History, Labour, and Freedom: Themes from Marx

by G.A. Cohen

Taking Karl Marx's theory of history as their point of departure, these essays, extensively revised and rewritten for this volume, chronicle the growth of humanity's power to produce, and the suffering that the byproducts of this freedom--exploitation, lack of freedom, indignity--have caused.
Cohen begins with a discussion and defense of historical materialism, incorporating his own reservations about the theory, and arguing that the truth of historical materialism is far more open than many Marxists believe. He addresses some of the principal difficulties under which workers labor in
contemporary capitalist class society, offering important new insights for all students of politics, political theory, and Marxism.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, History, Economics

336 pages, Paperback

First published April 20, 1989

About the author

Gerald Allan Cohen FBA, known as G. A. Cohen or Jerry Cohen, was a Canadian Marxist political philosopher who held the positions of Quain Professor of Jurisprudence, University College London and Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory, All Souls College, Oxford.

Born into a communist Jewish family in Montreal, Quebec, on 14 April 1941, Cohen was educated at McGill University (BA, philosophy and political science) in his home town and the University of Oxford (BPhil, philosophy) where he studied under Isaiah Berlin and Gilbert Ryle.

Cohen was assistant lecturer (1963–1964), lecturer (1964–1979) then reader (1979–1984) in the Department of Philosophy at University College London, before being appointed to the Chichele chair at Oxford in 1985. Several of his students, such as Christopher Bertram, Simon Caney, Alan Carter, Cécile Fabre, Will Kymlicka, John McMurtry, David Leopold, Michael Otsuka, Seana Shiffrin, and Jonathan Wolff have gone on to be important moral and political philosophers in their own right, while another, Ricky Gervais, has pursued a successful career in comedy.

Known as a proponent of analytical Marxism and a founding member of the September Group, Cohen's 1978 work Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence defends an interpretation of Karl Marx's historical materialism often referred to as technological determinism by its critics. In Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality, Cohen offers an extensive moral argument in favour of socialism, contrasting his views with those of John Rawls and Robert Nozick, by articulating an extensive critique of the Lockean principle of self-ownership as well as the use of that principle to defend right as well as left libertarianism. In If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich? (which covers the topic of his Gifford Lectures), Cohen addresses the question of what egalitarian political principles imply for the personal behaviour of those who subscribe to them.

Cohen was close friends with Marxist political philosopher Marshall Berman.

Cohen died on 5 August 2009.

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

The critique of Marx's labor theory of value makes this book worth reading alone.

[Turbulent_Architect · Rating 4 out of 5]

I frequently tell students that G.A. Cohen is one of the few Marxists I know who has any idea what he is talking about. Cohen is best known as a pioneer of what has come to be called Analytical Marxism—or, if you prefer, non-bullshit Marxism—along with his colleagues Jon Elster and John Roemer. His first book, Karl Marx’s Theory of History (1978), besides being an absolute masterpiece of twentieth century scholarship, demonstrates the fruitfulness of applying the tools of analytic philosophy to questions about history, politics, and society that have too often been marred by obscurity and dogmatism.

Cohen’s second book, History, Labour, and Freedom (1988), compiles a number of essays on Marx and Marxism divided into three loosely organized sections. All exhibit the author’s typical originality, and rigour but they are of varying levels of interest. The papers gathered under the first section serve to exposit Cohen’s interpretation of historical materialism, including his understanding of base and superstructure and his conception of historical inevitability. Since these mostly repeat material from his earlier work, they will be of limited interest to anyone already familiar with Karl Marx’s Theory of History.

The papers in the second section are much more interesting. Here, Cohen revises and refines his earlier theory to make it more empirically tenable. Of particular interest is "Restricted and Inclusive Historical Materialism," where he distinguishes between two readings of historical materialism. The first, inclusive historical materialism, depicts the growth of productive power as the primary mover of human history, whereas restricted historical materialism, sees it as one factor among others. Cohen ultimately endorses the latter, which allows him to grant a certain autonomy to spiritual or intellectual life even within the scope of a materialist conception of history.

However, the material gathered in the third section is by far the most exciting and original. The undoubted high point of the volume is “The Labour Theory of Value and the Concept of Exploitation,” which shows—to my mind conclusively—not only that the labour theory of value is false, but that it is utterly superfluous to the Marxist concept of exploitation. The closing paper on “Freedom, Justice, and Capitalism” similarly serves to dispel some conceptual muddles into which Marxists—and Leftists in general—so often fall. One can only wonder what the state of Leftist thought might be today if they read more Cohen and less Žižek.

[Samuel Weiss · Rating 3 out of 5]

History, Labour, and Freedom has three sections.

The first is an exposition of Cohen's interpretation of historical materialism initially given in Cohen's earlier work, Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence (KMTH). The arguments in this exposition are sometimes incomplete. Cohen acknowledges this and states that the full arguments can be found in KMTH, which he constantly references and quotes. Since Cohen's has one, of not the, most influential, interpretations of historical materialism, I think it's better to just read the fuller defence in KMTH instead of reading the summary in this book.

The second section is a selection of responses to a various critics of KMTH. These criticisms are mostly based on misinterpreations around Cohen's original work so the chapters in this section are mostly clarifications of Cohen's theory. They are generally sound but not altogether conclusive. In particular, I think his response to Joshua Cohen is weak. It's probably worth reading the criticisms before you read Cohen's responses in order to determine how sound they are.

The third section is a section of essays on freedom under capitalism. These are of a variety of quality. Of particular note is Chapter 11, The Labour Theory of Value and the Concept of Exploitation, where Cohen clarifies Marx's Labour Theory of Value (LTV) agaisnt a popular misinterpretation of it and provactively argues that Marx's theory of exploitation under capitalism does not require the LTV to hold. Chapter 13, The Structure of Proletariat Unfreedom, is also worth a read.