Rakesh Bhandari on Marx's theory of history

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Some notes on Marx's theory of history.

It would seem that modes of production, over history, change in the
degree of independence of parts by which I mean production units. In the
theory of the Asiatic mode of production , the village communities are
claimed to be completely independent and self-sufficient units of
production and consumption (the theory of the AMP does deserve the
burial for which Perry Anderson called long ago); in capitalism the
production units are enterprises which are interdependent directly or
indirectly upon another. This interdependence is captured in
neo-classical, Sraffian and Marxian theories of price: a change in one
part of the system implies widespread changes elsewhere. The degree of
integration which is achieved in bourgeois society is most starkly
revealed in the world historic event of a general crisis in which each
cannot sell because each will not buy.

Neither the total independence of parts nor complete holistic
interdependence are thus basic states; the degree of independence of
parts in a system is a historically changing property. In other words,
Marx's view of the history of modes of production and the nature of
totality is dialectical.

What I have suggested to Ian is that I don't think it's historically
valid or logically tenable to allow for the maximum level of
interdependence and integration of parts, i.e. production units, in a
system of simple commodity production.

Of course in the highly interdependent and integrated capitalist mode of
production in which production units are characteristically commodity-
and profit-making enterprises which employ "free" wage labor a few of
the parts may however be units of simple commodity production or slave
plantation production or peasant production. But these will exist as
exceptions. The parts can be heterogeneous at the margins.

As a result of these exceptions becoming parts of the bourgeois totality
or the capitalist mode of production their properties may also
change--it's another dialectical principle that the properties of parts
are often acquired by being parts of a particular whole; these
exceptional parts may acquire a capitalist character. Marx lays out how
both the independent craftsman was converted by merchants into a wage
laborer and the slave plantation acquired a capitalist character. Jairus
Banaji has explored how tenants and peasants were transformed into wage
laborers (see the section on Agrarian Capitalism at
http://epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=1999&leaf=10&filename=551&filetype=html


This puts me closer to Wallerstein than Brenner, I believe (though I
accept much of Jairus' criticism of dependency and world systems
theory). Perhaps closer to the Peruvian sociologist Anabel Quijano as
well. I am here using some of the dialectical principles laid out by
Lewontin and Levins to make sense of this view to myself.

A couple of other notes. The theory of the Asiatic Mode of Production
with which GA Cohen could not be bothered has the structure of an
adaptation in the strong Darwinian sense (see Richard Lewontin's
critique of neo Darwinism). That is, the properties of the AMP are
explained entirely in terms of the properties of a particularly harsh
environment--Marx's enthusiasm for geographic determinist and crudely
prejudiced Pierre Tremaux should be reason for concern as it was in fact
for Engels (see Diane Paul). Society and environment are treated in a
"strongly asymmetrical" ways (to use Peter Godfrey Smith's expression),
with environmental pressures driving a process of adjustment or
accomodation on the part of society. Since the external environment is
posited as stable so then is society once the adaptation has been
achieved. Hence Asiatic peoples are thought to be without history!

full: http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/OPE/archive/0305/0147.html

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