The theory of history by Karl Marx: a defense

Abstract

Cohen's work, now published by Editora Unicamp, appeared in the first edition in 1978, and in an expanded second edition in 2000. The expansion consisted of the inclusion of an Introduction to the 2000 edition: Reflections on analytical Marxism, and the addition of four new chapters, at the end of the work, to the original eleven chapters. The work is considered the founder of a current – ​​more specifically, a group of authors – that came to be called “analytical Marxism”, whose leaders were Cohen, John Roemer and Jon Elster. For this reason, the book has a meaning, due to its method and theoretical objective, as or more important than its object, Marx's theory of history, or Cohen's version of this theory. It can be said that the object was the support of a methodological project to reformulate historical materialism based on non-Marxist theoretical and methodological principles.