RE: Productive Forces

["Eric Nilsson" <enilsson@xxxxxxxxx>]

Carrol wrote:
> Are you assuming that Marx _did_ have a theory of (universal) history
> based on the development of the productive forces?

I am assuming that at one point Marx did have a theory of history in which
the productive forces played an "essential" role. Whether concepts from the
physics of his time contributed to this development (or formulation) was
pure speculation on my part, but I wonder if others (a "Phil Mirowski
critic" of Marxian economics ;>)  ) have wondered the same thing.

RE
> The idea of a "universal history" undercuts the fundamental marxists
> recognition of the _historical_ contingency of capitalism. It is a
> denial of history rather than a theory of history.

But didn't the old man believe that for forces of production and the social
relations of production drove broad historical development up until the
revolution? Afterwards humans could, he believed, drive historical
development; before this baser (so to speak) forces drove history.

A Marxian theory of historical development based on FoP and SRP does not
assume eternal capitalism but, instead, denies that capitalism is more than
a way-station to a better place.


Eric