Abstract
Alan Carter has proposed that anarchists can develop their own theory of history by engaging with the work of analytical Marxists such as G. A. Cohen. This essay argues that Carter fails to build his own convincing theory of history because it retains too many of the faults within Cohen’s reconstructed historical materialism. In particular, his historical theory depends upon an unsustainably extravagant dialectic.
Introduction
Marxism and anarchism are two theoretical traditions with a long and celebrated history of mutual engagement. Marx may have subjected his anarchist contemporaries Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Mikhail Bakunin to repeated intellectual derision, but his motivation for doing so was surely enlivened by the fact the three worked together in – and struggled for control over – the International Workingmen’s Association. The two traditions are not only connected by time and place, but by a series of positive overlapping beliefs. Most famously, the society that Marx believed a proletarian revolution would inevitably bring about was to be stateless (Marx 2000 [1875]: 615). In this, Marx and most subsequent Marxists share a fundamental goal with anarchists. It is this harmony of ideals that makes a project looking into the possibility of greater convergence between anarchism and Marxism, and thus the line of enquiry that links this special edition of Capital & Class, potentially fruitful.
Despite this shared heritage, there has always been a precise and sharp point of dispute and departure between the two traditions. Anarchists, ever since Bakunin’s direct challenge to Marx, believe that Marxists are too blasé when they imagine a benign role for the state in bringing about such a stateless society (Bakunin 1950 [1867]: 43). Marx advocated a transitionary period of government he called the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, which whilst very different to any state seen in Europe at the time or since, was still to be a centralised institution with coercive and violent powers (Marx 2000 [1875] 2000 [1870]). Perhaps even more problematic for an anarchist was Lenin’s later claim that this dictatorship of the proletariat must be preceded by another centralised and coercive institution: the vanguard party. Without such an institution, Lenin famously argued, the working class would never develop revolutionary consciousness and bring about the change that was in its objective interests (Lenin 1929).
According to Marxist theory, both of these institutions were supposed to be transitionary, and to disappear with the abolition of private ownership of the means of production. The basis of Marxists’ optimism that such an event would come about was their theory and understanding of the state. At its most simple level, Marx’s theory of the state amounted to the claim that the state existed in order to preserve unequal access to the means of production (Marx 2000 [1848]; Elster 1985). That was and is its singular role and function in a class society. Once there was no need for an organ to play that function, as there would not be in a classless society like the dictatorship of the proletariat, the state would, to use Engels’ justly famous phrase, ‘wither away’ (Engels 1998(1877): 355).
To the extent that the Marxist-Leninist societies that actually came in to being in the 20th century were classless, it goes without saying that anarchist suspicions of Marxism’s optimistic attitude towards state-like institutions were vindicated. The state-like institutions of these revolutions did not wither away; and what is worse, these institutions that were supposed to bring about a stateless society became organs of terror and oppression that were calamitous even by the bloody standards of the 20th century. Analytical Marxism – a late-20th-century intellectual movement of western philosophers and social scientists such as G. A Cohen, John Elster, John Roemer – was above all a critical response to this failure of actually existing socialist regimes (Roemer 1986; Elster 1985; Cohen GA 2000). The protagonists of the analytical Marxism were all sympathetic to the view that Marxism had something substantial and unique to offer to the social sciences and humanities, but were committed to subjecting the tradition to the most rigorous critique possible through the mainstream tools in their field, be they ‘rational-choice theory’ or ‘analytic philosophy’, in light of these very real practical failings. Any Marxist arguments that their theoretical system was immune to criticism from mainstream social science, perhaps on the basis that they had discovered a new and superior form of social science, was seen as unforgivably trenchant in light of the tragic failings of actually existing Marxist states.
In a series of recent essays, Alan Carter has sought to explain what anarchists can learn from the achievements of analytical Marxism (Carter 2001, 1999, 2011). Carter describes the work of Elster, Roemer, Cohen et al. as having had a ‘profound and positive’ effect on political theory, and believes that anarchists can render their own insights more clearly and effectively by working with, and improving upon, analytical Marxist ideas. In particular, Carter believes that anarchists can develop their own ‘theory of history’, superior to anything Marxists have to offer, by working with the structure of argument and ideas developed by G. A Cohen in his seminal reconstruction of historical materialism, Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence. This essay is intended as an assessment of this project, and asks whether Carter manages to construct a plausible anarchist theory of history by engaging with analytical Marxism.
An anarchist theory of history
Our discussion of the historical dispute between anarchists and Marxists helps us to think about what an anarchist theory of history has to be able to do in order to be considered successful. What unifies the anarchist tradition, and differentiates it from other radical belief systems, is its suspicion of centralised institutions. If anarchists need, as Carter tells us that they do, their own ‘coherent theory of historical change’ (Carter 2001: 233), then for that to be a recognisably anarchist one, it must explain the reasons for their prediction of the state being a malign influence in revolutionary processes. As Carter states his own goals, he must ‘develop a theory of history that supports anarchist, rather than Marxist, claims about the process of revolutionary change’ (Carter 2001: 247). For Carter, a successful engagement with analytical Marxism will give a theoretical support for the traditional anarchist suspicions of Marxist explanations of the transition between capitalism and a stateless society. It is only fair to assess his theory on the basis of whether he achieves that goal, and that is what I shall do here.
Before outlining the structure of this essay, I want to pick out one or two important features of this stated aim. The first is to say is that it begins with a prediction about the process of revolutionary change. For the sake of clarity, we shall formalise that prediction as follows:
In order for this to count as a historical theory, Carter must produce a mechanism that explains why this prediction is likely to come true. Without such an explanation, the observation that this happened in the aftermath of some 20th century revolutions would be a purely descriptive claim. There is very clearly a descriptive role for historians to play, in particular when answering how a defined set of events and institutions came about. However, the anarchist prediction is a general prediction about the consequences of a near perennial type of revolutionary action. By offering a plausible and justified explanation as to why this has happened in the past, anarchists will be able to offer secure reasons for thinking that it will happen again if similar circumstances come into play in the future. A successful anarchist theory of history will give explanatory force to their general suspicions of state like institutions.
Having stated what, for Carter, a successful anarchist theory of history would look like, I will now outline how I am going to go about criticising his attempt to construct such a theory through an engagement with analytical Marxism. I first outline the theory of history from which Carter gains his inspiration: that is, G. A Cohen’s reconstruction of historical materialism. In the next section I show what Carter believes to be missing in Cohen’s theory, and how anarchist insights can improve upon it to develop their own theory of historical change. In so doing, I offer some thoughts on the core components of Carter’s theory and the aspects of Cohen’s thought that remain pregnant within it. It is, we shall see, functional and dialectical, and assumes that there is utility in affording primacy to a particular variable (the state) in its explanation.
In the second half of the paper, I introduce some critiques of the aspects of analytical Marxism that Carter has chosen to utilise in his anarchist theory. Most importantly, I argue that the aspects of G. A. Cohen’s thought to which Carter pays most homage amount to what David Leopold has called an ‘extravagant’ and impermissible dialectic. In the final section, I ask whether this criticism – which has been levied against Cohen’s explanation of historical materialism – can also be put against Carter’s redeployment of it in an anarchist setting. As I answer in the affirmative, the essay is ultimately a critique of the particulars of Carter’s project. His engagement with analytical Marxism does not produce a plausible anarchist theory of history. Nevertheless I hope that in the course of my exegesis and critique it will become clear that Carter has developed an intellectually rich and potentially important set of arguments, well worthy of more scholarly attention. There is fruit to be gained from anarchists engaging with analytical Marxist theories of change and continuity.
Cohen’s interpretation of historical materialism
I begin my analysis by offering a brief synopsis of Cohen’s reconstruction of historical materialism. Before I do so, I would like to make a note about the aims and intentions of Cohen’s project. Whilst some of the works conducted by analytical Marxists were willing to radically depart from the traditional tenants of Marxism in order to render it useful to their own contemporary problems (Elster 1985; Roemer 1986), this was not the case for Cohen’s reconstruction of historical materialism. As Cohen makes clear, he merely wishes to render a certain ‘orthodox’ understanding of Marx’s own historical materialism as plausible and as internally coherent as possible (Cohen 2000: ix). Indeed, in the second edition of the work he admits that he is no longer convinced of the truth of historical materialism (Cohen 2000: 341). I will not yet comment on why Cohen came to doubt the truth of historical materialism, but it is worth noting the peculiarity that Carter’s attempt to found an anarchist theory of history is a development on a theory to whose truth even the author himself was not committed. Let us turn to that theory, beginning with some important terminology.
The three most important categories in Cohen’s understanding of historical materialism are those found in Marx’s Preface to a Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy: ‘forces of production,’ ‘relations of production’ and the ‘superstructure.’ (Marx 2000 [1859]) There are two forces of production, and they are ‘labour power,’ which is fairly self-explanatory, and the ‘means of production’ – that is, the stuff you need to mix labour power with in order to produce goods that satisfy human needs, i.e. machinery, land, productive equipment and the like. We start from here in Marxism because one of the basic facts of the human condition is that we can’t produce the goods necessary to sustain ourselves and satisfy our wants without combining these two basic elements.
The way forces of production are organised in the productive process constitutes the relations of production. Relations can be identified by who has ‘effective control’ over the two constituent elements – labour power and the means of production. For example, under slavery the slave-holder has effective control over both the labour power of others and the means of production. This contrasts with capitalism, whereby capitalists have control over the means of production but have to purchase the labour power of workers, who by implication have effective control over their own labour power but not the means of production. The totality of relations of production amounts to the ‘economic base’ or ‘economic structure’ of society.
Having clarified that terminology, I am now going to offer two claims made by historical materialists that may initially sound strange. They appear, at first sight, either to give agency to bodies that can’t possibly have it, or at very least to rest upon unhelpfully agentical metaphors. Once I have presented the claims, I shall offer the theoretical innovation developed by Cohen which was both admired and copied by Carter, and which makes the claims considerably less strange.
Both of these claims appear initially to be rather peculiar, offering a natural but highly implausible reading. That reading is that there is literally some agentic and rational body called the ‘productive forces’ which selects (as selection is a characteristic unique to rational agents) the economic base. Likewise it might appear that there is another identifiable body called the ‘economic base’, which possesses the same agentic and rational powers and selects the most useful superstructure. In order to sustain such a reading, one has to make the implausible and near conspiratorial assumption that there is some sort of active and planned collusion and decision making, hidden from view, by the dominant powers in both the productive forces and the economic base. Whilst some Marxists have occasionally lapsed into such explanations, if the entire theory were to rest upon it, then historical materialism would, in most people’s eyes, be significantly weakened. It would rest upon empirical claims that appear to be quite simply false.
Cohen offers a way to understand claims (1) and (2) which does not depend upon any such conspiracy. They must, he suggests, be understood as ‘functional explanations’. Functional explanation tells us that the reason why an object is the way that it is, is that it serves a specific function. Importantly, this is the case even if the object was not consciously chosen by an identifiable agent to serve that function. In Cohen’s language, functional explanation offers answers to why questions, but not how questions. To illustrate the plausibility of functional explanation, Cohen and Carter both use the example of evolutionary theory (Cohen 2000: 249; Carter 2011: 250). If you were to ask me why it is that birds have hollow bones, I might reply, ‘Because they are lighter, which makes it easier for them to fly.’ This is a perfectly legitimate explanation as to why birds do in fact have hollow bones. It is not, however, in itself an explanation of how birds come to have hollow bones. There is, evolutionary theory tells us, no agent that selects the optimal characteristic; there just so happens to be a process – that of natural selection – which ensures that the end result of natural variation is that over time those features that best allow species to survive will endure. There is a non-agentic process of selection that makes the why explanation for birds’ having hollow bones – ‘because they make it easier to fly’ – true. 1
Putting all this together, we can say that, on Cohen’s understanding of historical materialism, forces of production ‘select’ a set of economic relations that tend towards their own development. Once these relations are in place, a superstructure is selected for its capacity to maintain and preserve the set of economic relations, and ultimately to allow for the development of the productive forces. We can put the same thing graphically like so:
I have made this graphical presentation since it will allow me to make clear the final point of note that we need to take away from our exegesis of Cohen. Under Cohen’s understanding of historical materialism, there is an ‘explanatory primacy’ afforded to the development of productive forces. When Marxists are seeking to explain any changes in the superstructure or economic base of any society, they rely upon a theory that believes that the final and ultimate unit of analysis is the development of productive forces. As the productive forces are constituted by the skills of human labour and the machinery we mix it with, Cohen calls this the ‘technological-primacy thesis’ (Cohen GA 2000: 134). It is a feature of the structure of historical materialism best captured in Marx’s oeuvre by the famous line from The Poverty of Philosophy, ‘the hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill with the industrial capitalist’ (Marx 2000 [1846]: 219-220). Cohen puts the same thing less poetically but just as clearly: ‘history is fundamentally the growth of human productive power, and forms of society rise and fall according as they enable or impede that growth’ (Cohen GA 2000: 2).
Thus far, I have remained silent on the justification for assuming that the productive forces will always develop, which in turn is a fundamental premise of the technological-primacy thesis. If the productive forces do not always develop, then it would be impossible to afford their development explanatory primacy in a theory of history that is supposed to be universal, i.e. it seeks to explain the reasons for all transitions between different modes of production and superstructures, and not just any given particular transition. For the same reason, it is essential to Cohen that the development of the productive forces does not only take place in contingent structural conditions: if that were the case, then one would have to afford the same elevated explanatory status to the conditions which make the forces develop. Without the productive forces developing autonomously and eternally, their development would not always be the ultimate determinant of change. Cohen overcomes this hurdle by developing an argument for why we would expect the productive forces to always develop that is rooted in assumptions about the fundamental and ahistorical facts of human nature and the human condition (Cohen & Kymlicka 1988: 171-175).
Scarcity demands labour. The first premise is the fact that scarcity demands labour: in order to satisfy their wants, human beings have to deploy their labour on natural resources.
Human ingenuity offers opportunities for productivity increases. The second premise is that human have the intellectual and creative capacity to come up with new ways to apply their labour more productively. We can find ways to satisfy more wants without engaging in as much labour.
Humans are rational actors. The final premise states that human beings are rational in the sense that they will apply their ingenuity in ways that reduce or redistribute labour in ways that are more productive. Rationality here means nothing more than our capacity for instrumental application of our aims.
Take all of these ahistorical premises together, Cohen claims, and it follows that it is always the case that productive forces will tend to develop. We will find new ways to deploy labour power and the means of production to produce more goods for the exertion of less labour. This is true independent of the structural or cultural circumstances of any particular epoch. Cohen calls this the ‘development thesis’ (Cohen GA 2000: 150).
If one accepts that the development thesis is an accurate description of human societies, then one is on the cusp of agreeing with the technological primacy-thesis. All that is needed to agree that social change is explained by the development of the technology is agreement with Cohen’s ‘compatibility thesis’. The compatibility thesis states that certain levels of development of the productive forces are incompatible with certain types of productive relations. Cohen illustrates the point in the following way: ‘Slavery … could not be the general condition of producers in a society of computer technology, if only because the degree of culture needed in labourers who can work that technology would lead them to revolt, successfully, against slave status’ (Cohen GA 2000: 158). Since productive forces always develop, and certain economic relations are incompatible with certain levels of development of the productive forces, it is true at any given moment that the form of economic relations is explicable by its capacity to allow for the development of the productive forces. If they were incompatible, they would become a fetter and would be deselected.
We shall finish our exegesis of Cohen’s reconstruction of historical materialism with a note about how this primacy argument relates to the functionalism of Cohen’s theory. We note that that argument makes no claims about how, in any given revolutionary change, we would see the relations of production changed so as to facilitate interaction between the forces of production. However, we provided an explanation as to why they must change and why this is a constant feature of human existence. Cohen’s functionalism and primacy are important devices in rendering historical materialism as a plausible explanatory theory of history.
Carter’s anarchist theory of history
Carter holds the clarity and rigour of Cohen’s explanation in high regard, but sees it as fundamentally incomplete as a theory of history. Completing the theory and rendering it more plausible is, Carter believes, a role that anarchists are uniquely well positioned to perform. I shall explain why in this section of the essay, and in doing so, offer Carter’s reconstruction of an alternative and identifiably anarchist theory of history. The two points of departure for Carter are (1) the unjustifiable absence in Cohen’s theory of ‘political forces’; and (2) a fault in Cohen’s explanation as to why the productive forces will always develop. I shall deal with each in turn.
Political forces
A traditional critique of historical materialism is that there can’t be a sustainable distinction between ‘relations of production’ and the ‘superstructure’, since relations of production are constituted by property claims over labour power and the means of production. (Plamanetz 1963: 279-282) Property claims are, as a matter of fact, couched in legalistic terms and express the backing of state power. As such, relations of production appear to be simultaneously superstructural and belonging to what Marx wants to call the economic base. Cohen avoids this traditional charge by making relations of production not about property rights, but ‘effective control’ over the constituent forces of production (Cohen GA 1988: 30). Carter believes that Cohen’s manoeuvre opens up an opportunity for anarchist critique.
One of the insights that the anarchist tradition brings to social explanation is that effective control over economic resources is not a concept that makes sense without some notion of ‘political power’. We can’t make sense of the notion of ‘effective control’ without reference to a potential owner’s ability to enforce the rules, norms and laws that dictate ownership patterns within a society. Without a body claiming the power to coerce people into accepting ownership claims, there is no possibility of effective ownership. This means, Carter suggests, that whilst Cohen’s notion of effective ownership may enable him to offer an account of the economic base that is distinct from the influence of notions of rights, it is also one that demands he take into account the necessary existence of ‘political forces’. That is, those forces which exert ‘political power’ in order to secure ‘effective control’ over resources. At this point in our exegesis of Carter’s adaptation of Cohen’s theory, we can say that ‘political forces’ have to be added as a separate a distinct category if the notion of ‘effective ownership’ is to be used as a non-rights-based historical variable. Since political forces are neither labour power nor means of production, but rather secure the effective control necessary to form an economic base, they ought to be placed alongside the superstructure and at the top of our earlier graphical representation (Carter 2000: 234).
One more thing needs to be said about Carter’s understanding of political forces. The ability to impose effective ownership relations is only possible through the existence of an apparatus such as the means of communicating, organising, defending and coercing individuals into accepting claims made over ownership. Carter collectively labels these things the ‘forces of defence’. Since, like the ‘forces of production’, the forces of defence are only of use when the labour power and machinery needed to utilise them are combined, he correspondingly suggests that we add ‘political labour power’ and ‘the means of coercion’ to the bottom of our graphical representation. As a result of Carter’s observation on the implausibility of a notion of ‘effective ownership’ in the absence of ‘political forces’, we end up with an explanatory framework that looks like the following supplement to Cohen’s characterisation of historical materialism. Carter uses similar graphical representations (Carter 2010: 958).
Development thesis
We remember that Cohen argues that the forces of production will always tend to develop on the basis of three supposedly ahistorical premises. The premises were:
1) Scarcity demands labour.
2) Human ingenuity offers opportunities for productivity increases.
3) Humans are rational actors.
Carter’s challenge to historical materialism rejects the idea that these premises would always lead to a situation whereby the forces of production develop. He is aware that if it is the case that under some particular cultural, structural or political circumstances they would not develop, then the methodological basis for Cohen’s affording primacy to technology would come under strain. We would not have a good reason to imagine that the forces of production always develop and thus that history is always troubled by the ability of a society to make sure that the forces of production successfully interact. Carter believes himself to have identified exactly one such circumstance.
Carter asks us to imagine the case of a political community that ‘self-defines’ itself as limitarian: 2 its members collectively decide not to produce more goods once a certain threshold of production has been reached, because they have enough. In this circumstance, Carter claims, the fact that there is scarcity in Cohen’s sense that there are desires that can only be satisfied though more (or more productive) labouring, would not bring about a development in the productive forces. A collective second-order desire, the product of a limitarian political community, would trump the first-order desire for more satisfied needs that creates scarcity.
Marxists may wish to suggest that this imagined limitarian community amounts to a rejection of one of the core premises of Marxism: that all history takes place in circumstances of scarcity. This is certainly true if we define scarcity on the basis of the final desire of peoples, and are thus not concerned with a trumped first order desire. However, such a technical point will not suffice to overcome the general thrust of Carter’s objection. We can think of many potential examples whereby a political community selects a collective goal that trumps the need to develop the productive forces: perhaps they wish to engage in economically destructive warfare in order to practise the warrior virtues. As more examples are given, the ambition of historical materialism to offer a universal theory of historical change becomes increasingly damaged. The condition of scarcity, and the supposed drive this imbues in us towards technological innovation, does not seem to produce an ahistorical reason for assuming that all societies can be explained by their capacity to deal with changes that flow from the development of the productive forces.
Carter’s two critiques combined
Now that I have explained Carter’s two anarchist criticisms of Cohen’s reconstruction of historical materialism – that it fails to take into account political forces, and that the reasons for affording explanatory primacy to technology are unsound – we are ready to see how Carter combines these two criticisms to create an identifiably anarchist theory of history.
The limitarian collective self-identification would not trump the problem of scarcity, Carter notes, in the circumstance of there being a permanent and sufficient force with an interest in the continued development of the productive forces. The anarchist insight about the need for there to be a political force which supports effective control over the means of production suggests just such a candidate. Political forces are only able to maintain themselves because they have control over the forces of defence. However, forces of defence are expensive to maintain, and do not produce goods which can be sold in order to fund this maintenance. Instead, forces of defence are funded by extracting a surplus from economic relations in the form of taxes. As such, if we assume that the forces of defence come to diminish since they often need replacing and continually servicing, we can assume that political forces have a permanent interest in ensuring that productive forces are effectively utilised in such a way that allows the political forces to extract a continual stream of surplus.
Carter’s suggested anarchist revision to Cohen’s theory is, then, that political relations ‘select’ economic relations for the purpose of developing productive forces. Productive forces are not developed for their own sake, but in order to extract a surplus that is necessary to sustain and entrench the new category ‘political forces’. As Carter puts it himself: The political relations ordinarily select economic relations that develop or optimally employ the economic forces because that facilitates the development of the political forces, which usually empower the political relations. (Carter 2001: 240-241)
Carter’s alternative explanation as to why the productive forces always develop has reversed the relationship between politics and economics. Whereas in historical materialism it is the brute fact of economic conditions and human nature that makes the development of productive forces inevitable, in Carter’s proposed theory of history it is the work of political actors. In a deliberate mirroring of Cohen’s language, Carter describes his alternative explanation as resting upon a ‘state-primacy thesis’ (Carter 2001: 240). The nature of a set of productive relations is no longer explained by the level of the development of productive forces, but now by ‘state interests’.
The beauty of Carter’s alternative ahistorical explanation for why the forces of production always develop, from the anarchist point of view, is that it gives theoretical credence to their partially confirmed suspicion of state-like institutions. We remember from Part Two of this essay that for Carter, a successfully anarchist theory of history would give a reason to believe that the following prediction was true:
If we are to explain the changes in relations of production and superstructure that come about from the development of the productive forces with reference to a political force with a permanent interest in the development of the productive forces, then any alteration in the economic base is unlikely to see the slow withering away of those political forces. In this alternative explanatory framework, economic relations will always be organised in a way that satiates the need of political forces for the productive forces to develop. The rather obvious practical implication being that any revolutionary action that thinks economic life ought to be organised in the interests of ordinary people, must seize both the means of production and the means of coercion. Any action that fails to do the latter will see economic relations organised in the permanent interests of those political forces that rely upon their monopoly of the means of coercion and the forces of defence. This is the trap into which anarchists accuse orthodox Marxist of having fallen, and Carter offers a rich theoretical justification for why we might take such accusations seriously.
My critique: Extravagant dialectics
In the next section of this paper, I am going to offer some criticisms of Carter’s construction of an anarchist theory of history. It is, I think, vulnerable to a criticism that Cohen largely came to accept of his own reconstruction of historical materialism: namely; that affording explanatory primacy to technological development amounts to an unsubstantiated ‘extravagant’ dialectic, and thus ultimately fails to learn the right lessons from the debates within the analytical Marxist literature.
I will begin my criticism by defining the word ‘dialectics’ as I intend to use it for the rest of this essay. Whilst various and conflicting ideas have been identified with that term, I intend to use a simple and singular definition. A theory of history is dialectical if it explains change as being governed by a pattern of progress that comes about through the struggle of opposing and contradictory forces (Elster 1985: 37-48). It is useful to note that Carter’s conception of history is dialectical since he considers patterns of change and continuity to be governed through the struggle of economic and political forces to maintain and preserve themselves over time. All historical development is impacted, according to Carter’s alternative anarchist theory of history, by this continued struggle whereby the political forces’ permanent interests ought to be afforded explanatory primacy.
The labelling of Carter’s theory as a dialectic is, I assume, uncontroversial. It is, after all, self-consciously a modification – an anti-thesis if you will – of the obviously dialectical conception of history that is historical materialism. However, Carter’s theory is not only dialectical but is also a particularly strong variety of that approach. It is what David Leopold has called an ‘extravagant dialectic’ (Leopold 2008: 106-128). My criticism of Carter’s anarchist theory of history will be conducted by first explaining what an extravagant dialectic is, and by outlining some of difficulties that exist in using an extravagant dialectic as part of a historical explanation. I will then suggest that one of the reasons Cohen came to reject historical materialism is that it was governed by an impermissible extravagant dialectic. The final part of my critique will be to suggest that Carter’s theory possesses exactly the same weakness as Cohen recognised in his own theory, and thus that it should be rejected on precisely the same grounds.
Extravagant dialectics
The distinction between ‘extravagant’ and ‘modest’ dialectics was drawn by Leopold in a contribution to a series of essays on contemporary methodological approaches to political theory (Stears & Leopold 2008). It was Leopold’s intention to show that some form of dialectics was still useful, and not in opposition to commitments to standards of clarity in exposition or other more fashionable methods of explanation in the humanities and social sciences. However, during the course of making this argument, Leopold offers an historical explanation as to why scholars might presently be averse to the term. His thesis is that G. W. F. Hegel’s philosophical system makes it legitimate for Hegel to suggest that the process of progress through contradiction is not simply a pattern that occasionally appears in the natural world, but is in fact the way that the world is always structured. Since Marxism, the predominant intellectual tradition with which people now associated dialectics, has a direct intellectual lineage through Hegel, this sort of extravagant belief system still occasionally permeates its thought. The term ‘extravagance’ here is used to identify the universality of the process: it is not just a pattern that appears in history, but a pattern to which history is subject at all times. One might say, as Marxists and Hegelians of an extravagant persuasion are prone to do, that history is dialectical. By contrast, a modest dialectic simply states that history can be, only given the right circumstances, usefully explained as progression through contradictions.
I do not have space here to offer an exegesis of Hegel’s dialectic of spirit, but it is useful to suggest with Leopold why this sort of extravagance is justifiable in Hegel’s philosophical system. In doing so, we begin to see why it probably isn’t acceptable outside of that specific intellectual context.
Hegel’s Philosophy of Right seeks to explain how actually existing political institutions and laws are the ‘actualisation’ and ‘destiny’ of the ‘free will’ (Hegel 1999 [1820]: 35). It is a seemingly audacious thesis that argues that institutions as varied as the monarchy and retributive punishment are an actualisation of the free will of the individual. However, the audacity of the argument is somewhat blunted when one comprehends that the legwork is done in Hegel’s argument by his presuppositions about the relationship between the subject of his thesis (the free-willing individual) and the object of her knowledge (the actual world, including its political institutions). For they are, at least according to Hegel’s philosophical system, identical: the world is the repeated attempts of the subject to understand itself and to be understood by others. I do not want to say too much about why Hegel held this identity to be true, because we can get what we need to know about the justification for Hegel’s extravagant dialectic from just one element of a full answer to that question. Hegel understands the free will of the individual as the way in which God’s providence revealed itself in the world. The free will of the individual is then an instance not only of individuals trying to be recognised by other persons and to achieve their ends, but also of God’s plan unravelling in the world. As God is a perfect being, we can expect this process of unravelling to have a destiny and a final ending which is the ultimate revelation of the world that God intended for his creatures. This is why for Hegel, every contradiction that exists in the world must move towards a reasonable resolution – reasonable both in the sense that it is the product of two conflicting reasonable wills, and of the reason and plan of God. This is a point made most clearly by Hegel in the preface to Philosophy of Right, where he rebukes Plato for rallying against the destructive force of Athenian democracy. He does not do so on the grounds that democracy is not a destructive force, but instead on the grounds that Plato was wrong to imagine that the role of the philosopher is to try and overcome such a force, rather than to understand why it is necessary from the point of view of ‘the free infinite personality’ (Hegel 1991: 20).
Marxism was of course born out of an opposition to Hegel’s presupposition that history is to be explained by the self-discovery of the free individual (Marx 2000 [1843]). However, Marx’s dialectical conception of history is often accused of failing to rid itself of the aspects of Hegel’s dialectic that are only justifiable in the wider context of Hegel’s philosophical system. In particular, Hegel’s vision that history has a final end, or telos, makes sense in the context of this outlined theodicy. Outside of such a theodicy, or an equally alien Aristotelian naturalism, it is hard to imagine what reasons Marx would have for thinking that the progress of contradictions that he observed in the world were heading towards an ultimate resolution. What is more, Hegel’s account of institutions being constituted by struggling wills gives us reason to think that the laws of development of those institutions will continue to be governed by processes of development internal to the will. Once political and economic institutions are considered to be external objects that are not entirely subject to the will – and this is surely part of what Marx means when he says that they are alien to us – one loses the reason for supposing that these institutions will be governed by the relatively stable and fixed laws of human rationality. Alienated political and economic institutions have greater scope to be chaotic or variable, and are not obviously governed by constant and defined laws. We have then two reasons to be suspicious of extravagant dialectics outside of Hegel’s system: we lose the given justification of imagining the process of contradiction being a constant and repeated law of interaction, and the reason for having a final telos.
Cohen’s extravagant thesis
I have introduced the language of extravagant dialectics, and explained why they are a problematic device in historical explanation, because this helps us to understand why it is that Cohen doubted the truth of historical materialism. My thesis is that Cohen had to adopt and create some implausibly strong assumptions in order to justify the extravagance of the dialectic that is suggested by historical materialism. I shall offer a short justification of that claim before setting out the ramifications of Carter’s anarchist theory of history.
The first thing to note is that Leopold’s distinction between extravagant and modest dialectics was only coined in 2008. That is, 20 years after Cohen first publicly expresses his doubts over the truth of historical materialism (Cohen GA 1988). It might, then, appear to be anachronistic to say that Cohen developed those doubts because of the impermissibility of extravagant dialectics. However, it seems far more likely to be true that Leopold was only able to make the distinction by observing the intellectual struggle within analytical Marxism over the plausibility of dialectical explanation. He does, after all, rely upon several distinctions made by analytical Marxists in order to carve out his argument about when modest dialects are still worthwhile (Leopold 2008: 118-127). Indeed, from what I can decipher, Leopold likely adopted the word ‘extravagant’ from Cohen’s own musing on the difficulties of dialectical explanation. For example, Cohen once wrote: ‘[Marx] rightly reacted against Hegel’s extravagant representation of all reality as ultimately an expression of the self’ (Cohen 1988: 138). Leopold’s distinction, according to my explanation, is the sort of clarification that the philosopher can only offer at the falling of dusk.
The second thing to note is that we have already seen the sort of answer that Cohen sought to develop in response to the charge that the presumption that history is always a process of progress through contradiction between the productive forces and productive relations is unjustifiable in Marxism. The development thesis and the compatibility thesis are an explanation as to why every society is shaped by the potential for a contradiction between eternally developing productive forces and the patterns of effective control that shape how they are utilised. As such, they provide a potential reason as to why it was justifiable to keep the universalistic feature of Hegel’s extravagant dialectic, if not the telos. However, we should note that this argument is developed in the context of a project that seeks to show the most plausible way that historical materialism could be defended, not in the context of an argument that argues that it is true. Cohen even goes as far as describing his attempt to justify the argument for primacy as ‘venturesome and perhaps foolhardy’ (Cohen GA 2000: 150). These are hardly the ringing words of a confident advocate.
Indeed, it is one of the arguments in Cohen’s work that was subject to the most significant and authoritative criticism (Cohen J 1982; Levine & Wright 1980) Though Cohen did feel moved to answer some of those critics, he did so whilst again reiterating that his task was to offer the most plausible defence rather than pursue the truth without fetters (Cohen GA & Kymlicka 1988). We have already seen one reason offered by Carter for thinking that the thesis might not be true, namely the possibility of a political community that self-identified itself as limitarian. We might also think that the human interest to develop productive forces will only be realised by our instrumental rationality in the context of the right social conditions (Levine & Wright 1980). For example, if society is too badly organised, and too concerned with issues not concerning economics to look after its basic needs, then the universality of the development of the productive forces will be lost, and with it will go the justification for the primacy of technology in Cohen’s theory. Given that it appears that the majority of analytical Marxists felt that this was one of the few battles of Cohen’s titanic defence of materialism that was lost, it is perhaps best to think of the primacy thesis as a technical innovation necessary to render plausible the more extravagant claims left over in the dialectic of historical materialism, but ultimately untrue.
Carter’s extravagant thesis
Given the reaction that most people have to Cohen’s argument for the technological thesis – that it doesn’t work – it seems somewhat surprising that Carter, who we have seen shares that view, decides that, rather than dropping the concept of primacy, what analytical anarchists must do is imbue another force with the capacity to make the productive forces constantly develop. It might be true, Carter tells us, that the productive forces do not have an autonomous tendency to develop, but there is no reason to imagine that they don’t always develop due to the permanent interests of political forces. This is the state-primacy thesis.
In order for the state-primacy thesis to be true, we would have to believe that state-like political forces have both the permanent motivation and ability to develop the productive forces. Unfortunately Carter’s justification for what we might euphemistically say with Cohen is a ‘venturesome’ claim, is astonishingly brief.
Carter does provide a reasonably good argument for why state-like political forces might have the permanent motivation to develop the productive forces. One might imagine an objector to Carter suggesting that the state might become occupied by enlightened forces with a genuine commitment to the economic will of the people. Carter anticipated this point by asking us to recognise that state actors exist inside of an international community of other state actors who have the capacity to develop their own productive forces in order to extract surpluses and build up the forces of defence. As these forces of defence can be turned against the most enlightened of states, it only takes the presence of one powerful belligerent to necessitate every political force having an interest in the development of the forces of defence. In short, Carter adopts the position known as defensive realism in international relations theory, which sees the anarchy of the international system as structurally determining available state behaviour (Waltz 1959). There are obviously plenty of critics of defensive realism – anarchy is what states make of it and the rest (Wendt 1992); but it is at the very least a coherent position with plenty of support. The argument of the permanent ability of the state to realise the (possible) permanent motivation to develop the forces of defence is on far less secure footing.
If it is the case that states do not always have the ability to organise economic relations in a manner that allows them to develop the productive forces and extract a surplus, then it follows that the thesis that productive forces always develop because of the will of political forces is false. My argument against this proposition is a fairly simple one, but I doubt it is one to which anybody would raise an objection. It is this: there are innumerable cases of just such counter-examples, primarily in ‘weak states’. I will ignore cases in which it looks like the forces of production do not or are not developing, and focus instead on cases in which the state is unable to extract a surplus from the forces of production. The most glaring example is the Russian Federation in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which was simply unable to raise the tax money necessary to maintain the forces of coercion, and had little choice but to accept the demands of the owners of the means of production (Stiglitz 2002). Though this single illustrative counter-example is enough for the philosophical case against the state-primacy thesis, I could also point out the long list of states on the Failed States Index: there are presently 32 nations in which the official state is unable to maintain a monopoly over the forces of coercion (Fund for Peace 2013). Do the present respective states of Somalia, Afghanistan or Haiti have the capacity to organise economic relations in order to extract a surplus from the developing productive forces? If the answer is ‘no’, then the state-primacy thesis is based on the empirically false premise that state-like institutions have the permanent motivation and ability to develop the productive forces. As Carter’s most perceptive anarchist critics have noted, it might simply be the case that the state isn’t as universally strong and as rational as Carter’s state-primacy thesis demands that it should be (Hailwood 2004: 147).
Conclusion
Carter’s project is ultimately supposed to show that the remarkable process of critical examination to which analytical Marxism subjected historical materialism should be copied by anarchists in order to formalise and support their own theory of history. However, this essay has argued that Carter ultimately learns the wrong lessons from the very trove of wisdom he seeks to plunder. If anarchists take the route of adopting a state-primacy thesis, they are likely to be as prone to asserting unfitting and inappropriate patterns upon history as the Marxists Carter wants anarchists to improve upon. It is not the way forward for anarchists if they wish to argue that there is a general truth that state-like institutions will be a permanent and malign force if they are involved in revolutionary action. One might speculate that it is one of the reasons for which Carter himself has recently sought to develop a supplementary justification for the ‘anarchist prediction’ that does not rely upon the state-primacy thesis (Carter 2010: 958).
However, I do not wish to suggest that Carter’s project is without merit. The suggestion that ‘effective ownership’ requires ‘political forces’ is eminently plausible, and is an important clarification of the anarchist critique of historical materialism. Any political community that does have political forces with an objective interest in the development of the productive forces has good reason to believe that the abolition of the private ownership of the means of production will not be sufficient to impose a collective limitarian will. Without the radical distribution of political power and force there may be a body with the ability and motive to continue the development of the productive forces. That is the particular and evidently anarchist lesson towards which Carter’s theoretical attempts to construct a theory of history point. It can be adopted whilst quietly dropping the more extravagant features of Carter’s anarchist theory of history.