Nor can I agree with dismissing the kin relations which the majority of the world's population still maintain as something already gone, or for that matter the whittling away of the family (which I agree is a theme of advanced capitalism) has entirely removed it from economic importance in advanced economies.
I am in agreement that that Marx did not assume that Primitive Communism was homogenous in disbaring surplus extraction especially as the main thrust of the analysis was to explain how surplus extraction emerged within Primitive Communism.
But what I a cannot understand is a point of view which states categorically that these things are irrelvant to the present and somehow unknowable as well as unresolvable. This seems to take skepticism to an unhealthy, even dogmatic, extreme. I find it extremely difficult to reconcile this either with the philosophy of method of Historical Materialism (especially as it seems to dissolve the history part away).
As for:
"Perhaps at some time in the past, the "family economy" was the only kind of production. I'm not sure that can be said to have ever constituted a (dominant) mode_of_production (in the complete sense that Marx used the term), in itself. Or that we will ever know."
If domestic/kin production was at some time in the past the only form of production it clearly can not be other than a dominant relation of production and so consitute a Mode of Production as distinct from those dominanted by some other relation of production. The usefulness of Marx's scheme to order different historical stages of development logically (not necessarily chronologically) is the conclusion of seeing development as pressuposing the differring conditions which give rise to it. The continuity in historical forms shapes and gives character to particular social formations and this is the complexity in which we live - unravelling this complexity is the foundation of understanding it.
Of course we could deny that domestic/kin production was anywhere and at any time "dominant" but this would seem to fly in the face of all our accumulated ethnological knowledge and the clear central importance of kin relations in what use to be called "primitive societies".
Greg Schofield Perth Australia
--- Message Received --- From: "Grant Lee" <grantlee at iinet.net.au> To: "LBO-Talk" <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2001 09:49:12 +0800 Subject: Pre-historic human societies
Greg:
I don't want to get into the old debate about the mode of production, mainly because I think that's unresolvable. I don't really think the 19th Century conceptualisation is as central to historical materialism as some would have us believe. I think (e.g.) De Ste Croix's idea of (if you like) a "mode of surplus extraction" is useful (and not exclusive of mode of production).
"Primitive Communism is ... something that practically everyone has experienced and known well." Yes, this is true in the sense in which you use the word, i.e. reproduction. There are also communes, religious communities, etc. And I don't believe that Marx considered the CMP (or any other mode of production) to be homogenous in terms of whether or not a surplus _was_extracted (or the form of surplus extraction).
IMO the point is that all other (still existing) modes have been subsumed by the global logic of capital. The family economy, in_ the_form_that_we know_it_ at least, is no longer essential to reproduction and is continually being whittled away (with the attendant antisocial externalties, if you'll excuse the expression) by the broader relations of production, a point made frequently by EP Thompson, Hobsbawm and others.
Perhaps at some time in the past, the "family economy" was the only kind of production. I'm not sure that can be said to have ever constituted a (dominant) mode_of_production (in the complete sense that Marx used the term), in itself. Or that we will ever know.
Regards,
Grant.