I found this post by Joseph Heath very informative. Basically, Marx was about exploitation but when there was no theory of exploitation without open holes that could be developed, analytical Marx turned to equality ala Rawls.
Back when I was a graduate student, during the last years of the cold war, the most exciting thing going on in political philosophy was the powerful resurgence of Marxism in the English-speaking world. Most of this work was done under the banner of “analytical Marxism” (aka “no-bullshit Marxism”), after the publication of Gerald Cohen’s book. Karl Marx’s Theory of History: Defense (and his subsequent elevation to the Chichele Professorship in Social and Political Philosophy at Oxford). At that time in Germany, Jürgen Habermas was incredibly united Legitimationsprobleme im Spätkapitalismus he promised to renew Marx’s analysis of the problems of capitalism in the language of modern systems theory. It was an exciting time to be a strong teenager. One can say, without exaggeration, that many of the most intelligent and important people working in political philosophy were Marxists in some sense.
So what happened to all this fervor and excitement, all the high-powered theory being produced under the banner of Western Marxism? It’s a terrible thing, but all those brilliant, important Marxists and neo-Marxists, doing all that higher power work, they became free. All the theorists at the core of the movement of analytical Marxism – not just Cohen, but Philippe van Parijs, John Roemer, Allen Buchanan, and Jon Elster – and the inheritors of the Frankfurt School like Habermas, ended up accepting some exceptions. of the idea known as “liberal equality.” Of course, this was not in compliance with the “classical freedom” of the 19th century.th century, it was a departure from the style of modern liberalism that found its biblical expression in the work of John Rawls.
If one feels like putting this point in the opposite direction, one might say that the “no-bullshit” Marxists, after removing all the bullshit from Marxism, find that there is nothing left but freedom.
That’s what opens it up. Read everything.
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