Analytical Marxism

Analytical Marxism is an academic school of Marxist theory which emerged in the late 1970s, largely prompted by G. A. Cohen's Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence (1978). In this book, Cohen drew on the Anglo–American tradition of analytic philosophy in an attempt to align Marxist theory with an analytic style and standard, which led to his distancing of Marxism from continental European philosophy. Analytical Marxism rejects much of the Hegelian and dialectical tradition associated with Marx's thought. The school is associated with the "September Group", which included Jon Elster, John Roemer, Adam Przeworski and Erik Olin Wright. This group initially also playfully called themselves No Bullshit Marxists. Its theorists emphasize methodology and utilize analytical philosophy, and some of them favor rational choice theory, game theory and methodological individualism (the doctrine that all social phenomena can only be explained in terms of the actions and beliefs of individual subjects).