James Farmelant wrote:
>
> I wonder how Justin and Sam would evaluate Alan Carling's
> formulation of a weakened technological determinism?
Jim, I haven't read enough of Carling to really comment much.
> 1) that human nature is socially located and constrained so
> its occurrence within particular relations of production imposes
> a characteristic form of development on each mode of production.
Its human nature amongst other things like social and economic structure which gives each m of p its essence.
>
> 2) The question of the origin of a mode of production must
> be separated out from the question of its subsequent
> reproduction - which Carling conceives in quasi-Darwinian
> terms as a matter of its survival and/or expansion in
sounds reasonable.
> competition with rival modes and with nature.
>
> 3) That historical change must be explained in selectionist
> terms.
Why is this? There are many ways to explain historical change most of which can be combined. No doubt there is selcetionist pressure amongst other things.
>
> 4) The Competitve Primacy Thesis (which Carling proposes
> as a substitute for the Intentional Primacy Thesis that he
> attributes to Cohen. Competitve Primacy asserts that
> the mode of production that prevails is the one containing
> the most highly developed forces of production.
I think histroically this is true but has little to do with selection. Areas with more developed f of p have by definition more highly developed weapons and can thus impose their system on others.
>
> 5) That Competitive Primacy implies that the relations
> attached to superior forces will almost never or at least very
> rarely lose out to relations attached to inferior forces.
> This in Carling's view makes history "sticky downwards"
> to use Olin, Levine & Sobers' phrase. And this is said to give
> history as a whole a bias (weaker than a direction). At the
> same time, Carling building upon Brenner's analysis of
> the feudal-capitalist transition argues that embodies,
> however, something stronger but historically localized.
> While agreeing with Levine et al. that history must be
> seen as embodying a weal directedness, Carling
> contends that he builds a stronger theoretical case
> by looking towards the later rather than the earlier
> Marx with an eye to Darwin rather than to Adam Smith.
One of the problems that Carling might face is an explanation of combined and unevan development. For if weaker forces are selected out by higher forces, why are there feudal relations alongside capitalist relations and why has this persisted for a long time in some places e.g. Peru. Charles Bettelheim has theorized that capitalist relations become parasitic on feudal or other precapitalist relations such that capitalism becomes dependant on them. Selection has never been complete witness the importance of feudal relations in Europe with the influence of the various royal families, dukes, barons and sultans in the M.E. HOwever, selection works over a very long period of time so we will see i guess.
Sam Pawlett