[PEN-L:3548] Interesting comments on G.A. Cohen from another list

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

George may want to take a look at Richard W. Miller's 1984 book,
_Analyzing Marx_  for a critique of Cohen's interpretation of historical
materialism.  Miller understands Cohen as interpreting Marx as
being both an economic determinist and a technological determinism.
Miller argues that such an interpretation of Marx is erroneous especially
when we take into account Marx's practice as a historian and not
just confine ourselves to Marx's statements in his Preface to his
_A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy_.

As Miller notes there has long existed a at least two schools of
thought within Marxism concerning the relative roles of class
struggle and the dialectic between the forces of production and
the relations of production.  Technological determinists from
Plekhanov to Cohen have tended to privilege the latter over the
former in their interpretations of Marx's theory of history.  On
the other hand there have always been dissenters from this
technological determinism who placed their emphasis on class
struggle as the main force determining the direction of history.
Just as Miller criticizes the technological determinists, so he
also criticizes at least some of the dissenters on the grounds that
they fail to explain Marx's concern with the development of the
forces of production as determining the direction of social change.

Miller offers as an alternative to the "technological interpretation"
(to use Cohen's term) of historical materialism, what he calls "the
mode of production interpretation."  In this view, internal economic
change is said to arise on the basis of the mode of production's
self-transforming tendencies.  These tendencies are said to be rooted
in its relations of production, the forms of cooperation and the
technology through which production is carried out.  Processes
that initially sustain its relations of production will eventually over
time lead to its abolition.  Change need not come because of the
existence of barriers to material production.  Changes in the forms
of cooperation or in technology may enhance the power of initially
subordinate groups while motivating them to resist  the old
relations of production because they have come to inhibit further
development of that productive power.  However, it is also possible
for change to come from factors that are wholly internal to the
relations of production.  The patterns of control in the existing
mode of production may make it inevitable that certain initially
subordinate groups will acquire the power and the motivation to
overthrow the existing relations of production.

Like George, Miller criticizes the technological determinist reading
of Marx on the grounds that it does not give sufficient scope to class
struggle as an independent variable in the making of history.
Cohen, for instance clearly treats class struggle as a dependent
variable that is subordinate to the forces-relations dialectic.  He
fails to perceive that their might be contradictions that are internal
to the relations of production which will manifest themselves in the
form of class struggle.

Miller, also attempts to relate the competing understandings of
Marx's materialist conception of history to competing philosophies
of science.  Miller sees the technological interpretation as being
closely tied to a positivist philosophy of science while he links his own
"mode of production interpretation" with the anti-positivist
philosophies of T.S. Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend.

		Jim Farmelant


Louis Proyect

(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)