JKSCHW at aol.com wrote:
> But if you want to get particualt about it, I didn't say that that view of
> Marx committed him to technological determinsim or a rigid sequence of stages
> or hsirorical inevitability. You don't have to buy into Plekahnov or G.A.
> Cohen. The view can just be that there is a rough a sequence of stages in
> which the later ones count as progress over the earlier ones and one gets
> fron one to another by some sort of dynamic internal to the stages.
>
> That's weak eniugh that I believe it be true myself.
Yes, technological determinism can just mean that the productive forces limit the types of social relations. For example, there cannot be the types of mass production we have today with feudal social relations or hunter-gatherer societies with computers. Socialism is different and more difficult since I think it is consistent with all levels of productive forces.
> Brenner doesn't actually offer interpretations of Marx at all, just accounts
> of the rise of capitalism. By Wood I presume you mean Ellen M. Wood, not
> Allan Wood, the analytical Marxist, who does in fact think that Marx is a
> pretty rigid historical determinist.
He (A.Wood) argues this in his published work, he also thinks its true which gives rise to his views about morality where morality is relative to the mode of production. By definition, capitalism is just because the concept of justice is relative to the mode of production. Capitalism is just in the capitalist mode of production, feudalism in the feudal mode of production etc. The critique of capitalism should not be a moral one. Interesting argument, though Wood is weak on why capitalism should be condemned how exactly we are supposed to get beyond it. If socialism is inevitable, why struggle for it today? (I know Cohen has an essay on this.)
The
> best interpretive case against a technological determinsit, stagist,
> inevitabilist reading of Marx himself is probably Richard Miller's in
> Analyzing Marx. (Miller was an analytical Marxist, he since given up on
> socialsim because he thinks markets are here to stay.)
Another good book is *The Structure of Marx's World-View* by John McMurtry, also an analytical philosopher. He's influenced by Cohen but presents a much weaker and hence more defensible version of the deteminism thesis. Regrettably, McMurtry in his latest work shows the deplorable influence of people like David Korten and Jerry Mander arguing for things like small scale "producers" market. Mcmurtry also argues that Marx and Engels were economic determinists, that non-economic phenomena can be explained by economic phenomena most of the time.
Sam Pawlett