When G. A. Cohen set out to write a defence of historical materialism, or Marx’s theory of history, he believed it to be true. In the subsequent revision of his defence years later, he came to doubt the proposition that it is true for epistemic reasons:

More recently, however, I have come to wonder whether the theory which the book defends is true. I do not now believe historical materialism is false, but I am not sure how to tell whether or not it is true… That is unclear because we still have only a crude conception of what sort of evidence would confirm or disconfirm historical materialism.[1]

I seek to highlight some of the plausible epistemic concerns that may have caused Cohen to doubt the truth of Marx’s theory, and hope to prove that these concerns prove fatal for the theory.

The first and most general concerns are how to know when the theory has proven true: is it possible for the theory to be proven true prior to the observed collapse of capitalism into communism? How would this be done? Or, does the theory require the actualization of communism (in a way not contrary to the historical materialism argument, such as the USSR[2])? Further, is the theory confirmed at this point regardless of future possibilities – is historical materialism taken to be true when communism obtains in spite of the fact that there remains a possibility for communism itself to fail? If communism obtains and subsequently fails (into an unknown economic structure different from those that preceded it), is the theory taken to be true, or false? These all appear to be vital questions for the proponent of historical materialism to answer in order for their theory to be taken as true. Answers to these questions are not obvious and do appear pertinent, thus the defender of historical materialism ought to be able to answer them.

A further set of concerns relates more towards Cohen’s argument for the relationship between property relations, production relations and productive forces:

But in all cases, so historical materialism contends, the property relations change in the service of changes in production relations (which in turn reflect development of the productive forces).[3]

Cohen attempts to support this with the following argument:

Slavery, for example, could not be the general condition of producers in a society of computer technology, if only because the degree of culture needed in labourers who can work that technology would lead them to revolt, successfully, against slave status. How wide is the range of economic structures compatible with given productive forces? We shall not supply a complete answer, but it is clear that with given productive forces not all economic structures are possible.[4]

While prima facie this argument may appear to be strong, upon further inspection it appears dubious and casts doubt on how we can know which production relations are compatible with productive forces. It is unclear why proficiency in computer technology necessitates a level of culture in the workers that would cause them to revolt against their slave status. Rather, it seems likely that it would be possible to educate the workers in such a way that they are not introduced to aspects of culture that may cause them to doubt their position, while simultaneously providing the necessary educational tools to build their computer proficiency. The aspects of culture most pertinent to this case, history and customary morality, seem to be easily avoided in the education of computer scientists, and so it does not seem clear why their required level of culture is incompatible with slavery. Perhaps customary morality could even be taught to slaves, and through some sort of indoctrination not dissimilar to historical subjugation of women in some middle eastern countries or some slaves in pre-civil war USA, the slaves would accept their status as exempt from typical moral matters concerning people. Certainly this argument would require more elucidation to prove true in this example, and even more to prove true in general that some production relations are incompatible with some productive forces. The inability to prove in one case that a production relation is incompatible with a set of productive forces sheds doubt on the ability to show in general how this may be true.

The final epistemic concern relates to the structure of the argument as a functional explanation lacking a true generalization. Cohen notes that the most common account of true functional explanations, Darwin’s natural selection, is, “a compelling account of why functional explanations apply in the biosphere.”[5] Darwin does not merely show that function explanations apply in the biosphere, but shows how this is possible. However, Cohen goes further to state that, “it is possible to know that x explains y, and yet find it puzzling that x should explain y, through failure to see how x explains y.”[6] It is unclear in what sense one may know that x explains y without seeing how it does. Cases such as Darwin’s avoid such problems as they provide elucidation as to how x explains y, but Cohen’s defence of Marx lacks such an elaboration.

Cohen attempts to side step this lack of elaboration in two ways: claiming it is unnecessary to know the further, general truth of the functional explanation, and advancing a weaker thesis of correlation, rather than causation.

In regards to the first argument, Cohen says, “our experience of the world assures us that wherever a consequence explanation holds, it has some or other further elaboration.”[7] However, it does not appear obviously true that our experience does confirm this. Often times we may think a consequence explanation holds but only due to a further lack of knowledge – something we do not know we do not know proves the consequence explanation to be incomplete or untrue. In essence this is a lurking variable, and without a further elaboration that rules out these lurking variables, it does not seem clear that we can take consequence explanations to be true. Consider the following example from WWII – following the war, analysis was done on bombing accuracy and it was found that bombers were more accurate when opposed by an enemy aircraft, compared to when they were unopposed. Was this an example of what is in sports frequently called “the clutch gene”? Rather, bombing unopposed occurred only when there was heavy cloud cover, making it difficult to accurately hit targets. As such, lurking variables can be seen to disrupt consequence explanations we may think we observe.

Cohen’s second attempt at avoiding the lack of elaboration is done by advancing a thesis proposing correlation, rather than causation between the requirement of living existence and the actual endowments of living things.[8] This weaker thesis does not rule out the possibility that some lurking variable may better explain the observed phenomenon, and is thus unsatisfactory. While correlations may prove to be intriguing, one cannot derive causation from this, and cannot prove the theory on these grounds.

Due to underlying epistemic issues, it is unclear how one may confirm a variety of theses and aspects of the historical materialism argument. The argument suffers from a lack of clarity on how to show the truth of the argument, to a perceived inability to prove the relationship between production relations and productive forces in general, and lastly to an inability to draw causation from the argument. Whether these issues are fixable is itself unclear, but for proponents of historical materialism, these appear to be necessary issues to attack in order to prove the truth of the theory. As Cohen himself does not supply answers to these questions, and may have doubted his ability to do so, historical materialism seems to have reached an impasse.

[1] Cohen, G. A. Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. 341.

[2] Ibid., 391.

[3] Ibid., 226.

[4] Ibid., 158.

[5] Ibid., 271.

[6] Ibid., 271.

[7] Ibid., 271.

[8] Ibid., 285.