The relation between the forces of production and the social relations of
production in the thought of Karl Marx is usefully exemplified and epitomized
in footnote 34 of the famous chapter on “The Fetishism of Commodities” in Das
Kapital. Let us quote it in full here:
I seize this opportunity of shortly answering an objection taken by a German paper in America, to my work, “Zur
Kritik der Pol. Oekonomie, 1859.” In the estimation of that paper, my view that each special mode of
production and the social relations corresponding to it, in short, that the economic structure of society,
is the real basis on which the juridical and political superstructure is raised and to which definite social
forms of thought correspond; that the mode of production determines the character of the social,
political, and intellectual life generally, all this is very true for our own times, in which material
interests preponderate, but not for the middle ages, in which Catholicism, nor for Athens and Rome,
where politics, reigned supreme. In the first place it strikes one as an odd thing for any one to suppose
that these wellworn phrases about the middle ages and the ancient world are unknown to anyone else.
This much, however, is clear, that the middle ages could not live on Catholicism, nor the ancient world
on politics. On the contrary, it is the mode in which they gained a livelihood that explains why here
politics, and there Catholicism, played the chief part. For the rest, it requires but a slight acquaintance
with the history of the Roman republic, for example, to be aware that its secret history is the history of
its landed property. On the other hand, Don Quixote long ago paid the penalty for wrongly imagining
that knight errantry was compatible with all economic forms of society.
For Marx, the ideological superstructure of human societies is “explained
[by] the mode in which they gained a livelihood” – in other words, by their
“mode of production”. The mode of production is a combination of “the forces of
production”, which refers to the degree of technological advancement of
society, and by “the social relations of production”, which refer to the
adherence of the superstructure to the forces of production, to the manner in
which the superstructure interacts with the forces of production. It is this interaction
that forms the economic base on which the superstructure depends. Social
relations of production refer to this complex interaction between ideological
superstructure and forces of production.
Social relations are closely bound up with productive forces. In acquiring new productive forces men
change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of
production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change
all their social relations. The hand-mill gives you society with the
feudal lord; the steam-mill society with the industrial capitalist..(Marx, The
Poverty of Philosophy.)
The social relations of production or economic base form a complex
interaction between ideological superstructure on one side and forces
of production on the other. The ideological superstructure can either
facilitate or impede the forces of production – and if the latter, the social
relations must change together with the superstructure. When the social
relations of production – the interaction of ideological superstructure and economic
base – contrast and impede or hinder the forces of production, it is the
superstructure that must give way. Only in communism will the ideological
superstructure disappear and the social relations of production coincide with the
forces of production and enhance them. Thus, it is not so much that the
superstructure has nothing to do or does not interact with the forces of
production; it is rather that the superstructure can hold back the forces of
production only so much. The ideological superstructure – the state, religion,
other ideologies – influences the forces of production not essentially
but in terms of either promoting them or holding them back. To that degree it
forms part of the social relations of production by determining how the surplus
social product is employed.
After the triumph of the bourgeoisie, there
was no longer any question of the good or the bad side of feudalism. The
bourgeoisie took possession of the productive forces it had developed under
feudalism. All the old economic forms, the corresponding civil relations, the
political state which was the official expression of the old civil society,
were smashed.
Thus, feudal production, to be judged
properly, must be considered as a mode of production founded on antagonism. It
must be shown how wealth was produced within this antagonism, how the
productive forces were developed at the same time as class antagonisms,
how one of the classes, the bad side, the drawback of society,
went on growing until the material conditions for its emancipation had
attained full maturity. Is not this as good as saying that the mode of
production, the relations in which productive forces are developed, are
anything but eternal laws, but that they correspond to a definite
development of men and of their productive forces, and that a change in
men's productive forces necessarily brings about a change in their relations of
production? As the main thing is not to be deprived of the fruits of
civilization, of the acquired productive forces, the traditional forms in which
they were produced must be smashed. From this moment, the revolutionary
class becomes conservative.(The Poverty of Philosophy)
Once again, Marx reasserts the dependence of social relations on productive
forces. What is noteworthy in this passage is that Marx’s notion of “productive
forces” is at once physiological or naturalistic in one aspect, and political
in another, in the sense that it subsumes “class antagonism” into the category
of “forces of production” in such a way that clearly Marx sees political
antagonism as part and parcel of the physiological or naturalistic
“development of the forces of production”. The clear implication is that Marx
subsumes the Political to the sphere of “material conditions” as part of a
natural physiological evolution of the human species. The Hegelian teleological
derivation of this interpretation of history – from the viewpoint of his
“historical materialism” – is unmistakeable. And so is the eschatological motif
in Marx’s entire oeuvre – the historical material inevitability of communism as
the “final stage of society”, one in which class antagonism will vanish from
human history. Only in communism the antagonism between social classes is
finally superseded and abolished (aufgehoben) - here is the famous Hegelian
Aufhebung in Marxian version, the materialist obverse or inverse of
Hegelian dialectical materialism – “stood on its feet” – but with “the cunning
of Reason” preserved in the guise of “material production” and “productive
forces”, or Nature or physis. (Recall that Marx’s doctoral thesis was on the
conception of Nature [physis] in Democritus and Epicurus.) For Marx, it is only
once the state of society has reached a point where the forces of production are
sufficiently contrasted or held back by the social relations of production (the
interaction between superstructure and forces of production) – only at that
stage society is ripe for revolution and the supersession (Aufhebung) of
the preceding mode of production.
But there is another crucial aspect to Marx’s physiological or naturalist
position regarding the direct, immediate relation between forces of production
and social relations of production – between “the wind-mill” with feudalism and
“the steam-mill” with capitalism. Clearly, this is far too simplistic a view,
as Weber objected, for the simple reason that there is nothing in a wind-mill
that gives you the feudal lord, and nothing in the steam-mill that yields the
capitalist. Taken in isolation, without reference to other social
relations, technical advances mean little if they mean anything at all. The salient
feature of Marx’s rough equation is his attempt to remove ethical judgements
from the movement of history as a naturalist dialectic of class antagonisms. In
the quotation above, Marx deliberately refers – not once, but twice – to the “revolutionary
class” in the history of modes of production – the bourgeoisie in feudalism and
the proletariat in capitalism – as “the bad part” or “the drawback of
society”. As Robert Tucker has sought genially to demonstrate (in “The
Cunning of Reason”), there is a clear attempt on Marx’s part here to draw an
insurmountable wall between ethical and moral judgements or “politics”, as it
were, and “science” or “the laws of motion of history” – between ethics and
science, between politics and nature, between coercion and necessity. And yet,
it is entirely evident that Marx’s entire “scientific analysis” of capitalism can
never go beyond the status of “political critique”. The fact of the matter is
that once we attempt to show the “scientific necessity” of “historical exploitation”
in any mode of production, we quickly become aware of the fact that historical
exploitation – a political and ethical judgement – can never be
reconciled with scientific necessity – a factual finding! It is this
fundamental apory and inconsistency in Marx’s critique of capitalism that led
fatally to the catastrophic antagonistic division of working-class movements,
parties and organizations between “scientific” or Marxist and “utopian” or social
democratic currents, especially in the fateful period of political and social
ferment between the two world wars.
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