This is more a story of how liberal philosophy has matured than it is a story of how Marxism has lost its relevance. One very important pillar of liberalism is, when you ask people what they think liberalism is, they associate it with political equality — with the idea that people should have equal rights, and they should be equal before the law. In other words, they associate liberalism with the formal attributes of democracy.

Marxists of course value democracy. But they also have charged that political democracy without economic equality undermines democracy and makes it something of a sham. The reason is that the economic inequalities that are typical of capitalism make it very hard for political equality to actually have real substance. The people who have lots of money and lots of wealth use the power that gives them in the economic realm to also dominate the political realm. They use their economic power to overwhelm the political equality that liberalism promises.

This was the Marxist critique of liberal philosophy and liberalism. What happened was that, by the late twentieth century, a small number of philosophers coming out of the liberal tradition essentially came to the same conclusion as Marx in this regard; John Rawls was the most influential of these. As Rawls says, if rights are going to have equal worth — if they’re going to be equally valuable for everyone — that requires eradicating the economic inequalities that are typical of capitalism.

In other words, Rawls came to the same conclusions as Marx. He wasn’t the first. There’s always been a strand of philosophical liberalism that has been very much in tension with actually existing political liberalism. What happened by the late twentieth century was that the dominant strand of philosophical liberalism was egalitarian.

How do we make sense of this? I would say this is liberalism finally catching up with Marxian socialism. If that’s true, then it’s not so much that Marxism is becoming redundant as it is the two philosophical traditions more or less converging into one. You could say, in a sense, liberalism has become redundant.

That might sound hyperbolic, but the fact is that there’s a real sense in which Marxism cannot be displaced by liberalism, even if their moral philosophies converge. While Rawls and other liberal philosophers have a great deal to say about what’s wrong with capitalism and what’s wrong with empty promises of formal democracy, they have very little to say about a strategic orientation that might enable us to remedy these defects.

They have a robust picture of what a just and humane society looks like, but they have no real theory of two other essential things: One, how is an unjust social order sustained and reproduced over time? That is, how is capitalism reproduced over time? How is power maintained? That’s what political economy studies. Two, given that constellation of power, how might we bring together a social coalition that could fight for and win the institutional design that they recommend as a just and humane social design? That’s the theory of social conflict and change.

This is where Marxism has something to say that liberal political philosophy simply does not, because Marxism is a very robust political-economic theory. If that’s the case, you can accept Heath’s view that liberal political philosophy and Marxist moral theory are almost on the same plane. You can accept every single point Rawls is making about justice, but it still leaves Marxism with an entire range of strengths and contributions that liberalism does not make, at least not that philosophical tradition that he is talking about.

Marxism is, at its core, not a moral philosophy, but a theory of politics and a political economy. As long as liberalism fails to produce that, it can never supplant Marxism or make Marxism redundant.

I don’t think that’s correct. It comes down to two questions. One, does historical materialism have to be understood in the narrow technological-determinist way that traditional Marxists defended, and which many, including myself, have criticized as being indefensible? Two, is that the version that classical Marxist organizations were actually guided and inspired by when they brought about the tremendous changes and transformations that we saw in the twentieth century that made the socialist tradition so valuable?

Start with the first question, which is whether the narrow, technological-determinist version of historical materialism is the only valid interpretation. What that theory says is that history moves forward in very firmly set grooves, and that social systems come and go according to whether or not they are suitable for further technological development and further development of the productive powers of society. At a certain point, if it turns out that existing social institutions are hampering society’s productive powers, the drive to sustain and grow those productive powers is so strong that the existing social system is disassembled. And you get a new social system that’s consistent with this overpowering drive to keep technology moving forward.

That is how Cohen understood historical materialism. That is a very deterministic view. On this view, when a social order is coming into crisis, it’s pretty much guaranteed that a new one will replace it, and that the new one will be better suited for technological development.

Cohen ends up saying two things about this view. First, he says this is not a theory that we can actually sustain. Second, he says, thank God it’s wrong, because it does more damage than good. The theory, if taken literally, encourages political complacency because of its determinism. It encourages the view that — hey, look, the crisis is here! And it’s pretty much guaranteed that socialism is going to win, because that’s the next mode of production.

That means that you don’t really have to work to understand the actual political situation today, which is what politics is all about. You don’t have to do “the concrete analysis of the concrete situation,” in Vladimir Lenin’s phrase. You know that, at worst, you might slow down the transition, and at best, you’ll hasten it. But the transition itself is more or less guaranteed.

Cohen says, this is a terrible political theory, so it’s a good thing we can ditch it. But once we say it’s wrong, what’s left? Without the materialist theory, he thinks, what’s left is a project of moral advocacy. Cohen says that socialists should focus on persuading people of the moral desirability of socialism.

The issue is, is the traditional version of their theory the only one that’s plausible? There’s a certain amount of ambiguity in Marx’s texts on this point. Even if there wasn’t ambiguity, though — even if he did mean to lay out the theory that Cohen says he did — the more important question is, is there another, less demanding version of the theory that’s plausible, that is consistent with the spirit of what Marx is trying to say but doesn’t have the flaws of the deterministic reading?

In my view, it’s pretty clear that it is possible to develop a less demanding, less narrow version of the theory. This version does not have the deterministic implications of the old one and therefore is not in danger of generating complacency or laziness on the part of Marxists. But it does possess the positive elements of the older theory, which are simple.

First, if a social order is coming into crisis, its resolution will be one that’s made possible by internal factors of that social order. So if capitalism is coming into crisis, the resolution toward socialism is made possible by the dynamics of capitalism itself. That means you don’t have to be a utopian, in Marx’s pejorative sense, to be a socialist. Second, the social forces that are necessary to bring about that new social order are viable and can be maintained on the basis of people’s material interests.

This theory is a kind of materialism in two senses. First, it doesn’t fall into utopianism. It’s materialist in the sense that it’s realistic. Second, it says people are willing to fight for their material interests; they have the interests that the creation of a new social order calls for.

That version of the theory, I think, is a legitimate interpretation for Marx. And it’s a sustainable theory in its own right. That means, then, we can reject the technological-determinist version of historical materialism but still retain the essence of the theory that’s defensible as a guide to strategic action.

But let me go back to the second issue I said is key. In the first part of the twentieth century, socialism as a movement was incredibly successful because it brought about some very profound changes — not just the Russian Revolution but also all the social democratic advances. Both of those movements drew on Marxist theory. Both of them took traditional historical materialism very seriously. So the question is, did those people, in taking that theory seriously, fall victim to the determinism and complacency that Cohen worries about?

The answer is absolutely not. If they had believed Cohen’s version of the theory, and they had actually drawn the same conclusions he drew, you wouldn’t have seen the
unending debates over minute details, over the moment, over the conjuncture, that the early socialists had.

There’s one of two possibilities. Either they were schizophrenic, and they subscribed to a theory that they completely ignored in all of their practice; or the way they understood historical materialism was actually closer to the modified, more sustainable version that I’m laying out — even though they gave lip service in their documents to the more deterministic theory. If you see the way they talk and the way they debate each other when they appeal to Marxism, they are appealing to the less deterministic but still materialist version.

This means that Cohen is wrong on two counts. He’s wrong that the only sustainable version of materialism is the one he espouses. And he’s wrong that historical materialism, once you take it on, generates complacency.

Right. But as it happens, Cohen rejects this argument too, leading him back to moral advocacy. He thinks there’s a profound difference between the capitalism of the early twentieth century and the capitalism of the twenty-first century. The difference is that, in the early twentieth century, you could rely on the working class as the agent of social change, and in the twenty-first century you can’t.

That’s also worth examining, because here too Cohen’s argument is pretty weak. He says there are four reasons that workers can no longer be counted on as they could in the early part of the twentieth century. Marxists took for granted that, first of all, workers are the majority of society under capitalism; second, that they produced society’s wealth; third, that they’re the exploited group; and fourth, that they are the neediest people in society.

Cohen says that you can’t take these four features for granted anymore. He doesn’t really go into this very much — except for the fourth, workers being the neediest people. But let’s examine all four.

Is it true that workers are a majority of society? Yes. Every careful account of the American and European class structure shows that what we call “production-line workers,” whether in the service sector or blue-collar workers or those in other sections of the economy, still account for a majority. It’s not a huge majority, but it is very much still a majority.

Are workers exploited today? In the Marxist sense, yes. It’s as true now as it was in the early twentieth century that workers create a surplus. And is it true that the surplus is what accounts for most of the wealth in society? That’s obviously true.

What about the fourth factor? This is where Cohen really stakes his claim. He says that they are not any longer the neediest group in society. Other groups are needier. He means people like the elderly, the unemployed, and so on.

Is his assessment of this fourth factor correct? Is he right that workers are no longer the neediest group in society? I don’t see how he can say that. It’s true that they aren’t indigent – but that’s not what matters. What matters is that they are harmed more than any other major group, and that they will stand to gain substantially from socialism. Surely that’s no less true today than it was in 1920?

That being the case, one can affirm all four facts about the working class, even today. Workers are the majority; they’re exploited; that exploitation is the creator of wealth; and workers are needier than any other major group in modern society, which means that they have as much of an interest in moving toward a transformation of capitalism and being anti-capitalist today as they did before.

I don’t think the differences are cosmetic; I think there are profound differences. But there is not much of a difference in workers’ motivations and interest in a better social order. The difference lies much more in their capacities to bring it about.

We don’t fully understand this yet, but there was something about early twentieth-century capitalism that made organizing and the creation of mass, militant organizations much easier than it is today. That, I think, is the biggest difference between that capitalism and this capitalism. That’s what the Left today needs to figure out. We need to figure out how to bring workers together around their interests, which are as salient today for a new social order as they were in the early twentieth century.

The mystery that divides us from that Left is that it had a model and a workable strategy of what organizations ought to be, how to mobilize them, how to activate them. The current left has not figured that out.

Cohen misunderstands the challenge. He thinks the challenge is that workers do not have the motivation that they did back then. I would say the challenge is more that they don’t have the capacity or the organizational power that they had back then.

That’s due to a combination of factors: a change in the ecology of industrial enterprises; a change in how much of the working class is in industry and manufacturing versus services; a change in the urban landscape and the connection between work and living; and finally, the dramatic dismantling of the civic associations of the working class that help them forge their collective identities as workers.

It’s some combination of these things. We need a well-crafted research program to try to figure it out.

Yes, but the problems for the moral advocacy view run even deeper.
The way you put it was, a version of historical materialism is salvageable, so we don’t have to rely on moral advocacy. I would suggest that begs the question in a fundamental way, because it’s not clear to me how moral advocacy could ever be a foundation for a political transformation of the kind we’re talking about. In other words, even if we wanted to rely on it, we couldn’t.

A struggle for socialism or even social democracy calls on people to take enormous risks and make enormous sacrifices, because they will have to take on the capitalist class. I do not see any way that moral advocacy can be the mechanism for bringing most people to such a political project. You need to be able to show people that they have a real interest in the outcome — a material interest, not just a moral calling — and also show them that it’s realistic, that it’s not just a kind of suicide mission.

It’s remarkable to me that the advocates of this view — Cohen is one, but there are others — never try to systematically confront this question. Actually, there are two questions, depending on who the target of your moral advocacy is.

One question is, if it’s a general moral calling, why would the most powerful sectors of society and their servants in the media, in universities, and in politics be convinced by your moral advocacy when they have a direct interest in maintaining the social order? The other is, if you don’t go to them, why would the working poor come to you out of a moral calling, unless you can make it clear to them what they have to gain from this?

To my mind, it’s more realistic to say that if a materialist framework for politics is no longer sustainable, socialism is not sustainable as a movement. I would rather come clean and admit that than live with this pipe dream that moral advocacy will get you there. In a very real sense, this is what Marx and [Friedrich] Engels were arguing against in their lifetimes: these various kinds of utopianism that said, if you just ask people to be nice, you can get to socialism.

So if Cohen is right that a materialist version of politics is no longer sustainable, the conclusion that he draws from this simply makes no sense. The conclusion we should draw is that politics of the kind we’ve committed to is now impossible. These moral conversations are fantasies that intellectuals entertain; I don’t know how they have any traction in the world.

Socialists absolutely have to take moral philosophy seriously, for two reasons.

One reason is obvious once you think about it, but some people don’t entertain it seriously enough: it’s not just that we want something different from capitalism; we want something better than capitalism, and by “better” we mean more desirable.

If socialism is more desirable, on what grounds is it more desirable? What if somebody came along and said, I have a solution to capitalism’s inefficiencies, but you’re going to have to give up all your civic and political rights. Most socialists would reject that. But we reject it on moral grounds, so we need to be able to articulate what those are.

The second reason is perhaps less obvious, but it follows from the first. There are two criteria on which socialists have to assess the institutions they’re trying to build. One is practical: Are those institutions realistic and sustainable? The other is moral: The new institutions might be realistic and sustainable, but are they desirable?

Sustainable and desirable are two very different things. That which is sustainable may not be desirable, and that which is desirable might not be realistic. Socialists are very big on the issue of realism, and we understand now, after a hundred years of experiments, there are versions of socialism that may not be sustainable — and one such version, I think, is central planning. So we realize that we might have to settle for something less than that.

Those institutions that together comprise something less, however, are going to have elements in them that you take from capitalism. You might have a labor market. You might have certain financial markets. You might have certain kinds of product markets.

You now are confronted with the question: If we’re going to be saddled with, say, a labor market, is every version of that morally objectionable? Or are there versions or aspects of it that are acceptable, that as socialists we can live with?

What about hierarchies? We can’t eliminate all hierarchies. With hierarchies, we have a menu of options. Which are the ones that we think are consistent with our goals and thereby desirable, and which are the ones we should try to avoid and dissolve?

These are all moral questions. Whenever you have a menu of options, as we do, you will select from that menu not just on practical grounds — there will be intense moral debates as well. If you don’t know the grounds on which you reject capitalist institutions, you won’t know what the grounds are on which you are choosing to accept or reject its alternatives.

Without a well-worked-out normative underpinning, socialists have no basis on which they can make these choices. If you don’t have that basis, when you don’t have morality, all you’re left with is power. And what will settle these debates is who has the guns, and who has the most resources. That is absolutely something you want to avoid on the Left.

So though Cohen is wrong in thinking that all that’s left for socialists is moral advocacy, his larger project of trying to give a firmer grounding for socialists on why they should accept or reject certain social institutions was absolutely crucial. It behooves us to try to deepen that as much as we can. And in that we will have very able partners among egalitarian liberals, because they have come around to many of the same views that socialists already had, even if it took them a little bit longer.