the fact that TANS is invoked as a defense of marxism-leninism just goes to prove that ML is a purely historical theory and not a political one. cockshott offers no theory of revolutionary organization or class analysis.
he is most pertinent to marxism-leninism because he exonerates the centralized planning that was historically, not theoretically, associated with the ideology. i'd venture to say that this effectively proves marxism-leninism in its modern incarnation to be a historical theory of the USSR's development, and not a valid or useful theory of actual revolutionary science. this is borne out in the continued failure of Marxism-Leninism to appeal to proletarians.
Out of the chance this is not a bait, and in order to answer OP’s statement for anyone lurking, ill bite.
Except for all the developments on ML that happened after the USSR, like Mao's philosophy for one. I would argue that to a large extent althusserianism is an extension of ML in western academic terms.
Austin Roberts
To quote the man himself,
Nathaniel Rodriguez
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Aaron Brooks
This was attempted by analytical marxists in the 80s and they failed
Caleb Perez
More importantly, this somewhat supports my point, because people blindly cite Paul Cockshott as a total exoneration of Marxism-Leninism, when in reality, his relationship to Marxism-Leninism is purely historical: the subject of his study is the USSR.
I agree that he is best understood as transcending that position; I'm arguing that tankies wielding him like a club to defend highly orthodox Marxism-Leninism is proof that they seek to defend the USSR, not the actual revolutionary content of their theory.
Nicholas Morales
Communism is not a technocratic fantasy for nerds. Total cybernetic control is a feature of postfordist capitalism, not communism - if anything communism would be a barbarian rupture with the technological society and therr can be no blueprint for it, it must necessarily be a graven image.
Andrew Thomas
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Bentley Ross
Not really. IF you look at analytical marxism in the historical side you get people like Gerald Cohen doing a technological deterministic defense of historical materialism such as in his work "Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence" which is basically the polar opposite of Cockshott, Cohen was like bordiga on steroids. With regards to economics, the analytical marxists tried to justify marxist economics in terms of bourgeois neoclassical economics including things like game theory - again, this is a reductionist view which is the complete opposite of cockshott's econophysical approach which is based on information theory. Furthermore cockshotts philsophy is post althusserian while the analytic philosophers, like their name implies, were reliant on anglo-analytical philosophy.
So actually thats completely wrong, analytical marxism is literally the complete opposite of Cockshott's ideas in pretty much every way.
Except that he was in ML parties in the 70s, and 80s, and has defended the soviet union on multiple occasions. Even though he himself would be considered deviationist by say 1960s USSR standards, his theory is considered more of a development of ML theory than a rejection of it.
