Analytic Marxism emerged in the late 1970s as an attempt to wed Marxist theory to analytic philosophical methodology. The movement, created primarily by G.A. Cohen and the “September Group,” exemplifies how analytical-philosophy appropriates and neutralises radical traditions through philosophical-columbusing.
Origins: Gerald Allan Cohen
Gerald Allan (“Jerry”) Cohen grew up in a Jewish communist household in Montreal, ardently imbibing Marxist ideas in his youth. In 1961 he came to Oxford to take the BPhil degree, where—as he later put it—“under the benign guidance of Gilbert Ryle… learned British analytical philosophy.”
Cohen recalled that in the 1960s “almost all politically committed students” were hostile to analytic philosophy. By contrast, having already become a committed Marxist, he found it “not difficult to take analytical philosophy on board.” This set the pattern: Marxism would be adapted to fit analytic philosophy, not the reverse.
Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence (1978)
Cohen’s 1978 book performed the extraordinary task of defending hyper-orthodox technological-determinist Marxism in the style of analytic philosophy. As Marxist historian Ellen Meiksins Wood comments, the book is “less a reinterpretation of Marx than an uncompromising defence of the most orthodox interpretation.”
Crucially, it is also “curiously ahistorical.” Cohen’s “law” of history is “so diluted that it has no explanatory value.” What Cohen defends is not a historical theory of capitalism—the social order of a specific epoch—but a theory of history as such.
This renders Cohen’s version of Marx useless for explaining capitalism. Unsurprisingly, that task is relegated to a purely moral form of explanation. Marx gives way to traditional liberal-bourgeois philosophising.
The September Group
Shortly after publication, Cohen formed a group with Jon Elster (Norwegian social scientist) and John E. Roemer (American economist). Meeting first in September 1979, they called themselves the “September Group.”
Jon Elster’s methodological individualism
Elster arrived in Paris to do a PhD on Marx in 1968, just as Althusserianism was at its height, but chose to work instead with right-wing philosopher Raymond Aron. He came to view that Marx employed two methods:
- Methodological individualism (correct)
- Methodological collectivism (a deep mistake)
It was “extraordinary,” Elster reported, how Marx could shift between them within the same work (e.g., the Grundrisse). When Marx invoked the “dialectical method,” it tended to be “in such general, even vapid terms” that it was hard to see what implications it could have “for more specific analyses.”
John Roemer’s game theory
Roemer’s A General Theory of Exploitation and Class (1982) sought to explain exploitation in terms of game theory. This attempted to dismantle the master’s house using the master’s tools: the rational agents assumed by game theory could not possibly do the expected work unless they hoisted themselves over the barriers imposed by class.
”Non-bullshit Marxism”
Cohen liked to call the September Group’s approach “non-bullshit Marxism.” The “bullshit” was partly what Cohen detected in Althusser’s work: theses either so impenetrable it was impossible to tell if they were true, or—where intelligible—admitting only two interpretations, one trivial and the other obviously false.
“Bullshit” was partly equated with “dialectic.” It was never made clear what dialectical reasoning was, Cohen protested, leading him to conclude that “dialectic as a rival to analysis thrives only in an atmosphere of unclear thought.”
Analytic Marxism involved positive commitment to analysis, conceived as standing in opposition to holism. Social formations had to be understood in terms of the behaviour of their component parts. This commitment to analysis—both in the “non-bullshit” sense and the individualist sense—was, according to Cohen, “unrevisable.” Any resistance to analytic techniques was “irrational obscurantism.”
Cohen’s drift to liberalism
As time went on, Cohen strayed from Marxism. He followed in the line of his mentor Isaiah Berlin, and Berlin’s successors John Plamenatz and Charles Taylor, to become Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory at Oxford (1985-2008).
In later work, his concerns were traditional themes of liberalism, and his arguments became indistinguishable from those of moral philosophers. Cohen, who seemed genuinely troubled that his life as an Oxford professor and fellow of All Souls College might be dissonant with continued professions of Marxism, had left the communism of his Montreal youth far behind.
Critiques
Ellen Meiksins Wood
Wood identifies analytic Marxism’s fundamental flaw: by rendering Marx’s theory ahistorical, it becomes useless for its original purpose—explaining capitalism. The “law” of history is so abstract it has no explanatory power for understanding specific social formations.
Methodological bankruptcy
The attempt to reduce Marxian analysis to methodological individualism and game theory represents trying to dismantle the master’s house using the master’s tools. Class relations cannot be adequately grasped through frameworks assuming rational individual agents maximising utility.
Rejection of dialectic
Dismissing dialectic as “bullshit” or “unclear thought” prevents engagement with Marx’s actual method. The insistence that analysis is “unrevisable” closes off alternative philosophical approaches as “irrational obscurantism.”
Legacy
Analytic Marxism demonstrates how analytical-philosophy colonises radical traditions:
- Stripping away structural and dialectical analysis
- Reducing historical materialism to ahistorical schemas
- Replacing revolutionary critique with liberal moral philosophy
- Insisting on methodological individualism as “unrevisable”
The result is Marxism evacuated of critical power, reduced to exercises in formal logic and game theory, ultimately drifting back into the liberal tradition it originally sought to overcome.
Further reading
- Cohen, G.A. (1978). Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence
- Elster, J. Making Sense of Marx
- Roemer, J. (1982). A General Theory of Exploitation and Class
- Wood, E.M. critiques of analytic Marxism
- Schuringa, C. (2025). A Social History of Analytic Philosophy, Chapter 10