{"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":"56 / 57","pdf_page":34,"physical_index":34,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"2016f4bebf725c66c0b1ba06a02ef9c78f7a4f98a96f9dd05e72df8c4f69d394"},"chapter":"The Violence of Abstraction","content":"What my quote from Edward Thompson suggested, on empirical grounds, was that precisely as we move from the general concept of the class property’ to the concepts of its members – as soon as, in other words, we try to specify empirically those historical forms of property which are Marx's particular concern – we cannot any longer always exclude superstructural' terms. Like the yellowness of the lemon, they might be essential, and hence defining features of the property relations empirically at issue. At first sight, this appeared simply as an ill-bred empiricist' counter to Cohen's or Balibar's attempts rigorously to demarcate economic and legal at the level of a general theory. But it is in fact testimony to a lapse in their own logic. Even had Thompson not been burying his head in the archives, we would have had no licence to exclude law – or anything else – a priori from counting, should the evidence warrant it, as internal to a given property form.\n\nFor recognition of the internality of 'superstructural' relations to a given empirical form of property in no way conflicts with adherence to a rechtsfrei definition of the concept of property in general. No general concept of property can or ever could be exhaustive of the empirical characteristics which define property's particular forms. It is impossible, in logic, to infer the concepts of members of a class, their differentia specifica, from the concept of the class itself. But for exactly the same reason, rechtsvoll specifications of these forms cannot be ruled out by virtue of the general rechtsfrei definition alone either. Cohen can only evade this conclusion by implicitly reifying his general concept of property - taking it as immediately specifying an empirical particular. He treats rechtsfrei property as if it were an entity in itself, a substance really distinct from the legal and other forms in which property empirically exists, rather than – like fruit' - a mere class concept, specifying some characteristics (or family resemblances) real empirical forms of property have. A predicate, to use Marx's own vocabulary, is thus surreptitiously transformed into an independent subject.\n\nIf we refuse the reification, however, and properly distinguish the general concept of property – however defined – from the concepts of its particular forms, Acton's contention may still make eminent sense, when applied to the latter. Cohen's refutation of Acton rests on his tacit, and wholly illicit, conflation of these distinct levels of conceptualization: transhistorical and historical, to employ my earlier terminology. But one cannot argue thus from the general to the particular. Certainly we may, if we choose, define property in general in rechtsfrei terms. There are some obvious advantages to doing so. But in any given empirical instance the economic structure of society' may still turn out to be neither conceivable, nor observable, ‘apart from the legal, moral and political relationships of men'. The burden of this chapter is to show that Marx never for a moment thought otherwise, and his concepts of production relations and economic structure must be comprehended accordingly.\n\nSimilar arguments, we might note, apply to another of Cohen's attempted restrictions on the category of production relations, his exclusion from Marx's economic structure' of so-called work relations' - relations of production which Cohen terms material’ as distinct from social’ relations between producers. 'Work relations' include the forms of co-operation in the labour process, and division of labour in the workshop',6 discussed (also) as productive forces in the last chapter. By a specifically social relation between producers, Cohen means one which entails an ascription to persons - specified or unspecified – of rights or powers vis-à-vis other men' (1978: 94). This is another way of delineating his ownership relations. Not all relations between people in production are of this kind, and only those which are, in his view, enter Marx's economic structure’.\n\nThe foundation of this distinction between social and material relations of production is Cohen's perfectly correct observation that Marx himself systematically distinguishes between material and social properties of the phenomena he analyses. We saw this, and its relevance to Marx's theory of fetishism, in the last chapter. But Cohen commits a similar reification here as he does with property. For the point is that in Marx, the relevant distinction lies between material and social attributes - properties, qualities, characteristics, features - of productive phenomena, not between different kinds of phenomena in production as such. These too are in other words class concepts. Use as raw materials or instruments in the labour process, for instance, is a material characteristic which defines the class means of production, while embodying value and commanding surplusvalue are social characteristics which define the class capital. But the empirical form, constant capital, exists only as a phenomenon which conjoins both these sets of attributes. Accordingly, as argued above for class or attribute concepts generally, no purely material’ description (or, come to that, no purely social description) can be a complete empirical account of any real entity in this realm of analysis. We have not sufficiently described constant capital when we enumerate its material characteristics qua means of production. This is to refer only ‘to the simple matter of capital, without regard to the formal character without which it is not capital' (1858a: 267). Remember the lemon again. Conversely, means of production only ever exist in some social form or another, just as there is no fruit that is not an apple, a pear, and so on.\n\n56\n\nRELATIONS OF PRODUCTION\n\nRELATIONS OF PRODUCTION\n\n57","previous_page":33,"next_page":35}