In this novel treatment of an old topic, Norman Geras has found himself facing in two diametrically opposite directions: within the Marxist tradition, there are those who wish to deny legitimate room for any concept of human nature; and there are others who, so far from wishing to deny the attribution of common characteristics to human beings, think such statements about human nature to be merely self-evident, banal and therefore no integral part of a Marxist perspective. In spite of having to direct his attention to both these groups at once, Geras has avoided developing an intellectual squint by producing a precise and sharply focused discussion. As might be expected from the no-nonsense analytical style and the largely exegetical approach, he is more successful in the narrower task of disposing of the opponents of human nature than in dealing with those who insist on its irrelevance to Marxism.
Geras’s book is an excellent example of the development of a distinctively Anglo-Saxon approach to Marxism.footnote1 Perry Anderson has recently pointed out persuasively that ‘today the predominant centres of intellectual production seem to lie in the English-speaking world, rather than in Germanic or Latin Europe. . . . the traditionally most backward zones of the capitalist world, in Marxist culture, have suddenly become in many ways the most advanced.’footnote2 In the fields of economics and history there has long existed a steady stream of substantial contributions from English-speaking Marxists. But only recently has this been matched by essays which bring to bear on Marxist concepts the procedural standards and analytical methods of philosophy as practised in the Anglo-Saxon world. Allen Wood’s Karl Marx, Gerry Cohen’s book on historical materialism and many of the articles in the journal Philosophy and Public Affairs are among the numerous examples of this trend.