The “September Group”: From Analytical Marxism to Normative Political Philosophy

Analytical Marxism – formerly also known as the “September group” – is a branch of Anglo-Saxon social theory, political and normative philosophy. There are several publications on the set in the Russian humanities and social sciences, but all articles are limited to the sociological aspect of the work of analytical Marxists. In this article we propose to consider another aspect of this direction – normative aspect. To show this aspect of analytical Marxists, the author suggests considering the movement in historical dynamics. It originates from the publication of “Karl Marx’s Theory of History” (1978) by Canadian-English philosopher J.A. Cohen. Cohen tried to rid Marxism of Hegelianism and make it the subject of a real science, which set the framework the current’s activity. At the first stage of the work, analytical Marxists (J.A. Cohen, Jon Elster, John Roemer, Erik Olin Wright, Robert Brenner, Adam Przeworski and others) worked within the framework of sociology and historical sociology, combining the problems raised by Marx with various scientific methods – game theory, rational choice theory, historical sociology, etc. By the early 1990’s, some of the participants of the movement left the group (Elster, Przeworski), while others refocused on new topics, namely, normative political philosophy. Arguing with the ideas and arguments of John Rawls, Robert Nozick, and others, analytical Marxists answered the problems of normative theory in their own way – an attempt to combine freedom and equality (Cohen), egalitarianism (Roemer), real utopias (Wright), and basic income (Philippe Van Parijs).