The Violence of Abstraction : The Analytic Foundations of Historical Materialism

by Derek Sayer

This original and provocative examination of the analytic fundamentals of historical materialism offers a challenging reassessment of Marx's social theory and a devastating critique of conventional Marxist thought.

The fundamental concepts of Marxist sociology - forces and relations of production, economic structure and superstructure, property, class, ideology and state - are examined in detail. Unusually Sayer investigates these as they were actually used by Marx, in a wide variety of substantive analyses both of capitalist and pre-capitalist societies, and assesses the claims of historical materialism accordingly. He convincingly shows that standard Marxist interpretations of concepts are not only inconsistent with Marx's own analytic practice but examples of what Marx himself diagnosed as fetishisms.

This book restores to Marx's materialism its dialectical philosophy, its empirical method and its humanist inspiration. Exhaustively documented, clearly written and lucidly argued by an author whose Marx's Method was described as 'written at a level of sophistication seldom found in English language works on Marx', this is a contribution of the utmost importance to the contemporary literature on Marx.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, History, Nonfiction

192 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1987

Reviews

[Kyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

derek sayer's scanned and posted this book on his academia.edu page here:

https://www.academia.edu/19913844/The...
https://www.academia.edu/19914365/The...
https://www.academia.edu/19915016/The...

[Griffin MB · Rating 5 out of 5]

a stellar defense of Marx's conception of production as production-of-life-conditions as against the very influential (and very wrong) text by GA Cohen on Marx's theory of history, which upholds a technological determinist theory of history. Cohen bifurcates forces and relations of production in a way that removes anything but a formalistic link between them--Sayer, who also wrote an excellent text on Marx's method, mounts a great defense of a non-Second-International, much more dialectical reading of Marx. one of the great takedowns of analytical Marxism and an excellent introduction to Marx's theory of history in its own right.

[Ravi · Rating 4 out of 5]

An impressive rebuttal to the theories of G.A. Cohen with respect to marxist theory and its relationship to functionalism. I cant do justice to the subtleties of the argument (nor am I sufficiently versed in analytical marxism to judge) but the overall argument is compelling. And always a pleasure to encounter a book that cites Dunayevskaya. I recommend it.

[Noah Coates · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely phenomenal work