> did GA Cohen> > ever reply to Derek Sayer's Violence of Abstraction in which it is
> > argued> > that Cohen's basic concepts, such as forces, relations, mode of > > production,> > are either too thin to sustain a universal theory of history or are
> > surreptiously invested with the meaning/forms that they take > > specifically> > in bourgeois society and thereby hypostatised because they are then
> > passed> > off as actually transhistorical concepts in a universal theory of > > history?
>
> I have no idea maybe Justin knows.
I am pretty sure he didn't. I rather suspect he considers Sayers beneath him as some sort of sloppy fundamentalist Hegelian. As of the latest revisions to his theory in History, Labor, Freedom, he stood by the transhistorical elements while giving up on the necessetarian ones. In KMTH, he defends the thinness and abstraction in term of giving a general theory.
>
> > For example, Sayer draws from Godelier to show how in so called kin > > based
> > societies, seemingly superstructural elements can themselves be > > relations> > of production. Sayer gives example of forces of production that may
> > seem> > otherwise to be relations or superstructures.
Well, there are going to be counterexamples to every general theory.
>
> That has been a common objection to Cohen's interpretation.
> Cohen in *KMTH* did take on the issue of whether science is
> part of the forces of production or part of the superstructure.
> His answer was basically that to the extent that scientific knowledge
> is applied to production it is part of the forces but to the extent
> that scientific ideas may be distorted by social interests then
> it may also become part of the superstructure in asmuch as
> it becomes ideology. Thus something like social Darwinisn
> would be part of the superstructure inasmuch as it was ideology
> rather than genuine science.
Right, but SD is not science at all.
however, C's position is more nuanced than that. He would allow that insofar as scientific or technical knowledge could be described in abatraction from the Rel of Prod., the are material (that is what C means by material) and part of the Prod Forces. BUt he would agree that such a descriptionw ould not be complete.
(--jks