> The thing that makes capitalism
> unique is the manner in which it structures social relations to reward
> productivity gains. I am with Brenner and Ellen Wood on this. The
> technological innovations that occurred were the result of the shifts
> in reward structures coming out of the changes in social relations.
> Capitalist agricultural produces innovated because those innovations
> meant increased rewards, and Wood is correct that there is a pressure
> to innovate because of the increased competitive nature of the system
> (innovate or die as a capitalist). The improvements in yields came
> out of these changes, which fueled the division of labor and led
> further innovations that fed back into farming. If the innovations
> are not related to the changes in social relations then why the rapid
> innovation? Are you saying technological innovation is independent of
> the social relations (capitalism)?
As an interpretation of Marx, this misses the essential point that, for Marx ,"reason," which isn't merely instrumental reason, develops in history. So, for him, capitalist surplus extraction isn't simply another form of instrumentally rational surplus extraction.
Feudalism works to develop the individuality of what will eventually be the capitalist, an individuality that, according to Marx, is more rational than the individuality of the feudal lord and that creates productive relations more consistent with the development of rationality.
Since, for Marx, "technology" is "the power of knowledge objectified," productive relations more consistent with rationality and its development provide greater impetus to the development of technology than those they replace.
A contrasting of capitalism with feudalism on this basis is found in the passage from the Grundrisse I just quoted.
It's also found in the following passage from the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts:
"There is a form of inactive, extravagant wealth given over wholly to pleasure, the enjoyer of which on the one hand behaves as a mere ephemeral individual frantically spending himself to no purpose, and also regards the slave-labour of others (human sweat and blood) as the prey of his cupidity. He therefore knows man himself, and hence also his own self, as a sacrificed and futile being. With such wealth contempt of man makes its appearance, partly as arrogance and as squandering of what can give sustenance to a hundred human lives, and partly as the infamous illusion that his own unbridled extravagance and ceaseless, unproductive consumption is the condition of the other’s labour and therefore of his subsistence. He regards the realisation of the essential powers of man only as the realisation of his own excesses, his whims and capricious, bizarre notions. This wealth which, on the other hand, again knows wealth as a mere means, as something that is good for nothing but to be annihilated and which is therefore at once slave and master, at once magnanimous and base, capricious, presumptuous, conceited, refined, cultured and witty – this wealth has not yet experienced wealth as an utterly alien power over itself: it sees in it, rather, only its own power, and (not)a wealth but enjoyment (is its final) aim.
"This [...] ||XXI| and the glittering illusion about the nature of wealth, blinded by sensuous appearances, is confronted by the working, sober, prosaic, economical industrialist who is quite enlightened about the nature of wealth, and who, while providing a wider sphere for the other’s self – indulgence and paying fulsome flatteries to him in his products (for his products are just so many base compliments to the appetites of the spendthrift), knows how to appropriate for himself in the only useful way the other’s waning power. If, therefore, industrial wealth appears at first to be the result of extravagant, fantastic wealth, yet its motion, the motion inherent in it, ousts the latter also in an active way. For the fall in the rate of interest is a necessary consequence and result of industrial development. The extravagant rentier’s means therefore dwindle day by day in inverse proportion to the increasing possibilities and pitfalls of pleasure. Consequently, he must either consume his capital, thus ruining himself, or must become an industrial capitalist.... In the other hand, there is a direct, constant rise in the rent of land as a result of the course of industrial development; nevertheless, as we have already seen, there must come a time when landed property, like every other kind of property, is bound to fall within the category of profitably self-reproducing capital – and this in fact results from the same industrial development. Thus the squandering landowner, too, must either consume his capital, and thus be ruined, or himself become the farmer of his own estate – an agricultural industrialist.
"The diminution in the interest on money, which Proudhon regards as the annulling of capital and as a tendency to socialise capital, is therefore in fact rather only a symptom of the total victory of working capital over squandering wealth – i.e., the transformation of all private property into industrial capital. It is a total victory of private property over all those of its qualities which are still in appearance human, and the complete subjection of the owner of private property to the essence of private property – labour. To be sure, the industrial capitalist also takes his pleasures. He does not by any means return to the unnatural simplicity of need; but his pleasure is only a side-issue – recreation – something subordinated to production; at the same time it is a calculated and, therefore, itself an economical pleasure. For he debits it to his capital’s expense account, and what is squandered on his pleasure must therefore amount to no more than will be replaced with profit through the reproduction of capital. Pleasure is therefore subsumed under capital, and the pleasure-taking individual under the capital-accumulating individual, whilst formerly the contrary was the case. The decrease in the interest rate is therefore a symptom of the annulment of capital only inasmuch as it is a symptom of the growing domination of capital – of the estrangement which is growing and therefore hastening to its annulment. This is indeed the only way in which that which exists affirms its opposite." <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/needs.htm>
The contrasting, along with the idea of the capitalist "passions" themselves developing through time, is repeated in Capital:
"At the historical dawn of capitalist production, — and every capitalist upstart has personally to go through this historical stage — avarice, and desire to get rich, are the ruling passions. But the progress of capitalist production not only creates a world of delights; it lays open, in speculation and the credit system, a thousand sources of sudden enrichment. When a certain stage of development has been reached, a conventional degree of prodigality, which is also an exhibition of wealth, and consequently a source of credit, becomes a business necessity to the 'unfortunate' capitalist. Luxury enters into capital’s expenses of representation. Moreover, the capitalist gets rich, not like the miser, in proportion to his personal labour and restricted consumption, but at the same rate as he squeezes out the labour-power of others, and enforces on the labourer abstinence from all life’s enjoyments. Although, therefore, the prodigality of the capitalist never possesses the bonâ-fide character of the open-handed feudal lord’s prodigality, but, on the contrary, has always lurking behind it the most sordid avarice and the most anxious calculation, yet his expenditure grows with his accumulation, without the one necessarily restricting the other. But along with this growth, there is at the same time developed in his breast, a Faustian conflict between the passion for accumulation, and the desire for enjoyment." <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch24.htm>
It's also found in the Manifesto.
"The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which reactionaries so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades." <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm>
Ted