JKSCHW at aol.com wrote:
>
> But the obvious truth that you can't have the feudal lord without the hand
> mill or the industrial capitalsit without the steam mill is (a) too weak for
> progress, since it does not say that, or what, drives the taransition from
> one to the other, and (b) is misleading, in my view, in placing the engine of
> progress in technology.
[comments on old threads] I think the 'productive forces limits the relations of production' thesis has more explanatory power within a mode of prod rather than explaining movement from one to another. It doesn't necessarily attribute dynamism in history to technology either (remember there is more to the productive forces than technology)and is compatible with class struggle as teh dynamic motor behind history and technological change. Basically, a true if uniteresting thesis.
>
> There is also a weak ratchet effect, pulling against retrogression, based on
> the fact taht people, having won emaponcipation fdrom a form of oppression,
> will resist submitting to it again. These build on on eacxh other, creating a
> long run tendenct towards graeter emapancipation. There is nothing inevitable
> in progress, meaning greater emancipation from domination, and no guarantee
> that retrogression will not happen. But there is a long run tendency towards
> progress.
Yes I agree. What do you think of retrogression in terms of modes of production? MIchael Vickery in his fine book on Cambodia argues that this was the case in Cambodia from 1975-8 where a retrogression occurred from a kind of bureacratic state capitalism to a kind of tributary mode of prod. It would seem that such a retrogression can only be brought about by radical political intervention of the sort that occurred in Cambodia.
> The best weakening of Cohen is Write, Levine, and Sober's Reconstructing
> Marxism. I still think that the technological explanation of progress is a
> blind alley.
Good book with some fine yet tepid criticisms of meth individualism. Tech determinism isn't necessarily an explanation of progress.
Sam Pawlett