ABSTRACT
Jon Elster and I each worked sympathetically on Marxism for a long time, and each of us independently came to see that Marxism in its traditional form is associated with explanations of a special type, ones in which, to put it roughly, consequences are used to explain causes. In keeping with normal practice, Elster calls such explanations functional explanations, and I shall follow suit here.1 He deplores the association between Marxism and functional explanation, because he thinks there is no scope for functional explanation in social science. It is, he believes, quite proper in biology, because unlike social phenomena, biological ones satisfy the presuppositions that justify its use. Elster therefore concludes that the Marxist theory of society and history should abandon functional explanation. He also thinks that it should, instead, draw for its explanations on the resources of game theory.
