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[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]