Yes. We’re still in the Preface to the first edition. How irritating, I know it. It gets worse. To be honest, I am dreading this post because it centers upon a passage that can lend itself to a number of arguments, but it especially seems to play into the hands of those who criticize Marx for ‘economic determinism.
Capital was based, in part, upon a thorough study of capitalism and its development in England. At the time it was the most developed capitalist environment, and therefore, as far as Marx was concerned, the closest thing to a ‘pure model’ available. Of course, Capital was not intended to apply merely to conditions in England, but to capitalism et al - even countries where capitalism was both emerging and underdeveloped (like the Germany of 1867). To his German readers Marx says, ‘the tale is told of you’.
“Intrinsically, it is not a question of the higher or lower degree of development of the social antagonisms that spring from the natural laws of capitalist production. It is a question of these laws themselves, of these tendencies winning their way through and working themselves out with iron necessity. The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future” (90-91).
Woah Nellie! Sounds mighty determinist to me. ’Natural laws’, ‘iron necessity’, ‘image of its own future’. Of the thousands of pages of Capital I have read, this passage tends to remain most present in my mind. It troubles me, precisely because elements of it seem to contradict the emmancipatory core in Marx’s work.
Let’s be honest with ourselves, and with Marx:
Q. If we accept that capitalism is a social construction, how does that jive with ‘laws of iron necessity’? Isn’t that precisely economic determinism?
A. Capitalism is a social construction. However from Marx’s viewpoint it is a necessary and inevitable step on the road to a higher stage of development. It is inevitable and necessary because, even though all of us would like to believe we can create something through the power of raw imagination, the fact is a society is limited by the historical and material conditions it finds at its disposal.
For example, even though the USSR or Communist China had a vision of scoialism, neither were/have been able to realize that vision by virture of the fact both still had to venture through a phase of industrialization which, at the time, required (state) capitalistic means.
“Even when a society has begun to track down the natural laws of its movement -and it is the ultimate aim of this work to reveal the economic law of motion of modern society- it can neiter leap over the natural phases of its development nor remove them by decree. But it can shorten and lessent the birth-pangs” (92).
This brings us to a far more interesting critique of Marx’s economics. Marx’s model of economic development is essentially ‘Rostowian’ (though this is a little anachronistic on that Rostow came later). Stagist is a better, more generic term. Marx conceived of the development of a society’s productive powers and evolved from one stage to the next, from primitive hunter/gatherer, to primitive agricultrual, to ancient plantations, to feudal forms, and from feudal forms to agricultrual capitalism and then, finally, to industrial capitalism. It is industrial capitalism which, according to Marx, has the distinctive capacity of laying the material framework for the transition to socialism.
One can, of course, argue that such models of development are essentially Euro-centric and assume a particular path or type of development as both desirable, and to a certain extent, inevitable.
“…we [Germany] suffer not only from the development of capitalist production, but also from the incompleteness of that development. Alongside modern evils, we are oppressed by a whole series of inherited evils, arising from the passive survival of archaic and outmoded modes of production, with their accompanying train of anachronistic social and political relations” (91).
Marx and Engels, unlike the Communists of the Second International (Lenin, Trotsky, Luxembourg, Kautsky [before WW1]) and rather unlike most communists of today, very much supported the globalizing tendency of capitalism. There is a very famous quote of Marx, which laziness prevents me from grabbing just this moment, which essentially states the British presence in India was serving to sweep away old ‘Asiatic’ economic forms, and replacing them with a more productive capitalist model.
In other words, the faster and further capitalism develops, spreads, develops, the sooner socialism can be made.
Of course, and as was stated in an earlier post, international trade and imperialism (economic and militaristic) are not really analyzed in Marx. Consequently, the role advanced capitalistc countries can play in keeping other less developed countries in an underdeveloped state is not addressed. For a discussion of this the work of the ‘neo-marxists’ Immanuel Wallerstein (The Modern World System), Paul Baran (The Political Economy of Growth), or A.G. Frank (Capitalsim and Underdevlopment in Latin America: historical studies of chile and brazil) is good reference. Lenin (Imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism) and Rosa Luxembourg also have some interesting points. For a compelling defense of ‘orthodox’ Marxism re development and imperialism see Bill Warren’s Imperialism: the pioneer of capitalism. The work of economic historian, Karl Polyani is also worthwhile, as it (to an extent) addressed the aspect of cultural hubris in notions of ‘development.
All right. That’s quite a load for one day. Oh. And tomorrow I will post an essay I wrote for my social theory class addressing, specifically, Weber’s criticism of Marx’s economic determinism.
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