Technological Determinism, was Re: (Don't read this if .....

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Sat Jan 29 13:17:28 PST 2000


JKSCHW at aol.com wrote:


> [Justin:] rejection of historical metanarratives of progress such as Marxism or
> >ltraditional iberalism
>
> [Angela] Lyotard perhaps. Others might know better. Perhaps Rorty. Who else?
>
> Certainly Marx doesn't have a metanarrative of progress in the way Rorty
> might understand this.
>
> [Justin] Sure he does. Rorty is no fool, although he is raecting against an
> old-left
> culture that no longer exists. . ,. But Marx believes
> that there is a progressive series of modes of production froim slavery
> through feudalism to capitalism to communism, driven by an internal dynamic.
> See, inter alia, the 1859 Preface. Rorty rejects that sort of model.

This of course is a matter of immense debate *among* Marxists. One position (Brenner, Thompson, Wood among others] is that (a) the totality of Marx's work does *not* exhibit any belief in such an "internal dynamic" in history and (b) those passages in Marx where he does express (or seem to express) such a belief are wrong. The claim to an "internal dynamic" in history as a whole (rather than just in capitalism) reduces history to a technological determinism which is inconsistent with the overwhelming bulk of Marx's work.

A few months ago this was debated out at terrifying length on Pen-L, and I'm not going to repeat any of the arguments here.

Carrol



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