This does seem like an interesting fundamental disagreement on the meaning of the "productive forces". We've basically got two views here:
1) Charles' and mine, that production is a physical process. As Charles said, one measure of the productive forces which allows the term to be given sense independently of any assumptions about social relations would simply be the physical concept of "work" (roughly speaking, the ability to transfer energy). You could envision a theory in which state of development of "the productive forces" was measured by the highest temperature to which one million randomly selected members of the human race, socially organised in any which way, could raise a metric tonne of water from 0 degrees Centigrade in one hour; this would obviously be a bit of a strange definition, but it has the advantage of, as far as I can tell, being monotonically increasing in whatever the underlying variable of "human development" might be. On this view, the invention of fire would be a big step forward for the productive forces, the wheel, inclined plane and lever a few more, electricity another one, and nuclear energy another big one (anything that helps you get energy from one place to another basically). My half-baked ramblings about "the complexity of arbitrary physical objects" were an attempt to suggest that it's possible to keep the flavour of the energy transfer view of the productive forces, while making it a bit more realistic in terms of matching actual human development. On this view, precision tools would have been a step forward, as would computers, etc. If the development of the productive forces is at the level where the most complex object you can produce is a cell-phone (with "complex" hopefully to be defined in some objective way along the lines of Shannon's information theory; one measure might be the maximum surface area of an object which could be repeatably produced and placed into a one foot cube.), then an improvement in silicon technology which allows you to produce a *smaller* cell-phone is an increase in the productive forces (because you could also use this increase to produce non-cellphone objects which were previously inaccessible if you wanted to), whereas the use of economies of scale or a more efficient cellphone design which allows you to produce *cheaper* cellphones is not an increase in the productive forces (because it doesn't allow you to change your mind and produce anything you couldn't produce before). I like this view because it allows the questions of technology, organisation of production and consumption to be separated analytically. But I also see the case for: 2) Eric's (and Jim's?) view, that technology, organisation of production and consumption can't be separated in this way, and that because production has to be production of goods that people want, it can't be measured outside the context of a particular social organisation. I think (would be interested in comments) that this might actually go so far as to imply that measurement of the state of the productive forces might only be possible using market prices, along the lines of Kuznets' GDP concept. This emphasises the idea that the value of an "arbitrary physical object" is determined socially. So it all seems to come down to the question of whether "the productive forces" are to be understood as "the forces producing value" or "the forces producing things". I don't know enough about Marx to be sure about this one, but I think Cohen's version of historical materialism is based on something like 1) above. dd ___________________________________________________ Email Disclaimer This communication is for the attention of the named recipient only and should not be passed on to any other person. Information relating to any company or security, is for information purposes only and should not be interpreted as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any security. The information on which this communication is based has been obtained from sources we believe to be reliable, but we do not guarantee its accuracy or completeness. All expressions of opinion are subject to change without notice. All e-mail messages, and associated attachments, are subject to interception and monitoring for lawful business purposes. ___________________________________________________
