Analytical Marxism

Analytical Marxism is an academic school of Marxist theory which emerged in the late 1970s, largely prompted by G. A. Cohen's Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence (1978). In this book, Cohen drew on the Anglo–American tradition of analytic philosophy in an attempt to raise the standards of clarity and rigor within Marxist theory, which led to his distancing of Marxism from continental European philosophy. Analytical Marxism rejects much of the Hegelian and dialectical tradition associated with Marx's thought.

The school is associated with the "September Group", which included Jon Elster, John Roemer, Adam Przeworski and Erik Olin Wright. Its theorists emphasize methodology and utilize analytical philosophy, rational choice theory, and methodological individualism (the doctrine that all social phenomena can only be explained in terms of the actions and beliefs of individual subjects). Many other Marxists and scholars of Marxism have criticized analytical Marxism as representing a major departure from Marx's approach.


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