G. A. Cohen - Karl Marxs Theory of History: A Defence

Karl Marxs

Theory of History

Karl Marxs

Theory of History

A DEFENCE

Expanded Edition

BY

G. A. Cohen

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY

Published in the United States by Princeton University Press,

41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

In the United Kingdom and elsewhere, by

Oxford University Press

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford 0x2 6DP

Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press

in the UK and in certain other countries

Copyright G. A. Cohen 1978, 2000

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

Database right Oxford University Press (maker)

First published 1978

Seventh printing, and first expanded edition,

with new introduction and chapters, 2001

All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 00=107323

ISBN 0-691-07068-7

eISBN 978-0-691-21300-2

www.pup.princeton.edu

For

MY FATHER,

and in memory of

MY MOTHER

FOR

WHAT THEY

ALL SAID

WAS...

It depends...

It all depends...

It all depends on WHERE YOU LIVE

and WHAT YOU HAVE TO BUILD WITH.

The Little Boy and His House, by Stephen Bone and Mary Adshead, London, J. M. Dent and Sons, Ltd., 1936.

IN THE social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real basis, on which rises a legal and political superstructure, and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, orwhat is but a legal expression for the same thingwith the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations, a distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophicin short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so can we not judge of such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained rather from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social productive forces and the relations of production. No social formation ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself. Therefore mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, it will always be found that the task itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation. In broad outlines Asiatic, ancient, feudal, and modern bourgeois modes of production can be designated as progressive epochs in the economic formation of society. The bourgeois relations of production are the last antagonistic form of the social process of productionantagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism, but of one arising from the social conditions of life of the individuals; at the same time the productive forces developing in the womb of bourgeois society create the material conditions for the solution of that antagonism. This social formation brings, therefore, the prehistory of human society to a close.

KARL MARX, 1859

1. This book defends historical materialism, by offering argument in its favour, but more by presenting the theory in what I hope is an attractive form.

The presentation respects two constraints: on the one hand, what Marx wrote, and, on the other, those standards of clarity and rigour which distinguish twentieth-century analytical philosophy. The aim is to construct a tenable theory of history which is in broad accord with what Marx said on the subject. While he would certainly have found some of what will follow unfamiliar, the hope is that he could have recognized it as a reasonably clear statement of what he thought.

That is not an arrogant hope. Marx was a restless and creative thinker, who developed many ideas in many directions. He did not have the time, or the will, or the academic peace, to straighten them all out. It is not arrogant to claim to offer a less untidy version of some of his major thoughts than he himself provided.

2. The reconstruction given here is less ambiguous than the theory in its original state. It is therefore easier to criticize, and I do not regret that. But there is one likely reaction which I wish to anticipate and deflect, namely that I have erected a general historico-philosophical theory, the supreme virtue of which consists in being supra-historical. than any theory will represent it as being. The quoted passages are warnings against a certain misuse of theory, but some Marxists cite them to disguise their own aversion to theory as such. They should be reminded that Marx and Lenin were not themselves against theory.

3. Louis Althusser has had a strong effect on current interest in historical materialism, and I am bound to say a word about my attitude to his work, which is hardly mentioned in this book.

Althussers Pour Marx persuaded me that the abidingly important Marx is to be found in Capital and the writings preparatory to it. That conviction helped me to write this book, and I am therefore grateful to him. But when I passed on to Lire Le Capitala set of essays, by Althusser and othersI was disappointed. I obtained little from the essays by Althusser, beyond a sense of how elegantlyand evasivelythe French language could be used. I liked other things better, especially the contribution of Balibar. But I did not think it profited from being cast in terms which showed Althussers influence.

Above all, I found much of Lire Le Capital critically vague. It is perhaps a matter for regret that logical positivism, with its insistence on precision of intellectual commitment, never caught on in Paris. Anglophone philosophy left logical positivism behind long ago, but it is lastingly the better for having engaged with it. The Althusserian vogue could have unfortunate consequences for Marxism in Britain, where ludicity is a precious heritage, and where it is not generally supposed that a theoretical statement, to be one, must be hard to comprehend.

4. My specific doctrinal differences with the Althusserians need not be described here. They are considerable.

For it is an old-fashioned historical materialism which I defend, a traditional conception, in which history is, fundamentally, the growth of human productive power, and forms of society rise and fall according as they enable or impede that growth. The focus is on the more basic concepts of the theory, those of forces and relations of production, and there will be unusually little discussion, as books on Marx and society go, of class conflict, ideology, and the state.