Political Studies (1997), XLV, 768783

Analytical and Essential Marxism

ALAN CARLING
University of Bradford

Analytical Marxism involves the attempt to reconstruct Marxist theory and to

refocus Marxist politics in the light of contemporary intellectual developments
especially in analytical philosophy and economic theory and historical events
above all, the failures of Communist regimes. In order to assess this reconstruction it
is necessary to bear in mind a conception of the overall Marxist project. By this
standard of comparison it remains to be seen whether Analytical Marxism can eect
the required kind of connection between its theory and its practice.

Essential Marxism
Classical Marxism combines a theory of society with a politics of emancipation.
Without a theory of society, the politics of emancipation has no guide; without
a politics of emancipation, the theory of society has no point.1 The theory of
society probably contains a methodology and certainly contains a theory of
history. The methodology is tendentially Hegelian, and the theory of history
centres on the relationships among markets, property systems and levels of
technology. The labour theory of value is central to the analysis of markets. The
politics of emancipation includes adherence to a set of values, the identication
of a social vehicle and the description of a political process by means of which
the social vehicle will realize the values in the light of the social theory. The
values include equality, self-realization and community; the social vehicle is the
proletariat and the political process is class struggle.
The previous paragraph is written to exhibit the branching structure of the
Classical Marxist project portrayed also in Figure 1, with its two main branches
extending down from `theory of society' and `politics of emancipation'
respectively. In terms of levels of description, the highest level consists in `theory
of society' and `politics of emancipation'. Level 2 contains `methodology' and
`theory of history' on the theory side, and `values', `vehicle' and `process' on the
politics side. And so on down the hierarchy.2 To assess the credentials of any
1
`The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.'
K. Marx, `Theses on Feuerbach', in J. Elster (ed.), Karl Marx: a Reader (Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press, 1986), p. 23. I am grateful to Christopher Bertram and an unknown reviewer for
their help in pruning an overgrown early draft of this paper, and to G. A. Cohen for subsequent
critical commentary.
2
Although I share Eric Wright's views about the high level content of the Marxian programme,
I am less happy about his way of construing the lower level project. In particular, I do not nd very
helpful his tripartite division of Marxism between Class Analysis (`independent variable Marxism');
the Theory of History (`dependent variable Marxism') and Class Emancipation. `Marxism after
Communism', in Interrogating Inequality (London, Verso, 1994), pp. 23455. It seems to me that the
analyses of class and history must converge in their application to a politics of emancipation, whatever
the range of other social phenomena which can be subsumed under a more generalized `Marxian' label.
# Political Studies Association 1997. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main
Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
 Review Section 769

Figure 1. The Branching Structure of Classical Marxism

candidate Marxism, we compare it to this classical tree. In fact, we no longer ask

the question `what characterizes a Marxist account?', but transform it into the
question `how Marxist is the account?' by determining the extent and the shape
of the coincidence between the candidate account and the Classical tree acting as
the standard of comparison.
I wish to add one caveat to the previous statement. I think that any account
which is to count plausibly as Marxist must contain both a theory of society and
a politics of emancipation in an intrinsic relationship with each other: the rst
two sentences in this article are essential. This stipulation is already sucient to
distinguish Marxism from most liberal and many radical theories (and from
political philosophy simpliciter), for which a theory of society may have
independent interest, but no intrinsic political role. By the same token, there is a
highest-level distinction to be drawn between Marxist and Weberian approaches
on the theory side, even if their lower level theories are sometimes dicult to
distinguish from one another, and even if the Weberian theorists are independ-
ently interested in political questions. As long as the Weberians resist making
intrinsic the connection between theory and politics, the projects dier
fundamentally.3 Marxists will also be distinguished on similar grounds from
those who have either given up on the theory of society or given up on the
politics of emancipation, or both (possibly for related reasons) postmodern-
ists, bemused spectators of the Soviet experience, and so on. But the way in
which these highest level propositions are protected from falsication is evident
from the fact that to dispute them one would have to argue (perhaps from the
disappointment at the failure of one particular social theory) that no social

3
The drift of the argument will I hope be clear: Weberians dier from Marxists at the high level,
even if not at the low. This is almost the opposite of the relationship between dierent kinds of
Marxist, whose dierences tend to be at the lower levels, but not at the highest: or so I contend.
Even though I take level 1 to be necessary to Marxism, I am not arguing that it is sucient.
Feminism for example (or some of it at least) has a similar level 1 conception of its emancipatory
project, spelled out at level 2 by a theory of patriarchy on the theory side and a feminist practice on
the politics side. But it would be obtuse to regard feminism as thereby a Marxism. When rst
confronted with this scheme, Sarah Perrigo remarked that level 1 denes a critical theory in her eyes,
of which Marxism and (some types of pre-postmodern) feminism are prominent cases. I am very
happy with that stipulation.
# Political Studies Association, 1997
770 Review Section

theory was possible; or from the collapse of the dreams invested in one
particular movement that no politics of emancipation was possible.4 Thus, the
core of the Marxist project can survive repeated setbacks not because its
adherents are peculiarly immune to evidence, but because of the way that its
highest-level propositions are framed.5
We might then say of Analytical Marxism in this perspective that on the
theory side its premise is the rejection of both the Hegelian methodology in
Marx and his labour theory of value. But this attitude is not merely destructive,
since the attempt is made to preserve the classical research programme by (a)
reconstructing the theory of history along non-Hegelian lines and (b) replacing
the classical labour theory of value with contemporary general equilibrium
theory.6

The Problem of History

According to Cohen's exegesis, Marx's theory of history is an attempt to explain
the long-run development of human productive power (aka the increase in the
level of the forces of production). Marx's general view of people (his `philo-
sophical anthropology') is that they are inherently creative beings held back by
material circumstances. So the development of productive power is a history of
humans overcoming the barriers to self-expression and therefore to a fully-
human life. Up to press the development of the general powers of man has been
at the expense of individual men (not to speak of women, which Marx usually
does not). The relations of production have been unequal ones, casting most
humans in a subordinate, demeaning role. This has created a series of forms of
class society, riven by internal tensions. These tensions have helped to drive
history forward, via the mechanism of class struggle but the outcomes of class
struggle nevertheless conform to the historical trend of productive development.
Not only is each successor form of society more productive than its predecessor,
but the productivity dierential explains the succession. This is why, in Cohen's
view, historical materialism involves a form of technological determination
wedded to functional explanation: without some thesis attributing primacy to
the forces over the relations of production, there is no historical materialism.7
4
Cf. `The Soviet experiment was only one of various conceivable experiments, and its failure
does not impeach the possibility of more successful attempts'. J. Roemer, A Future for Socialism
(London, Verso, 1994), p. 125.
5
Cf. `[the] hard core [of a research programme] is tenaciously protected from refutation by a vast
``protective belt'' of auxiliary hypotheses'. I. Lakatos in J. Worrall and G Currie (eds), The Philo-
sophical Papers of Imre Lakatos. Vol I: The Methodology of Scientic Research Programmes
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1978), p. 4; A. Callinicos, Is there a Future for Marxism?
(London, Macmillan, 1982), pp. 17985 and Introduction to Marxist Theory, pp. 156. See also M.
Burawoy, `Mythological Individualism the Metaphysical Foundation of Analytical Marxism', in
T. Carver and P. Thomas (eds), Rational Choice Marxism (London, Macmillan, 1995), pp. 1946.
6
One way of distinguishing among Marxists (or indeed any other type of theorist) is via the
character of their attachment to the research programme. `Committed' Marxists are those with
emotional attachments to the core, whose reaction to falsications of lower level theses will tend to
be strategic retreat: to fall back on the core with the aim of reformulating the auxiliary hypotheses
so as to enable them to preserve their personal identication with the core project. `Cognitive'
Marxists by contrast will tend to treat the various propositions of the theory as independently
veriable, and be prepared to accept or reject them piecemeal, as if marking a checklist. Among
Analytical Marxists, Jon Elster perhaps exemplies the latter approach.
7
G. A. Cohen, History, Labour and Freedom: Themes from Marx (Oxford, Oxford University
Press, 1988), Part II.
# Political Studies Association, 1997
 Review Section 771

It is important to note that Cohen in his initial statement of it left the theory
open to signicant renement centring on the provision of a suitable `elabora-
tion' of the functional relationship between forces and relations of production.8
It might then be thought that John Roemer's general equilibrium replacement
for the classical labour theory of value supplied the requisite elaboration of the
theory of history one would have rational choice microfoundations for a
macroscopic theory of long-run social change. But I doubt whether the
relationship between the two bodies of work is as comfortable as this view
suggests.
First, it is true that in the absence of denitive elaborations of the functional
claims made in the theory of history, a kind of blank space is left in the
explanation which might be construed as a failure to nd micro foundations,
but whether or not the existence of the space is fatal to the explanatory claim
was precisely the point at issue between Cohen and Elster concerning the logic
of functional explanation. If one agrees with Cohen (as Elster eventually felt
compelled to do) that the existence of the space is not fatal, then an elaboration
which lls the space with an individualistic account is useful to round out but
not necessary in principle to establish the claim. Thus the theory does not
strictly speaking require microfoundations.9
But more to the point, and more in need of emphasis, is the converse fact that
even if the theory of history did require microfoundations, neo-classicism is not
well placed to provide them. What neo-classicism does is to build formal
equilibrium models on the basis usually of highly idealized assumptions about
the conditions under which microscopic rational choice occurs, especially the
assumption of perfect information. Here the micro-macro link is already
implicit within the theory. First, individual-level rational choice (of a somewhat
idealized kind) does indeed provide the foundation for (i.e. the explanation of)
an equilibrium conguration. But second, this equilibrium conguration is a
macroscopic entity, since although it is explained by individual choice (which
makes neo-classicism consistent with methodological individualism) it is not
reducible to the choice of any single individual, since the characteristics of the
equilibrium depend in general on the interacting choices of many individuals.
Such models can be immensely clarifying in an abstract way, and of great
polemical advantage to the left in challenging models of the right which
deploy similar idealizations, but they are not very suitable for founding the
theory of history. This is because (i) the structures with which the theory of
history deals are not equilibrium structures, (ii) `historical' i.e. real rational
choice does not take place under ideal conditions, in particular (iii) because
genuine innovation in productive technique which is of course fundamental
to the Marxist theory of history is hard to square with neo-classical assump-
tions. It is arguable that in a world of perfect information, for example, every
alternative production technique is already known, and so genuine innovation
cannot occur.
We are therefore back looking for ways to provide a workable elaboration for
the theory of history.

8
G. A. Cohen, Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence (Oxford, Clarendon, 1978), pp. 2858.
9
See A. Carling, Social Division (London, Verso, 1991), Section 1.2, for one among many
commentaries on the debate.
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Rationality and History Revisited

The rst attempt simply makes social structures themselves (in particular,
relations of production) the object of choice: `the claim is, that, being rational,
people retain and reject relations of production according as the latter do and do
not allow productive improvement to continue'.10
I have dubbed this doctrine Intentional Primacy, since it gives primacy to the
forces over the relations of production in virtue of the way in which the
intention of a relevant actor to improve the forces governs the intention to
transform the relations. This is primacy by means of intention, and primacy of
one intention over another. Cohen and Kymlicka's cited formulation never-
theless requires a careful explication. They say that people oriented towards the
improvement of productive forces have the options either to `retain' or `reject'
relations of production. They are silent about whether people also enjoy the
option of creating relations of production in order to improve the forces. The
latter is certainly what revolutionary socialists have often imagined themselves
to be doing in making revolutions. And if Intentional Primacy is interpreted in
this sense, doubt must be cast upon it by the failure of the Bolshevik experiment
to carry through just such an attempt.
But now suppose that Intentional Primacy is interpreted in the narrower sense
of Cohen and Kymlicka. In this conception it seems that history proposes, in the
sense of creating alternative types of production relations, and `people' dispose,
by selecting among these historical creations the ones which `allow productive
improvement to continue'. It is true that retaining and rejecting production
relations is a more plausible form of historical activity than creating them, since
it can presumably be based more on experience than the revolutionary leap in
the dark, but this gain in historical plausibility has been won at considerable
explanatory cost. For no explanation is oered under this weaker formulation
of how new production relations come into being, and so the theory of history is
signicantly incomplete.11
A second type of relationship between history and rationality treats social
structures as given, but with certain macroscopic tendencies (in particular, a
`law of motion') which can be traced back to the rationality of agents placed in
the typical social roles provided by the structure. In the key application to date,
we have two such structures feudalism and capitalism with laws of motion
tending to technological stagnation and technological development respectively
(one might say, a law of motion contrasted with a law of immotion).12 If as a
result of some prior history these two structures are historically co-present, then
capitalist structures will tend to outcompete feudal structures in the contexts
provided by world markets and the international relations of states.13 Hence

10
G. A. Cohen and W. Kymlicka, `Human nature and social change in the Marxist conception of
history', The Journal of Philosophy, 85(4) (1988), 17191, p. 178.
11
The argument on Intentional Primacy amends A. Carling, `Analytical Marxism and historical
materialism: the debate on social evolution', Science and Society, 57(1), 1993, 3165 in the light of
comments by G. A. Cohen on a draft of the current paper.
12
R. Brenner, `The origins of capitalist development', New Left Review, 104 (1977), 2693.
13
I have argued in addition that this co-presence may be no coincidence, since capitalist
structures may even have arisen almost inevitably from feudal structures, given the demographic
trends of European feudalism. (See `There'll always be an ``England'' ' in Social Division, pp. 625,
and `Analytical Marxism and Historical Materialism', pp. 524). For a conception similar to
Competitive Primacy, see C. Bertram, `International competition as a remedy for some problems in
# Political Studies Association, 1997
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they will come to predominate by a `Darwinian' process of social selection. As

long as the decisive factor in this success is the enhanced technological
capability of the capitalist structures, then we have arrived at a new version of
the Primacy Thesis: Competitive Primacy.
Competitive Primacy is certainly a Marxist theory of history, since it exhibits
a systematic relationship between markets, property systems and levels of
technology: levels of technology determine the fate of property systems in the
context of world markets. More strongly, my view is that it is the Marxian
theory of history in the current state of play. First, it avoids the overweening
demands placed on the cognitive ability and political agency of actors by the
doctrine of International Primacy Competitive Primacy describes a liveable
world, in which history proceeds often by unintended consequences. Second,
there is a good deal of historical evidence bearing on the question, which
requires more careful sifting, but certainly does not rule the theory out, despite
the sniy remarks of prominent sociological commentators.14

Marxian Values and the Equal Opportunity for Welfare

If the rejection of Hegel is a premise of Analytical Marxism on the theory side, its
premise on the political side is a rejection of Lenin. In terms of the scheme above,
Leninism is a relatively low level variant of Marxism, which introduces a
particular technology of power: the proletarian social vehicle becomes eective
through the vanguard party, and the centrally planned economy is the means for
realizing the values of equality and community (the latter in the form of a certain
projection of proletarian solidarity), accompanied by, how shall we put it, a
tendency to de-emphasize the present possibilities of self-realization.15 Although
the rejection of the vanguard party and central planning have been long-standing
themes of Analytical Marxism in particular, these commitments predated the
collapse of Communism the rejections had their nuances.16 More to the point:

historical materialism'. New Left Review, 183 (1990), pp. 11628; and cf. some of the remarks in
P. Railton, `Explanatory asymmetry in historical materialism', Ethics, 97 (1986), 2339. For further
evidence of Cohen's position, see History, Labour and Freedom, pp. 259 and his interview with
Imprints, 1(1) (1996), pp. 1516. It may be that the weaker version of International Primacy is
consistent with Competitive Primacy, since rational-motivated retention or rejection of production
relations is part of the process by which competitively-superior relations are dierentially
reproduced. If I may also be allowed a shameless plug, copies of Imprints: A Journal of Analytical
Socialism are available from 58 Wilmer Drive, Bradford BD9 4AS, UK.
14
Some preliminary consideration of the historical evidence occurs in `Analytical Marxism and
historical materialism', pp. 4952, undiscouraged by Tony Giddens' claim that: ` ``History'' . . .
cannot be comprised within any evolutionary scheme, let alone one that invokes as its primary basis
the expansion of productive forces'. `Commentary on the Debate', Theory and Society 11 (1982),
p. 538. Ellen Wood has taken a similar line from within Marxism see especially Democracy against
Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995),
pp. 1212.
15
Leninism is dened at level 4 on the politics side, since it provides a specic implementation of
the equality/proletariat/class struggle programme. Leninism also lls out the theory side of the
picture in a related way and at a related level, with original contributions on the theory of the state
and on capitalism as an international system (imperialism). Elements of the latter contributions
should surely survive the collapse of political Leninism, since they consolidated the key inter-
national dimension of the theory of history.
16
See especially the moving account in G. A. Cohen, `The Future of a Disillusion', in Self-
ownership, Freedom and Equality (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995), ch. 11, p. 250,
and cf. J. Roemer, A Future for Socialism, p. 124.
# Political Studies Association, 1997
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these rejections left a space open for reconstruction, which dierent authors
would ll in characteristically dierent ways.
Cohen wished above all to defend Marxian values against their most
dangerous contemporary opponent, whom he identied as Robert Nozick.
After some consideration, and at least one false start, Cohen concluded that the
polemical power of Nozick's onslaught on the most cherished projects of the left
derived from the appeal of a postulate that was immanent but not explicit
(`latently salient') in Nozick's work: the postulate of self-ownership.17
Self-ownership has a negative and a positive dimension. The negative
dimension establishes individual rights to protection from invasions of the self
without consent, either physical violence, and coercive invasions of the
body or, presumably, moral invasions libel, verbal harassment, obligatory
psychotherapy and so on. The positive dimension is not, so to speak, defensive
but assertive: it entitles a person to the full fruits of the exercise of all their parts
and powers. Since it is the latter right which has the most controversial
implications for the question at hand, `self-ownership' will be understood
subsequently to include its full positive content.18
Self-ownership has inegalitarian ramications in itself as those with greater
talents claim greater rewards but its inegalitarian potential is considerably
enhanced if it is conjoined with a principle allowing inequality of rights not only
in personal parts and powers, but in and over the external world. Such a
principle is supplied in Nozick's work by an historical entitlement argument,
whereby private property justly acquired can be justly transmitted to create
thereby a justied current allocation. The (only) constraint on initial acquisition
is given by the proviso that no-one be made worse-o by the acquisition and the
only constraint on subsequent transfer by a requirement of fair dealing:
transactions should not be accomplished via force or fraud. The upshot is a
moral recipe for libertarian capitalism: a society which can reect without limit
inequalities in the return to personal qualities, to private property ownership,
and to any combination of the two. Wilt Chamberlain can bank the earnings
from his talent, capitalize his savings, and pass on the proceeds without tax to
his descendants. Two avenues of attack are then made available against Nozick:
challenge either property acquisition (taking self-ownership as read) or
challenge self-ownership (taking as read Nozick's entitlement theory or some
other account of property acquisition).
Cohen begins down the rst avenue, in the company of Hillel Steiner, whose
property this argument has become.19 Since the attempt is to fuse self-
ownership with an egalitarian distribution of worldly goods, the doctrine is
reasonably described as left libertarian. Various points can be made. First, since
it is very likely, given the grubby history of capitalism, that most of actually-
existing capitalist property has been acquired with generous admixtures of force
and fraud at some stage in its career, it is very unlikely that Nozickian principles
justify more than a tiny fraction of observed inequalities in wealth. Although
one would have thought there is much scope at this point for uniting history

17
Self-ownership, Freedom and Equality, p. 38. For an account of the false start, see p. 12.
18
Cohen does not introduce the terms negative and positive self-ownership, but a hint of the
underlying distinction appears in Self-ownership, Freedom and Equality, p. 70, n. 6, as part of an
extensive discussion of the possible degrees of self-ownership.
19
H. Steiner, An Essay on Rights (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1994).
# Political Studies Association, 1997
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directly with politics (as opposed to uniting the theory of history with politics),
Analytical Marxism has not taken up this opportunity at any length, probably
because it looks rather too empirical a question for highfalutin theorists to
tackle directly.
Second is the impact of the Nozickian proviso on initial appropriation, if this
is taken seriously. It implies that, say, William the Conqueror's expropriation of
most of England would have been justied only if it left my forebears and myself
at least as well o as we would otherwise have been. Since the intervening
history presumably includes many generations of ill-rewarded serng and the
like by my predecessors for William's descendants, this is quite a sti test for
William's current descendants in the House of Windsor to full. This conclu-
sion may be strengthened by pointing out that Nozick frames his counterfactual
history rather narrowly, since he assumes that my family's post-Norman fate
can be compared only with the hypothetical continuation of a pre-Norman
situation in which there was open access to common ownership of all the
relevant resources. But this is not the only possibility what if we had decided
to privatize the land ourselves before the Normans took up the opportunity? Or
what if the land were jointly owned by all of us, so that the Normans would have
had to pay a high price for the permission they needed from us for their
appropriation. These will be applications of Norzick's test even harder to pass
than his original application.
Third, it is possible to exert some pressure on the force and fraud clause in
Nozick's theory. I have elsewhere emphasized the classical Marxian theme that
the injustice of capitalism consists in part in the fact that those without property
are compelled on pain of starvation to contract for employment by some
capitalist, even if they are free to choose which one. To the extent that proletar-
ians lack any `reasonable or acceptable' alternatives, they are forced into the
labour contract, and so the ensuing distribution between wages and prot is not
justied according to libertarian criteria.20 It follows, I think, that a person
concerned with liberty should support something like a Van Parijs Basic
Income, covering at least the basic subsistence needs, in order to level the
playing eld of transactions on behalf of those without property. Since most
friends of liberty concede that there is a case for state intervention, nanced by
compulsory taxation, in order to prevent other incursions of force and fraud
into the free market domain (bank robberies, latter-day invasions by William
the Conqueror etc.), they would be hard put to deny the justice of redistributive
taxation designed to fund Basic Income for such a purpose.21 At all events, the
inegalitarian thrust of Nozick's views can be blunted in a variety of ways while
still arming the self-ownership principle: by inspecting the facts of history, by
reconceptualizing the state of nature, or by inquiring more closely into the
justice of process.
But this does not blunt Nozick enough for Cohen, who wishes in addition to
challenge the self-ownership principle, thereby parting company with Steiner,
and, in Cohen's view, to some extent with Marx. The Nozick problematic is
especially problematic for Marxists, according to Cohen, and more so than it is
20
G. A. Cohen, History, Labour and Freedom: Themes from Marx (Oxford, Oxford University
Press, 1988), p. 247; Social Division, Section 6.4.
21
Social Division, p. 366; Van Parijs' own case for Basic Income is of course quite dierent from
this: he believes it would optimize real freedom. See Real Freedom for All: What (if Anything) can
Justify Capitalism? (Oxford, Clarendon, 1995).
# Political Studies Association, 1997
776 Review Section

for your actual liberal, because the very value to which Nozick appeals self-
ownership is the value to which Marxists appeal in order to condemn
capitalist exploitation. This is because the basis of the condemnation is the
unreciprocated expropriation by the capitalist of the fruits of the proletarian's
labour, which is an exercise of the proletarian's parts and powers, properly
belonging to him or her by right under the full self-ownership principle. This is
how and why capitalist prot can be represented as a species of theft, despite the
fact that it is legal under capitalist law presumably because capitalist laws do
not reect proletarian self-ownership in the way that they ought. So part of the
agony of coming to terms with Nozick consists in this view in the agony of
reappraising a value that has been interwoven into the socialist culture of
opposition to capitalism; a value that has been partly responsible for socialism's
historic strength.22
I do not deny the agony, but I do not believe it is quite as agonizing as Cohen
maintains. First, it was widely agreed within Analytical Marxism in the course
of the 1980s debates that exploitation involves unjustied, unequal exchange,
but there remains a good deal of argument both about the reason for the
injustice, and its point of incidence. In particular, Roemer traced the injustice
back to the relevant initial property distribution within his neo-classical
equilibrium framework. Because the distributional outcome (in terms, say, of
labour eort expended respectively by property owners and non-owners) was
built into the initial distribution of property according to his deterministic
models, he seems to have inferred (he has certainly stated) that criteria of justice
only impinge on the initial distribution, and are not to be applied independently
to the outcome of the transactions. (This means, of course, that Roemer is
considering the justice issue within a Nozickian entitlement framework).23
Cohen and I have made the same critical response to this position: Roemer has
elided what is causally fundamental with what is normatively fundamental.24
Although the initial property distribution does indeed determine the outcome,
what makes the outcome unjust may be in part some characteristic of the
outcome: the fact, for example that it violates some general principle of just
distribution, rather than the fact that it arises from a property distribution that
is antecedently unjust. But then this raises the possibility of reading the
outcome-injustice back into the initial distribution: the latter may be unjust
because of its unjust consequences. And this does go beyond the libertarian
framework, because it involves the application of an end-state principle of
justice (to use Nozick's vocabulary).
The question then arises what Marx's views were in this area, and,
independently of this question, what Marx's followers' should be. It is because
Cohen emphasizes the centrality of self-ownership to Marx's moral condemna-
tion of capitalism that he must counsel Marxists to think again, and in going
beyond the libertarian framework, to consider going beyond Marx. I agree that
we should go beyond the libertarian framework, but I am not so sure that this
involves going beyond Marx. My view is that, although the self-ownership theme
22
Self-ownership, Freedom and Equality, ch. 6.
23
Social Division, Section 6.2, and for similar remarks directed against Elster, see M. Lebowitz,
`Is ``Analytical Marxism'' Marxism?', Science & Society, 52(2) (1988), 191214, pp. 20911.
24
Social Division p. 146; Self-ownership, Freedom and Equality p. 2058. It should be noted for
the record that Lebowitz was very close to the same suggestion on his p. 211, without quite
reaching it.
# Political Studies Association, 1997
 Review Section 777

is certainly present in Marx, and even dominant in some discussions (especially in

Capital itself), it sits uneasily beside at least two other principles (evident
especially within the Critique of the Gotha Programme) from which it is never
clearly distinguished in Marx's work. Indeed, I suspect that part of the reason
that Marx felt impelled to write the Critique in the horried tone it adopts is
because socialist followers (especially the architects of the Gotha Programme) had
extrapolated the self-ownership arguments in Capital in ways that Marx neither
intended nor envisaged.25 But neither did Marx achieve a very satisfactory
synthesis of views in his elliptical remarks of the Critique. This makes it an open
question which combination of principles truly expresses his underlying attitude,
even if he had a consistent underlying attitude, which maybe he did not.
The two alternative principles I have in mind are (i) the labour balance
principle and (ii) welfare egalitarianism. The labour balance principle is,
roughly, that in the economic business of life you deserve back what you put
in.26 In the exploitation context, this implies that the unequal exchange is unjust
just because it is unequal, given that another party on a similar plane of moral
entitlement is gaining at your expense. Supercially this may look like the self-
ownership principle, but it is not, rst because it is an end-state principle
(it matches an output distribution of net product with an input distribu-
tion of productive eort among the same population). Second is the
complication arising from dierential skills, whereby personal eort diverges
from productive contribution, since the more skilled can by denition make the
same contribution with less eort.27 The question is then posed whether labour
balance requires reward for contribution or for eort: a self-owning Wilt
Chamberlain is entitled to any entrance fee he can command; a contribution-
balancing Wilt is entitled to whatever share his skill and eort contribute in
combination to the team's success, and an eort-balancing Wilt to that portion
of the team's result which is owed solely to his eort, regardless of his skill.28 It
should be noted that labour balance conceptions are consistent with the
positions adopted by leading left liberals such as Dworkin, because they draw
the moral line in a similar place between talents and skills beyond our control,
for which we do not consequently deserve special reward, and exercises of eort
within some domain of personal responsibility, for which recognition, and
recompense are therefore due.29

25
See especially the withering remarks he addresses to the `Lassallean catchword of the
``undiminished proceeds of labour'' ' in K. Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme (Peking, Foreign
Languages Press, 1976), pp. 811.
26
The individual producer receives back from society after the deductions have been made
exactly what he gives to it' Critique of the Gotha Programme, p. 15. R. J. Arneson has characterized
exploitation similarly as lack of reciprocity: `some persons characteristically benet from social
cooperation without making good-faith eorts to make a reciprocal contribution balancing the
benets they receive'. `Market Socialism and Egalitarian Ethics' in P. Bardhan and J. Roemer (eds),
Market Socialism: The Current Debate (New York, Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 290.
27
Marx recognizes this point when he says `one man is superior to another physically or mentally
and so supplies more labour in the same time, or can work for a longer time; and labour, to serve as
a measure, must be dened by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of
measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labour.' Critique of the Gotha
Programme, p. 16.
28
Writing this reminded me of the selection policy of the English national soccer squad, which
would make the principle very easy to apply: the moment any player shows unusual skill, replace
him with a player who only shows unusual eort.
29
The Future of Socialism, p. 12.
# Political Studies Association, 1997
778 Review Section

Both labour balance and self-ownership are principles originally addressed to

the situation of the able bodied individual without anterior labour commit-
ments: historically no doubt the able-bodied male. Neither self-ownership nor
labour balance have much to say to the plight of the needy or the already-
committed carers, who cannot use their ownership of their selves to any, or to
further, productive eect, nor receive recompense for work they are unable for
whatever reason to perform. To cater to these situations, there must be an
independent compensation principle of welfare egalitarian tendency `to each
according to need'.30 But this can be brought together with labour balance
theory, since both the need branch and the eort branch of the combined
principle can be represented as welfare-restoring compensation, either for
special needs, or for extra eort.31 One arrives then at Roemer's most recent
formulation of the socialist equality principle: equal opportunity for welfare,
realized at the maximum level.32
It is because most Analytical Marxists seem now to have aligned themselves
with something like this position a position held in common with many left
liberals that the question has been raised whether there are any distinctively
Marxist, or indeed socialist, egalitarian values.33 I am not sure that there are,
and I am not sure that it matters very much if there are.34 Quite the reverse if
only these values could become inscribed in general political discourse, how
much more healthy the society would become. But this judgement about the
content of the egalitarian value abstracts from the larger context of the Marxist
discussion, and this diers from the context of the left liberal discussion in two
signicant respects. First, equality jostles in the Marxist tradition with other
values especially community (which tends to counter the individualism of the
liberal discussion), and self-realization (which tends to counter the liberalism of
it, since it entails a specic conception of the good life: poetry is denitely
referred to pushpin in the classical Marxist moral universe).35 Second, the
context of the discussion includes the higher level connections with sociology
and politics that help to dene the Marxian programme. Discussion of values is
not only about values, but about the coalitions and institutions which might
deliver them. Consideration of this issue leads to the last piece of the Analytical
Marxist jigsaw.

30
`Further, one worker is married, another not; one has more children than another, and so on
and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labour, and hence an equal share in the social
consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and
so on. To avoid all these defects, right instead of being equal would have to be unequal'. Critique of
the Gotha Programme, p. 17.
31
I construe the last sentence in the previous quote in the following sense: in order to compensate
both producers and their dependants appropriately, the rights which producers derive from their
work must be adjusted to take account of the needs of their dependants. Hence reward for work is
no longer strictly proportional to eort.
32
`I believe socialists want equality of opportunity for (1) self-realization and welfare, (2)
political inuence, and (3) social status.' The Future of Socialism, p. 11. I note that this welfarist
proposal seems inconsistent with the historical entitlement position Roemer still takes (so far as I
know) vis-a-vis exploitation, and with an earlier claim that `self-ownership of productive talents
need not be denied to construct a convincing argument against the massive inequalities existing in
the capitalist world today'. Free to Lose (London, Radius, 1988), p. 174.
33
E.g. by Roemer, in The Future of Socialism, p. 15.
34
It is presumably up to those socialists scandalized by this type of declaration to state clearly
what their non-liberal egalitarian values are.
35
R. J. Arneson, `Market Socialism and Egalitarian Ethics', pp. 2916.
# Political Studies Association, 1997
 Review Section 779

Socialism and the Market

The space of possible social forms may well be triangulated by state, market and
community. State is collective and hierarchical; community collective and
reciprocal; market contractual and individual. In practice, any organization for
a complex society is likely to involve admixtures of all three forms, so we are not
in the business of eliminating one or more forms entirely, but of changing the
balance between all three of them in certain directions, in respect of dierent
areas of social life.
As far as the economy is concerned, the rejection of centralized state socialism
implies that, unless a large economy is unrealistically conceived as a single giant
co-operative, the economy must consist in a number of relatively autonomous
units joined by market relations, but possibly subject to external regulation or
constraint. The source of the external constraint might be centralized and state-
like or (at least in principle) decentralized and communal. Moreover (a fractal
theme) the relatively autonomous subunits might look in turn either state-like
(hierarchical and managerial) or communal (workers' control) or resemble a
locally democratic combination of state and community (managers elected by
but not necessarily from the work force).
There is a source of some confusion, and dispute, about which of these
possible congurations qualies for the name market socialism.36 The deni-
tional problem arises whenever socialism is identied with particular institu-
tions, which, to the extent that they exclude markets, thereby exclude market
socialism. Part of the eect (indeed, part of the purpose) of concentrating anew
on the character of socialist values is to hold open again the relationship
between values and institutions. The question of market socialism then ceases to
be a question of denitions, and becomes a question of means and ends: can the
market play a role in the realization of socialist values?37 On the one hand, one
might say that if it cannot, so much the worse for socialism (given the Soviet
experience); on the other hand, unregulated capitalism, as the purest expression
of the market principle, is well known to shatter equality, distort self-realization
and destroy community. So, so much the worse for socialist values. To nd
some room for a socialist politics between these considerations, it must be
argued that the value-infringing eects of capitalism derive from features apart
from its systematic use of market relations. In particular, that it is the property
system of capitalism which is to blame, and that this can be reformed suciently
to enable the power of markets to be harnessed to socialist ends, or, at least, to
prevent non-market socialist aims from being subverted by free market forces.38
The need to consider the relationship of socialist institutions to markets
receives a powerful boost from Marxism's anti-utopian commitment: it seems to
me that Marxian socialists now have more reason than non-Marxian socialists
to take the market seriously, in a reversal of the time-honoured pattern. If, as
the positive experience of capitalism and the negative experiences of feudalism
and the Soviet Union suggest, the market acts as a forcing house of innovation
36
See the papers collected in J. Le Grand and S. Estrin (eds), Market Socialism (Oxford,
Clarendon, 1989).
37
`I view the choice of property rights over rms and other resources to be an entirely
instrumental matter; possibilities for organizing such rights should be evaluated by socialists
according to the likelihood that they will induce the three equalities with which socialists are
concerned.' The Future of Socialism, p. 23.
38
Cf. The Future of Socialism, p. 126.
# Political Studies Association, 1997
780 Review Section

in ways that non-market social forms nd dicult to match, and if, as Com-
petitive Primacy and the Marxist theory of history suggests, dynamic viability of
social forms depends on their relative tendencies towards innovation, then a
viable set of socialist institutions will have to match more or less the techno-
logical dynamism of its largely capitalist environment, which in the present state
of knowledge will most likely require the harnessing of the market. `More
specically', as Roemer puts the point, `can competition between business
enterprises, leading to innovation, be induced without a regime of private
property in the means of production?' 39
Roemer's hopeful armative answer to this question relies on an observation,
some conservation and at least one innovation. The observation is that `the
market . . . does not perform its good deeds unaided; it is supported by a myriad
cast of institutional characters that have evolved painstakingly over time, and in
a variety of ways, in various market economies. [A Future for Socialism's]
central argument is that these institutional solutions to the design problems of
capitalism also suggest how the design problems of socialism may be solved in a
market setting'.40 These institutional solutions show, rst, that capitalist
dynamism does not depend on the unique talents of individual entrepreneurs
folk who can allegedly be induced to give of their talents only by a highly
unequal system of private property in their corporate creations and second,
that corporations resolve a range of principal-agent problems of the type that
would face the writers of any socialist constitution.41
Roemer's conservationism arises because he wants to change prevailing
capitalist solutions to principal-agent problems as little as is necessary to bring
about a movement towards socialism, and as much as is possible without
sacricing eciency.42 Since, in his view, `considerations of eciency pretty
much determine the distribution of wages among workers', this implies the
retention of the labour market, and a large portion of the conventional
managerworker relationship, with its inherently inegalitarian consequences in
terms both of autonomy and reward. But, since, on the other hand, `the
distribution of prots' is `not so determine[d]' by eciency considerations, his
positive proposals centre on a new construction of managerial control, to make
the general public in eect egalitarian stockholders of all major corporations.43
39
The Future of Socialism, p. 45.
40
The Future of Socialism, p. 4, and for supporting argument see especially W. Lazonick, Business
Organization and the Myth of the Market Economy (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991).
41
A `principal-agent' problem is the label given by economists to the age-old problem of getting
other people to do what you want them to do when you are unable to breath down their necks the
whole time: the problem of, for example, shareholders (qua owners) in relation to managers; or
managers in relation to workers.
42
The Future of Socialism, p. 51.
43
The Future of Socialism, p. 120. `I nd it useful to dene socialism not as a system in which
there is, simply, public ownership, but as a system in which there are institutional guarantees that
aggregate prots are distributed more or less equally in the population.' J. Roemer, `Can There Be
Socialism after Communism?' in Bardhan and Roemer, Market Socialism, p. 89 (original emphasis).
Roemer's proposal is roughly in the centre of the range he considers (ch. 6), which go from the left
(The economy of labour managed rms variously envisaged by J. Dreze, M. Fleurbaey and
T. Weisskopf) to the right (F. Block's proposals for `capitalism without class power' and J. Cohen
and J. Rogers `associative democracy'). The problem with the former set of proposals is that
external nancing constraints might place labour-controlled rms in much the same position as
Roemer's conventionally-managed ones. The problem with the latter set is that they envisage such
minor alterations to basic property rights that it is dicult to see how they qualify as socialist
proposals, even if we want to be denitionally relaxed.
# Political Studies Association, 1997
 Review Section 781

The innovation consists in the mechanism for guaranteeing that stock-

ownership remains egalitarian. The proposal is, in eect, to sequester the stock
market. Each citizen will be issued with a per capita share of national (or world?)
corporate stock in the form of coupons given at the age of majority which can be
traded on the stock market but neither bequeathed nor sold for cash. Citizens
derive cash dividends from their coupon holdings during life, but the coupons
revert to the national (or international?) treasury on death. The fact that the
coupon market is a real market accomplishes `two of the three functions of a
capitalist stock market: the movement of a rm's stock is a signal to banks and
citizens about how well the rm is expected to perform, and the market allows
citizens to choose how to bear risk. It does not perform the third function, of
raising capital, which is here provided by banks.' 44 Banks are retained in this
model rather than replaced by direct state investment because of the need for
rms to be run under a harder budget constraint (as opposed to the notorious
soft budget constraints of the Communist economies). But the existence of
banks gives rise to new principal-agent problems, arising in the relationship of
the socialist public to corporate management, possibly mediated, or compli-
cated, by public-bank and bank-management agency problems. These problems
will be solved either, as indicated, by the action of the coupon stock market (the
Anglo-American solution) or by bank supervision of rms, backed by bankers'
professionalism and pressure from their own coupon holders (a socialist variant
of the Japanese capitalist solution). But the fact that the coupon market is
insulated from the rest of the money economy, and constrained to remain
roughly egalitarian (with egalitarianism renewed in each generation), means that
no capitalist class can grow up to monopolize society's wealth and distort
economic growth by settling too easily for investments which create public bads
like pollution.
Despite the concessions Roemer has deliberately made to forms of
organization forged under capitalism, and the opportunities for inequalities
which still exist under his proposal (including at least the following: variable
wage rates, variable returns from more or less advisable coupon investment
decisions, variable organizational power), Roemer defends `some variety of
market socialism' as the best `next step from capitalism for approaching the
long-term socialist goal'.45 In this perspective, the market must at least be
tolerated in the short-term, pending some future convergence to the traditional
socialist ideal either more equality, or more likely, more community, in which,
as Cohen puts it, persons are motivated not `on the basis of impersonal cash
reward' but `on the basis of commitment to one's fellow beings'.46 Although
Roemer quotes Cohen to this eect, and is able to do so without inconsistency
(given the distinction he has introduced between the short and the long-term
objectives of socialism), I am not so sure that dierences in attitude to the
market are quite so easily accommodated. Earlier he had said in a similar
context that `any complex society must use markets in order to produce and
distribute the goods that people need for their self-realisation and welfare'. 47
44
The Future of Socialism, p. 76.
45
The Future of Socialism, p. 118.
46
The Future of Socialism, p. 118, citing `The Future of a Disillusion'.
47
The Future of Socialism, p. 27. Emphasis added. The grip of the neo-classical imagination is
also evident in the way that all non-market interventions are still seen by Roemer as compensations
for generic market failures (see p. 21).
# Political Studies Association, 1997
782 Review Section

That is a fairly denite statement. The only reason one might expect it not to be
true into an indenite future is if one expected some change to intervene making
the conditions for its current truth no longer applicable at some point in the
future. What change might that be?
Perhaps society might become less complex, but that is not easy to envisage,
and is in any case not part of the conventional socialist, as opposed to the
anarchist, vision. The classical answer is that technological change promoted by
the market renders the market obsolete, but Cohen has ruled that out on
environmental grounds, quite apart from the relevance (once again) of the
Soviet experience of the attempt to supersede the market.48 Perhaps then we can
expect people to change into nicer beings, but Roemer pours scorn on this idea
at most opportunities: `I do not base a blueprint for a socialist future on the
evolution of the seless individual'.49 Either, then, one has reproduced the old
Marxist sleight of hand, in which the utopian element in the programme the
transformation of personalities and motivations is despatched to a comfort-
ably distant and unknowable future, or one is committed to showing, and
encouraging, the tendencies which will create conducive social relationships in
the midst of the existing historical development. Partly, this will involve state
interventions of standard kinds, which Roemer's market socialism does
retain especially the creation of a welfare state to help compensate for the
unreformed vicissitudes of the labour market, and investment planning, which
the non-capitalist climate and the new structure of bank supervision would both
facilitate. Partly, the recognition that capitalist success has depended on the
ability to shield individuals and institutions from market forces raises the
possibility that communal forms of productive organization could also
survive.50 But there remain two 64-dollar questions prompted by Marxist
theory and left unresolved by this debate. First, can an adequate rate of
technological change be sustained by more inclusive productive organizations,
without at the same time inducing the levels of stress, insecurity and alienation it
is socialism's mission to dispel? Second, as Roemer admits of all the market
socialist proposals he considers: `none of them is specic with respect to the
process of transition from here to there'.51 It is not just a question of harnessing
the market; it is a question of harnessing the progressive forces which will
harness the market.

A Future for Marxism

Socialist values are not going to go away: equality and community reect the
ancestral conditions of the human race, which is probably adapted to observe
them; self-realization is a possibility which may be wired into the facility which
gives us the power to live in groups. The drive to contain capitalism will always
be there; and to replace it with systems of greater justice and more concern
for human welfare. So there will always be a place for Marxism while class
societies endure. What is called Analytical Marxism has already made a signal

48
The environmental argument is in Self-ownership, Freedom and Equality, ch. 5.
49
The Future of Socialism, p. 116.
50
Cf. Business Organization and the Myth of the Market Economy, pp. 7086 and pp. 26770.
51
The Future of Socialism, p. 53.
# Political Studies Association, 1997
 Review Section 783

contribution to the theory of Marxism, and the impact of this contribution will
continue to be felt in diverse ways for a long time to come. But whether or not
Analytical Marxism will count nally as a Marxism depends on it making the
kind of connection between its theory of society and a politics of emancipation
characteristic of a true critical theory. That verdict remains in the balance.

# Political Studies Association, 1997