On Wed, 18 Jan 1995, Jim Devine wrote: > > On Mon, 16 Jan 1995 10:40:32 -0800 Justin Schwartz said: > >On Mon, 16 Jan 1995, Jim Devine wrote: > >> Justin, on your reference to G.A. Cohen's reconstruction of historical > >> materialism, I would add the adjective "failed." He produced a > >> technological-determinist theory of history that differs w quite > >> radicaly from Marx's materialist conception of history.... > > > >The situation with Cohen is more complex than you suggest. In the first > >place you dispute only the accuracy of Cohen's scholarship, viz. whether > >he has Marx right. Whether or not he does, however, what Cohen produced > >was probably the clearest, most precise and coherent, best articulated > >statement of a Marxian theory of history we have. > > If it's not a good representation of Marx's view, in what way is it > Marxian? Oh, come along Jim. Marxism is a broad church. There are lots of Marxian views which are not Marx's, whether or not they pretend to be "orthodox." Thus Luxemburg on accumulation or Lenin on imperialism or on the Party or Gramsci on hegemony or Trotsky on combined and uneven development or.... What makes a view Marxian is whether its advocates identify it as such, whether it is part of the tradition of Marxist debate and practice (i.e., the tradition of people who thus identify themselves), responding to other Marxian views, whether it uses Marxian concepts like class, mode of production, exploitation, ideology, etc., whether it poses questions in Marxian terms and for Marxian purposes, i.e., promoting socialism and working class self-emancipation, etc. See E.P. Thompson's discussion of various conceptions of Marxism in his Open Letter to Leszek Kolakowski (in The Poverty of Theory). You know this and I shouldn;t have to say it. In any event the real question, unless we are merely doing history of 19th century social theory for purely scholarly purposes, is whether some view that meets these general criteria as being recognizably Marxist is in facr defensible. Cohen's certainly is the first, so the issue is whether it's the second. This point is reinforced by the fact that the technological- > determinist theory is a bourgeois theory that precedes Marx. So is class analysis, as Marx himself points out! Anyway there is T-D and T-D. Smith and others may have maintained version of T-D, but the account developed in the 1859 Preface, The Poverty of Philosophy,a nd elsewhere is distinctively Marx's and he was pround enough of hit to say that it was the guiding thread of his studies to which he had won by a lot of hards, painstaking work. > See, for example, Comninel > RETHINKING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION (1987, Verso) and Rigby, MARXISM > AND HISTORY (1987, St. Martin's). Both cite Meek 1976 MARXISM AND > THE IGNOBLE SAVAGE (C.U.P.) Marx was clearly influenced by this > t-d theory (which shows up in Smith, among others), but seems to > have moved toward the vol. III theory in which it's the mode of > production of the surplus (the mode of exploitation) which > reveals the inner secrets of a social formation (ch. 47, s. 2). > (I'd guess that Marx's relationship with t-d theory is a lot > like his relationship with Ricardo. He learned a lot but > did so critically and then moved on to better stuff.) > But unlike the situation with Ricardo, where he settles accounts out in the open, he never renounces the TD account--it shows up, for example, in the Critique of the Gotha Program. And as I note, he cites it in the footnotes to the fetishism section of Capital, vol. I, completed and polished after the draft manuscripts for vol. 3. And, unlike them, published. > The problem for Cohen's theory that arises from Marx's theory > is that as Marx argues (but authors such as Braverman make clear), > the nature and speed of technological change are endogenous, > to a large extent _determined by_ the mode of exploitation. That's certainly one problem--it's the point of my objection based onm the relative timing of the rise of capitalism and the industrial revolution. But all this can show is that Marx was inconsistent unless there is evidence that her changed his mind and renounced the Preface account. > In the postface to the 2nd edition of CAPITAL, Marx quotes > a reviewer favorably as summarizing Marx as saying that > each economic system has its own laws of population. The > same applies to the laws of technology, as Marx describes > how the capitalist lust for profits influences the kind of > machines introduced and the way in which they are used. > Technological determinism only works if technological change > (both its quality and quantity) are exogenously given. As above. Maybe he didn't see that this was hard to square with the Preface account. > > Tech. determinism is even weaker than genetic determinism, > because most of the time, an individual's genes don't change > due to environmental influence. And these changes aren't > transmitted to the young, unless Lamarck and Lysenko were > right. Technology is affected severly by the societal > environment and is transmitted to future generations. > Now you shift to whether it's a good theory rather than whether Marx held it throughout his career. I agree that it isn't, but this isn't a good objection. Cohen and his Marx can admit that technology is affected by the relations of production--he argues at some length that the latter must be functional for the development of the former, and so influence them; when the functionality breaks down, we get fettering and a revolutionary situation. That's the theory, to put in a nutshell. It avoids your problem. > > Unfortunately the less > >technologically determinist accounts tend to either degenerate into > >handwaving when it comes to discussing (a) revolutionary transitions from > >one mode of production to another and (b) specifying a non t-d sort of > >determination of the superstructure by the base or the relations of the > >base to the productive forces, either that, or they degenerate into an > >ill-theorized eclectic multi-causalism which doesn't capture anything that > >might be specifically called "materialist." . . . > > Except compared to the vaguest multi-causalism, > I don't see determinism as a virtue (and I'd like to know what > _you_ mean by "materialism"). What's the advantage of a > deterministic theory if reality isn't deterministic? Actually I didn't talk about determinISM but about determinATION, which,a s lots of Marxists have emphasized, needn't be deterministic. To say that A determines B (or is a determination of B) isn't to say that if A necessarily B. It might be that B is one of a range of alternatives, C, D, E, etc., which A constrains as the range of possibilities, so if A then, B or C or D, but what finally picks out B may not be directly related to A. This is one way of understanding the notion of relative autonomy. Well, I'd like to know what I mean by materialist too, but "materialism" is what Marx called his theory of history, so I mean a theory which is relevantly like that. Suppose we say a materialist theory of society and history is one where economic facors have some sort of explanatory priority over a theoretically interesting range of phenomena. This, by the way, isn't Cohen's reading. > > To my mind, the point of a > theory of history is NOT to present a heart-warming story > of how victory is inevitable (to cheer us as the Newtron > bomb hits DC). Where did I say that it was? Rather, it is to figure out what parts of > the historical process have "nature-like" or "automatic" > laws of motion and _what parts don't_ (and the relationship > between these two types of parts). The multi-causalists > reject the former, while Cohen et al reject the latter. > Both are missing something. This is a caricature of Cohen, for whem, as he puts it class striggle has secondary but real significance. Moreover there is nothing automatic even about technological progress for Cohen, which is exhibited as the result of a human tendency to want to reduce necessary labor. And the story as given in Cohen's recent work and Wright Levine and Sober makes the whole process merely tendential and probabilistic. If you're going to attack the view,a nd I think it should be attacked, don't attack a straw man. > > Historical change is not pre- > determined. There is NO automatic march to socialism. The > 2nd and 3rd Internationals were hurt by their mechanistic > visions of determinism. Lenin, whatever his other faults, > at least got away from determinism, knowing that individual > actions and decisions (or group actions and decisions) can > have important effects (not always good, but that's another > issue). Getting beyond Lenin, > there is a role in history for organizing the > opposition to the system. Without an organized and conscious > opposition, it won't matter if capitalism falls apart. Even in his more determinist days, Cohen would not have disagreed. > The capitalists will put the pieces back together again (after > a period of chaos, of course). "Automatic Marxism" of the > sort that Cohen formalizes misses this point completely. On > this, I recommend Mike Lebowitz's book, BEYOND CAPITAL, > 1992, St. Martin's: ch. 7. > > Also, one of the problems with Cohen is that he takes the semi- > determinism that Marx saw in the laws of motion of capitalism > and says that they apply transhistorically. That is, Marx > saw a clash between the forces and relations of production > as rising automatically under capitalism (with the actual > results of this clash depending on class struggle). Cohen > takes the technological dynamism (growth of the forces of > production) that is characteristic of capitalism and > decides it applies to all previous modes of production (and > downgrades the role of class and other struggles). To be quite fair Cohen argues this in great and specific detail with a wealth of textual citation. > > A certain type of "technological determinism" does apply under > capitalism: capitalism produces amazing and gigantic technological > changes which keep on changing the institutions and cultures of > the world. They sometimes conflict with capitalism itself. > But other social formations produce very different kinds and > degrees of technological change, contradicting technological > determinism. > > >As to Cohen's scholarship, although his account is based on the 1859 > >Preface, it is not restricted to that, and he offers extensive evidence > >from many of Marx's writings that Marx really meant the Preface view. > >After all, he (Marx), calls it his Leitfaden, guiding thread, in his first > >statement of his mature economic views (in the Contribution...), and > >adverts to it again in Capital, e.g., in the footnotes in the Fetishism of > >Commodities. I do think that Marx actually held this view as his > >"official" account, although it is in immense tension, if not actual > >contradiction, to a lot of his other ideas, and one might construct an > >internal critique of it based solely on materials Marx himself provides. > >E.g., the fact that the rise of capitalism and the "formal subsumption" of > >labor to capital precedes the technological changes of the industrial > >revolution, where the theory seems to call for the reverse. > > The "guiding thread" is often translated as "heuristic," as opposed to > a deterministic theory a la Cohen. As you note, Marx's mature theory > contradicts his 1859 precis. His 1844 writings do too. So why > not dump the 1859 precis, or rather its t-d interpretation? > Well, I think we should, but note two things. First, we are here talking about improving on rather than adhering to Marx, which of course is fine. But the second thing is that it is incumbent on us to develop a theory which is as precise, clearly stated, general, and potentially explanatorily powerful as Cohen's. After the job he has done, wooliness, vagueness, and handwaving of the sort that caharcterized previous discussions of this issue are unacceptable. As if they were acceptable before! > BTW, the reference to the 1859 preface during Marx's > discussion of the fetishism of commodities is a reference > to his _economic_ determinism, not _technological_ > determinism. Fair enough. I didn't look back when I referred to the text. Still, I suggest that the context implies that he still holds the whole of the Preface view. He certainly doesn't qualify it in any respect. He refers (p. 175 of the Verso/Vintage ed, > n. 35) to the "mode of production," not to the technology. > The mode of production involves both technological and > societal/institutional components (cf. Derek Sayer's > THE VIOLENCE OF ABSTRACTION, Basil Blackwell, 1987). > > Frankly, Marx's economic determinism makes more sense > than any technological determinism. This is especially true > when one notes that class and other struggles take place > within the "economic base" (mode of production).The > problem, of course, is that the "base" and "superstruc- > ture" are not as clearly defined as they were in the > 19th century, when Marx wrote. > This I don't get. If, as seems plausible, Cohen is right that the base is the relations of production, in particular in capitalism, that propertylerss workers control their own labor power but no means of production, which are the private property of members of the capitalist class, and the superstructure is the set comprising the state institutions, including the legal system, and the institutions which produce legitimating ideas (ideology)--churches, universities, the media, as well the the ideas thus produced--if all that is right, how are m,atters any less clear now than then? --Justin Schwartz
