REVIEW ARTICLES COHEN ON MARXS THEORY OF HISTORY

J O N ELSTER

G. A. C O H E N book, S Karl Marxs Theory of History: A Dilfmre, sets a new standard for Marxist philosophy. I t disproves the statement imputed to A. J . Ayer, as for Marxist philosophy, it does not exist. It is not only relevant-there has been no lack of relevance in Marxism-but also lucid, imaginative and precise. The author displays a full mastery of the technical tools of conceptual analysis, a sure grasp of the Marxist corpus and a substantive sociological imagination. It is also in one important respect a most unsatisfactory book. The central thesis of the book is that the productive forces have primacy over the productive relations, in the sense that the relations are what they are because they have the function of furthering the development of the forces. The whole book leads up to this thesis, but the main argument for it is given in a very cursory and unconvincing page (p. 292-3). Behind this thesis is a more general methodological position, an attempt to vindicate functional explanation in the social sciences as sui generis, that is reducible neither to causal nor to intentional explanation. As will be argued below, the attempt does not succeed. The excellence of the book emerges in spite of and not because of the central ideas that are defended. If we disregard the defence and application of functionalism, we are left with a conceptuul analysis ofthe process of production in the tradition of the chapters of Capi/alJ on manufacture and machinery. These chapters are among the best that Marx ever wrote, and Cohens book is the best modern treatment of the same range of problems. As the title implies, the book is both interpretation and substantive analysis. The exegesis is throughout solid and convincing. I found only two passages that are quoted out of context so as to distort their meaning. (These are on p. 102, to Capitul I, p. 360, where Cohen misleadingly quotes a passage from the analysis of manufacture as if it were valid for advanced capitalism in general; and on p. 160 where he falls for the temptation of quoting a passage from Cupital I . p. 482 that would have been wonderful evidence for Cohens interpretation if it had been asserted in the implied context.) Nor have I found many cases where relevant texts have been omitted. It is surprising that in his discussion (pp. 77, 79) of the individuation of economic forms Cohen does not refer to the passage in Cupital I, p. 180 where Marx proposes technological rather than social criteria of identity, but the oversight does not seem fateful. More controversial is his treatment of Marx and Engels as identical twins, but only in a few places (pp. 155, 187, 205) does this tend to be (slightly) misleading. Cohen seems to have been unaware of the recent publication (in the new MEGA) of the first third of the manuscript of which the T/irwrii>.s ef Surplus- Vriluii forms the second third. Here, for example, Cohen would
I G. A . Cohen. Ktrr/ MarsA T h f J of Hi.ccory: A De/c,nc,e (London. Oxford University Press, 1978). I am grateful to G . A . Cohen for reading a first draft of this review, helping me to state some objections more forcefully and pointing out why others were unjustified.

Political Studies, Vol. XXVIII. No. I (121 128)

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have found a text that gives the lie to his statement (p. 138) that Marx frequently refer[s] to correspondence of relations to forces and never the opposite. Thus in MEGA 11, 3, I , p. 121: Hierbei wird sich zeigen, dass . . . dem Capitalverhaltnisdamit es entwickelt auftrete-auch bestimmte Productionsweise und Entwicklung der Produktivkrafte entspreche. I do not believe, however, that any important modifications would be required by this text, which in the main rather tends to confirm Cohens interpretation. If Cohen has any weak point, it is to be found in his sometimes uncertain grasp of economic theory. His treatment of productivity increase (p. 56ff.) is unsatisfactory: here more formalization would be needed, or less. More importantly, he states on p. 353 that the theses of the labour theory of value are not presupposed or entailed by any contentions advanced in this book, and nevertheless he does presuppose this theory in several places in Ch. V (pp. 116, 123, 124). Also he apparently ignores the large literature by economists on analogies to natural selection in the theory of the firm, in spite of the importance of these analogies in his own theory. So much for general comments; now for specifics, chapter by chapter. The opening chapter On Images of History in Hegel and Marx is a very well-written and stimulating introduction to the Hegelian background of Marxism. It compares favourably, at least from an analytical viewpoint, with the treatment of the same topic On p. 24 there in the first volume of Leszek Kolakowskis Main Currents ofarxism. seems to be a slight inaccuracy in the implication that the surplus enables the formation of a class which does not work. From Polanyi and Pearson we know that it is rather the other way around, as correctly stated on p. 94. Chapter I1 On the constitution of the productive forces then starts up the main argument of the book. Cohen defines the productive forces both extensionally (instruments of production, raw materials and labour power, including various attributes of the latter such as skill and knowledge) and intensionally (as a facility capable of use by a producing agent in such a way that production occurs (partly) as a result of its use, and it is someones purpose that the facility so contribute to production). In his elaboration of this definition Cohen has to clear several well-known hurdles, notably the inclusion of science (a mental element) among the material productive forces. Cohens solution seems to me to be the right one: the antonym of material in Marxist theory is social rather than mental. (A small query, however: isnt Cohens insistence (pp. 41, 43) that productive forces be ownable hard to square with the inclusion of science among the productive forces?) A final section explains what is meant by the developmenr of the productive forces. Cohen argues, rightly 1 think, that this should be understood as productivity increase, even though he also invokes qualitative change, as distinct from quantitative progress, as an explanatory variable. (More about this later.) Chapter 111 The economic structure explains the notion of production relations in terms of the ownership relation. Immediate producers are classified according to the extent to which they own their labour power and their means of production. As ownership can be total, partial or absent, this generates nine combinations altogether. Two of these are incoherent,four correspond to important historical categories, and the remaining three are marginal or transitional classes. This may sound like sterile classification, but-as readers of Max Weber will know-good typologies may be fertile indeed, and Cohens is. He further argues that these production relations should enter into the definition of class, and that it is a mistake to confuse the structural dehnition of class with the substantive assertion that classes thus defined tend to become classconscious. The chapter ends with some acute comments on modes of production and economic change. Here Cohen makes a sharp distinction between process and structure; too sharp, in my opinion, because he forgets that aspects of the process may be part of the structure. Thus on p. 85 he states that There is no difference of economic structure, despite movement within the economy, as long as there are the same relations

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in the same frequency bound into the same network. This, in my opinion, is exactly the same error for which Eduard Bernstein was takzn to task by Rosa Luxemburg in Sozialreform oder Revolution? Two societies may be exactly identical as regards the nature and the frequency of the economic relations at any given moment of time, and nevertheless differ in economic structure because the one has a very high turnover rate and the other a very low one. Would we not say, for example, that a caste-like society with no social mobility was strucfurully different from a society that at all times had the same numbers of persons in the same classes, but in which a good deal of upwards and downwards mobility (exactly compensating each other) was going o n ? Chapter IV on Material and social properties of society follows up the earlier observation that material and social are antonyms in Marxist theory. Many good points are made in this chapter; others are more controversial. 1 found the distinction (p. 103) between socially engendered needs (e.g. the needs for deodorants) and needs that are social in their contents (e.g. the need for positional goods) very helpful; in particular i t could be used for distinguishing between a bad and a good sense of the term artificial need. I am less sure about the main contention of the chapter, that there are material as well as social relations of production and that division of labour falls within the former. Here, as well as in Ch. V1.6, Cohen argues that work relations are intermediate between productive forces and production relations, determined by the former and determining the latter. For a counter-example, consider a machine that can be tended efficiently by three men and somewhat less efficiently by two. The choice between the two methods, which imply different work relations, will be determined by the relative prices of machinery and labour, which in their turn are determined in part by the class struggle. My hunch is that Cohens thesis here is derived from the structuralist bias that is implicit in much of Marxist reasoning that, by assuming fixed coefficients of production, denies the reality of entrepreneurial choice. Chapter V on Fetishism is largely exegetical, with less substantive discussion than the other chapters. It is also the weakest chapter in the book (even if it would be a highlight in most other books), belonging perhaps to an earlier stage of composition. I have two main objections. (i) Cohen tends to take commodity fetishism more seriously than it deserves to be taken. From the history of mercantilism we know that money fetishism is a real and important phenomenon; from everyday life and from economic theory that price fetishism is a pervasive feature of modern economies; but commodity fetishism has always seemed to me a much more strained notion, with no interesting sociological implications. (ii) The treatment of capital fetishism is unsatisfactory, because resting upon a version of the labour theory of the value that I believe to be invalid. Also 1 would have liked to see the link to the notion of alienation spelled out more explicitly. With Chapter VI on The primacy of the productive forces we come to the core of the book. Here Cohen explains and defends the thesis that the productive forces have primacy over the production relations, not in the sense that the latter d o not exert an influence on the former, but in the sense that the latter are what they are because of the kind of influence they exert on the former. We are dealing, that is, with a consequence explunation of the production relations in terms of what they d o for the productive forces. The general notion of consequence explanations, including the special case of functional explanation, is discussed at length in Ch. IX, of which more later. After a (somewhat too) long exegetical introduction, Cohen goes on to argue the substantive case (a) for the thesis that the productive forces tend to develop throughout history and (b) for the thesis that production relations are to be explained in terms of their capacity for developing the productive forces. The argument for the first thesis is given in a rather convoluted argument (p. 152ff.) that after repeated reading I did not find very convincing. Perhaps my dissatisfaction is due not so much to logical defects of the
See my The Labour Theory of Value, Marxist Perspectives (1978)

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argument, as to the absence of historical material. Thus Cohen does not mention the institutional and psychological reasons that in many stretches of history have prevented technical progress, such as lack of investment objects (in the absence of a patent system) or lack of investment motivation (as in the non-diffusion of the water mill in ancient Rome). Historical materialism, in Cohen's view, asserts an unbroken technical progress throughout history, even if proceeding at an unequal rate. An alternative view would be to say that the productive forces were largely static up to recent times, when the advent of capitalism made possible a revolutionary breakthrough. This would be consistent with the many passages where Marx stresses the conservative character of earlier modes of production, even if inconsistent with the more general statements of the 1859 Preface. Also, as a rough generalization, it might be more consistent with the historical record than the rough generalization of unbroken progress. True, Cohen argues only that the productive forces tend to develop, in the same sense that children tend to grow taller. In both cases the development might be arrested for accidental or exogenous reasons. Still there are many children, but only one history of the world, and I d o not believe that Cohen really means to hedge his argument to the extent of imputing on/.v counterfactual implications to his thesis. The 'primacy thesis' then follows from the 'development thesis' and the added premiss that for any given set of production relations there are limits to the productive forces that can develop within them. When one set of relations reach their limit. they must give way to another set, because otherwise stagnation would ensue and the development thesis would be false. This, again, means that the relations are what they are because they permit a development of the productive forces. The argument assumes (i) that progress is in the interest of humanity, (ii) that there always is some social class whose interests coincide with the interests of humanity in general and (iii) that this class will be able to get the upper hand in the class struggle. Or, to put it the other way around, 'the interests which conspire to support the existing order. . . will not be strong enough to sustain it indefinitely' (p. 158-9). For this broad statement no other argument is given than that 'there is a general stake in stable and thriving production, so that the class best placed to deliver it attracts allies from other strata in society' (p. 292). This, I submit, simply is not true; the general interests of society do not create their own fulfilment. It is quite often the case that the general interest may be furthered by several different arrangements, each of which gives a particular advantage to one particular class over and above its share in the general increase of welfare created by the arrangement, and the struggle between these arrangements may then prevent any of them from coming about. In the last section of the chapter Cohen confronts the problem of the technological conservatism of pre-capitalist modes of production that he rightly sees as the main obstacle to his interpretation. He argues that even if the relations of production in these societies d o not afford any direct stimulus to the productive forces, they may stimulate them indirectly, by providing a suitable environment for their development. He draws an analogy to constitutional monarchy promoting democracy: not by encouraging it directly, but by providing a stimulus for the development of democracy, e.g. by opposing it. Now this solution to my mind has two defects. First, it is unconvincing in the absence of illustrative historical material. Second, it seems to contradict Cohen's general assertion about the way in which productive forces select production relations 'according to their capacity to promote development' (p. 162), which according to the statement quoted above is mediated through the action of a class that has a direct interest in promoting that development. Chapter VII on 'The productive forces and capitalism' provides historical illustration for the assertions of Ch. VI. There is much that is excellent in this richly documented chapter: this I leave to the reader to find out for himself. Instead I would like to raise two questions that are alluded to but not really confronted in this chapter. First, I believe that one should not glibly talk about the production relations fettering the use

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and development of the productive forces; second that one should not invoke both the quantitative progress and the qualitative change of the productive forces in order to explain production relations. Let me put the point somewhat differently. The crucial thesis of the 1859 Preface according to Cohen, and I think he is right, is that the production relations further or fetter the quantitative progress of the productive forces. To this Cohen adds another thesis, that with some plausibility can also be imputed to Marx, that this furthering or fettering explains the emergence or disappearance of the production relations. I then submit that he should not have resorted to the ad-hoc strategies of saying, first, that if the relations d o not fetter the development of the forces, then they might perhaps fetter their use, and, second that if the relations are not explained by the forces in the way Cohen suggests, then perhaps they might be explained by the forces in another manner. This is playing o n words and shifting the argument. One should also remember that a crucial feature of capitalism is that the fettering of the use of the productive forces was the means for furthering their development, through the patent system whose justification is that by slowing down the diffusion of technical progress it ensures that there will be more progress to diffuse. Chapter VlIl on Base and superstructure, powers and rights shows Cohen at his very best, disentangling the logical structure of property rights and their link to the economic structure. From this chapter I would like to cite the following example of Cohens ability to dispel by a simple phrase confusion that it took a hundred books to accumulate. Discussing the strange architectural metaphor of base and superstructure, he offers the following explanation: Four struts are driven into the ground, each protruding the same distance above it. They are unstable. They sway and wobble in winds of force 2. Then a roof is attached to the four struts, and now they stay firmly erect in all winds of force 6. Of this roof one can say: (i) it is supported by the struts, and (ii) it renders them more stable. There we have a building whose base and superstructure relate in the right way. (p. 231)
This, of course, is not the whole explanation. Cohen also offers a strictly demetaphorized account, whose basic strategy is to match every legal right in the superstructure by an economic power and then claim that the right is what it is because of its stabilizing impact on the power. To my mind the functional explanation is much more nearly convincing in this case than in the corresponding explanation of property relations by their impact on the productive forces. This is so because (at least in some of the cases distinguished by Cohen on p. 226-7) there usually is some group in whose direct interest it is to legitimate an existing or at least embryonic practice. Non-existing productive forces cannot bring about new production relations, but emerging production relations can bring about a new legal order. Douglass North and Robert Thomas4 have shown how and under what conditions this can take place; nevertheless there can be no presumption that it will typically happen. Here as elsewhere conditions and mechanisms must be specified if the functional explanation is to be valid, as will now be argued. Chapter IX on Functional explanation : in general is ambitious but unsuccessful. Cohen does not prove his case for functional explanation being a separate explanatory category on a par with causal explanation. I d o not, of course, quarrel with the use of functional explanation in biology. Here natural selection provides a general mechanism that creates a presumption that beneficial consequences of structure or behaviour explain their own causes. Cohen does not, however, provide any similar mechanism for
D. North and R. Thomas, tnslitutionul Change und Anwrican Cambridge University Press, 1973).

J . Robinson, Thp Accuniu/ution oJ Cupitul (London, Macmillan,

1956), p. 87.

Economic Growrh (Cambridge,

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functional explanation in the social sciences, and therefore his argument cannot succeed. Let me first quote the important passage where he makes his claim for functional explanation in social science: [Functional-explanatory claims] may be rationally tenable before suitable elaborations are available. If a Marxist says that the bourgeois media report industrial conflicts in a style which favours the capitalist class because that style of reportage has the asserted tendency, he may be able to justify his explanatory claim even when he cannot yet display how the fact that reportage in the given style favours the capitalist class explains the fact that industrial conflicts are reported in that way. (p. 272) This, presumably, means that Marx was justified in implying (Capitul I l l , p. 600--1) that social mobility can be explained through its favourable consequences on class domination, through the channeling of the best brains in the lower classes into the upper class; or that the capital-logic school is justified in assuming that the needs of capital in general create their own fulfilment through the state. In short, the sluices are wide open for all sorts of pseudo-explanations. I am simply at a loss to see why functional explanation should be of interest over and above the particular mechanisms that may justify it in any given case. Let us take a closer look at the problem. There is, of course, a large number of particular mechanisms that bring it about that social phenomena may be explained through their own consequences. The two most important are probably intentional choice and intentional (or artificial) selection,s to which may be added natural selection and reinforcement.j No one has any quarrel with a functional explanation where the mechanism is actually shown to be at work. The hard question is whether one can ever be justified in setting forward a functional explanation even in the absence of a specific mechanism. In biology this question is to be answered in the affirmative, because the general mechanism of natural selection creates a presumption that beneficial consequences explain their own causes. Now this is only a presumption, and it may turn out that the functional explanation, even if justified ex ante, is shown to be wrong ex post. In a roughly similar manner, rational-choice explanation in the social sciences has the same epistemological status. There is a well-grounded presumption that human beings act rationally that makes it justified to assume in any given case that they d o so, even if ex post we may turn out to be wrong. Consider by contrast pre-Darwinian explanation in biology. Here the apparent adaptation of organisms to their environment made most biologists consider that features of the organisms could in fact be explained through this ecological adaptation. Darwin showed us that they were wrong, and that reproductive rather than ecological adaptation is the maximand. And they werg not only wrong, bur also unjustified. The leap from the analysis of consequences to a consequence explanation was quite arbitrary. The point is even better brought out by considering the intentional explanations in physics that were proposed by Leibniz and Maupertuis. On Cohens account they were justified in assuming that least-time and least-effort principles were evidence of some guiding intention behind the physical processes, o r at least in assuming that these consequences of the processes had an explanatory power. Cohen would say that they were wrong, but justified; 1 would argue that they were wrong and unjustified. Let me also point to the kind of account that could have brought me a step closer to accepting Cohens conclusion (which is not to say that it would have brought me very close). This is the analysis of functional explanation proposed by Arthur Stinchcombe
See my Ulysses und fhe Sirens (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1979), Ch. I . For reinforcement, see P. van Parijs. Functional Explanation and the Linguistic Analogy, Philosophy of the Social Sciences (1 979).

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in the Merton Festschri/r. By conceptualizing social change as a Markov process with absorbing states, he argues that there is indeed a presumption that social institutions will be well-adapted to their environment even when this is not brought about by intentional choice or selection. To bring out the logic of his argument, consider the following statement by Lewis Coser:8 Conflict within and between bureaucratic structures provides the means for avoiding the ossification and ritualism which threatens their form of organization. Coser does not in any way justify his use of the phrase provides the means of avoiding instead of simply has the consequence of reducing. On Sinchcombes account, however, such a justification is forthcoming. Assume for simplicity that the bureaucratic structure of a society can be in one of two states: rigid and hierarchical, or flexible and conflict-permitting. Assume, moreover, that if the bureaucracy at time t,, is in state R (for rigid), then the probability is p that at time t,+, it will still be in state R and I - p that it will be in state F (for flexible); also that if at t, it is in state F, then at t,,, it will be in state R with probability q and in F with probability 1-9. Stinchcombe then could argue as follows. A rigid hierarchical bureaucracy will accumulate so much tension that eventually it must explode and be replaced by another, which may then either be rigid or flexible. In other words, O < p < l . By contrast a flexible structure permitting the day-to-day enactment of conflict will let tension out gradually and continuously, so that no explosion will occur. In other words, q=O. But this means that the system has exactly one absorbing state (F), in which eventually it will end up with probability I. I believe that I have seen no other mechanism that comes closer to being for sociology what natural selection is for biology, even if this is not, to repeat, to say that it comes very close. Cohen, however, does not even attempt to provide such a mechanism, which is why I believe that his enterprise must be judged to be a failure. To come up with a list of possible mechanisms is not to make an argument for some such mechanism being at work. A (somewhat unfair) analogy may help me make the point. In the pseudo-sociology of the 19th century there was general agreement that there must be in societies sonic analogy to the cell, the hard question being whether this should be taken to be the individual, the family, the firm and so on. Today, of course, we simply reject the presumption of there being a social cell; and in the same way we should simply reject the presumption that beneficial consequences explain their causes. Chapter X on Functional explanation: in Marxism does not add much to the discussion of the preceding chapter; in fact it detracts from it. In the second section of the chapter Cohen makes out a good case against functional explanation, quite similar to the one I have just made out against his own account. He actually states that Sociologists often identify interesting functions, but it is ahvuys a further question, whose answer needs further evidence and argument, whether what they identify explains why something is so (p. 283, italics added). Yes, indeed, but does not this contradict the statement from p. 272 quoted above? The only way of making them compatible would be to show that there is some mechanism of sufficient generality as to license functional explanations in the absence of specific knowledge; but this, to repeat, Cohen has not done. Let me try to review these two chapters in a more charitable light. Perhaps Cohen mainly intended to convey the notion that consequences often explain their causes, and that there is no single mechanism whereby they d o so. Conscious choice, artificial selection, natural selection, reinforcement and absorbing Markov chains all are instances of mechanisms that permit us to explain phenomena by their consequences. The term functional explanation may then be used as an umbrella term for these

A. Stinchcombe, Mertons Theory of Social Structure, in L. Coser (ed.), T/w Idru of Socicrl S/ruclure; P u p m in Honor. of Roberr Mor/on (New York, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974). I( L. Coser, Social Conflict and the Theory of Social Change, in C. G. Smith (ed.), Conflicl R m h t i o n (Notre Dame. Ind: University of Notre Dame Press. 1971).

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mechanisms, and it would also be possible to oppose them en bloc to causal explanations. (For simplicity I here disregard the non-functional consequence explanations.) Now to this less ambitious project there can be no strong objections, but I nevertheless believe that causal vs. intentional explanations is a more fruitful dichotomy than causal vs. consequence explanations. First, some consequence explanations invoke causal mechanisms, so that the dichotomy is not exclusive. Second, many intentional explanations of behaviour are not consequence explanations, viz. when the intended consequences fail to materialize: this means that the dichotomy is not exhaustive. Third, and most importantly, the proposed classification obscures the vital distinction between short-term and long-term consequence explanation^.^ The former are basically causal, the latter basically intentional. Take Cohens example (p. 280) of larger scale in firms being explained by economies of scale, which may either be sought intentionally or realized by natural selection. It might very well be the case that a firm first had to go through a stretch of diseconomies of scale before it realized the economies of scale, e.g. because of some indivisibilities in the production process. This would be evidence for an intentional adaptation and evidence against natural selection, but it is not the kind of evidence that fits naturally into Cohens framework. And in any case I believe that Cohens project is more ambitious, and then the strong objections stated above do apply. Chapter XI on Use-value, exchange-value, and contemporary capitalism is generally good, but does not draw upon Cohens specific and unique skills. In addition the book contains two appendices, the first of which expands upon some themes of Ch. V while the second contains definitions of some key terms. It also has a superlative index that was of great help in preparing the present review. Elster, Ulysses and rhe Sirens, Ch. 1. 3