Melberg, Hans O.: A review of reviews: Making Sense of Marx

_{[Note for bibliographic reference: Melberg, Hans Olav (1996), A review of reviews:
Making Sense of Marx, http://www.oocities.org/hmelberg/papers/960506.htm]

A review of reviews:

Making Sense of Marx

by Hans O. Melberg

Making Sense of Marx

by Jon Elster

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

556 pages

ISBN: 0 521 29705 2

Introduction

Brian Barry once wrote that to review one of Elster's book one "would either have to
have taken off several years to master the many fields which fall within Elster's purview
or would be a consortium of at least twenty carefully-chosen experts." 1 Since I cannot claim the same level of intellectual sophistication as
Elster, I tried the second approach: To collect the insights of other reviews in order to
make an assessment of Elster's book. Unfortunately this strategy turned out inadequate
since the quality of many of the reviews was poor. This review thus turned into a
presentation of Elster's arguments, a collection of my own observations on Elster's book
and a defense of Elster against some of his critics.

In my mind there is no doubt that Elster, in the words of Ryan, has written a book which
is "splendid ... endlessly ingenious, inventive and imaginative ... built on
apparently inexhaustible reserves of textual scholarship " and "... written in
sober, lucid and careful prose ..."2 I thus disagree with S.
Meikle who claims that the book is "an unsympathetic treatment of Marx, that it is
lacking in scholarship and balance, and that the standard of argument is unusually
poor."3 Yet, this very disagreement forces me to raise two
issues. First - since it is not obvious - I have to defend my claim that Making Sense
of Marx is a good book. Second, one must examine the question of how it is possible to
judge the same book so differently.

The argument

The key argument and the justification for yet another book on Marx, is Elster's view that
Marx's writings suffers from a systematic methodological flaw: its reliance on functional
and collectivist explanations. As he writes

"In my opinion the many failures of Marx and later Marxists derive largely from
this misguided framework [of methodological collectivism, functional explanation and
dialectical deduction], hence much of the present work will be devoted to showing how it
is possible to address the questions raised by Marx without having recourse to it."
(p. 4)

Functional explanation

Crude functional reasoning is build on the mistaken assumption that if something turns out
to be beneficial for something or somebody, then the event can be explained by reference
to those it is beneficial for. For example, social mobility may be beneficial for the
capitalist class since it deprives the workers of the potential leaders of a possible
revolution. Hence, when we ask the question: "Why is there social mobility?"
Marx and Marxists often automatically answer: "Because it benefits the capitalist
class." For Elster this is not convincing since the answer does not show exactly how
the capitalist class creates social mobility. It is as if we always convict the person
with the best motive for a murder without asking for more evidence that the person
actually was behind the murder.

Collectivist explanation

In fact, the mistake is even more serious than assuming the person with the best motive is
always guilty of a crime. In the social sciences we are sometimes dealing with collective
entities which do not have desires or the capacity to act. To assume, as methodological
collectivists do, that entities like a class have the capacity to act is to ignore a
fundamental difference between a group and an individual. For example, as a class it might
be better for the capitalists if they could give concessions to the workers to avoid a
revolution. However, if we think of the capitalist as a group of individuals (instead of
one united actor) we discover that they may have a collective action problem which
prevents them from acting in their collective best interests. Each individual capitalist
wants to maximize profit and let the other capitalists worry about the problem of a
potential revolution. Hence, we cannot automatically assume that a class fulfils its
interests. Even less are we entitled to assume that abstract concepts such as
"capital" (which is not even composed of individuals) somehow mysteriously
defends its "interests." Capital does not have interests or the capacity to act.

Elster's alternative: Methodological individualism and intentional/causal explanation

If we reject functionalism and collectivism, what kind of explanatory strategy should we
use? Elster argues in favour of methodological individualism and intentional/causal
explanations. Methodological individualism is "the doctrine that all social phenomena
... are in principle explicable in ways that only involve individuals - their properties,
their goals, their beliefs and their actions." (p. 5). This does not mean that
intentional explanation is the only valid explanation. There is room for causal
explanations - for example the formation of beliefs and desires should be causally
explained. We do not intentionally choose our beliefs, but we may try to explain some of
our beliefs by reference to causal mechanisms such as wishful thinking.

Armed with the philosophy of explanation outlined above Elster investigates all of Marx's
major theories and concepts: the labour theory of value, alienation, dialectics, the
falling rate of profit, exploitation, the theory of history (productive forces, relations
of production, the stages of history and the transition between the stages), the theory of
the state, the theory of ideology and finally the theory of classes and the class
struggle. Most of these theories are found to be flawed in a way which can be traced back
to Marx's methodology. It is these quality of these arguments which make me thinks this a
good book, as I shall try to demonstrate. In so doing I have to be selective and I have
chosen not to focus on the philosophical arguments of his theory of explanation. Instead
of reviewing the relative merits of functionalism and methodological individualism (which
I want to discuss in another essay) I want to focus on demonstrating Elster's style of
argument in specific cases.

Marx's theories of history

Elster claims that Marx had a philosophy of history, an explicit theory of history and an
implicit theory of history. The first argued that history was a process marching towards
the state of communism. The second was his theory of historical materialism. The third,
which is often incompatible with the second, is Marx's view of social change as it emerges
through his writings on actual historical changes. I want to focus on the second theory -
historical materialism.

For Marx the motor of history is technological change or what he calls the productive
forces (or the base). According to Marx these forces determine the superstructure of a
society i.e. the relations of production (the ownership structure) and the legal and
political structures. The productive forces must correspond to the relations of production
in a way that ensures the maximum development of the productive forces. Simplified and
expressed in plain English Marx's seems to be arguing that the level of technological
development determines which ownership structure (public or private) is the most efficient
for economic growth and somehow the most efficient structure is always selected
(efficiency is here judged dynamically, not statically).

How does this happen? One possible mechanism is the class struggle. For example, before
the industrial revolution there was no working class. With the technological changes that
created the industrial revolution a new class emerged. This class may then through
political struggle force changes in the legal and political structure of society.

Initially this may seem like a plausible account of historical change. For example, we
surely need to refer to changes in technology if we want to explain the change from a
society of large families living in rural villages to small families living in urban
areas. Similarly and equally plausible we must refer to groups of people, such as classes,
to explain revolutionary political changes as the French and the Russian revolutions.
However, as often, the initial plausibility is deceptive. Based on Elster's discussion I
want to give three reasons why Marx's theory flawed.

First, technology only one factor of many which create historical changes. For example,
ideas (translated into intentional policies) and historical accidents may also lead to
social changes. One example of each is respectively the ideas of Keynes which led
governments to get involved in the economy to a much larger extent than before (for better
or worse) and the unusually cold winter in Russia which significantly hindered Hitler's
advance in 1943.

Second, the class struggle is one of many possible mechanism for making changes in the
superstructure (i.e. the political and legal system). Ethnic, religious and geographic
divisions may be equally or more important than class divisions. Once again it is not
difficult to find empirical examples. The American Civil Rights Act of 1964 - a massive
change in the legal structure - came as the result of ethnic conflict, not class conflict;
The conflict in Northern Ireland is - or was at least in one sense - religious; The
division between the urban and the rural areas has also been a major determinant of social
change such as when Norway in 1972 rejected membership in the European Union. It thus
seems clear that classes cannot be the only process whereby the social structure is
changed.

Third, it is not clear why the workers would be motivated or have the ability to revolt
simply because the productive forces do not correspond perfectly to the relations of
production. Imagine an economic system in which the standard of living is relatively high
and growing. In such a system it is doubtful whether the workers would be motivated to
revolt by the uncertain promise of a higher level of growth under a new system. On the
contrary psychological theory suggests that people need to experience deprivation before
they go out into the streets and overthrow the government. Finally, even if they were
motivated, they might not have the ability since the capitalists may have a monopoly on
the means of coercion.

On the above account Marx's theory seems primitive and obviously false. One might
therefore argue that it is a false representation of what Marx really meant. Building on
this one might try to rescue Marx's theory with the following argument: True, technology
is not the only source of historical change and the class struggle is not the only
possible process, however if we want only to explain changes in the relations of
production (as opposed to all kinds of social changes) then technology and the class
struggle are the most important factors. This makes Marx's theory more plausible at
the expense of reducing the range of its explanatory power. How good is this defense?

Elster does not reject this straight away, but he does point to several distinct
weaknesses of which I shall mention two.

First, Marx's methodological collectivism leads him to ignore the problem of collective
action at the level of the working class. It is by no means certain that the working class
will revolt even if they as a collective entity could create a better system by revolting.
Using the tool of methodological individualism we see that for each single worker it is
more profitable to stay at home and not participate in the revolution since it is both a
risky and costly affair (you might get killed and the revolution might fail). Hence,
although as a group they could profit from a revolution, the revolution will not occur
because the individuals all want the others to do the hard work.

Second, empirically speaking it is difficult to argue that technology and the class
struggle are so much more important than other variables since historical experience often
suggests that other factors are at least as significant. For example, both the World Wars
caused great social changes, but neither demonstrated the primacy of technology or the
class struggle in shaping world history. Nationalism proved to be stronger than class
loyalties since the working class on both sides were killing each other and historical
accidents played a large role as well as technology.

I have so far pointed out a number of problems in Marx's theory of history. I have not
touched the more conceptual problems, such as how to define a class, the productive forces
and the relations of productions. As Elster shows there are serious problems with these
concepts. For example, the forces of production is not simply the same as technology since
it includes everything that advances production such as organizatorial skills and
knowledge. One might then ask whether religion is a productive force since it increases
production by increasing discipline among the workers. The problem is then that there is
no distinction between the base and the superstructure which allows us to argue that the
base determines the superstructure. Similarly there are great problems in defining
classes, but in the above and the below I have chosen to focus on the core problems and
not the fuzzy edges of a theory.

Capitalism

While rejecting much of Marx's writings, Elster thinks much of Marx's description and
critique of Capitalism is valuable.

One aspect of the description is the formation of ideological beliefs in capitalism.
Elster discusses four mechanisms identified by Marx: Inversion; The transformation of
particular into general interests; The confusion between local and global truths; and
Conceptual imperialism. Of these the third, the confusion between local and global truths
is the most interesting and thus my focus.

Local v. Global truths

Imagine that you live in a society in which most marriages are arranged. You also observe
that the few people who go against the tradition and marry the person they want out of
love, often become unhappy. You may then conclude that to marry out of love causes
unhappiness. The problem with this kind of belief formation is that is confuses what is
locally true with the general truth. The reason why those who marry out of love become
unhappy might be that they are either very stubborn people (who do not bow to tradition)
or that the rest of the community causes their unhappiness by avoiding them ("They
did not obey their parents, they should be avoided"). This means that if all
couples married out of love, they would not all be unhappy since both reasons why those
who married for love became unhappy would disappear if it was common. Hence, while it is
true that those who marry of out love in a traditional society becomes unhappy, it is not
true that marrying out of love would cause unhappiness in a society in which this was the
tradition. To believe so is to confuse local and global truths.

The same kind of mistake can be observed in ideological belief formation. For example, we
tend to think it is just if a person is paid as if he were the last to be hired (i.e.
according to the marginal contribution he makes to the firm). We may then imagine a firm
of ten workers, each paid as if they were the last worker to be hired. Is this just? The
problem is simply that not all the ten workers can be the last person to be hired
(although they are all paid as if they were). Hence, to believe the pay they get when they
are all paid as if they were the last worker to be hired is just, is to commit the fallacy
of believing what is locally (i.e. for one) is globally true (i.e. true for all).

What is the significance of this and the other mechanisms? Knowledge of this and other
mechanisms that form our ideological beliefs has both a normative and an explanatory
implication. Normatively we might have to revise our notion of what consists a just pay.
As for the explanatory side the mechanism may explain the stability of capitalism without
invoking implausible conspiratorial theories (such as the state and the church being only
a tool for the capitalists). We have a belief that is generated by actual practices in
capitalism which in turn makes people believe that capitalism is just and hence makes it
stable. Needless to say we are only talking about one aspect and one mechanism, not a
proof that capitalism as a whole is more unjust or worse than any alternative.

Turning to the critique of Capitalism Elster thinks Marx advances three arguments: That it
is unjust (exploitative), wasteful (statically and dynamically) and inhuman (because of
alienation). Of these I have already dealt with the first (that the workers may get less
than they deserve). In relation to this argument one should also note that Elster's
argument is very contested since Marx himself always argued that he did not condemn
capitalism using moral concepts such as just or unjust.4 I tend to
agree with Elster that although Marx did not use the words just or unjust, and even if he
denied that he used the concepts normatively, his theory of exploitation does not make
sense unless it implies an argument about what constitutes a just distribution. These
arguments, in turn, are by their very nature normative. There is no distribution which is
scientifically correct.

As for Marx's second argument - that capitalism is inefficient - it is very week indeed.
Elster advances some arguments in that direction but I tend to believe that he does not go
far enough. It is true that capitalism is not perfectly efficient statically speaking. At
any one point in time there is unemployment and a waste of resources through duplication,
non-exploitation of economies of scale and failures of coordination. However, as Elster
admits, Marx exaggerated the significance of these mechanisms. Even more so Marx was wrong
about the dynamic inefficiency of capitalism. Unlike communism, capitalism has so
far proved very good at producing and applying technological progress. Under regulated
capitalism (that is with patent laws) there is both a great incentive and an ability to
produce inventions. I tend to think that Marx's mistake in this aspect was worse than an
exaggeration. He did not only exaggerate the tendencies he found, he also failed to see
many causal mechanisms that determine the rate of innovation, which Elster himself has
identified in his Explaining Technical Change.

Maybe the key word in the above paragraph is "so far". Marx himself often argued
that capitalism would initially be very good at advancing the productive forces until this
progress eventually undermined itself. On this interpretation capitalism is not
inefficient, but it will become inefficient at some point. For example,
technological progress could make economies of scale so widespread and important that
private ownership would not be as efficient (statically speaking) as public ownership of
the means of production. This is possible, but as Elster agrees, Marx nowhere proves that
Communism as a whole would be both statically and dynamically more efficient. In fact
there is good reason to suspect the opposite, because of principal-agent problems under
communism (see my review of M. Malia for more on this). As long as there is no alternative
which is both superior and feasible, Marx critique of Capitalism on grounds of
efficiency is relatively uninteresting.

The third argument against capitalism is that it alienates large number of peoples.
Alienation is interpreted as frustration (objective and/or subjective) that arises when we
are denied self-realization. Self-realization for Elster consists in the development of
what Marx called our "species-powers" or what we today would call the desire to
be creative. The best example of this would be workers at an assembly line who have to do
repetitive and monotonous tasks. Another example would be sub-ordinate workers in
hierarchical structures who have to perform the commands of their superiors with little
scope for using their own creativity.

As with efficiency, alienation is a question of degrees. To what extent does capitalism
prevent self-realization and are there any superior alternatives? If we use the situation
today as a reference point, and not that of a worker in 1850, it seems as if Marx
exaggerated the degree of alienation under capitalism. Technological change - such as the
introduction of robots - have reduced the amount of repetitive and mind-less jobs.
Moreover there has been a change of attitudes of the managers since uninspiring jobs have
often been found to produce inefficiencies (absenteeism, lack of concern for quality,
hostility towards management). Lastly, it does not appear that public ownership is a
better alternative. There were not fewer boring jobs or less sub-ordination in the Soviet
Union than a capitalist country.

Communism

When discussing Marx's critique of capitalism I have also touched upon some of the
comments he makes about his predicted alternative, communism. According to Elster, Marx
idea of communism is "extremely utopian" (p. 522). It is not only utopian for
empirical reasons (such as the extent to which self-reliazation is incompatible with
efficiency), but also for more logical and conceptual reasons. Communism, defined as
maximum self-realization for all individuals, is in itself a contradictory notion since my
self-realization may prevent you from realizing your creative abilities. For example, my
self-realization may depend upon the recognition of others. But such recognition is by its
nature a positional good in the sense that not everybody can be equally famous. In short,
for me to be famous, somebody has to be unknown (or at least not as well known). This, and
other arguments, makes me agree with Elster than communism is massively utopian.5

Criticism?

I have problems criticising this book simply because I find the arguments convincing and I
lack the expertise necessary to argue that Elster's textual interpretation of Marx is
wrong. To my mind the book is the most systematic and devastating critique of Marx and in
the words of a critical reviewer "the burden, after Elster, is on more orthodox
Marxists to justify how one can be more orthodox than Elster's analyses warrants ..."6

Trying to be critical I may say that the book is not as rewarding as some of Elster's
other books. My main interest is what is true and important in the social sciences, not
what Marx really meant. Hence the textual debates and the process of throwing quotes on
each other from different writings of Marx, is for me a rather boring exercise. I thus
feel that Elster's shorter and less exegetical book An Introduction to Karl Marx is
more rewarding and less boring.

The reviews

How does we explain the fact that different reviewers come to widely different conclusions
about this book? It is tempting, and plausible, to explain this phenomena with one of
Elster's favourite themes - wishful thinking. What one might call fundamental Marxists
simply want Marx to be right. This desire distorts their judgement and it often
makes them seek the sources of information that are "friendly." Of course one
might argue that it is the judgement of Marx's critics which is distorted, not his
supporters. The only way to solve these arguments is to produce hard evidence - causal
mechanisms and textual quotes - not to label each other as supporters or enemies or
Marxism. Elster produces these arguments, some of his critics do not. In fact, I was
shocked to see the level of argument in some of the reviews (the reader may judge for
himself the quality of the contributions of Meikle, Slaughter and Gold.)

Conclusion

Elster has written an encyclopaedic and masterly book which should be the starting point
for all students of Marxism. Somewhat paradoxically the book undermines itself in the
sense that by proving Marx wrong on so many points it becomes less interesting to read
about Marx or to be a student or Marxism. Instead of reading about Marx's mistaken
arguments, one might as well go directly to the more plausible arguments in Elster's other
books or the writings of other social scientists with more intellectual self-discipline
than Marx. Nevertheless the book is still of value for two reasons. First, as long as
there are people who believe in Marx it is important to prove when Marx was wrong. Second,
the book is not wholly destructive since it provides interesting reconstructions and
suggests better and alternative explanations of the phenomena that Marx was interested in.

NOTES

1 Barry, Brian (1980), Superfox, Political Studies 28, p. 137

2 Ryan, Alan (1986), The Marx problem book, The Times Litarary Supplement, April
25, p. 437

3 Meikle, Scott (1986), Making nonsense of Marx, Inquiry 29, p.29

4 See A. Wood (1986) for more on this critique.

5 See N. Mobasser (1987) for a discussion of Elster's arguments about self-realization.

6 Levine, A. (1986), The Journal of Philosophy, p. 728

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barry, Brian (1980), Superfox, Political Studies 28:136-143

Burawoy, Mihael (1986), Making nonsense of Marx, Contemporary Sociology 15 (5):
704-707

Elster, Jon (1987), Reply to Comments, Inquiry 29:65-77

Gold, Michael (1988), Review of An Introduction to Karl Marx, Kyklos 41
(2):329-332

Harvey, David (1986), Review of Making Sense of Marx, Political Theory 14
(4): 686-690

Levine, Andrew (1986), Review of Making Sense of Marx, The Journal of Philosophy,
p. 721-728

Meikle, Scott (1986), Making nonsense of Marx, Inquiry 29:29-43

Mobasser, Nilou (1987), Marx and Self-Realization, New Left Review, Iss. 161:
119-128

Nielsen, Kai (1992), Elster's Marxism, Philosophical Papers 21 (2):83-106

North, Douglass C. (1987), Is it Worth Making Sense of Marx, Inquiry 29:57-63

Ryan, Alan (1987), Can Marxism be rescued?, London Review of Books 16 (9):8-10

Ryan, Alan (1986), The Marx problem book, The Times Literary Supplement April 25,
p. 437

Slaughter, Cliff (1986), Making Sense of Elster, Inquiry 39:45-56

Taylor, Michael (1987), Elster's Marx, Inquiry 29:3-10

Walzer, Michael (1985), What's Left of Marx?, The New York Review of Books 32
(18):43-46

Wood, Alan (1987), Historical Materialism and Functional Explanation, Inquiry
29:11-27

A note on the bibliography

Many of the reviews are of a poor quality (Burawoy, Gold, Harvey, Meile, Slaughter). The
best are probably Ryan and Walzer. Nielsen also provides a good summary of Elster's
arguments (but not much criticism). Levine, Mobasser and Wood are the best reviews which
are also quite critical of Elster. _{[Note for bibliographic reference: Melberg, Hans Olav (1996), A review of reviews: Making
Sense of Marx, http://www.oocities.org/hmelberg/papers/960506.htm]}}