The following is an e-mail that I sent to Alan Carling of Bradford University. I haven't received any response from him as of yet, but maybe people on this list might wish to comment.
Jim Farmelant ----------------------------------------------------------------- Alan, I have recently been reading Malachi Hacohen's book *Karl Popper: The Formative Years, 1902-1945* and that has led me to ponder a bit the influence of Popper on Analytic Marxism. Some of the key texts of AM such as Jerry Cohen's *Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence* and Jon Elster's *Making Sense of Marx* have no references to Popper in them but one cannot help thinking that these books were written directly or indirectly in response to Popper's criticisms of Marxism. In particular Elster's book with its espousal of methodological individualism and its contention that much of what is worthwhile in Marx stems from his use of a methodological individualism seems very Popperian in character. In fact, one cannot help thinking that perhaps Elster was attempting to create a kind of Marxism that would have been acceptable to Popper. Jerry Cohen likewise makes no reference to Popper ( he does refer to the logical positivists, to whom Popper was opposed) in his book, but it would appear that he was among other things attempting to recast historical materialism in such a form as to rebut Popper's charge that it could not be branded as unfalsifiable and hence unscientific or pseudoscientific. It is also noteworthy that many of the Analytical Marxists have seemed to share views concerning dialectics that were similar to the ones that Popper espoused in his essay "What is Dialectic?" Like Popper, they are skeptical of the dialectics of nature, and indeed of most Hegelian or Hegelianized formulations of dialectics and its relations with formal logic, history, and the natural sciences. And Popper's contention that most of what is valid and uselful in dialectics can be reduced to the method of "trial and error", that is to what we can call selectionism, looks a great deal like your own viewpoint. And indeed over time Popper became increasingly committed to expanding reliance upon selectionist explanatory models, so that his selectionism not only encompassed his philosophy of science (conjecture & refutation model), but also his epistemology (which became known as evolutionary epistemology), his political philosophy (the open society allows selectionism to operate at the social and political levels in a non-lethal, non-violent manner), his philosophy of history (he seems to have held a selectionist evolutionist view of history, similar to Hayek's), and even to his cosmology. Jim Farmelant > > Dear Jim > > >> As you will have gathered, I reached the position that the only > >> plausible version of historical materialism is a selectionist one > >through an > >> engagement with Jerry Cohen's work, and Analytical Marxism more > >> generally. > >> It was only subsequent to that realisation/discovery that I saw a > >> parallel with the work of the 'bourgeois' social selectionists > you > >mention. > > > >I am a bit surprised by that since I had read Dawkins' > >*The Selfish Gene* long before I say your SCIENCE & SOCIETY > >article back in 1993, and I had read one or two books (whose > >titles now escape me) on social evolutionism which approached > >it from a selectionist standpoint. And I was also familiar with > >BF Skinner's radical behaviorism which attempted to develop > >a selectionist account of operant learning. Skinner also BTW > >proposed a selectionist account of social evolutionism too > >- see his 1981 paper - Selection by Consequences. Science, 213, > 501-504. > >Also see online (http://www.psych.nwu.edu/~garea/table.html > >http://www.bfsr.org/element1.html). And I had a slight > >familiarity with Popper's evolutionary epistemology which > >is selectionist. So I was (and am) a bit surprised that > >none of these people got mentioned at least in passing > >in your 1993 article. > > Thanks for the Skinner reference. I suppose it is a bit surprising > that > I > was so ignorant, but this sadly is the truth of the matter. I am > sure > that > the fact that evolutionary ideas were in the air in the 70s and 80s > had > an > impact on the way Cohen formulated his ideas, and thus on my > reception > of > Marxist theory. But you must remember that the Selfish Gene was > off-limits > for any self-respecting leftist and/or social scientist at that time > (at > least in any circles with which I had contact. Your intellectual > environment sounds more balanced). It was simply assumed (without > adequate > justification, of course) that sociobiology and all its works was > both > facile and dangerous. I didn't actually open the Selfish Gene until > the > 90s, and when I did, I was intrigued that it wasn't nearly as bad as > I > had > imagined, and contained that fascinating final 'meme' chapter which > says > a > lot of the things that social scientists would want to say against > reductionist sociobiology. That really threw me! > > Anyway, good luck with both the software and the Marxism. ATB > > Alan > > PS > Another recent article of mine that might interest you is a long > review > of > Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel (co-written with Paul Nolan), > which > appeared in the journal Historical Materialism (no. 6, Summer 2000, > 215-64). ________________________________________________________________ GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO! Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less! Join Juno today! 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