In an early thread, I quoted Marx from the "Results of the Immediate Process of Production" "chapter six" of a draft of volume one of Capital. I think it merits its own thread, unencumbered by a context that partakes in the mystification that Marx here demystifies. Along with much else in Marx's famous 1859 preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy , the standard misinterpretation of productive forces became canonical in 2nd and 3rd International Marxism. Plekhanov called the preface "A genunine 'algebra' -- and purely materialist at that -- of social development." Lenin praised the preface as "An integral formulation of the fundamental principles of materialism as applied to human society and its history."
There was just one problem. Although the contradiction between forces and relations of production was central to Marx's analysis of historical development, he never defined precisely what he meant by forces of production. "From forms of development of the productive forces," Marx famously wrote, "these relations turn into their fetters." It is, of course, clear that productive forces refer to several things. Do they include science, technology and machinery? Strictly speaking they do not. They include the use of science, the use of technology and the use of machinery -- but not the things in themselves. There was a good reason Marx excluded these objectifications of human labour, intellect and culture: they intensify "the mystification implicit in the relations of capital as a whole." Machinery, technology and science take the form of "the productive power of capital " in "the immediate process of production. " It is not easy unlearning something that has become a truism in orthodox Marxism. In Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence, Gerald Cohen presented a lucid account of this orthodox view. It is useful to have such an account in order to refute it -- as Derek Sayer did in The Violence of Abstraction. Sayer devoted an entire chapter to productive forces, in the course of which he quoted part of a paragraph from the "Chapter Six" manuscript that I would prefer to quote in full. Note that Marx included the *use* of machinery, not the machinery itself as a productive force and called the "form of the productive power of capital" a mystification: > > The social productive forces of labour, or the productive forces of > directly social, socialized (i.e. collective) labour come into being > through co-operation, division of labour within the workshop, the use of > machinery > , and in general the transformation of production by the conscious use of > the sciences, of mechanics, chemistry, etc. for specific ends, technology, > etc. and similarly, through the enormous increase of scale corresponding to > such developments (for it is only socialized labour that is capable of > applying the general products of human development, such as mathematics, to > the immediate processes of production ; and, conversely, progress in these > sciences presupposes a certain level of material production). This entire > development of the productive forces of socialized labour (in contrast to > the more or less isolated labour of individuals), and together with it the > use of science (the general product of social development), in the immediate > process of production , takes the form of the productive power of capital. > It does not appear as the productive power of labour, or even of that part > of it that is identical with capital. And least of all does it appear as > the productive power either of the individual worker or of the workers > joined together in the process of production. The mystification implicit > in the relations of capital as a whole is greatly intensified here, far > beyond the point it had reached or .could have reached in the merely > formal subsumption of labour under capital. On the other hand, we here > find a striking illustration of the historic significance of capitalist > production in its specific form - the transmutation of the immediate > process of production itself and the development of the social forces of > production oflabour. (page 1024) > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#39678): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/39678 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/116724755/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
