So we have a three-stage process: productive forces determine relations of production, which in turn determine the superstructure. The productive forces are fundamental. Their growth provides the momentum for the whole process of history.
But isn’t all this much too crude? Should we take seriously the statement about the handmill giving us feudal lords, and the steam mill capitalists? Surely Marx must have realized that the invention of steam power itself depends on human ideas, and those ideas, as much as the steam mill itself, have produced capitalism. Isn’t Marx making a deliberately exaggerated statement of his own position in order to display its novelty?
This is a vexed question. There are several other places where Marx says flatly that productive forces determine everything else. There are other statements which acknowledge the effect of factors belonging to the superstructure. Particularly when writing history himself, in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, for instance, Marx traces the effects of ideas and personalities, and makes less deterministic general statements, for example:
Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given, and transmitted from the past.
(EB 300)
And what of the opening declaration of The Communist Manifesto: ‘The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles’? If the forces of production control everything, class struggles can be no more than the superficial form in which these forces are cloaked. Like the images on a cinema screen they would be powerless to affect the underlying reality they reflect. So why describe history as the history of class struggles? And if neither thought nor politics has any real causal significance, what is the meaning of Marx’s dedication, intellectually and politically, to the cause of the working class?
After Marx died, Engels denied that Marx had said that ‘the economic element is the only determining one’. He and Marx, he conceded, were partly to blame for this misinterpretation, for they had emphasized the economic side in opposition to those who rejected it altogether. Marx and he had not, Engels wrote, overlooked the existence of interaction between the economic structure and the rest of the superstructure. They had affirmed only that ‘the economic movement finally asserts itself as necessary’. According to Engels, Marx grew so irritated at misinterpretations of his doctrine that towards the end of his life, he declared: ‘All I know is that I am not a Marxist.’
Was Engels right? Some have accused him of watering down the true doctrine; yet no one was in a better position to know what Marx really meant than his lifelong friend and collaborator. Moreover the relatively recent publication of Marx’s Grundrisse – a rough preliminary version of Capital and other projects Marx never completed – reveals that Marx did, like Engels, use such phrases as ‘in the last analysis’ to describe the predominance of the forces of production in the interacting whole that constitutes human existence (G 495). Right or wrong, one cannot help sympathizing with Engels’ position after Marx died. As the authoritative interpreter of Marx’s ideas he had to present them in a plausible form, a form not refuted by common-sense observations about the effect of politics, religion, or law on the productive forces.
But once ‘interaction’ between the superstructure and the productive forces is admitted, is it still possible to maintain that production determines the superstructure, rather than the other way round? It is the old chicken-and-egg problem all over again. The productive forces determine the relations of production to which correspond the ideas of the society. These ideas lead to the further development of productive forces, which lead to new relations of production, to which correspond new ideas. In this cyclical movement it makes no more sense to say that productive forces play the determining role than to say that the egg ensures the continued existence of chickens rather than the other way round.
Talk of the productive forces ‘finally’ or ‘in the last analysis’ determining the other interacting factors does not provide a way out of the dilemma. For what can this mean? Does it mean that in the end the superstructure is totally governed by the development of the forces of production? In that case ‘finally’ merely stretches the causal chain; it is still a chain and so we are back with the hard-line determinist version of the theory.
On the other hand, if ‘finally’ not merely stretches, but actually breaks, the chain of economic determinism, it is difficult to see that asserting the primacy of the productive forces can mean anything significant at all. It might mean, as the passage from The German Ideology quoted in the previous chapter appears to suggest, that the process of human history only gets going when humans ‘begin to produce their means of subsistence’; or as Engels put it in his graveside speech: ‘mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.’ But if politics, science, art, and religion, once they come into existence, have as much effect on the productive forces as the productive forces have on them, the fact that mankind must eat first and can only pursue politics afterwards is of historical interest only; it has no continuing causal importance.
Alternatively, describing the economic side as ‘finally’ asserting itself could be an attempt to say that although both economic and non-economic factors interact, a larger proportion of the causal impetus comes from the productive forces. But on what basis could one say this? How could one divide the interacting processes and say which played the larger role? We cannot solve the chicken-and-egg problem by saying that while the existence of the species is not due to the egg alone, the egg has more to do with it than the chicken.
9. English factories in the mid-nineteenth century: men and women at work in the Patent Renewable Stocking Factory at Tewkesbury in 1860
In the absence of more plausible ways of making sense of the softening phrases used by Engels and – more rarely – Marx, the interpretation of the materialist conception of history seems to resolve itself into a choice between hard-line economic determinism, which would indeed be a momentous discovery if it were true, but does not seem to be true; or the much more pliable conception to be found in the Grundrisse, where Marx describes society as a ‘totality’, an ‘organic whole’ in which everything is interconnected (G 99–100). The view of society as a totality is no doubt illuminating when set against the view that ideas, politics, law, religion, and so on have a life and history of their own, independently of mundane economic matters. Nevertheless it does not amount to ‘the law of development of human history’, or to a scientific discovery comparable to Darwin’s theory of evolution. To qualify as a contribution to science, a proposed law must be precise enough to enable us to deduce from it certain consequences rather than others. That is how we test proposed scientific laws – by seeing if the consequences they predict actually occur. The conception of society as an interconnected totality is about as precise an instrument of historical analysis as a bowl of porridge. Anything at all can be deduced from it. No observation could ever refute it.
It still needs to be explained how Marx, though obviously aware of the effect of the superstructure on the productive forces, could so confidently assert that the productive forces determine the relations of production and hence the social superstructure. Why did he not see the difficulty posed by the existence of interaction?
The explanation may be that belief in the primacy of the productive forces was not, for Marx, an ordinary belief about a matter of fact but a legacy of the origin of his theory in Hegelian philosophy.
One way to see this is to ask why, if Marx’s view is inverted Hegelianism, the existence of interaction between ideas and material life does not pose exactly the same problem for Hegel’s view (that the progress of Mind determines material life) as it poses for Marx’s inversion of this view. Hegel’s writings contain as many descriptions of material life influencing consciousness as Marx’s contain of consciousness influencing material life. So the prob
lem of establishing the primary causal role of one set of factors over the other should be as great for Hegel as for Marx.
Yet Hegel’s reason for believing in the primacy of consciousness is clear: he regards Mind as ultimately real, and the material world as a manifestation of it; accordingly he sees the purpose or goal of history as the liberation of Mind from all illusions and fetters. Hegel’s belief that consciousness determines material life therefore rests on his view of ultimate reality and the meaning of history. History is not a chain of meaningless and often accidental occurrences, but a necessary process heading towards a discoverable goal. Whatever happens on the stage of world history happens in order to enable Mind to reach its goal. It is in this sense that what happens on the level of Mind, or consciousness, is the real cause of everything else.
Like Hegel, Marx has a view about what is ultimately real. His materialism is the reverse of Hegel’s idealism. The materialist conception of history is usually regarded as a theory about the causes of historical change, rather than a theory about the nature of ultimate reality. In fact it is both – as Hegel’s idealist conception of history was both. We have already seen passages from The German Ideology which indicate that Marx took material processes as real in a way that ideas are not. There Marx and Engels contrast the ‘real life-process’ of ‘real, active men’ with ‘the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process’. They distinguish the ‘phantoms formed in the human brain’ from the ‘material life-process, which is empirically verifiable’. The frequent reiteration of ‘real’ or ‘actual’ in describing the material or productive life of human beings, and the use of words like ‘reflex’, ‘echo’, ‘phantom’ and so on for aspects of consciousness, suggest a philosophical distinction between what is real and what is merely a manifestation or appearance.
Nor is this terminology restricted to Marx’s early works. The contrast between appearance and reality is repeated in Capital, where the religious world is said to be ‘but the reflex of the real world’ (C I 79).
Also like Hegel, Marx thought that history is a necessary process heading towards a discoverable goal. We have seen evidence of this in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, where Marx criticized classical economists for saying nothing about the meaning of economic phenomena ‘in the evolution of mankind’ or about the extent to which ‘apparently accidental circumstances’ are nothing but ‘the expression of a necessary course of development’. That this too is not a view limited to Marx’s youthful period seems clear from, for instance, the following paragraph from an article of his on British rule in India, written in 1853:
England, it is true, in causing a social revolution in Hindustan, was actuated only by the vilest interests, and was stupid in her manner of enforcing them. But that is not the question. The question is, can mankind fulfil its destiny without a fundamental revolution in the social state of Asia? If not, whatever may have been the crimes of England, she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about that revolution.
The references to ‘mankind’s destiny’ and to England as ‘the unconscious tool of history’ imply that history moves in a purposive way towards some goal. (The whole paragraph is reminiscent of Hegel’s account of how ‘the cunning of reason’ uses unsuspecting individuals to work its purposes in history.)
Marx’s idea of the goal of world history was, of course, different from Hegel’s. He replaced the liberation of Mind by the liberation of real human beings. The development of Mind through various forms of consciousness to final self-knowledge was replaced by the development of human productive forces, by which human beings free themselves from the tyranny of nature and fashion the world after their own plans. But for Marx the progress of human productive forces is no less necessary, and no less progress towards a goal, than the progress of Mind towards self-knowledge is for Hegel.
We can now explain the primary role of the productive forces in Marx’s theory of history in the same manner as we explained Hegel’s opposite conviction: for Marx the productive life of human beings, rather than their ideas and consciousness, is ultimately real. The development of these productive forces, and the liberation of human capacities that this development will bring, is the goal of history.
Marx’s suggestion about England’s role in advancing mankind towards its destiny illustrates the nature of the primacy of material life. Since England’s colonial policy involves a series of political acts, the causing of a social revolution in Asia by this policy is an instance of the superstructure affecting the economic base. This happens, though, in order to develop the productive forces to the state necessary for the fulfilment of human destiny. The superstructure acts only as the ‘unconscious tool’ of history. England’s colonial policy is no more the ultimate cause of the social revolution in Asia than my spade is the ultimate cause of the growth of my vegetables.
If this interpretation is correct the materialist theory of history is no ordinary causal theory. Few historians – or philosophers for that matter – now see any purpose or goal in history. They do not explain history as the necessary path to anywhere. They explain it by showing how one set of events brought about another. Marx, in contrast, saw history as the progress of the real nature of human beings, that is, human beings satisfying their wants and exerting their control over nature by their productive activities. The materialist conception of history was not conceived as a modern scientific account of how economic changes lead to changes in other areas of society. It was conceived as an explanation of history which points to the real forces operating in it, and the goal to which these forces are heading.
That is why, while recognizing the effect of politics, law, and ideas on the productive forces, Marx was in no doubt that the development of the productive forces determines everything else. This also makes sense of Marx’s dedication to the cause of the working class. Marx was acting as the tool – a fully conscious tool – of history. The productive forces always finally assert themselves, but they do so through the actions of individual humans who may or may not be conscious of the role they are playing in history.
Chapter 8
Economics
Although Marx described the materialist conception of history as the leading thread of his studies, he was in no doubt that his masterpiece was Capital. In this book he presented his economic theories to the public in their most finished form. ‘Most finished’, not ‘finished’; Marx saw only the first volume of Capital through to publication. The second and third volumes were published by Engels, and a fourth volume, entitled Theories of Surplus Value, by the German socialist Kautsky.
As with the materialist conception of history, so with the economics: the mature form is easier to appreciate in the light of earlier writings. So let us return to Marx’s ideas in 1844, the point at which we ceased to follow their general development and went off in pursuit of the materialist conception of history.
By 1844 Marx had come to hold that the capitalist economic system, regarded by the classical economists as natural and inevitable, was an alienated form of human life. Under capitalism workers are forced to sell their labour – which Marx regards as the essence of human existence – to the capitalists, who use this labour to accumulate more capital, which further increases the power of the capitalists over the workers. Capitalists become rich, while wages are driven down to the bare minimum needed to keep the workers alive. Yet in reducing so large a class of people to this degraded condition, capitalism creates the material force that will overthrow it. For Marx, the importance of economics lay in the insight it provided into the workings of this alienation and the manner in which it could be overcome.
In the years immediately after 1844 Marx’s major literary efforts went into polemical works: The Holy Family, The German Ideology, and The Poverty of Philosophy. In the course of castigating his opponents Marx developed the materialist conception of history, but did not greatly advance his economic theories. His first attempt to work out these theories in any detail came in 1847
, when he gave a series of lectures on economics to the Workingmen’s Club in Brussels. The lectures were revised and published as newspaper articles in 1849, and later reprinted under the title Wage Labour and Capital.
Wage Labour and Capital is a lucidly written work, containing many echoes of the 1844 manuscripts, but without their Hegelian terminology. It is worth examining in some detail, because its clarity makes the more difficult Capital easier to grasp.
Marx starts with labour. Labour is described as ‘the worker’s own life-activity, the manifestation of his own life’. Yet it becomes, under capitalism, a commodity the worker must sell in order to live. Therefore his life-activity is reduced to a means to go on living, not part of his life, but ‘a sacrifice of his life’. His real life only begins when his work ceases, ‘at table, in the public house, in bed’ (WLC 250).
Marx then asks how wages are determined and answers that the price of labour is determined like the price of any other commodity. It may rise or fall according to supply and demand, but the general tendency is for wages to level down to the cost of production of labour, that is, the cost necessary for keeping the worker alive and capable of working and reproducing.
Next Marx turns to capital. He states the view of classical economics, that capital consists of the raw materials, instruments of production, and means of subsistence which are used in further production. Since all these elements of capital are the creation of labour, even the classical economists hold that capital is accumulated labour.