Cider - Shop now
Buy new:
-20% $39.99
FREE delivery Friday, May 16 to Nashville 37217
Ships from: Amazon.com
Sold by: Amazon.com
$39.99 with 20 percent savings
List Price: $49.95
FREE Returns
FREE delivery Friday, May 16 to Nashville 37217
Or Prime members get FREE delivery Wednesday, May 14.
In Stock
$$39.99 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details
Price
Subtotal
$$39.99
Subtotal
Initial payment breakdown
Shipping cost, delivery date, and order total (including tax) shown at checkout.
Ships from
Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Ships from
Amazon.com
Sold by
Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Sold by
Amazon.com
Returns
30-day refund/replacement
30-day refund/replacement
This item can be returned in its original condition for a full refund or replacement within 30 days of receipt.
Read full return policy
Payment
Secure transaction
Your transaction is secure
We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more
$28.73
Ships in a BOX from Central Missouri! May not include working access code. Will not include dust jacket. Has used sticker(s) and some writing or highlighting. UPS shipping for most packages, (Priority Mail for AK/HI/APO/PO Boxes). Ships in a BOX from Central Missouri! May not include working access code. Will not include dust jacket. Has used sticker(s) and some writing or highlighting. UPS shipping for most packages, (Priority Mail for AK/HI/APO/PO Boxes). See less
FREE delivery May 19 - 20 to Nashville 37217. Details
Only 10 left in stock - order soon.
$$39.99 () Includes selected options. Includes initial monthly payment and selected options. Details
Price
Subtotal
$$39.99
Subtotal
Initial payment breakdown
Shipping cost, delivery date, and order total (including tax) shown at checkout.
Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items.
Ships from and sold by textbooks_source.
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the author

G. A. Cohen
Follow
Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

Karl Marx's Theory of History Expanded Edition

by G. A. Cohen (Author)
4.8 out of 5 stars 24 ratings
{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$39.99","priceAmount":39.99,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"39","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"99","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"lIYjnC5ByAOilWcDEKU3w8vrgNb1BSeVA3UWNll5R5okJv8%2B%2BTENATAvq%2Bvk2zQA7VcnI4mhVshKZtKDx5dLoImzH9G4%2Frz2vCKTvUeWfOrw2G5ojKYGBSw4pZNNWZKf7DzHVC%2F4Ois%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$28.73","priceAmount":28.73,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"28","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"73","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"lIYjnC5ByAOilWcDEKU3w8vrgNb1BSeVFpMBFYM01LrAoUzrolxYpI4I4L6nY9KBpV0fMW1bP9iD4hKQnsSpvCS3q2tAwO2mZfTTItGpYG7kIlj%2BF2jbSaeYmCWPO%2FcltDO5LMZ2H1QTMwOPXE6mJHTg3RJZYBWGFOz9oqyeDgacEMZ48Kb8mA%3D%3D","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

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 defense of historical materialism commanded widespread admiration. In the ensuing twenty years, the book has 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 also expresses reservations about traditional historical materialism, in the light of which he reconstructs the theory, and he studies the implications for historical materialism of the demise of the Soviet Union.

Read more
Previous slide of product details
  1. ISBN-10
    0691070687
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0691070681
  3. Edition
    Expanded
  4. Publisher
    Princeton University Press
  5. Publication date
    December 15, 2000
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    5.5 x 1.18 x 8.5 inches
  8. Print length
    430 pages
Next slide of product details
Books%20with%20Buzz
Books with Buzz
Discover the latest buzz-worthy books, from mysteries and romance to humor and nonfiction. Explore more

Frequently bought together

Karl Marx's Theory of History
This item: Karl Marx's Theory of History
$39.99
Get it as soon as Friday, May 16
In Stock
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
+
Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1 (Penguin Classics)
$18.32
Get it as soon as Friday, May 16
In Stock
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
+
Hegel: Elements of the Philosophy of Right (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought)
$26.79
Get it as soon as Friday, May 16
In Stock
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com.
Total price: $00
To see our price, add these items to your cart.
Details
Added to Cart
Choose items to buy together.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Winner of the Isaac Deutscher Memorial Prize"

"Cohen's blend of sound scholarship and acute philosophical reasoning has produced a work with which anyone seriously interested in understanding Marx must come to terms."---Peter Singer, New York Review of Books

"A clear, definite, and well-reasoned interpretation of what the theory really is. . . . Admirably argued and generally exhilarating."---Anthony Quinton, The Times Literary Supplement

"[Karl Marx's Theory of History] is an ambitious and impressive work. . . . Cohen writes with limpidity, verve, and honesty."---William H. Shaw, American Historical Review

Review

"An admirable and formidable book."—E. J. Hobsbawm

"Every sentence has the feel of having been deeply thought through over a long period of time."—Gareth Stedman Jones

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Princeton University Press; Expanded edition (December 15, 2000)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 430 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0691070687
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0691070681
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.25 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1.18 x 8.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.8 out of 5 stars 24 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
G. A. Cohen

G. A. Cohen

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read book recommendations and more.

Customer reviews

4.8 out of 5 stars
24 global ratings

Review this product

Share your thoughts with other customers
Write a customer review

Top reviews from the United States

  • Calixte
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great book, with flaws. But what doesn’t?!
    Reviewed in the United States on November 4, 2022
    The comment section highlights everything wrong with Marxists today. Marxist theory has always been relegated to the continental types, the scribes of critical theory, and other subcategories. The issue with them is the intense abstractions in which they love to “play.” It’s completely detached and disassociated from the very people for which they claim to advocate. There is something deeply unsettling about despising anything analytically rigorous with phantasmagoric critiques the thing in question, as a means to shields one’s own ideological and intellectual ineptitude. And that’s who dislike the book in the reviews: “Marxists.” But of a kind in which lives in name only; as a fetish.
    2 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report
  • Kevin McShane
    4.0 out of 5 stars Marx for thé hard core
    Reviewed in the United States on December 17, 2017
    Verified Purchase
    A very interesting defense of Marx using the lingo and style of analytic philosophy. The post 1989 revisions make it slightly more credible. One wonders if Cohen would have changed his views even more in the post 2001 world. Or if he could have imagined Trumpism
    4 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report
  • R. Albin
    4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting
    Reviewed in the United States on February 26, 2017
    An interesting, rigorous, and somewhat demanding effort to defend Marx's theory of history. As Marx nowhere laid out his theory of history systematically, this is partly an effort to synthesize diverse writings to present a coherent theory. This is simultaneously also an effort to modernize Marx by stripping away some of the more obscure features of Marx's thought such as the use of "dialectic"and some of more cloudy Hegelian teleology. A good deal of the book is careful argument to refute other interpretations of Marx. While indispensable in the context of Cohen's goals, some of the sectarian wrangling is a bit hard to follow.

    Cohen succeeds in presenting a coherent and Marxian theory of history. This has a strongly technological determinist flavor with changes in so-called "productive forces" as the main motor of human history. Much of Cohen's discussion is a sophisticated effort to justify Marx's Base and Superstructure model. In a complex but interesting argument apparently analogous to some explanations in biology, Cohen defines relationships between productive forces and production relations, the latter being the networks of power controlling productive forces, as generating the social superstructure. The latter, however, interacts in complex ways with production relations. A good deal of Cohen's arguments hinge on the nature of "functionalist" explanations and devotes a whole chapter to an abstract discussion of functionalist explanations.

    How convincing is the Marx-Cohen model? Cohen's arguments are sophisticated and rigorous. I suspect that most objective readers will be convinced that Marx did offer a coherent theory and will finish this book with enhanced respect for Marx's analysis of capitalism. Important aspects of the model itself, however, continue to strike me as excessively deterministic and Cohen's efforts to avoid this potential defect by use of functionalist explanations, while coherent, seems to vague to be a really useful approach. This book was published originally in the late 1970s and the later chapters include some later writings by Cohen in which he responds to criticisms and somewhat weakens the model.
    6 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report
  • Dave Death
    1.0 out of 5 stars The starting point for all critics of Marx
    Reviewed in the United States on August 21, 2005
    This book has some virtues, in terms of clarity of exposition, but as a reading of Marx it leaves a lot to be desired. Like Jon Elster's attempts of making (non)sense of Marx that followed it, this text reads into Marx a set of assumptions taken for granted within neoclassical economics but entirely foreign to Marx's work. If you want to see how Marx and Marxism measure up to the unquestionable and seemingly unthinkable criteria of bourgeois thought, read this. But if you want to understand Marx, read Althusser. 'For Marx' is a good place to start, but be sure to read the essays collected in 'The Humanist Controversy' and 'Philosophy and the Spontaneous Philosophy of the Scientists' too, not to mention 'Reading Capital' and 'Machiavelli and Us' ... Cohen may be easier to read, but only because Cohen doesn't challenge any of the ideology of capitalism that is as invisible to most people as water is to the fish that swim in it.
    34 people found this helpful
    Helpful
     Report

Top reviews from other countries

  • S P Mead
    5.0 out of 5 stars a major contribution
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 22, 2016
    Verified Purchase
    This is an exceptionally well-written book that advances a complex and highly interesting thesis regarding Marx's theory of historical materialism. The author, Cohen, seeks to draw on and interpret Marx's writings concerned with understanding 'history' and, on so doing, present a unified and coherent analysis of what history means from a Marxist perspective. The book was first published in 1978 and quickly became recognised as a work of major importance. While Marx was primarily concerned with the political economy of capitalism, he nonetheless dedicated years of study and research to the subject of history. On the one hand, he sought to generally understand the entire social history of humankind (from primitive societies onward, through antiquity and feudalism to modern social formations). On the other hand, Marx was particularly interested in the lineages and dynamics of capitalist society. For Marx, history was not merely a succession of events - rather, he argued that underlying social forces moved history in certain directions. As such, he was intensely fascinated by the 'meaning' of history - and, on that basis, Marx presented a definite 'theory of history'. In this book, Cohen endeavours to explain that theory.

    The arguments put forward by Cohen are often complex, and occasionally highly abstract. As such, it's typically the case that a careful re-reading of this book is most rewarding. He explores various topics: productive forces, the economic structure, the material properties of society, base and superstructure, and both use-value and exchange-value. These topics are subjected to a sustained critique, and Cohen presents his own analysis of the theory of history he perceives Marx as advancing. As to the validity of the specifics of his argument, I'll leave that up to the reader to decide. What I will say is that Cohen develops a highly logical approach - and, if one accepts the premises on which his argument rests, then his conclusions are sound. What the author does, in a rather amazing way, is explore and explain the minute detail of particular words and phrases used by Marx, showing what they mean in each given context. As such, Cohen's work is exceptionally thorough.

    Few social scientists and philosophers seek to explain the meaning of history by theorising 'history' itself. Marx sought to do so - but often as a secondary task (with notes and draft materials left unpublished). Cohen collects all of Marx's ideas regarding history and succeeds in presenting a highly interesting argument concerning Marx's theory. For anyone fascinated by either Marx or history, I recommend this book.
    Customer image
    S P Mead
    5.0 out of 5 stars
    a major contribution

    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 22, 2016
    This is an exceptionally well-written book that advances a complex and highly interesting thesis regarding Marx's theory of historical materialism. The author, Cohen, seeks to draw on and interpret Marx's writings concerned with understanding 'history' and, on so doing, present a unified and coherent analysis of what history means from a Marxist perspective. The book was first published in 1978 and quickly became recognised as a work of major importance. While Marx was primarily concerned with the political economy of capitalism, he nonetheless dedicated years of study and research to the subject of history. On the one hand, he sought to generally understand the entire social history of humankind (from primitive societies onward, through antiquity and feudalism to modern social formations). On the other hand, Marx was particularly interested in the lineages and dynamics of capitalist society. For Marx, history was not merely a succession of events - rather, he argued that underlying social forces moved history in certain directions. As such, he was intensely fascinated by the 'meaning' of history - and, on that basis, Marx presented a definite 'theory of history'. In this book, Cohen endeavours to explain that theory.

    The arguments put forward by Cohen are often complex, and occasionally highly abstract. As such, it's typically the case that a careful re-reading of this book is most rewarding. He explores various topics: productive forces, the economic structure, the material properties of society, base and superstructure, and both use-value and exchange-value. These topics are subjected to a sustained critique, and Cohen presents his own analysis of the theory of history he perceives Marx as advancing. As to the validity of the specifics of his argument, I'll leave that up to the reader to decide. What I will say is that Cohen develops a highly logical approach - and, if one accepts the premises on which his argument rests, then his conclusions are sound. What the author does, in a rather amazing way, is explore and explain the minute detail of particular words and phrases used by Marx, showing what they mean in each given context. As such, Cohen's work is exceptionally thorough.

    Few social scientists and philosophers seek to explain the meaning of history by theorising 'history' itself. Marx sought to do so - but often as a secondary task (with notes and draft materials left unpublished). Cohen collects all of Marx's ideas regarding history and succeeds in presenting a highly interesting argument concerning Marx's theory. For anyone fascinated by either Marx or history, I recommend this book.
    Images in this review
    Customer imageCustomer imageCustomer image
    One person found this helpful
     Report
  • ClaudioC
    5.0 out of 5 stars Analysis and Mehod
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 8, 2012
    Verified Purchase
    A book that every student of Marx must read! Thought, critics and debate are examined and discussed, carefully and critically. Ad maiora.
    Report