This book defends historical materialism, by offering argument in its favour, but more by presenting the theory in what I hope is an attractive form.

The presentation respects two constraints: on the one hand,what Marx wrote, and, on the other, those standards of clarity and rigour which distinguish twentieth-century analytical philosophy. The aim is to construct a tenable theory of history which is in broad accord with what Marx said on the subject.While he would certainly have found some of what will follow unfamiliar, the hope is that he could have recognized it as a reasonably clear statement of what he thought.

First published in 1978, this book rapidly established itself as a classic of modern Marxism. Cohen's masterful application of advanced philosophical techniques in an uncompromising defence of historical materialism commanded widespread admiration.In the ensuing twenty years, the bookhas served as a flagship of a powerful intellectual movement--analytical Marxism. In this expanded edition Cohen offers his own account of the history, and the further promise, of analytical Marxism. He atso expresses reservations about traditional historical materialism, in the light of which he reconstructs the theory, and he studies the implications for historical matedalism of the demise of the Soviet Union.

NOTE ON REFERENCES AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION TO THE 2000 EDITION: REFLECTIONS

ON ANALYTICAL MARXISM

I.  IMAGES OF HISTORY IN HEGEL AND MARX

II.  THE CONSTITUTION OF THE PRODUCTIVE FORCES

  (1) Economic Structure and Productive Forces

  (2) Some Terminological Points

  (3) Labour Power

  (4) Science

  (5) More Candidates for the Catalogue

  (6) The Development of the Productive Forces

III. THE ECONOMIC STRUCTURE

  (1) Ownership Rights in Productive Forces

  (2) Possible and Impossible Ownership Positions of Producers

  (3) Subordination

  (4) Redefining the Proletarian

  (5) The Structural Definition of Class

  (6) The Individuation of Social Forms

  (7) Modes of Production

  (8) Varieties of Economic Change

IV.  MATERIAL AND SOCIAL PROPERTIES OF SOCIETY

  (1) Introducing the Distinction

  (2) Matter and Form in the Labour Process

  (3) Use-value and Political Economy

  (4) Revolutionary Value of the Distinction

  (5) Against Marx on Mill

  (6) Work Relations

V.  FETISHISM

  (1) Fetishism in Religion and in Economics

  (2) What is True and What is False in Fetishism

  (3) Diagnosis of Commodity Fetishism

  (4) Diagnosis of Capital Fetishism

  (5) Commodity Fetishism and Money

  (6) Commodity Fetishism, Religion, and Politics

  (7) Communism as the Liberation of the Content

VI. THE PRIMACY OF THE PRODUCTIVE FORCES

  (1) Introduction

  (2) Assertions of Primacy by Marx: The Preface

  (3) Assertions of Primacy by Marx: Outside the Preface

  (4) The Case for Primacy

  (5) The Nature of the Primacy of the Forces

  (6) Productive Forces, Material Relations, Social Relations

  (7) 'All earlier modes of production were essentially conservative'

  (8) Addendum

VII. THE PRODUCTIVE FORCES AND CAPITALISM

  (1) The Emergence of Capitalism

  (2) The Capitalist Economic Structure and the Capitalist Mode of Production

  (3) Capitalism and the Development of the Productive Forces

  (4) Four Epochs

  (5) Capitalism's Mission, and its Fate

  (6) The Presuppositions of Socialism

  (7) Why are Classes Necessary？

VIII. BASE AND SUPERSTRUCTURE, POWERS AND RIGHTS

  (1) Identifying the Superstructure

  (2) The Problem of Legality

  (3) Explanation of Property Relations and Law by Production Relations

  (4) Bases Need Superstructures

  (5) Is the Economic Structure Independendy Observable？

  (6) More on Rights and Powers

  (7) Rights and Powers of the Proletariat

  (8) Addenda

IX. FUNCTIONAL EXPLANATION: IN GENERAL

  (1) Introduction

  (2) Explanation

  (3) Function-statements and Functional Explanations

  (4) The Structure of Functional Explanation

  (5) Confirmation

  (6) Are any Functional Explanations True？

  (7) Consequence Explanation and the Deductive-nomological Model

X.  FUNCTIONAL EXPLANATION: IN MARXISM

  (1) Introduction

  (2) Conceptual Criticisms of Functional Explanation

  (3) Functionalism, Functional Explanation, and Marxism

  (4) Elaborations

  (5) Marxian Illustrations

XI. USE-VALUE, EXCHANGE-VALUE, AND CONTEMPORARY

  CAPITALISM

  (1) Introduction

  (2) The Subjugation of Use-value by Exchange-value

  (3) A Distinctive Contradiction of Advanced Capitalism

  (4) Mishan and Galbraith

  (5) The Argument Reviewed

  (6) Is Capitalism a Necessary Condition of the Distinctive Contradiction？

  (7) An Objection

  (8) The Bias of Capitalism and Max Weber

  (9) Obiter Dicta

XII. FETTERING

XIII. RECONSIDERING HISTORICAL MATERIALISM

XIV. RESTRICTED AND INCLUSIVE HISTORICAL MATERIALISM

XV. MARXISM AFTER THE COLIAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION

APPENDIX I Karl Marx and the Withering Away of Social Science

APPENVIX II Some Definitions

LIST OF WORKS CITED

NAME INDEX

SUBJECT INDEX