{"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":"36 / 37","pdf_page":24,"physical_index":24,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"dfe9a4fe664cc48a7700eb81dd17ab094dab46d63e95c6523deb78773e8c42ed"},"chapter":"The Violence of Abstraction","content":"Marx social relations could indeed be productive forces. But we do not need to go so far for authorization of this heresy. The texts on which I have been drawing- Capital and ‘Results of the immediate process of production' – themselves say as much. 上\n\nAlthough, for Marx, formal subsumption of labour to capital entails no technological change in the labour process, it does lead to a considerable enhancement in the productive power of human labour. He repeatedly, even tediously, stresses this. For the Grundrisse, the greater the extent to which production still rests on mere manual labour . . . the more does the increase of the productive force consist in [producers'] collaboration on a mass scale' (1858a: 529). In the ‘sixth chapter', Marx lists several ways in which this happens.\n\nFormal subsumption ‘increases the continuity and intensity of labour; it is more favourable to the development of versatility among the workers, and hence to increasing diversity in modes of working and ways of earning a living' (1866: 1026-7). In contrast to slave or servile labour, 'this labour becomes more productive ... The consciousness (or better, the idea) of free self-determination, of liberty, makes a much better worker of the one than of the other, as does the related feeling (sense) of responsibility' (ibid.: 1031, Marx's parentheses). ‘Social forms of consciousness' - ‘superstructural' phenomena par excellence for most Marxists - would seem here to be part of capitalism's productive forces, and unproblematically so for Marx. A similar case could be made for Max Weber's ‘Protestant ethic', an orientation to conduct' of whose benefits to capitalist enterprise neither Marx himself, nor Marxist historians like Hill or Thompson, have been entirely unaware.14 This position is perfectly coherent within the multi-referential and non-exclusive interpretation of Marx's general concepts argued earlier, but not otherwise. The same goes for the passage on state activity as ‘itself an economic power' quoted above. Elsewhere Marx similarly describes French state formation as ‘a powerful coefficient of social production' (1871: 75). My own previous work (Corrigan and Sayer, 1985) suggests he was not exaggerating.\n\nPerhaps most importantly of all, for Marx, formal subsumption permits – even on the basis of the old, traditional mode of labour’ - large increases in the scale of production, and this enlargement of scale constitutes the real foundation on which the specifically capitalist mode of production can arise’ (1866: 1022). Once again Capital generalizes the point:\n\nthe sum total of the mechanical forces exerted by isolated workmen differs from the social force that is developed, when many hands take part simultaneously in one and the same undivided operation ... In such cases the effect of the combined labour could not be produced at all by isolated individual labour, or it could only be produced by a great expenditure of time, or on a very dwarfed scale. Not only have we here an increase in the productive power of the individual, by means of co-operation, but the creation of a new power, namely, the collective power of masses. (1867a: 326)\n\nMarx goes on to remark that ‘mere social contact begets in most industries an emulation and a stimulation of the animal spirits that heighten the efficiency of each individual workman'. His general conclusion – something of a syntactic battering-ram, but worth giving in full – is this:\n\nWhether the combined working-day, in a given case, acquires this increased productive power, because it heightens the mechanical force of labour, or extends its sphere of action over a greater space, or contracts the field of production relatively to the scale of production, or at the critical moment sets large masses of labour to work, or excites emulation between individuals and raises their animal spirits, or impresses on the similar operations carried on by a number of men the stamp of continuity and many-sidedness, or performs simultaneously different operations, or economises the means of production by use in common, or lends to individual labour the character of average social labour – whichever of these be the cause of the increase, the special productive power of the combined working day is, under all circumstances, the social productive power of labour, or the productive power of social labour. This power is due to co-operation itself. When the labourer cooperates systematically with others, he strips off the fetters of his individuality, and develops the capabilities of his species. (ibid.: 329, emphasis added)\n\nOnly the most determined casuist, I would suggest, could deny that for Capital, as much as for The German Ideology, people's mode of co-operation is itself a “productive force\", - and a pretty powerful one at that. The forces/relations distinction as conventionally drawn must accordingly collapse. These are not mutually exclusive concepts, denoting substantially distinct entities.\n\nCohen himself does discuss these analyses, though not at any great length. He deals with the apparent contradiction between Marx's assertion here of the historical and logical precedence of formal over real subordination, and the primacy thesis', via his interpretation of\n\n36\n\nPRODUCTIVE FORCES\n\nPRODUCTIVE FORCES\n\n37","previous_page":23,"next_page":25}