[OPE-L:3524] Re: Historical materialsm

[Paul Cockshott <wpc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 12:22 19/06/00 -0400, Rakesh Bhandari wrote:
> Marxian theory depends neither on
> philosophical materialism nor atomism.

This is a highly contentious position. 
 
It is directly a variance with the German Ideology, which defends an
explictly
materialist view of history in opposition to idealist views. As does the
summary
in the Preface to the critique of political economy, which again states
that
the guiding principle of Marxs investigations is the materialist view of
history:

>   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 given 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