Since, he says, feudal societies are defined by their ‘non-economic mechanisms of surplus-extraction, to specify them in rechtsfrei terms abstracting from superstructures', leaves us with no basis for differentiating between them. This has a paradoxical historiographic consequence. 'If, in effect, the feudal mode of production can be defined independently of the variant juridical and political superstructures which accompany it, such that its presence can be registered throughout the globe wherever primitive and tribal social formations were superseded, the problem arises: how is the unique dynamism of the European theatre of international feudalism to be explained?' (ibid.: 402). A 'colour-blind materialism' (ibid.) eventuates in historical idealism, for the differentiating factors can then, logically, only be sought outside the sphere of ‘material life'.
Cohen does discuss Marx's analyses of feudalism; he could hardly fail to, given their evident awkwardness for traditional historical materialism'. What he says is to my mind implicitly subversive of his overall conception of production relations. He cannot but recognize that for Marx the production relations of slavery or serfdom include the authority of the superior over the producer's labour-power, and he exploits it by exercising that authority'(1978: 83). Violence and ideology are thus admitted to be internal to feudal exploitation, or constitutive of the specifically feudal property form. On the face of it, this must collapse the base/superstructure distinction as Cohen conceives it, to yield a broader conception of economic structure. Cohen tries to evade the difficulty – in so far as he recognizes it at all – by arguing that the serf is not in fact the owner, but merely the possessor, of his plot, so that the rights he enjoys over it are tied to the performance of his duties' (ibid.: 84). To the extent that we can speak of ownership' without anachronism in this context, this is undoubtedly true, but it hardly helps Cohen. He remains hoist by his own petard. For Marx's point, well taken by Anderson, is that economically’ the serf precisely is in a position to produce his own subsistence, and any rechtsfrei definition of ownership would have to acknowledge this fact. The only thing which curtails his effective control' of either means of production or his labour-power is the eminently rechtsvoll relationship of Herrschaft. It is only through the latter – Marx's non-economic' coercion – that we can in fact meaningfully characterize the lord's ‘ownership', as distinct from the peasant's material possession, at all. As with Marx's three forms of communal property, the political and legal superstructure’ turns out once more to be internal to the ‘economic structure of society', a defining element of property' in the feudal context.
In the early sections of this chapter I sought to establish, on both empirical and theoretical grounds, that we had no good reason for excluding any kind of social relation from being a possible relation of production, or for arbitrarily assigning some social relations to the 'base’ and others to the superstructure' of society, a priori. These questions could only be resolved for particular historical forms of society, on empirical criteria. I have now shown that in analysing concrete historical formations Marx himself was no respecter of neat base/superstructure models. Indeed, I have suggested that the apparent separability of the economic sphere' from Acton's legal, political and moral relationships of men’ is a phenomenon of capitalism alone, and orthodox conceptions of production relations are therefore methodologically akin, in their immediate generalization of capitalist appearances, to the fetishized views of productive forces discussed in chapter 2 – a theme I shall take further below.
The clear implication of this argument is that, for Marx, production relations are, very simply, any and all social relations which are demonstrably entailed in a given mode of production, or way in which [people] produce their means of subsistence' (1846a: 31). To put it the other way around, the production relations of a given mode are all those relations between people, in whose absence they would not be producing in that particular way. Such production relations and the ‘economic structure' they define, may include Cohen's material relations', superstructural’ relations, or relations he deems beyond the purview of historical materialism entirely, like familial forms. Examples of all of these being treated as internal to an economic structure' can be found in Marx's work. What is, or is not, a production relation in any given instance can only be determined a posteriori, on the facts of the case. We have no good theoretical grounds for defining the category more restrictively, and Marx's own practice suggests he did not intend that we should. Since property is for him merely another appellation for production relations, the same holds for what comprises ownership'.
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RELATIONS OF PRODUCTION
RELATIONS OF PRODUCTION
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