Re: Question to Various comments in In Digest 77

["Justin Schwartz" <jkschw@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> CB: Doesn't _The Manifesto of the Communist Party_ make it pretty clear
> that Marx's theory of history is rooted in the relations of production
> aspect of the forces of production, the division of labor, and the class
> struggle ?  History is a history of class struggles, not technological
> innovations. Since producers are part of the forces of production , it is
> their development that is in the forces of production that makes history,
> and historical revolutions.

That's one strand in Marx. The other one is represented most famously by the
1859 Preface to the CoPE, where Marx sets out the "forces" thesis, which he
also stated as early as 1847 in The Poverty of Philosophy ("the hand nmill
gives you the feudal lord, the steam mill the industrial capitalist"). Cohen
may overdo the claim that Marx is _consistently_ committed to the forces
thesis, but his book establioshes with scholarly rigor that Marx was often
committed to it. You have to read the book carefully, it's as important a
piece of Marxist analysis as has been published in the last 50 years.
Personally I think that Marx never thought through the tensions between what
have come to be called the class struggle/relations of production account,
articulated by Fisk, Miller, and Brenner, and the forces of production
account, articulated by Cohen and Wright Levine and Sober (among others).
jks

jks




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