Making a distinction between transition from one stage to another and
transitions within a mode of production, is to make a distinction that cannot
be maintained, at least in the historical record. There is no sharp
distinction between modes of production. Both the relations of production and
the means of production evolve at an uneven rate, and interact with each
other. It is only in retrospect that we can describe a particular set of
arrangements a definite mode of production. And it is a definition made for
convenience and has no theoretical value. A mode of production is not a thing,
it is a convenient abstraction made by historians to describe a particular
society. To consider it a think is to engage in reification.
There is no transformation between modes of production in the historical
record, except where there was a catastrophic collapse of a society (and here
the result was usually not progressive). There are transformations only within
modes of production. When a sufficient number of these transformations occur
we can look back and say that that mode of production was different than some
other.
Rod
Timework Web wrote:
> I haven't read Cohen's work but I want to comment on Louis's quote from
> Marx. By itself, I agree that the passage is abstract, but it sums up an
> argument that Marx makes time and again and develops more fully
> elsewhere. That is, Marx *does* have a stage theory, but it can't be
> deduced from the famous passage. Nor should it be over-extended by
> analogy.
>
> As far as the transition from feudalism to capitalism or capitalism to
> socialism goes, Marx's theory is highly speculative. But it is *within*
> capitalism, namely between the factory system and modern industry, that
> Marx most explicitly develops a stage theory. The distinction between the
> two epochs rests, ultimately, in the difference between the formal and the
> real subsumption of labour under capital.
>
> Extending the stages by analogy runs the risk of economic determinism.
> If we allow that there is a *logic of capital*, it can only be manifest in
> a social system in which capital dominates. The transitions from feudalism
> to capitalism and from capitalism to socialism could thus not express such
> a logic and could consequently only be made by contingent human actions
> that aren't constrained by a logic of capital. Also, not everything that
> happens within a society dominated by capital obeys the logic of capital.
>
> In summary, the question of stage theories can't be resolved by the answer
> to the question of whether such is proper to Marx and Engels. My own view
> is that Marx tentatively projected a finite 'end of capital', which is to
> say, yes, Marx's analysis of Capital was apocalytic. To say that Marx's
> analysis was apocalyptic, however, is like saying he wrote prose.
>
> "In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations
> that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of
> production which correspond to a definite stage of their development of
> their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of
> production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real
> foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to
> which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of
> production of their material life conditions the social, political and
> intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men
> that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that
> determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of their development,
> the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the
> existing relations of production, or -- what is but a legal expression for
> the same thing -- with the property relations within which they have been
> at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these
> relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social
> revolution. With the change of the economic foundations the entire immense
> superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed."
>
> tom Walker
--
Rod Hay
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