Analytical Marxism, Political Power, and the Strategic Question of Socialist Reform in the Early 21st Century

Analytical Marxism can be used to rethink socialist electoral strategy, yet its lack of a robust account of power undermines its ability to provide useful analyses of social, political, and economic conditions that this would require. I argue that by adding a suitable account of power Analytical Marxism can not only provide more substantive analyses of prevailing material conditions but can also be used to pragmatically rethink electoral socialist strategy in such a way that it overcomes many of its present shortcomings and from this can be used to provide a positive account of social and economic reform. In doing so, I set out a four-fold approach to power that bridges the agency-structure divide and then apply this approach to power to Analytical Marxism's analyses of class, class formation, class struggle, exploitation, and domination. Through this, I aim to show that Analytical Marxism allows us to engage in analyses of prevailing material conditions that are capable of shedding light on and serving as a basis from which to think about and overcome the strategic failures of electoral socialist strategy throughout the 20th century. To do so, I analyse contemporary phenomena such as the activity of corporations like Amazon, the emergence of financialization, and the continued development of advanced capitalism to show that prevailing material conditions have rendered traditional socialist strategy ineffective in advancing the interests of workers. Subsequently, I use this updated account of Analytical Marxism to rethink electoral socialist strategy regarding the role of workers' movements, the role of collective action, the role of political parties, the methods of aggregation of actors' interests, and provide a substantive account of social and economic reform that becomes possible. Here, I argue that an Analytical Marxist approach to social and economic reform must be constituted by the establishment of state capitalism with the eventual goal of shifting towards a state-regulated market socialism, both of which would be presided over by a paternalistic party and that this is justifiable based on considerations of distributive justice and equality.