A systematic, critical examination of Karl Marx's social theories and their philosophical presuppositions. Through extensive discussions of the texts Jon Elster offers a balanced and detailed account of Marx's views that is at once sympathetic, undogmatic and rigorous. Equally importantly he tries to assess 'what is living and what is dead in the philosophy of Marx', using the analytical resources of contemporary social science and philosophy. Professor Elster insists on the need for microfoundations in social science and provides a systematic criticism of functionalism and teleological...
A systematic, critical examination of Karl Marx's social theories and their philosophical presuppositions. Through extensive discussions of the texts ...
As John Roemer says in his introduction to this volume, 'During the past decade, what now appears as a new species in social theory has been forming: analytically sophisticated Marxism. Its practitioners are largely inspired by Marxian questions which they pursue with contemporary tools of logic, mathematics, and model building These writers are, self-consciously, products of both the Marxian and non-Marxian traditions.' This volume assembles substantial and original essays, both published and unpublished, by some of the leading practitioners of 'analytical Marxism'. The essays discuss a...
As John Roemer says in his introduction to this volume, 'During the past decade, what now appears as a new species in social theory has been forming: ...
Karl Marx's writings contain, besides economic analysis and the political theory of revolutionary communism, an influential sociology of ideas, explaining how social life shapes and distorts people's ideas and beliefs. This book presents a fresh critical study of this theory, establishing what Marx did and did not say, and distinguishing the more scientific parts of his thought from those that were overly influenced by his revolutionary aims. The author argues that Marx's own theory of ideas can play an important role in explaining the subsequent degeneration of Marxist thought itself.
Karl Marx's writings contain, besides economic analysis and the political theory of revolutionary communism, an influential sociology of ideas, explai...
Defenders of capitalism claim that its inequality is the necessary price of the freedom that it guarantees. In that defense of capitalist inequality, freedom is self-ownership, the right of each person to do as he wishes with himself. The author shows that self-ownership fails to deliver the freedom it promises to secure. He thereby undermines the idea that lovers of freedom should embrace capitalism and the inequality that comes with it. In the final chapter he reaffirms the moral superiority of socialism, against the background of the disastrous Soviet experiment.
Defenders of capitalism claim that its inequality is the necessary price of the freedom that it guarantees. In that defense of capitalist inequality, ...
