{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"df60fc71-5c84-4680-bd1a-40a5ea8ac5ed","title":"The Violence of Abstraction The Analytic Foundations of Historical Materialism","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"0631153187","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"df60fc71-5c84-4680-bd1a-40a5ea8ac5ed","id":"df60fc71-5c84-4680-bd1a-40a5ea8ac5ed","uuid":"df60fc71-5c84-4680-bd1a-40a5ea8ac5ed","title":"The Violence of Abstraction The Analytic Foundations of Historical Materialism","normalized_title":"theviolenceofabstractiontheanalyticfoundationsofhistoricalmaterialism","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"0631153187","isbns":["0631153187"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":93,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/df60fc71-5c84-4680-bd1a-40a5ea8ac5ed","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/The%20Violence%20of%20Abstraction%20The%20Analytic%20Foundations%20of%20Historical%20Materialism","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/df60fc71-5c84-4680-bd1a-40a5ea8ac5ed/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/df60fc71-5c84-4680-bd1a-40a5ea8ac5ed/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/df60fc71-5c84-4680-bd1a-40a5ea8ac5ed","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/df60fc71-5c84-4680-bd1a-40a5ea8ac5ed/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/df60fc71-5c84-4680-bd1a-40a5ea8ac5ed/search"},"page":{"printed_page":"28 / 29","pdf_page":20,"physical_index":20,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"723cf430cd17f09aa0008a851da1da8efa97327e269d679d94f5308b94743165"},"chapter":"The Violence of Abstraction","content":"Capital it remains the purposive character of human labour which stamps it as exclusively human' and ‘distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees'(1867a: 178). Under certain circumsances the productive powers of human labour may then come to appear simply as the intrinsic property of the material things in which these powers are objectified, independently of the social relations through which they alone acquire this property. But such an appearance is, for Marx, exactly that: a fetishistic illusion, and one he was much concerned to confute, as we shall see.\n\nI shall first try to substantiate my interpretation of productive forces from Marx's texts. Having done that, I shall show that Marx himself explicitly criticized what has become the standard conception – the reduction of productive forces to the things used in production - as exactly such a fetish, an ideological confusion rooted in the alienated forms of appearance of human capacities and social relations under capitalism.\n\nThe passage already quoted from The German Ideology, which describes production as a ‘double relationship', is an appropriate place to begin. For it reads, at more length, like this:\n\nthe production of life, both of one's own in labour and of fresh life in procreation ... appears as a double relationship: on the one hand as a natural, on the other as a social relationship. By social we understand the cooperation of several individuals, no matter under what conditions, in what manner and to what end. It follows from this that a certain mode of production, or industrial stage, is always combined with a certain mode of co-operation, or social stage, and this mode of co-operation is itself a productive force'. (1846a: 41, emphasis added)\n\nNote should be taken of the words I have italicized: it is interesting to see what Marx himself considered to follow for the concept of productive forces from his understanding of production as a double relationship'. Cohen does not discuss the closing sentence to this passage: oddly, since Marx here explicitly includes social relations among productive forces, something Cohen is at pains to deny. Were this the only occasion where Marx did so, it could perhaps be dismissed as an aberration, notwithstanding its evident connection with the logic of his overall argument. But it is not.\n\nMarx speaks, for instance, in the same text - when discussing communism – of ‘communal economy' as ‘in itself . . . a new productive force'. Though he makes clear that communism supposes an appropriately developed technology, it remains the communal economy', and not the technology in and of itself, that is the productive force at issue (1846a: 40n). He also counterposes industrial productive forces' and ‘productive forces . . . based on association and the community' (ibid.: 91). Lest such sentiments be thought a peculiarity of Marx's early works alone, the Grundrisse, also, describes the community itself ... as the first great force of production' (1858a: 495).\n\nIn the same work, Marx argues that the capability to consume' is 'the development of an individual potential, a force of production. The saving of labour-time [is] equal to an increase in free time, i.e., time for the full development of the individual, which in turn reacts back upon the productive power of labour as itself the greatest productive power' (1858a: 711). Discussing Robinson Crusoe, he conceives such castaways - bereft, presumably, of advanced technology - as persons ‘in whom the social forces are already dynamically present' none the less (1857: 74, 84–5). Money, as well as being ‘an intrinsic relation of production', is itself an instrument of production' and ‘a driving wheel for the development of all forces of production, material and mental' (1858a: 215, 216, 223; cf. 225). ‘Trade' is numbered as a productive force alongside industry and science (ibid.: 277). So is increase in population', because it ‘makes possible a greater combination and division of labour' (ibid.: 399). Most importantly, perhaps, it is the human being himself who is the main force of production' (ibid.: 422).12 Capital, similarly – though not explicitly using the term productive force' – describes state activity during the early development of capitalism as itself an economic power'(1867a: 751). Not all of these can plausibly be dismissed as merely metaphorical extensions of the concept.\n\nReturning to the early works, a draft article of 1845 brings out the thoroughly contextual, historical character of Marx's concept with macabre irony:\n\nUnder the present system, if a crooked spine, twisted limbs, à one-sided development and strengthening of certain muscles, etc., makes you more capable of working (more productive), then your crooked spine, your twisted limbs, your one-sided muscular movement are a productive force. If your intellectual vacuity is more productive than your abundant intellectual activity, then your intellectual vacuity is a productive force, etc. etc. If the monotony of an occupation makes you better suited for that occupation, then monotony is a productive force. (1845a: 285)\n\n28\n\nPRODUCTIVE FORCES\n\nPRODUCTIVE FORCES\n\n29","previous_page":19,"next_page":21}