[January, 2000]
Determinism [...] I will define—I hope, uncontroversially—as the belief that everything that happens has a cause or causes, and could not have happened differently unless something in the cause or causes had also been different. Determinism is a problem not of history, but of all human behaviour. The human being whose actions have no cause and are therefore undetermined is as much of an abstraction as the individual outside society [...]. [The] assertion that ‘everything is possible in human affairs’ is either meaningless or false.
E. H. Carr [1]
Men make their own history, but not of their own free will; not under circumstances they themselves have chosen but under the given and inherited circumstances with which they are directly confronted.
Karl Marx [2]
It is no accident that the terms Marxism and historical materialism are often regarded as practically interchangeable. Allowing for the fact that Marxism is at root a tool for changing the world, it is so because it is a science of the mechanisms of social change. (Science in the sense that Marx used the word: ‘All science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided.’) It is consequently also a science of history, and given that ascertainable historical evidence pertains solely to he past, a fundamental test of Marxism’s efficacy vis-à-vis its claim to be the key theoretical weapon in the struggle for social liberation in the future paradoxically lies in the proof of its effectiveness as a tool of historical enquiry and explanation of the past. Indeed, amongst Marxists themselves, the very intersection of Marxist theory and historical method is itself classically the site of a great deal of controversy. It is on this terrain that the disagreements over the claims of Marxism to be ‘science’, over the utility or otherwise of the ‘base-superstructure’ model, over whether or not an adherence to the methodology of Marxism leads to the dogmas of determinism and reductionism, are fought out; and for non or anti-Marxist writers, it is the territory upon which Marxism itself most seriously discredits itself. [3] Thus we can also approach the general problematic of the bourgeois revolution in the light of a study of Marx’s own exposition of his theory of historical development as well as a survey of how subsequent ‘Marxists’ have themselves in various ways interpreted Marx’s writings on the subject.
Perhaps the most celebrated statement of Marx’s ‘theory of history’ is the account contained within the 1859 ‘Preface’ to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. [4] Eric Hobsbawm once described this summary as a presentation of historical materialism in its most ‘pregnant’ form, [5] and his description is acute: the highly synoptic and condensed nature of the ‘Preface’ means that it has to be read with caution, and a failure to appreciate its nuances of meaning can lead—and, I would argue, has led—to a misreading of its content and a misapplication of its method. [6] Notwithstanding, in the argument of the ‘Preface’ can be found all the fundamental premises of Marx’s conception of historical development. The ‘Preface’ was not by any means Marx’s only or even last word on the subject, yet it is of such inestimable value as a summary exposition that a discussion of its arguments will enable us to illuminate a number of the theoretical difficulties we have encountered with regard to the development and application of the concept of the bourgeois revolution in Marxist or Marxist-inspired historiography. [7]
Firstly, and fundamentally, early in the ‘Preface’ Marx asserts that:
In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a definite stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation [...]
However,
at a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production [...]. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. [8]
The ‘forces of production’ constitute the material (‘material’, that is, to be understood in this instance not as a synonym of physical but as an antonym of ‘social’) prerequisites of production. We can take them to consist of the instruments of production (tools, machines, factories, and so forth), raw materials (what is worked on), and human labour (which includes skill and technique as well as brute muscle). [9] Now, these forces of production have a natural tendency to expand (or ‘develop’ or ‘grow’, etc.); which is only to say that, intrinsic to human experience of interaction with the external, ‘natural’, environment, is the attempt, in conditions of relative material scarcity to extract more out of it for less effort. [10] The productive forces ‘develop’ because people, through production, develop them. But men and women do not do this (primarily) as individuals. They interact, both in the form of co-operation as well as in the form of conflict, with other men and women. It is axiomatic to Marxism that production is an intrinsically human propensity; it is also axiomatic that it is intrinsic to human production that it tends towards the social. [11] In the course of production to fulfil their needs, people enter into certain social relations—‘relations of production’, relations ‘appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production’. [12] These relations of production—and they are social relations—constitute the ‘economic structure of society, the real foundation’.
These social relations of production in essence express themselves as relations of ‘effective control’: [13] of people over things, and people over people. The productive forces, as they expand in power, generate these social relations of production, the economic structure, which are reflective of the character of the productive forces, and propitious to the latter’s further development. The relationship between the forces and relations of production is therefore not causal—or rather, it is not simply causal: it is functional. Cohen: ‘economic structures are as they are because, being so, they enable human productive power to expand’. [14] But as the productive forces develop, they begin to outstrip the capacity of the economic structure, which, rather than facilitating their growth, becomes a fetter. That the productive forces will develop, and that the production relations, forming a more inelastic structure, will not, is axiomatic; and it is this episodic antagonism between the two that gives rise to periods (‘eras’) of social revolution; which gives rise to the great shifts in human society between qualitatively different forms of social organisation of productive activity, between different ‘modes of production’.
Thus the first fundamental premise of the Marx’s theory of history is that qualitative changes in the ‘mode of production’ of material life result from, are caused by, periodic incompatibility between the tendency of the productive forces to expand and the ability of the production relations to let them.
Now, the (social) relations of production, the economic structure, defined by the relations between the productive forces, constitute, in turn, ‘the real basis, on which arises a legal and political superstructure’. [15] Unfortunately for our purposes, Marx never found it either necessary or possible to spell out precisely what are the boundaries of this superstructure: there are in the ‘Preface’, however, a few clues. First, it is described as ‘arising’ from the economic structure. Further on, Marx notes that when the economic foundation changes, ‘the entire immense superstructure is [...] transformed’. [16] It is possible to deduce from these remarks that what Marx calls the ‘legal and political superstructure’ is a set of legal and political institutions generated by and which (to a large degree) corresponds to the economic structure. ‘Corresponds to’, because changes in the economic structure bring about, sooner or later, changes in the superstructure: long term incompatibility is, in the terms of the model here set out, ruled out. Upon logical reflection, therefore, we can deduce that when we refer to the superstructure we are, in short, talking about the state: the state, that is, defined as a set of political and legal institutions, that arises from, corresponds to (and therefore facilitates through its regulation and management), the economic structure. [17]
It will of course be objected by some Marxists that this definition is too limiting. Yet although it is widely held that the distinction ‘base-or-superstructure’ is an exhaustive one, there is little in Marx that suggests that this should be so: the definition of ‘superstructure’, whatever else it may be in Marx, is not ‘everything social that is not part of the base.’ [18]
It is possible to illustrate this fundamental point by re-reading the following paragraph carefully.
The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. [19]
From this paragraph we can note the following set of ‘determinative’ relationships, here set out as a list (with Marx’s description of the character of the particular determination in italics):
(1) the superstructure arises on the economic structure
(2) definite forms of social consciousness correspond to the economic structure
(3) the general process of social, political and intellectual life is conditioned by the mode of production of material life
(4) the consciousness of men is determined by their social existence
In each case the character of the determination is denominated by a different phrase. We could, of course, substitute the last phrase ‘is determined by’ (or its grammatical equivalent) in each case, without apparently damaging the paragraph’s literal meaning. But that would be to sacrifice clarity for simplicity, for, of course, to say that y ‘is determined by’ x can and does mean a number of different things. It could mean, very simply, that y exists, or occurs, because x does. But—more suggestively—it could mean that x gives rise to y because, without it, x would be unable to exist, or occur. Further, it could also mean that the manner of y’s existence, or occurrence, is, in whole or in part, dependent upon either the fact of x’s existence, or occurrence, or the manner of x’s existence, or occurrence, again either in whole or in part. In addition, of course, simple ‘determination’ in and of itself does not necessarily suggest that the determined is purely passive, devoid of causal status in its own right, unable to effect—even substantially—the determining conditions. [20]
I would suggest, therefore, that Marx is not motivated purely by stylistic considerations here: it is significant for the interpretation of the meaning of the text that he uses a different phrase in each case (even if each is question-begging in its own way), since it suggests that Marx is implying a number of different types of determination. [21]
Thus we can conclude, therefore, without unduly ‘forcing’ the text, that the nature of the determination in (1) is not the same as that involved in either (2), (3) or (4). The determination involved in (1) is functional, analogous to that between the forces and relations of production encountered earlier: ‘superstructures are as they are because, being so, they consolidate economic structures’. [22] Since the superstructure supports and consolidates the economic structure we can expect a large degree of correspondence in function between the former and the latter. And indeed, this is exactly what we do find—so much so, in fact, that for most empirical and descriptive purposes we can, for purposes of more convenient exposition, define and describe production relations as simply by reference to property relations (to the degree that it is sometimes lost sight of that for Marx a ‘property relation’ is not a relation of production at all, but the legal—superstructural—manifestation of a production relation). That is to say, that, for certain explicative purposes, we can determine the character of economic relations solely by reference to their superstructural (legal) manifestation.
The determinations encompassed by (2), (3) and (4) on the other hand, are summaries, increasing in generalisation as we proceed through the paragraph. [23] We cannot derive a single precise model to cover the mechanism of causation of all legal, political, etc. manifestations—those superstructural as well as those non-superstructural—since it is not possible to derive a single model to encompass two or more types of causation. Yet if one does not limit the superstructure to the state, as we did before, and tries to conceive of it as encompassing all of the complex forms of ideology and consciousness, then not only is the particular character of the base-superstructure determination lost sight of, but we lose, through over-simplification, the way that the primacy of social being over social consciousness asserts itself in all its complex manifestations. [24]
Now, there are those who hold that for Marxism, human history is a history of ‘class struggle’. With a degree of justification, of course, because there are occasions when Marx and Engels seem to say just this: for example, in the famous opening words of the first chapter of the The Communist Manifesto:
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an interrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes. [25]
This approach is taken to offer an alternative conceptual model for historical explanation by certain Marxists. They view the forces-and-relations explanation as too ‘structural’ and the base-superstructure model as too ‘mechanical’, and prefer a brand of Marxism that is more centred on the warmer notions of human ‘experience’ and ‘agency’, more focused on the political, on the class struggle, and on consciousness: a Marxism, in short, that is more ‘humanistic’. Such is the interpretation of Marxism developed by, amongst others, the British writers E. P. Thompson and Raymond Williams, and by the Canadian writer Ellen Meiksins Wood and her followers. The theoretical villain of the peace for these writers is, of course, the high priest of ‘structural Marxism’, Louis Althusser. [26]
It is further argued that this division within self-professed Marxists between the ‘structuralists’ and the ‘humanists’ is itself a product of a theoretical dilemma within Marxism itself, between two incompatible conceptions of historical development: between a view of history as a result of the tension between the forces and the relations of production, or as a product of the struggle between social classes; between the identification of the primary motor of historical change at the level of the economic structure of society, or in the realm of the subjective—political—struggle between classes for control over social structures and processes. Perry Anderson, for example, has argued that ‘one of the most central and fundamental problems of historical materialism as an account of the development of human civilisation’ is:
The permanent oscillation, the potential disjuncture in Marx’s own writings between the ascription of the primary motor of historical change to the contradiction between the forces of production and the relations of production, on the one hand [...] and to the class struggle, on the other hand [...]. The first refers essentially to a structural [...] reality [...]. The second refers to the subjective forces contending and colliding for mastery over social forms and historical processes [...]. How are these two distinct types of causality, or principles of explanation, to be articulated in the theory of historical materialism?
On this score, classical Marxism, even at the height of its powers, provided no coherent answer. [27]
How much truth then are we to ascribe to these observations—either to the intervention of the ‘humanists’, arguing for a concentration on class and agency instead of on social structures, or to the view that within historical materialism itself there is to be found an incompatibility between two different and incompatible models for the mechanisms for historical change?
Since the notion of the ‘class struggle’ figures so forcefully as an independent entity in the conceptions outlined above, let us first clarify what position ‘class’ actually holds in Marx’s theory. In the ‘Preface’, Marx is addressing one particular segment of human history, which he defines as the ‘prehistory of human society’. Preceding this segment, so to speak preceding ‘history’ itself, is the age often designated as ‘primitive communism’, in which what is produced is minimal: sufficient for the basic subsistence of the producers, but no more. There is, as a consequence, no ‘economy’ as such: no privatisation of relations of control, no ‘ownership’, and hence no law of property, no division of labour, no classes. At a certain stage in human pre-history, however, technical development—agriculture, husbandry, etc.—transforms this state of affairs. [28] The appearance of a small relative surplus of production allows for a technical division of labour, for the development of commerce and trade, for the appearance of truly social relations of production, relations of ‘effective control’, and for the emergence of the concept and practice of private property and ownership. The whole of that period of human history covered by the argument of the ‘Preface’—which is, in short, ‘class society’ itself—shares these general features, although in different historically specific forms, irrespective of which particular mode of production is operative.
I noted that the economic structure in general is composed of social relations, relations of effective control (taking on the appearance of ownership and property rights). We can more precisely define these relations as control over the distribution of—‘ownership’ of—the means of production, and control over the mechanisms of appropriation and distribution of the surplus product. What the existence of social classes means is simply that there are groups of people who share common powers of control over these functions, which are of a different character to the powers (or lack of powers) common to other groups of people. Classes occupy different positions, enjoy different levels of effective control, expressed in the form of ‘rights’ (or the lack of them), over the functions of control over the forces of production and the appropriation of the surplus. Class relations are precisely these relations of effective control: of people over people, and people over things. To put it simply: in class society, the economic structure is composed of class relations. Class relations, expressed in legal terms as property relations are, in total, the economic structure, the social relations of production. The class structure of society and the economic structure of society are nothing more than different names for the same thing. [29]
Now, I have established that for Marx the principal motor of historical change is the antagonism between the perennial growth of the forces of production and the periodic failure of the economic structure to allow that growth. I have also noted that for Marx in the period of human history covered by the ‘Preface’—that period between the emergence of a certain production surplus above that necessary for the maintenance of basic subsistence at one end, and the raising of the productive forces to a level of abundance such that the whole of humanity can be propelled from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom at the other—society will necessarily be divided into social classes: classes which arise as a result of a particular range of development of the productive forces. Further, I have argued that in this model the structure of social relations between the classes is the form that the economic structure takes in a society divided into classes.
For Marx, class relations are antagonistic relations: their antagonistic standing in society is explained by the different position they hold in relation to the forces of production and the social surplus: effectively, by antagonistic relations of effective control (in many of its forms appearing as ‘ownership’ or rights). In order for there to be a renewed period of growth of the productive forces when their development is being restricted by the economic structure, the latter needs to be re-ordered. Sometimes this is possible through piecemeal adaptation: relatively minor changes that do not change its essential character. Sometimes this is not possible, for the antagonism is fundamental. ‘Then begins an era of social revolution’, as the ‘Preface’ puts it. [30] (Not, note, ‘then there is a social revolution’; but ‘then begins an era of social revolution’—which we can interpret either as a social revolution over an extended period, or an extended period during which (a) social revolution is possible and (or) expected. [31] Either interpretation is correct, depending on what we mean by ‘social revolution’; and I shall return to this point shortly. But for the moment, let us register that what is necessary for a renewed period of development of the productive forces is a qualitative reordering of the economic structure.) Now, what is required (crucially: whether the protagonists understand it or not ) is a qualitative re-ordering of the relations of production, of the structure of class relations. How is this to be achieved? We can deduce that a qualitative re-ordering of the economic structure amounts to the substitution of one class (defined by a certain character of relations of effective control over the distribution of the forces of production and the appropriation of the surplus product) for another (defined by different ones) in a position of social predominance (note that ‘social predominance’ is to be understood in terms of the economic structure; I have said nothing of the super structure yet in this respect). Class struggle is thus simply the social mechanism whereby the contradiction between the forces and relations of production is resolved.
Marx’s theory of history is of course precisely that: a theory of history, and the historical act is one that is played out by human actors. The conflict between the forces and the relations of production is not an inanimate or a mechanical one: it both arises and seeks its resolution in the realm of the social. The conflict between classes is suggested by their antagonistic position in the economic structure, but only comes to fruition when the development of the forces of production is checked by this very economic structure. Classes ‘rule’—in the sense that they socially predominate—precisely because they are able to facilitate the expression of the primacy of the productive forces; they fall, when they cannot.
It is often forgotten that the account of historical materialism laid out in the ‘Preface’ is concerned primarily with the progress of history at the long-term—epochal—level. [32] It is necessary to illustrate the importance of this observation. Recall my emphasis on the phrase ‘era of social revolution’ that occurs in the ‘Preface’. I commented that, depending on what meaning we ascribe to the term ‘social revolution’, it could mean either a social revolution occurring over an extended period, or an extended period during which (a) social revolution is possible and (or) expected. This latter consideration is in turn dependent upon whether or not we are undertaking an analysis of the epochal, or of the conjunctural; or, to put it another way, of the social, or of the political.
We should note, at this point, that the word ‘revolution’ in English has, as it evolved, encompassed a number of nuanced and, if related, then not always identical meanings. It is only relatively recently that it has acquired the modern connotation of a turbulent and tumultuous upheaval (especially of a political character): one of the antonyms of ‘revolution’ in this modern sense is, of course, ‘evolution’. [33] Yet before this, the word simply designated a circular movement, and, later, a turning-over, a turning upside down, or a simple reversal of authority or predominance. So although ‘social revolution’ suggests—because of our familiarity with the modern usage of the word—a short-tem and violent process, there is no real reason to suppose this to be the case in this instance. Marx does, after all—and significantly for our purposes—use the term era ofsocial revolution, suggesting in this instance a sense of a more long and drawn-out (though no less fundamental in result) social transformation. [34]
Thus ‘era of social revolution’ here can be understood either in the social sense, ‘revolution’ indicating the long-term transition from one mode of production to another. Or, however, if what we understand by ‘revolution’ is the more ‘conventional’ political sense, in the sense of a convulsive struggle for control over the state, then in the former reading ‘era of social revolution’ can be understood as an extended—‘transitional’—period in which political revolutions of the latter character are either or both possible or expected (in the sense of the ‘Preface’ that ‘mankind [...] sets itself only such tasks that it is able to solve.’). The former model tells us why the latter happened: it does not tell us how; and neither should we expect it to, for that is not its purpose. The difference between the two schemas set out here is analogous to the relationship between the alternative models of forces-and-relations and class struggle for the explanation of historical change described in the previous section. In an examination of a particular concrete political event, we should not expect the model outlined in the ‘Preface’ to tell us much about what takes place, for that is not its purpose; what it should tell us is why.
To criticise Marxism on the grounds of ‘economic determinism’ is a paradox: Marx’s Marxism—as we have seen—is economically deterministic by its own definition, and it is none the worse is it for that. It is rather important to be clear about what one means by ‘determinism’ of course, since crudeness and vulgarity in the exposition of the nature of determinisms is quite another thing indeed. Criticism of Marx on these grounds is misplaced; criticism of a good deal of subsequent Marxism is, however, very much a different matter. Indeed, a theme of what has preceded has very much been that much of the misinterpretation of Marxism by both its opponents as well as those who vulgarise its method can be circumnavigated through a closer examination of what Marx actually said. We were at pains to point out at the outset that there are powerful objective causes behind ‘bad theory’; and I reiterate that observation here. But if people do not always get from Marx what they deserve, they often get what they expect. The epigones of Marx that emerged in the Second and (Stalinised) Third Internationals developed conceptions of Marxism that were both crude and vulgar; and they used texts such as the ‘Preface’ to justify crudeness and vulgarity through recourse to higher authority. We can only note here, in conclusion, that what we have tried to argue is that such a use was misplaced.
The general conclusion at which I arrived and which, once reached, became the guiding principle of my studies can be summarised as follows. In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a definite stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or—this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms—with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure. In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic—in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this process and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained by the consciousness of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production. No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society. Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation. In broad outline, the Asiatic, ancient, feudal and modern bourgeois modes of production may be designated as epochs marking progress in the economic development of society. The bourgeois mode of production is the last antagonistic form of the social process of production—antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism but of an antagonism that emanates from the individuals’ conditions of existence—but the productive forces developing within bourgeois society create also the material conditions for a solution of this antagonism. The prehistory of human society accordingly closes with this social formation.
1 E. H. Carr, What is History? (Harmondsworth, 1977), 93.
2 Karl Marx, ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’, in Karl Marx, Early Writings (Harmondsworth, 1975), 103.
3 The pioneer of French Revolution ‘revisionist’ historiography Alfred Cobban spells out the stakes: ‘In practice, general social laws [i.e. Marxism] turn out to be one of three things. If they are not dogmatic assertions about the course of history, they are either platitudes, or else, to be made to fit the facts, they have to be subjected to more and more qualifications until in the end they are applicable only to a single case. General sociology is thus no answer to the need for some theoretical element [...]. The desire for a general sociological theory, applicable to the whole course of human history, must [...] be dismissed as incompatible with critical history.’ The Social Interpretation of the French Revolution: The Wiles Lectures Given at the Queen’s University Belfast, 1962 (Cambridge, 1965), 13-16.
4 Karl Marx, ‘Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy’, Early Writings (Harmondsworth, 1975), 424-428.
5 E. J. Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction’, in Karl Marx, Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations (London, 1964), 10.
6 Of course, there are many and varied objective reasons behind the instances of abuse and misuse of Marxist theory. Yet these very objective conditions have resulted in the state of affairs that much of the ‘Marxism’ that most people come across is in good part subject to some degree of vulgarisation, and a vulgarisation reinforced through a misreading of texts such as that on display here.
7 Acknowledgement is necessary here of G. A. Cohen’s Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence (Princeton, 1978), a work on the subject of its title which is quite literally indispensable. Without endorsing his conclusions tout court, in what follows I largely follow his argument (if not his emphases).
8 Marx, ‘Preface’, 263.
9 As Marx states elsewhere: ‘The simple elements of the labour process are (1) purposeful activity, that is work itself, (2) the object on which that work is performed, and (3) the instruments of that work.’ Capital, vol. 1 (Harmondsworth, 1976), 284. See also the discussion in Cohen, Karl Marx’s Theory of History, 31-37.
10 Marx takes for granted in the ‘Preface’ what he states explicitly elsewhere—for example in ‘The Poverty of Philosophy: Answer to the Philosophy of Poverty by M. Proudhon’, MECW, vol. 6 (1976), 105-212—that ‘there is a continual movement of growth in productive forces’ (166).
11 I am aware that I am sailing close to the choppy waters of ‘human nature’ here. But it is a misconception that in Marx there is no ‘theory’ of human nature. Conclusive in this respect in my view is Norman Geras, Marx and Human Nature: Refutation of a Legend (London, 1983), especially 61-86.
12 Compare with Marx’s formulation of ten years prior to the ‘Preface’:
In production, men not only act on nature but on one another. They produce only by co-operating in a certain way and by mutually exchanging their activities. In order to produce, they enter into definite connections and relations with one another and only within these social connections and relations does their action on nature, does production take place.
These social relations into which the producers enter with one another, the conditions under which they exchange their activities and participate in the whole cat of production, will naturally vary according to the character of the means of production.[...]
Thus the social relations within which individuals produce, the social relations of production, change, are transformed, with the change and development of the material means of production, the productive forces. The relations of production in their totality constitute what are called the social relations, society, and, specifically, a society at a definite stage of historical development, a society with a peculiar, distinctive character. (Karl Marx, ‘Wage Labour and Capital’, in MECW, vol. 9 (1997), 211-12.)
13 The phrase is Cohen’s: Karl Marx’s Theory of History, 35.
14 Ibid., xi.
15 Marx, ‘Preface’, 263.
16 Ibid.
17 ‘It is in each case the direct relationship of the owners of the conditions of production—a relationship whose particular form naturally corresponds always to a certain level of development of the type and manner of labour, and hence to its social productive power—in which we find the innermost secret, the hidden basis of the entire social edifice, and hence also the political form of the relationship of sovereignty and dependence, in short, the specific form of the state in each case.’ Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 3 (Harmondsworth, 1981), 927.
18 Although, as always with Marx, we cannot always assume total consistency as he evolved concepts and ideas in his writings over the course of four decades. There are, however, as far as I am aware, only two occasions in Marx where he suggests that the superstructure may in fact be broader in content. Thus in The German Ideology, Marx and Engels refer to ‘the social organisation evolving directly out of production and commerce, which in all ages forms the basis of the state and of the rest of the idealistic superstructure [...].’ (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The German Ideology: Part One, ed. C. J. Arthur (London, 1970), 57. Strangely, the paragraph from which this reference is taken appears to be missing in the Collected Works: compare the above with MECW, vol. 5 (1976), 50.) Again: ‘Upon the different forms of property, upon the social conditions of existence, rises an entire superstructure of different and distinctly formed sentiments, illusions, modes of thought and views of life.’ (Karl Marx, ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’, MECW vol. 11 (1979), 128.) In both these cases the superstructure is envisaged as incorporating to some degree human consciousness. This is even more strongly the case with some of Engels’ formulations, especially those to be found in his later correspondence, when he was at pains to distance himself from a economically ‘reductionist’ reading of historical materialism, although Engels’ role as something of a populariser of Marx’s theories leads—despite his many talents—to a lack of precision in his theoretical expositions when compared to Marx’s; for the contours of the work of the later Engels, see the comments in Gareth Stedman Jones, ‘Engels and the End of Classical German Philosophy’, New Left Review 79 (May-June 1973), 31-36.
19 Marx, ‘Preface’, 425.
20 This argument dispenses with the objection that, since ‘determination’ is simple ‘cause and effect’, saying that the economic structure ‘determines’ the superstructure invalidates the idea that the latter can play an ‘active’ role in relation to the former. Logically, and linguistically, this simply does not follow. As Cohen points out, functional explanations do not oppose themselves to ‘cause and effect’ ones, but are in fact a subset of them.
21 For an insightful discussion on the use of the concept of ‘determination’ in Marx’s work, see Roy Bhaskar’s discussion in Tom Bottomore (ed.), A Dictionary of Marxist Thought (Oxford, 1983), 117-119; for an account of the evolution of the word ‘determine’ in English, see Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (London, 1988), 98-102.
Cohen, Karl Marx’s Theory of History, xi.
23 It will be objected that the use of the verb ‘correspond’ in relationship (2) implies a non-determinative connection between factors. There is, of course, no reason to assume this to be the case. Everything depends on how we choose to read the word ‘correspond’: the reading on a car’s speedometer, for example, may be expected to ‘correspond’ to in some way the actual velocity of the vehicle—indeed, for safety’s sake it is desirable that this be so. But the speedometer reading does not determine the speed of the car; quite the reverse in fact. It is significant for our reading of the ‘Preface’ that Marx does not say that the economic structure of society corresponds to forms of social consciousness, but the opposite. The position of object and subject in the sentence is significant; his meaning, I would argue, is plain
24 Melvin Rader discusses Marx’s terminology in the original German in his Marx’s Interpretation of History (New York, 1979), 15.
25 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’, MECW, vol. 6 (1976), 483
26 For an excoriating critique of Althusser’s account of Marxism from this particular theoretical standpoint, see E. P. Thompson, ‘The Poverty of Theory’, in E. P. Thompson, The Poverty of Theory and Other Essays (London, 1978), 193-397; Raymond Williams expresses concern at some of the concepts deployed in the ‘Preface’ in his Marxism and Literature (Oxford, 1977), 75-89; while Ellen Meiksins Wood elaborates doubts along the same lines in ‘The Separation of the Economic and the Political in Capitalism’, New Left Review 127 (May-June 1981), 66-97, especially 75-86.
27 Perry Anderson, In the Tracks of Historical Materialism (London: Verso, 1983), 34.
28 The precise mechanism and sequence of these developments are controversial and complex; but they are tangential to the argument and need not detain us here. Engels had, of course, his own views on the matter—increasingly controversial over time. Thus, for an interesting discussion from a Marxist-Feminist standpoint, see Stephanie Coontz and Peta Henderson, ‘Property Forms, Political Power and Female Labour in the Origins of Class and State Societies’, in Stephanie Coontz and Peta Henderson (eds), Women’s Work, Men’s Property: The Origins of Gender and Class (London, 1986), 108-155, especially 112-116, 142-148 and 154-155.
29 Cohen: ‘[The] relations of production [...] are [the] relations of economic power people enjoy or lack over labour [...] and means of production. In a capitalist society relations of production include the economic power capitalists have over means of production, the limited but substantial power workers (unlike slaves) have over their own labour power, and the lack of economic power workers have over means of production.’ Cohen goes on to clarify his use of the term ‘economic power’: it is ‘“economic” in virtue of what it is power over, and irrespective of the means of gaining, sustaining or exercising the power, which need not be economic.’ G. A. Cohen, ‘Reply to Elster on “Marxism, Functionalism, and Game Theory”’, in Alex Callinicos (ed.), Marxist Theory (Oxford, 1989), 91.
Let me emphasise at this point that I have said nothing of ‘consciousness’ yet. I do not share the argument—expressed most clearly by E. P. Thompson—that ‘structural’ definitions of class are to be avoided, since classes that are not conscious of their nature as classes are not really classes at all. ( The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth, 1968), 9-10, 213; ‘The Peculiarities of the English’, in he Poverty of Theory, 85.) What worries Thompson is the fact that class ideologies do not arise mechanically through the mechanism of the base-superstructure model, as an unmediated reflection of their economic position. He regards such a proposition as vulgar reductionism, and on this point we can heartily agree with him.
But Thompson’s response is to attempt to define class in terms other than of structural economic position. Class consciousness is indeed not mechanically determined in an unmediated fashion by virtue of the position held by a class in the economic structure, and it is not determined in the relatively straightforward manner that the economic structure determines the manner of operation of the state. I was at pains above to argue that the base-superstructure model applies to the analysis of the nature of the state (in terms of the economic structure) alone, and not to consciousness and ideology, and it was the kind of problem of the sort envisaged by Thompson that provided one of the reasons why I was moved so to do. We should note, however, that Thompson does accept that there are groups of people who share a common relation to the means of production, but that he simply does not think this is sufficient to define such a group as a ‘class’. But by this very yardstick his attempt to define class existence in the last analysis only in terms of a class’s consciousness of itself as a class is flawed: not only because, by his standard, most classes that have existed in human history (especially subordinate ones) have not existed as classes as such at all, and he provides no alternative conceptual designation for what these ‘groups of people’ actually are; more importantly, if classes that are not conscious of being classes are not in fact classes at all, then where does class consciousness itself, so to speak, ‘come from’ in the first place—if not, that is, from an a priori ‘class’ experience of some kind? Accepting that the relationship between the position of a class in the economic structure and ideology is not ‘basic-superstructural’ is not the same as contradicting Marx’s formulation that ‘the mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life’ for, as I have tried to explain, that is a different contention.
30 Marx, ‘Preface’, 426.
31 In some of the translations of the ‘Preface’ the word ‘era’ is rendered ‘epoch’.
32 As Harry Braverman notes: ‘The treatment of the interplay between the forces and relations of production occupied Marx in almost all his historical writing, and while there is no question that he gave primacy to the forces of production in the long sweep of history, the idea that this primacy could be used in a formulistic way on a day-to-day basis could never have entered his mind.’ Labour and Monopoly Capitalism: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York and London, 1974), 19-20.
33 Perry Anderson, for example, once defined ‘revolution’ thus: ‘Revolution is a term with a precise meaning: the political overthrow from below of one state order, and its replacement by another.’ (Perry Anderson, ‘Modernity and Revolution’, New Left Review 144 (March-April 1984), 112.) This definition may indeed be ‘precise’ yet to assume that it is the only possible is false.
34 On the evolution of the meaning of the word ‘revolution’ in English, see the illuminating entry in Williams, Keywords, 270-74.