{"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":"8 / 9","pdf_page":10,"physical_index":10,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"cb72a5e1963b861bd4000fa9d1ae89651fed2f365fc22a8a22eb132bf2d42f4d"},"chapter":"The Violence of Abstraction","content":"Engels cautions, however, 'Please do not weigh each word in the above too carefully . .. I have not the time to work out what I am writing to you so exactly as I should be obliged to for publication’ (ibid.: 104). This letter is also of interest in the present context for including within the economic conditions which we regard as the determining basis of the history of society' both geographical circumstances and race, which Engels describes as itself an economic factor' (ibid.: 101). Unlike Cohen, he also includes there the entire technique of production and transport' (ibid.: 100).\n\nWhatever the difficulties with, or the undoubted possible inconsistencies between, these various formulations, the broad outline of what Engels is wanting to say in these letters - his ‘testament', as some have described it - is crystal clear. And it seems to me, at any rate, to contradict the spirit of Cohen's 'traditional historical materialism'. Not the least interesting feature of these letters, sharply contrasting with Cohen's analytic nicety, is the capaciousness of Engels's notions of ‘economic sphere’ and ‘superstructure'. The primum agens, for instance, is variously described as economic situation, movement, circumstances, conditions, development and necessity, while the superstructure (Engels's ‘ideological spheres') extends well beyond Cohen's institutions of state and law.\n\nIt may of course be argued that notwithstanding this terminological latitude - a lapse of rigour, perhaps, understandable in private correspondence - Engels's formulations can be reconciled philosophically with Cohen's version of Marx. Cohen might argue that Engels's remarks (in so far, no doubt, as they are meaningful at all) bear at best on how the primacy of the economic is conceived as operating, without weakening either the claim of primacy or its functional interpretation one iota. Additionally, Cohen's own functional account of primacy itself entails the feedback of relations on forces and superstructures on bases, since the character of the former term is in each case explained by its functionality for the latter. 'Construing [Marx's] explanations as functional makes for compatibility between the causal power of the explained phenomena and their secondary status in the order of explanation' (Cohen, 1978: 278). Interestingly, however, apart from one passing reference to Engels's unexplained \"determination in the last resort\"’(ibid.: 280) Cohen entirely ignores these letters.\n\nI think the omission unfortunate. Though Marx and Engels were not identical twins (Carver, 1986), Engels's testimony ought surely to count for something in the interpretation of the central tenets of Marx's thought. Certainly, nothing Engels says in these late letters in any way denies the centrality to historical materialism of the production and reproduction of real life'. Nor will anything said in this book. But Engels's caveats should affect how we understand that claim; and he is adamant that this should not be done in what he sees as a simplistic, reductionist manner. Claims for primacy (whether of forces or relations) have at the least to be nuanced. To do otherwise, for Engels, is to travesty his and Marx's life work. That Engels returned to the issue on so many occasions is perhaps indicative of how comprehensive, and damaging, he considered the travesty to be.\n\nIII\n\nWith some exceptions, subsequent Marxists have for the most part accepted the ultimate economic determination/relative superstructural autonomy framework established by Engels, and happily pursued empirical work within this framework without troubling over much about its theoretical credentials. It is, after all, an undogmatic, sensibly flexible basis for a materialist sociology, which is sufficiently open to allow room for the real complexity of history - a not unreasonable ‘guiding thread'. But from the 1960s onwards there have been various attempts to develop what Althusser once somewhat patronizingly called Engels's genial theoretical intuitions'(1969: 128) in conceptually more rigorous' ways. Althusser himself has advanced an elaborate model of ‘structural causality', in which society is conceived as being made up of a ‘structure in dominance’ comprising several distinct levels’ or instances’ – economy, polity, ideology and so forth - any one of which may play the dominant role' in a given ‘conjuncture', but whose overall interrelation is governed by economic factors. Poulantzas in his earlier writings offered a similar schema. Godelier, by contrast, hypothesizes a functional hierarchy in which relations of production dominate social structures under all conditions, but which social relations actually constitute production relations in a given context may vary enormously. Frequently, these will not be manifestly ‘economic' relations at all. He counts kinship relations as relations of production in many primitive societies, as does Meillassoux age and gender relations. Rodney Hilton has recently argued a similar case for juridical relations in feudal Europe. Hindess and Hirst, at one stage in their odyssey of critique and autocritique, tried to conceptualize superstructures as essential, but non-economic conditions of existence of economic bases. I could continue.³\n\n8\n\nPROLOGUE: MARX'S 'GUIDING THREAD\n\nPROLOGUE: MARX'S 'GUIDING THREAD'\n\n9","previous_page":9,"next_page":11}