Analytical Marxism

Analytical Marxism is a movement within Marxist theory and in various branches of social science and philosophy that seeks to investigate and develop some standard Marxist substantive claims using the techniques and methods of conventional social science and philosophy. Specifically, analytical Marxism uses the techniques of conceptual analysis associated with analytical philosophy and methods associated with standard neoclassical economics. The movement had its origins in the publication by G. A. Cohen of Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence, in 1977; in critiques of Cohen's work by Jon Elster and others; and in the publication by John E. Roemer of Analytical Foundations of Marxian Economic Theory in 1981. The movement has no institutional expression, as such, but for many years, a group known as the September Group, which included the leading analytical Marxists along with other philosophers and social scientists, met annually, and much of the work that is usually thought of as analytical Marxism emerged from that group.

Analytical Marxism represents a break with conventional Marxist theorizing precisely in its rejection of the view that there is a profound methodological divide between Marxism and bourgeois social science. Indeed, it represents the exact opposite tendency to that of the Hungarian Marxist Georg Lukacs, who famously argued in his book History and Class Consciousness that the distinctive feature of Marxism lies not in its substantive conclusions about class, history, economic dynamics, or revolution but, rather, in its methodological commitments. Analytical Marxists, by contrast, have been directly concerned with addressing the truth and falsity of Marx's substantive findings in social science and have attempted to reconstruct or salvage his arguments using the same tools that conventional social scientists or philosophers would use. They have placed great emphasis on the need to state arguments clearly and in a manner that optimizes the possibilities for rational discussion and critique, and they have often characterized the methodological stance of other Marxists as being obscurantist or directed toward evading falsification. Although the analytical Marxists were conscious and open about their rejection of a profound methodological discontinuity between Marxism and bourgeois social science, it is possible to point to other thinkers within the Marxian tradition who embraced similar positions, in particular the Austro-Marxists of fin-de-siècle Vienna and figures such as Michal Kalecki, Oskar Lange, and Piero Sraffa.