1 Elster, J., Making Sense of Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1985)Google Scholar

2 Elster, J., Logic and Society: Contradictions and Possible Worlds (Chichester: John Wiley and Sons 1978)Google Scholar

3 Logic and Society, 99. The formulas for antecedent and consequent used here are from Elster, J., ‘Some Conceptual Problems in Political Theory,’ in Barry, B., ed., Power and Political Theory (Chichester: John Wiley and Sons 1976), 267-8Google Scholar.

4 Logic and Society 110. It should be noted that, as Making Sense makes clear (24), it is, strictly speaking, required for counterfinality that the actors become worse off, not simply that, as this wording suggests, they fail to improve their situation. The complication is not significant for present purposes.

5 Perhaps one should add the supposition that those at the front find themselves, when seated, disagreeably low in relation to the podium. The need for such tedious refining merely bears out the point that the crux of the problem lies not in logic but in the messiness of the world.

6 Sour Grapes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1983), 21-3

7 Ulysses and the Sirens: Studies in Rationality and Irrationality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1979), 20

8 Elster, , Milking Sense, 122-4Google Scholar. ‘The main argument,’ he affirms, ‘is that in many cases counterfinality and suboptimality are identical as regards overt behaviour.’ If, however, one considers only overt behaviour, abstracting from the agents’ conception of their situation, it is not clear how, on Elster’s premises, one can be entitled to speak of contradictions at all. That one is not may be presumed to be part of the point behind his rebuke to those proponents of dialectics who say ‘contradiction’ when they should say ‘opposition, conflict or struggle’ (Making Sense, 3). Indeed, considered simply as overt behaviour, it is hard to see how even counterfinality can qualify as social contradiction. Elster’s ‘additional argument’ is even less persuasive. It is that ‘both counterfinality and suboptimality tend to generate collective action’ because of the ‘tension’ they involve: ’These tensions are in themselves not contradictions in the rigorous sense of the term used here, but they nevertheless point to the need for a unified terminology’ (Making Sense, 124). The argument is that suboptimality is to count as a contradiction because counterfinality does, and they share a feature which is not itself a contradicton. This is surely an unconvincing piece of reasoning. It would be so even if Elster had plainly identified a genuine common feature. It is, however, not obvious, and might well be thought unlikely, that ’tension’ can mean the same in the case of parametric actors confronted with the unintended consequences of their actions and in that of strategic actors confronting the intended consequences of theirs. For one thing, the element of subjectively experienced frustration must be different in the two situations. It may be concluded that Elster is indulging here in just the kind of uncontrolled analogising he castigates in others. See n. 17 below.

9 Elster, , ‘Reply to Comments,’ Inquiry 23 (1980), 216-17CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 On this point see especially Elster’s, ‘Marxism, Functionalism and Game Theory,’ Theory and Society 11 (1982) 453-82Google Scholar.

11 Hegel, G.W.F., Science of Logic, trans. Miller, A.V. (London: Allen and Unwin 1969)Google Scholar; Hegel’s Logic, trans. Wallace, W. (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1975), 174Google Scholar

12 ‘Es ist der reine Wechsel oder die Entgengensetzung in sich selbst der Widerspruch zu denken’ (Hegel, G.W.F., Phänomenologie des Geistes [Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main 1970]), 130Google Scholar

13 Marx, K., Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (Moscow: Progress Publishers 1974), 87Google Scholar

14 The terminology most frequently used is that of one occurrence ‘inducing’ another. There is an egregious instance in the explanation of the way transitions are accomplished in the Phenomenology of Spirit: ‘The “surfacing” of the contradiction to an explicit object of consciousness induces a change in the form of the consciousness but the new form always turns out to harbour a contradiction of its own, and so on until the level of absolute knowledge has been reached’ (Logic and Society, 71-2). In Hegel’s conception, however, it is surely not the case that the discovery of self-contradiction ‘induces’ a change in the form of consciousness, for it is already itself such a change. The discovery is, as it were, immediately transformative, without the intervention of a psychological process, of existing forms. Here the causal language corresponds to nothing in the text, and introduces a superfluous layer of mediation so far as conceptualising the transitions there is concerned.

15 Elster accomplishes the extension in a natural and effective way. Beliefs are brought in by virtue of their capacity to possess truth-values, so that contradictory beliefs are those which logically cannot all be true simultaneously. Desires qualify by virtue of an analogous characteristic in that they may or may not be realised: contradictory desires are those which ‘as a matter of logic must remain unrealized’ (Logic and Society, 71).

16 For a discussion of these issues in a Wittgensteinian framework, see P. Winch, The Idea of a Social Science (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1958), Ch. 5; and for a discussion in a Hegelian framework, see C. Taylor, ‘Hegel and the Philosophy of Action,’ in Stepelevich, L.S. and Lamb, D., eds., Hegel’s Philosophy of Action (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press 1983) 1-18Google Scholar.

17 Another source of unease is the fact that Elster makes no serious attempt to provide any rational grounds for these commitments. Early in Making Sense we are told that the principle of methodological individualism will be justified later, but the justification when it comes is cursory and question-begging. It depends entirely on the bare assertion that ‘To go from social institutions and aggregate patterns of behaviour to individuals is the same kind of operation as going from cells to molecules’ (Making Sense, 4-5). If they really are the same, one has no doubt been given a reason for preferring methodological individualism in social science. But whether this is so or not is itself part of what is at stake in the debate. In the absence of any discursive backing, all that Elster has offered is a more-or-less arbitrary analogy of the kind he is quick, and fierce, to condemn in the work of others; see Making Sense, 508-10 and n. 8 above. Elsewhere in his writings a promising text is the paper on ‘Marxism, Functionalism and Game Theory’ which is subtitled ‘The Case for Methodological Individualism‘(Theory and Society 11 [1982]453-82). The expectations aroused by the subtitle are, however, left altogether unsatisfied, as the paper fails to project even the shadow of a case for methodological individualism, being wholly taken up with other matters. This has been noted by Philippe Van Parijs: ‘Not only does Elster not provide a case for methodological individualism, contrary to what his misleading sub-title suggests, but also he does not even believe in it …’ (’Functionalist Marxism Rehabilitated: A Comment on Elster,’ Theory and Society 11 [1982], 510, n. 3). Van Parijs goes on to give an interesting justification for the second part of this comment.

18 See Making Sense, 93, and n. 13, above; cf. Marx, K., Zur Kritik der politischen Őkonomie (Manuskript 1861-3), Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe (Berlin: Dietz 1976), Vol II. 3, 1141, 1247Google Scholar; Capital (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1976) Vol. 1, 236.

19 Marx, K., The Poverty of Philosophy (Moscow: Progress Publishers 1955), 152Google Scholar; Misère de la Philosophie (Paris-Brussels: Frank-Vogler 1847), 117. As one might expect, the standard German translation, which was supervised by Engels, uses Gegensatz for both antagonisme and opposition and Widerspruch for contradiction.

20 Making Sense, 531. On the general question of Elster’s relationship to Marx, there is some further discussion in McCamey, J., ‘A New Marxist Paradigm?’ Radical Philosophy 43 (Summer 1986) 29-31Google Scholar; with correction, Radical Philosophy 44 (Autumn 1986), 48.