Naming vs. Explanation. The Foundations of Historical Materialism

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The habit of taking some paraphrase of the facts and turning it into
an explanation of the facts is a hard one to break, and we are all
almost certainly often guilty of it. Social Darwinism (based on an
equation of change with desirable change) involves a whole
series of such mistakes. And of course the WSJ editorial use
of "progressive" makes the same equation. It is progressive to
drive people from the welfare rolls. Market efficiency seems to
be a similar tautology. Efficiency is the name one gives to whatever
results from market exchange. The classical critique of this mode
of thinking, of mistaking a label for an explanation, is Marx's
*Poverty of Philosophy*, from which the following passage comes:

*****
Thus *Providence* is the locomotive which makes the whole of M.
Proudhon's economic baggage move better than his pure and
volatilised reason. He has devoted to Providence a whole chapter, which
follows the one on taxes.

    Providence, providential aim, this is the great word used today to
explain the movement of history. In fact, this word explains nothing.
It is at most a rhetorical form, one of the various ways of paraphrasing
facts.

    It is a fact that in Scotland landed property acquired a new value
by the development of English industry. This industry opened up new
outlets for wool. In order to produce wool on a large scale, arable
land had to be transformed into pasturage. To effect this
transformation,
the estates had to be concentrated. To concentrate the estates, small
holdings had first to be abolished, thousands of tenants had to be
driven from their native soil and a few shepherds in charge of millions
of sheep to be installed in their place. Thus, by successive
transformations, landed property in Scotland has resulted in the driving
out of men by sheep. Now say that the providential aim of the
institution
of landed property in Scotland was to have men driven out by sheep, and
you will have made providential history.

    Of course, the tendency towards equality belongs to our century. To
say now that all former centuries, with entirely different needs, means
of production, etc., worked providentially for the realisation of
equality is, firstly, to substitute the means and the men of our century
for the men and the means of earlier centuries and to misunderstand the
historical movement by which the successive generations transformed the
results acquired by the generations that preceded them. Economists know
very well that the very thing that was for the one a finished product
was for the other but the raw material for new production.

    Suppose, as M. Proudhon does, tht social genius produced, or
rather improvised, the feudal lords with the providential aim of
transforming the *settlers* into *responsible* and *equally-placed*
workers: and you will have effected a substitution of aims and of
persons worthy of the Providence that instituted landed property in
Scotland, in order to give itself the malicious pleasure of driving
out men by sheep.

    But since M. Proudhon takes such a tender interest in Providence,
we refer him to the *Histoire de l'economie politique* of M. de
Villenneuve-Bargemont, who likewise goes in pursuit of a providential
aim. This aim, however, is not equality, but catholicism.
            *Pov. Phil* (Moscow, 1973), pp. 104-105
********

For "Providence" one may substitute, for example, Human Nature. The
problem is that to say history flows from human nature is either
a trivial tautology, cats are black because they are black, or
a denial of history.

Carrol