G. A. Cohen’s pathbreaking book, Karl Marx‘s Theory of History: A Defence (1978), prompted extensive reconsideration of historical materialism. This effort recast ongoing debates about Marx‘s theory of history by defending the view that historical materialism embodies a set of substantive claims as appropriately subject to analytical scrutiny as those of any other viable theory. Specifically, Cohen advances one central substantive claim that summarizes his reading of the “Preface” to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. “History is, fundamentally, (...) the growth of productive power, and forms of society rise and fall according as they enable or impede that growth.” This premise affirms that the same set of factors that explain changes societies undergo within a given historical epoch also explain transitions between historical epochs. The theoretical account of intraepochal historical development suffices equally to cover interepochal, revolutionary change. In this paper we reject this premise and argue that even on the most plausible reconstruction of Marx’s theory of history—a reconstruction that employs, among other things, a careful ownership-based criterion of historical epochs and the use of functional explanations—Marx’s theory of history cannot explain social revolutions. -/- . (shrink)

There is a paradox, or self-defeating supposition in the core of constructionism, for it would appear that any attempt to resolve a dispute in historical interpretation within a convention of self-contained criteria of confirmation by appealing to justificatory criteria outside the convention -to wit, the theory of constructionism -is self-defeating. Through the theoretical consideration of historians isolated in a vat, following Hilary Putnam's metaphor, it becomes clear that the vat language of the historians does not have the possibility of referring, (...) intrinsically or extrinsically, to anything external. The implications of the vat metaphor for an understanding of historical inquiry are: 1) we need to recognize and insist upon different levels of abstraction both in historical writing and in the justification of its claims; 2) applied to history, the set paradox reveals the need to recognize that at the most abstract level of consideration we encounter inescapable incoherence; and 3) we need to recognize that in some important sense reference must be completed in the world, regardless of the problems in characterizing this sense philosophically. (shrink)