 Second, Cohen judges the proposal to replace functional explanation with game theoretic accounts as an unpromising one. Whilst game theory can provide imaginative accounts of aspects of class struggle—of alliances and revolution, for instance—class struggle is not the most basic of the phenomena that historical materialism is trying to explain. For Marxists, “class struggle has primary political significance, but the political dimension of society is not itself primary” (G. Cohen 1988: 17). Game theory might help explain the immediate outcome of various political struggles, but whether those outcomes stick, or not, is explained by the material conditions in which they take place.