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.
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 competition with rival modes and with nature.
3) That historical change must be explained in selectionist terms.
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.
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.
Jim Farmelant
On Sun, 30 Jan 2000 17:08:46 EST JKSCHW at aol.com writes:
> In a message dated 00-01-30 15:56:32 EST, you write:
>
> << 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.
>
> 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.
>
> My own story about progress, explained in my paper Relativism,
> Reflective
> Equilibrium, and Justice, Legal Studies 1987; and in a short and
> mere
> accessible version, Revolution and Justice, Against the Current
> 1993, is a
> class struggle story. I don't look to technology at all, except as a
> limiting
> condition of the sort you mention above. I argue there that
> societies marked
> by regimes of domination create particulat forms of resistance to
> the
> oppression that they generate that tends to destabilize those
> regimes.
> Ultimately, over the long run, there is a pressure to changr, limit,
> and
> ultimate abolish the kinds of domination that create these forms of
> resistance.
>
> 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.
>
> This story is based in part on Marx's observation that the history
> of all
> hitherto existing societies is the history of class striuggle, in
> part on on
> Hegel's notion of history as the progress of freedom and master and
> slave,
> and in part on J.S. Mill's liberal conception of historical
> progress.
> Hoiwever, I don't argue from what the big guys have thought, but
> from the
> logic of domination and resistance, given some elementary
> onservations about
> human social psychology, like: people tend to promotre their grouyp
> interests
> and resist oppressive regimes taht harm those interests.
>
> >Socialism is different and
> more difficult since I think it is consistent with all levels of
> productive forces.
>
> May some kind of socialism is consistent with all levels of
> productive
> forces, but whether a socailsim we would consider desirable is thus
> consistent would have to be argued.
>
> > 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.)
>
> Right. Cohen accepts an ideal justice based in something like
> natural right.
> But he used to think that the development of the priductive forces
> made
> socialism inevitable. Now he just thinks it makes socialism
> possible.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> > Mcmurtry also argues that Marx and Engels were
> economic determinists, that non-economic phenomena can be explained
> by
> economic phenomena most of the time.
>
> There's some basis for so thinking. Certainly Marx makes a lot of
> geberal
> statements to this effect.
>
> --jks
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