Alan Carling has offered a selectionist argument on behalf of the Marxian thesis that history has a degree of directionality. In summary, he contends that whenever two rival modes of production confront one another in terms of either economic/technological competition or political/military competition, then everything else being equal, the one that is best able to develop the forces of production, will most likely prevail.
Carling's thesis is developed in analogy with the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection. He furthers the analogy by positing that within modes of production, class struggles between exploiter classes and the exploited, serve as generators of new variants in the social relations of production. However, ultimately it is social selection on the basis of which relations will most facilitate the forces of production at a given time that determine which social relations of production will prevail.
Jim Farmelant
On Fri, 22 Jun 2001 15:40:13 -0000 "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com>
writes:
> Leo says:
> >
> >So although there is much to be learned from the Marxist tradition,
> it is
> >in
> >spite of, rather than because of, Marx's philosophy of history.
>
> I have published a defense of the quasi-Hegelian, neo-Marxian idea
> that
> social struggle does indeed tend towards greater freedom and moral
> progress.
> I don't offer it as an interpretation of Marx, but my attempts to
> disguise
> its Marxian origins were unsuccessful. For people who want to look
> at it, it
> is: Justin Schwartz, "Relativism, Reflective Equilibrium, and
> Justice,"
> Legal Studies 1997. A shorter and more dogmatoc statement of the ide
> was
> presented in Against The Current, I think in 1993.
>
> The main point of the argument is this: ruling groups that dominate
> others
> can't honestly state that they do so, but must present their claim
> to rule
> as legitimately in the interest of all. This claim to universal
> interests is
> false, however. Domination damages the objective interests of the
> dominated,
> giving them a motivation to fight, which is not always realized, but
> is
> sometimes. So we can expect,a nd often find, resistance. Moreover,
> resistance is sometimes successful. When it is, there is greater
> emancipation, pointing the way towards an emancipatory order where
> there is
> no domination. Although backsliding and reversions are actual and
> possible,
> nonetheless, success creates expectations of right--the (formerly)
> dominated
> come to think of their gains as something they are entitled to, and
> will
> fight to keep them. This is a universal, transhistorical fact about
> human
> nature.
>
> There is, therefore, a rachet effect--not absolute, not inevitable,
> not
> guaranteed to be one way, but real. One can see the point, for
> example, in
> trying to imagine an attempt to to take away the gains of the
> feminist
> movement in the 20th century. It could be done--see the Taliban--but
> it
> would be resisted. In sort, there is a scientific basis for thinking
> that
> Hegel and Marx were right, that history is the progress of freedom,
> that
> there is real teleology--not a pull, but a push, and that we are
> not stuck
> on a treadmill. Therefore, I disagree with Leo that Marxisn
> teleology is an
> impediment. On the contrary, it is a rational basis for social
> hope.
>
> Please note that there is no hint of class reductionism in the
> story:
> nothing in it depends on the centrality of any particular form of
> domination
> or resistance.
>
> --jks
>
>
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