If so, certain conclusions as to what that conception is, would seem inexorably to follow. Their most lucid and influential recent elaboration can be found in G.A. Cohen's book Karl Marx's Theory of History: a defence (1978). Cohen describes his Marxism as ‘an oldfashioned historical materialism ... 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' (ibid.: x). The 1859 Preface, which Cohen reproduces at length as the frontispiece to his book, is the ‘most pregnant statement' of this version of historical materialism - one which would not have been unfamiliar to Plekhanov or Kautsky. Though occasionally unorthodox in his treatment of some aspects of Marx's concepts, Cohen undoubtedly does articulate the essentials of the traditional conception'. He does so, moreover, with a clarity and rigour not always associated with that tradition, which is why I take his formulations as exemplary here. Cohen interprets the claims of the 1859 Preface as follows.
The text presents, to begin with, a general theory of history. Fundamental to this theory, the bedrock, as it were, on which the ‘economic foundation' of society is built, are material productive forces. By these, Cohen understands the things people use in order to produce. Productive forces consist of two sorts of things: means of production - raw materials, instruments of production, auxiliary materials, premises, spaces, (some) scientific knowledge; and labour power – human beings’ physical and mental capacity to work, together with their accumulated skills. Cohen postulates, and attributes to Marx, an inherent tendency for these forces to develop throughout history (the development thesis'), and argues that in Marx's theory productive forces have explanatory primacy in that it is their level of development which explains the production relations of a society and from time to time obliges them to change (the ‘primacy thesis'). Development of productive forces is thus, for Cohen, the fundamental dynamic or motor of history, and Marx's theory of history is ultimately a technological one (ibid.: 29). Importantly, Cohen insists that productive forces are material, as distinct from social entities. He sees this material/social distinction as a systematic and fundamental one in Marx's work, whose existence must be acknowledged if the primacy thesis is to be rendered coherent.
Production relations, for Cohen, are relations of ownership between people and productive forces, thus defined. By ownership Cohen does not mean a legal relationship. This would create problems of circularity, since the base', comprising production relations, would then apparently presuppose its superstructure', in which legal relations are held to belong. Ownership, as Cohen uses the term, is a relationship of effective control: an ability really to command the force owned. This power may or may not be superstructurally expressed in the form of legal relations. The totality of production relations, thus construed, makes up the ‘economic structure of society', its ‘base' or infrastructure' in standard Marxist parlance. This is society's foundation', that which in Capital's words provides the innermost secret, the hidden basis of the entire social structure' (1865a: 791). In accord with the primacy thesis, bases correspond' to requisite levels of development of material productive forces.
In most forms of society production relations will be class relations, and class, conversely, is for Cohen entirely defined as a property relation. A person's class is established by nothing but his objective place in the network of ownership relations . .. His consciousness, culture, and politics do not enter the definition of his class position' (1978: 73). Cohen argues that these exclusions are necessary to protect the substantive character of Marx's claim that the latter are largely determined by the former. This position receives some support from (amongst others) Perry Anderson in his critique (1980) of E.P. Thompson, the most prominent recent advocate of a cultural' rather than a structural' (the terms are inadequate) concept of class.
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PROLOGUE: MARX'S 'GUIDING THREAD
PROLOGUE: MARX'S 'GUIDING THREAD'
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