For What May We Hope? Historical Materialism and the Question of Socialism
by David Schweickart
Immanuel Kant proposed three questions as constitutive of the philosophical enterprise: What can we know? How should we act? For what may we hope? As a philosopher long interested in economic issues, let me offer some thoughts on these questions as they apply to our contemporary economic order: What do we know? In what may we hope? What should we do? I want to talk about the big picture–about capitalism and about what, if anything, might come next.
Part I: Four Development Theses
The publication in 1978 of G. A. Cohen’s Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defense marked the beginning of an exciting new genre of Marxist scholarship in the English-speaking world.[1] “Analytical Marxism” was the (soon-to-be applied) official appellation. “Marxism without the bullshit” was the unofficial label among core afficionados. (more…)
