[PEN-L:3846] poverty of technological determnism

[JDevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

As Gil pointed out, the handmill quote which exemplifies Marx's
technological-determinist side comes from the POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY.
That's what I remembered, though I couldn't find it, since the P of P
is a great source for simplistic slogans that Marx used in his
early economic theory. Much of the P of P's theory is crude
Ricardianism that Marx later criticized.

Rakesh writes: >>Perhaps the more important example of
'technological determinism' is Marx's discussion of the change in
productive forces from manufacture to machinery within capitalist
society and the *objective* tendencies which result in a bourgeois
system based on machinery: the proletarianization of craft labor
and the rise of the mass worker, business cycles due to the
periodic replacement of fixed capital, moral depreciation, the
rise in the organic composition of capital, the falling rate of
profit, etc.<<

I think one can see a technological-determinist theory here, but
Marx's CAPITAL involves a sociological-determinist theory too. The
way in which the factory system takes over, etc. represents an
expression of the laws of motion of a social system. In the end,
it's not a deterministic system of either sort since the structure
of society determines the nature of the development of the forces
of production, which in turn determines changes in the
institutional details of capitalist society, which in turn
determines... And so on ad infinitum: it's a dialectical process.
In the end, I would say the sociological-determinist side wins,
since for Marx, the development of the forces of production under
capitalism expressed the immanent tendencies of the system (the
becoming expressed the being).

Even then it's not really a story of forces-and-relations of
production determinism, since central to Marx's story --
especially that of revolution -- is an unexplained variable, the
reaction of the working class to all of this. Marx never developed
"laws of motion" of the development of working-class consciousness
and organization. (In the MANIFESTO, he and Engels assumed the
working class to be developing in a revolutionary direction; in
CAPITAL, it is assumed to be largely passive or reactive, with the
value of labor-power effectively given exogenously. For more see
Mike Lebowitz's best-selling book, BEYOND CAPITAL.)

>>However, the most interesting question, I would imagine, is
whether industrial capital gives us a certain kind of machinery,
a certain form of technology. ... <<

>From the point of view of the dependent world, technological
determinism makes a lot of sense since the technology usually
comes from the OECD, and is so largely exogenous. At least that's
how I read Baran & Hobsbawm's old exposition of historical
materialism.

in pen-l solidarity,

Jim Devine   jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ.
7900 Loyola Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90045-8410 USA
310/338-2948 (daytime, during workweek); FAX: 310/338-1950
"Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way
and let people talk.) -- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.