Defending Historical Materialism against G. A. Cohen: critical engagement with "Karl Marx's Theory of History"

Introduction

Admittedly, the title chosen for this critical assessment of G. A. Cohen’s landmark work on historical materialism is slightly misleading. Therefore, some qualifications are essential in order to set clear the parameters of this text. Firstly, this is not a defense of orthodox Marxism against any supposed distortions and watering down by its followers. It is a positive fact that numerous tenets and propositions proclaimed by Marx himself have now been firmly challenged within the Marxist scholarship. Cohen expressed very aptly the incoherence of labeling scientific socialism as Marxism, for this “misassimilates it to a religious rather than to a scientific paradigm” (Cohen 2000, xxvii). Consequently, as far as historical materialism is concerned, no one - including Marx himself - can claim a monopoly over its application while trying to explain the historical development of mankind. Hence, Cohen’s attempt at refashioning the inherited theory is as valid as anyone’s (Cohen 2000, xxviii).

The theoretical application of historical materialism within this paper is itself at great odds not only with the orthodox reading of Marx, but also with the much larger school of Marxist thought. Above all, despite the potential variations of its definition, the idea of class consciousness is firmly dismissed. The reading of historical materialism proposed here no longer considers social classes as the key historical protagonists. Unfortunately, the contemporary Marxist scholarship is still largely held hostage to such a class-centric approach. Just to give an example, Alex Callinicos insists that the modern proletariat, being the exploited class, has an interest “to accomplish social revolution” (Callinicos 2004, 69). Hence, it would be absolutely inappropriate to single out G. A. Cohen for criticism in this regard. Nevertheless, it is indeed the case that within the book under critical review here the revolutionary move beyond capitalism is based upon the proletariat becoming “sufficiently class-conscious and organised” (Cohen 2000, 204). This text proposes a different genesis of social revolution(s), contrary to the one where “the means whereby society is transformed is class conflict” (Cohen 2000, 285). This will arguably contribute to the search for “better answers to questions about the longevity of capitalism and the viability of socialism” (Cohen 2000, xxv).

This leads us to the second qualification. Inevitably, such an impactful work as Cohen’s “Karl Marx’s Theory of History” has received a lot of criticism, much of which is justified. For example, Brian Leiter focuses his critique on the nature of functionalist explanations (Leiter 2002, 1142). Sayers, for his part, attacks the very undialectical nature of analytical approach (Sayers 1984). Nevertheless, it would be wrong to assume from the title of this paper that historical materialism must be defended against Cohen more urgently than against any other scholar. Quite on the contrary - it is to his credit that his book has been chosen here as the object of critical appraisal. Apart from the general high quality of the book, one of its key strengths is Cohen’s notion - shared by this paper - that the motor of all historical social change has been the incessant development of the productive forces. While this already conflicts with many other critical reviews of the book in question, delving deeper into this debate is beyond the scope of our aims here. Whether one accepts Cohen’s Development Thesis or not, for the purposes of this text it suffices that it is empirically unquestionable that this social productivity has been increasing throughout history and still is today (Cohen 2000, 305).

The final qualification is the following. As stated above, this critical engagement with Cohen’s magnum opus is based upon an alternative reading of historical materialism. More concretely, a different explanation of how the social reality conditions the social consciousness of individuals is proposed. This issue is paramount here, for it is impossible to argue against Callinicos’s claim that human “action is to be explained intentionally, by ascribing to actors beliefs and desires that caused them to act in the way they did” (Callinicos 2004, xix). Cohen likewise captures perfectly the significance of this aspect when he states that “to claim that capitalism must break down and give way to socialism is not yet to show how behaviours of individuals lead to that result” (Cohen 2000, xxiv).

Arguably, social sciences in general - hence not only Marxists, and, to be sure, by no means G. A. Cohen alone - largely mistreat the question of social consciousness. Consequently, no matter how insightful one’s study is, whether one chooses an analytical approach or not, erroneous conceptions of social consciousness will lead to unsatisfactory social explanations. As a result, the content of this text will not go beyond the relation between the material world and the human mind. Debates over what Marx said and what he meant by that, discussions concerning the utility of functional explanations, or inquiries whether the means of production should be considered as part of the economic structure or not - all of this does not concern us.

To sum up, the overall goal of this paper is to elaborate and to defend an alternative explanation of historical social development within the framework of historical materialism. This goal will be pursued by engaging critically with G. A. Cohen’s defense of Marx’s theory of historical development. Again, far from singling the author out for criticism, his work serves here as a platform for a wider critique of what this text considers as a critical flaw within the Marxist scholarship in general. This flaw concerns the issue of social consciousness and its historical evolution.

On social consciousness

One of the virtues of G. A. Cohen’s approach is his belief that “any satisfactory explanation must be an empirical one” (Cohen 2000, 5). Consequently, the most appropriate way to begin our exposition of what social consciousness is and how it operates is to move directly into the empirical world. In his later edition, published in 2000, Cohen rightly criticises both Marx and the Marxist tradition for undervaluing the potential of such social manifestations as national or ethnic bonds (Cohen 2000, 347-349). Moreover, Callinicos notes that it has “become commonplace to the point of tedium to say that historical materialism ignores, or at least is incapable of explaining national conflict” (Callinicos 2004, 179). It has even been claimed that “the theory of nationalism represents Marxism's great historical failure” (Anderson 2006, 3). It is ironic, therefore, that after having dealt quite extensively with the issue of false consciousness, the forefathers of historical materialism do not seem to have grasped that modern nationalism is merely one of its features. Apparently, this failure might have been due to their focus on ideologies largely as the products of material class interests. Callinicos perpetuates such a narrow view and considers the contents of the human mind as the “attempts to give conscious expression to the needs of agents occupying particular positions within the relations of production” (Callinicos 2004, 173). Cohen accepts this line of reasoning at least partially, and - while claiming to be in sync with Marx’s position - proposes a false division of social consciousness into what stems from the “material needs of humanity and the interests of particular classes” and the remaining “free spiritual production” (Cohen 2000, 378). As stated in the introduction, this text dismisses the class-centric perspective and considers the contents of the human mind to be general reflections of the material social reality. Apart from this, social consciousness corresponds here with Engels’s false consciousness, for “the real motives impelling” the members of society towards particular beliefs “remain unknown” to them (Engels 1893).

Let us return to the modern nations. If we take any single specimen, for instance the Hungarians, their political embodiment today is modern Hungary. Neither this modern state, nor this modern nation itself would exist if there were no individuals who considered themselves to be Hungarians. As stated by Callinicos, “it is a necessary condition of the existence of a nation that its members believe that it exists” (Callinicos 2004, 154-155). Four or five hundred years ago, for example, none of these two entities existed precisely for this reason (Galbraith 1941, 114). While the concept of a Hungarian nation might have existed, it had a completely different meaning from what it stands for today. An aristocrat from Bratislava, for instance, who we would identify as Slovakian today, would have been considered as its member, whereas some poor peasants from the Buda surroundings - Hungarians by today’s standard - would not have been included within this feudal Hungarian nation (Bakke 1999, 140). The same configuration applies to the feudal Polish nation (Callinicos 2004, 248-249).

Here we can already clearly discern two distinct social consciousnesses. The feudal monarchies would often have individuals from quite distant lands as their sovereigns, yet the populations hardly opposed such origins of their kings. Would the Polish today accept a Swede, a Frenchman, or a Hungarian as the president of the Polish Republic? The historical moment when the British royal family had to begin obscuring their German origins was a good indication of a completed ideological shift away from the feudal mindset. Also, “the use of the mother tongue was not yet a criterion of national feeling” within the feudal social consciousness (Galbraith 1941, 124). Would the English citizens be content today if French was again the working language in Westminster? Or, would the modern Lithuanians accept the official state documents being written in a Slavic language, as it was once the case?

Furthermore, the feudal urban environment constituted yet another form of identity that is now obsolete. For instance, the city of Lyon had received the privilege of holding its own army, whereas the battalions of the royal army would essentially be considered as foreign (Souriac 2015). Could we imagine such a duality between the inhabitants of Lyon and the modern French army in our days? Feudal Colchester or Ipswich, to name a just a few, are examples of towns that had their own founding myths serving the contemporary political ends (Rosser 1996, 8-12). Today these can only play a symbolic role, whereas it is their modern equivalents, namely the national myths, that hold this political weight. For instance, the seven tribes led by Arpad in the case of Hungary. Moreover, the feudal city walls and protective tariffs have been superseded by the modern national borders and customs. Clearly, the feudal social consciousness identified each urban community as a separate nation. And it is essential to note here, when comparing different historical conceptions of the world, that neither is correct or incorrect. Feudal social relations were reflected in the contemporary minds in a particular way, and as these relations evolved, they were bound to reshape the social consciousness. The world of small scale artisan production - where the scope of the market of an individual unit hardly went beyond the borders of their towns - created the feudal city-states. The subsequent emergence of manufacture and industrial production widened the scope of the market of a single production unit, and thereby radically changed the social relations. This, in turn, widened the political horizon of the populations and enlarged the boundaries of what Benedict Anderson has described as the “imagined communities” (Anderson 2006, 13). Such is, arguably, the connection between the “social existence” and “the general process of social, political and intellectual life” that it determines (Marx, 1859). Therefore, G. A. Cohen is wrong to assert, in relation to nationalism, that “the phenomenon of attachment to ways of life that give meaning to life is not materialistically explainable” (Cohen 2000, 355).

Three points must be noted in relation to the above exposition. First, as is the standard case with false consciousness, even when one finds out the exact material basis that generates it, the reflection itself is not abolished. As Cohen put it, “a man who can explain mirages, does not cease to see them” (Cohen 2000, 401). In this regard it is very odd to find Callinicos seemingly disappointed that the workers tend to “accept their national identification” (Callinicos 2004, 251-252). All of us will be forced to operate within the framework of modern nationalist ideology until the social relations behind it cease to exist. This leads to the second point, which is that since modern nations have not always existed, there is no basis for expecting this modern nationalist consciousness to stay with humanity forever. The reading of historical materialism offered within this paper provides the material basis for its eventual supersession.

Thirdly, and most importantly, there are some features of social consciousness that are universal within the society. A person working as a fitness trainer might believe that the most important virtues in life are dedication and motivation, for instance, while a photographer might challenge that by putting forward patience and inspiration. A member of a small rural community might strongly disagree with an inhabitant of a large metropolis over the relationship people should strive for vis-a-vis nature. And it could be the case, indeed, that individuals under a wage-contract might share a particular common social perspective. However, within the so-called developed world there is an overwhelming consensus over the fact that humanity is divided into modern nations, or, for instance, that burning women for supposed witchcraft would be a stupid thing to do. But this has not always been the case. It is critical to take into consideration the fact that every philosopher of our days, every academic, G. A. Cohen included, as well as every single reader of this text - had he or she lived during the classical antiquity, he or she would have considered slavery as absolutely normal. Had they lived in the 14th or 15th century, they would have accepted the contemporary social inequalities as part of the divine social order. Or, during the 17th century, for instance, they would have accepted the political inequality between the different sexes.

Social consciousness is not a product of a purely autonomous thinking process performed by every individual, even if we experience it as such. To answer Cohen’s question of “how much of social consciousness is controlled by material and economic existence” (Cohen 2000, 377), there is nothing within the human mind that is not the reflection of his social being. As is stated by Sayers, “ideas and ideals have no autonomy from social life” (Sayers 2003, 107). And a significant part of this social life is shared universally by the entire population. If this was not so, one would have to find a plausible explanation for the diverse and numerous social consensuses throughout history. For instance, why is it that during a particular epoch the utilization of women as social currency via arranged marriages encountered no opposition at all, while a few centuries later such historical practices are universally condemned as having infringed upon personal liberty? If social consciousness was simply a personal affair, we would have had suffragists and suffragettes throughout the middle ages, while today certain political forces would be advocating for the reestablishment of papal excommunication. G. A. Cohen, however, holds a completely different notion of social consciousness:

But before an ideology is received or broadcast it has to be formed. And on that point there are traces in Marx of a Darwinian mechanism, a notion that thought-systems are produced in comparative independence from social constraints, but persist and gain social life following a filtration process which selects those well adapted for ideological service. Thus it is true but in one respect unimportant that the idea of communism has been projected time and again in history, for only when the idea can assist a viable social purpose, as it can now, by figuring in the liberation of the proletariat, will it achieve social significance. There is a kind of ‘ideological pool’ which yields elements in different configurations as social requirements change. (Cohen 2000, 291)

If the word Communism was uttered during the 17th century, for instance, its contents were very different from what this term embodied in the early 20th century, just as the latter was different from our contemporary conception of it. We have already touched this aspect when discussing the historical variations of national identities. To add further examples, today’s supporters of monarchy do not have the same conception of this institution as the feudal societies, whereby our contemporary royal families have merely symbolic roles to play. Likewise, 19th century feminism is very different from the one in the early 21st century. And while Cohen is aware that the meaning of the term liberalism “varies across space and time”, he does not explain these variations as distinct mental reflections representing divergent social realities, but rather as the adaptation of this idea to its “possible social use” (Cohen 2000, 291). By this social use, as well as by the social constraints mentioned above, the author simply refers to the class struggle. However, if by class struggle one implies the direct relations between the capitalists and the workers, it by no means exhausts the totality of social relations. Cohen provides the example of the Battersea Power Station, whereby “it is larger than you, and probably older too, but those relations between it and you are not production relations” (Cohen 2000, 34-35). This might be so. However, the relation between a factory and a citizen is still a social relation, even if this person is not directly employed there. A society characterised by a larger amount of less productive units of production experiences different social relations from when the production facilities are more concentrated and have greater individual productive capacities. And such differences in social relations constituted the material basis for the historically distinctive mental reflections, respectively the classical 19th century liberalism and the subsequent Keynesian corporatist consensus. The social classes and their opposing material interests played a very limited role here, if any at all.

After having shown that the contents of the same idea change historically alongside the evolution of the material social relations, it is clear that all attempts to implant social consciousness with certain default and timeless ideas are untenable. Hence, it is problematic for Cohen to suggest that “human beings on the whole prefer freedom to its opposite” (Cohen 2000, 204), or that “the sense of oppression and injustice” is “always latent in the underclass” (Cohen 2000, 293). There is no inherent conception of freedom within human beings, and the notion of what it entailed has been shifting throughout history. As noted by Sayers, “current standards of what is human and worthy of mankind, or inhuman and degrading, are in part at least a product of current conditions” (Sayers 2003, 126). To respond to Cohen’s reference to Engels that “ideas of equality and rectification of injustice are perennial” (Cohen 2000, 293), if equality proclaimed by the French Revolution had the same content that it has today, we would not have had to wait until the 20th century for women to get voting rights. One must never impose our contemporary social consciousness upon the actors of the bygone centuries. Callinicos appears to commit this error when he claims that “slaves undoubtedly have an interest in overthrowing their masters, but have generally been unable to do so” until the onset of the French Revolution (Callinicos 2004, 68). It would be absurd to assume that women, for instance, have always been eager to be liberated from the patriarchal norms of the society, and yet they had been suffering throughout the ages - only to gain their autonomy recently. The social position of women during the previous centuries looks horrible and unjustifiable merely from our current perspective. But back in the day, to borrow from Sayers’s treatment of aristocratic attitudes, this position was “self-evident and right” (Sayers 2003, 142).

The slaves may have revolted, the peasants may have produced uprisings, and the workers may have organised strikes and manifestations. But this did not necessarily entail challenging, respectively, the institution of slavery, the feudal relations, or the capitalist production relations. No social institution would have ever come into existence had the society not regarded it for a certain period of time as rational and appropriate. Accepting the timeless conceptions of freedom or justice leads one to the Hegelian belief that it is our “happy fate to be living fairly close to the consummation” of the emancipation project (Cohen 2000, 9). Hence, Sayers is correct in rejecting “the very notion of a final human end” (Sayers 2003, 163). Ironically, by treating social consciousness as static Cohen falls into the Hegelian notion he himself criticises, which even allows him to explain the submission of the slaves by their lack of intelligence and culture (Cohen 2000, 158). Unfortunately, it also informs his approach to the question of the Communist revolution, which is the focus of the concluding part of this paper.

Conclusion

So far we have dismissed the treatment of social consciousness as static, autonomous, and reacting upon this world within the framework of seemingly timeless rationality. Cohen’s belief in general “human rationality and intelligence” is the basis of his functional explanation of historical materialism (Cohen 2000, 159, 249, 279). Consequently, he can not grasp the genesis of social change, whereby the constantly evolving social consciousness makes what hitherto has been socially acceptable no longer so. As Callinicos notes, the author’s main concern is “whether it is rational to participate in revolution” (Callinicos 2004, 68). However, there were times when human sacrifice was considered as rational, as well as purchasing indulgences from the Church. So if Cohen himself supports the idea of socialist revolution, it is not due to any ahistorical rationality on his part, but merely as a result of his mind already successfully reflecting the contradictory social reality (Sayers 2003, 108). Nevertheless, the author explains the fact that capitalism is still intact by the dangers, as well as “costs and difficulties of carrying through a socialist transformation”, for the workers are not “helpless dupes of bourgeois ideology” or “so uninformed as to be unaware of the size of the socialist project” (Cohen 2000, 244-245).

Contrary to what is implied by Cohen, the transition between different modes of production does not proceed in the same fashion as choosing the best jacket on a rainy day (Cohen 2000, 328, 334). As noted by Sayers, “for Marx, socialism is not an alternative form of society” (Sayers 1984, 7). The workers are not customers that are trying to pick, on a functional basis, the economic system which is best adapted for further economic development. Cohen, however, seems to portray the revolution as the result of such a conscious historical decision, whereby “for efficiency and good order, production relations require the sanction of property relations. Hence men fight, successfully, to change the law so that it will legitimate powers they either have or perceive to be within their grasp, and lawmakers alter the law to relieve actual or potential strain between it and the economy” (Cohen 2000, 231).

This text has dismissed the class-based explanation of historical change. The transition beyond capitalism is not about the proletarians defeating the capitalists in a historical battle. It is not a question of structural limitations and “organizational, ideological and material” capacities to revolt, as implied by Callinicos (Callinicos 2004, 68). Cohen also argues that “capitalist society propagates and reinforces ignorance of power, whenever it projects an image of workers as incapable of collective self-organisation” (Cohen 2000, 244-245). Rather, the proper question is the following: how long until the society as a whole no longer believes capitalism to be rational and justified? To borrow from Marx, “from the standpoint of a higher economic form of society, private ownership of the globe by single individuals will appear quite as absurd as the private ownership of one man by another” (Sayers 2003, 123). This concerns the general social consciousness which is in constant evolution alongside the ever developing social productive forces.

Consequently, the revolutionary transition is also not about people finding out, understanding, or learning something that they had not grasped before. Cohen demonstrates such a naive understanding by claiming that to become revolutionaries the workers have to “become apprised of the truths of Marxist science” (Cohen 2000, 404-405). Callinicos holds a similar view, with the “great class battles” being considered as part of the “learning processes” whereby the proletariat may overcome the “‘dual consciousness’ characteristic of the Western working class, which combines both a sense of class antagonism and the pragmatic acceptance of capitalist society” (Callinicos 2004, 262). This inevitably gives the intellectuals like himself a very significant role to play in the matter, for the workers need “the minority of revolutionary socialists” to guide them and to assure the “theoretical clarity” (Callinicos 2004, 264-265).

To sum up, the abstract formula of social change could be the following. Up till point A the society considers women, for instance, to be unequal to men, while from point B onwards there is an overwhelming consensus over the equality between the sexes. The interval between A and B is the transitional period wherein the political battles over women rights are being fought. However, it would be wrong to describe social progress as a battle of ideas, for a battle could go either way. This text argues that as long as the material economic development continues, social progress will irreversibly move forward despite any temporary setbacks or reactionary waves. This is the result of the social consciousness being the mental reflection of the material social world, whereby the evolution of the latter makes every passing generation ever more repulsed by the social status quo. This is also the reason why the most reactionary person today would seem more progressive to us than the most progressive person from a bygone era. As far as the abolition of capitalism is concerned, one of the tasks of radical scholarship today would be to try to determine via potential indications how far the global society is within the transitional period towards Communism.

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