Are you familiar with the "Rational Choice Marxism" debates in the late 80s? (RCM has a lot of but not total overlap with Analytical Marxism.) I've been reading old arguments in New Left Review between proponents and detractors. Many anglo Marxists, particularly John Roemer, were trying to reconceptualize Marxism by starting from the individual, using tools like game theory to explain individual choice as the "microfoundation" of classes. They began by "generalizing" the concept of exploitation, looking at Marxist/class exploitation as a special case, and what they wound up generalizing it into is just the differential distribution of assets -- interpersonal, one-to-one inequality, as opposed to a 'hypothetically feasible' alternative distribution. Then those individual inequalities can be aggregated, becoming a class.
I found the debates because I'm a big Ellen Meiksins Wood fan, who was arguing against them. I think she explains in NLR very well how, not only was their particular analysis quite weak, but when you try to turn Marxism into something about atomistic individuals' choices and inequalities, instead of starting from social relations (like the compulsion to enter the market in order to reproduce yourself), you lose all of Marx's potential explanatory power, and you gain very little if anything in your Marxist analysis.
I fully agree w/ your last paragraph. I am not very familiar with analytical Marxism except for a couple of papers by John Roemer. I also read parts of his book on exploitatation where he redefines the concept. But otherwise I do not know much.
Are you familiar with the "Rational Choice Marxism" debates in the late 80s? (RCM has a lot of but not total overlap with Analytical Marxism.) I've been reading old arguments in New Left Review between proponents and detractors. Many anglo Marxists, particularly John Roemer, were trying to reconceptualize Marxism by starting from the individual, using tools like game theory to explain individual choice as the "microfoundation" of classes. They began by "generalizing" the concept of exploitation, looking at Marxist/class exploitation as a special case, and what they wound up generalizing it into is just the differential distribution of assets -- interpersonal, one-to-one inequality, as opposed to a 'hypothetically feasible' alternative distribution. Then those individual inequalities can be aggregated, becoming a class.
I found the debates because I'm a big Ellen Meiksins Wood fan, who was arguing against them. I think she explains in NLR very well how, not only was their particular analysis quite weak, but when you try to turn Marxism into something about atomistic individuals' choices and inequalities, instead of starting from social relations (like the compulsion to enter the market in order to reproduce yourself), you lose all of Marx's potential explanatory power, and you gain very little if anything in your Marxist analysis.
I fully agree w/ your last paragraph. I am not very familiar with analytical Marxism except for a couple of papers by John Roemer. I also read parts of his book on exploitatation where he redefines the concept. But otherwise I do not know much.