Cohen”.Google Scholar

10 I owe these distinctions to Yu. Semenov. Semenov, “Socio-Economie Formations”, 29–31.Google Scholar

11 Ibid., 54.

12 Gellner, Ernest, “A Russian Marxist Philosophy of History”, in Soviet and Western Anthropology, ed. Gellner, Ernest (New York: Columbia University Press. 1980), 60–63.Google Scholar

13 Hudelson, Richard, “Popper's Critique of Marx”, Philosophical Studies 37 (1980), 262.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Ibid., 264.

15 Ibid. See also his “Marx's Empiricism”, Philosophy of the Social Scinces 32 (1982), 241–253.Google Scholar

16 Gellner, , “A Russian Marxist”, 59–82Google Scholar, and Semenov, “Socio-Economie Formations”, 29–58Google Scholar. See also Gellner, Ernest, “The Soviet and the Savage”, Current Anthropology 16/1 (December 1975), 595–601.Google Scholar