Hari wrote, > In some instances, say the discovery of > iron and its smelting and malaeabilty etc- this may be a single > discovery that itself spawns a whole set of subsequent developments. Is > that not the overall intent of Mar & Engels in this views on what came > to be known as historical materialism?
Certainly a number of "critical" technological innovations can be identified in recent centuries. But I think that this perspective is not part of Marx and Engels' view of the advance of the forces of produciton. I think it has a more recent origin, perhaps with J. Schumpeter. Historical materialism (of the economistic variety) doesn't require a varying rate of technological progress; it simply requires an advance in the FoP and that at some critical point the advance of the FoP the existing SRP come into contradiction with the FoP. But, in any case, I believe that attention in recent years by economic historians has been given to the role of countless thousands of very small innovations each year (rather than focus on the big-deal innovations) as having been key for technological progress in capitalism. I tend to go along with this, in part because the big-deal innovations appear randomly and, if Schumpeter is to be believed, due to the efforts of the heroic individual. Not much consistent with Marx here. But the thousands of small innovations appearing within a capitalist economy are due to the workings of competition and the profit-motive (and the desire to exploit workers more) on any every day basis but capitalists big and small. The economic system of capitalism--and not heroic individuals--lead to the relentless technological advance in capitalism. (But even the above simplifies the analysis of technological advance in capitalism). Eric.
