3.2 Marxist perspectives: modes of production and dependency
3.2.1 Historical materialism: the basics
Historical materialism is synonymous with the Marxist theory of the historical development of societies, and consists in the application of the dialectical materialist philosophical conception to the study of human history. Its materialist character is best summed up in the postulate that “it is not the consciousness of men that determines the social existence of material conditions, but their social existence that determines their consciousness”
(Marx 1977[1859]:11). This runs counter to the Hegelian conception of history, and indeed to any conception that presupposes that the course of history is determined by the imposition of human will to circumstances. At a high level of abstraction, the material conditions referred to above consist most fundamentally of two inter-related aspects:
productive forces (means of production and the technical relations of production) and social-productive relations (the relations that people enter into in the course of modifying nature and producing use-values, i.e. “anything necessary, useful or pleasant”: Marx 1977[1859]:20). This articulated combination of productive forces and social-productive relations, again at the abstract level, is called a mode of production: slavery, feudalism and
60 capitalism are examples of modes of production that have actually existed throughout history, for each is or was characterised by a certain level of development of productive forces, simultaneously rendered possible and constrained by the social relations of production that also characterise(d) each of them (Hindess and Hirst 1975).
The historical materialist conception additionally posits that each mode of production has its own ‘laws of motion’, which determine the pace of development of the productive forces. The “dialectical” component of this theoretical conception corresponds to the thesis that the engine of history consists of the tensions and contradictions extant within each mode of production (between the classes extant within them, and between the level of development of the productive forces and the ultimately constraining role of the social-productive configurations). On a time-scale of centuries, these tensions and contradictions ultimately build up to such an extent that it becomes impossible to preserve the existing mode of production, and a new one arises in its place with a new class structure and new laws of motion. This is what accounts for the replacement of slavery with feudalism, and of the latter with capitalism.
The capitalist mode of production is characterised by the centrality of the capital relation: the wage employment of ‘free’ labourers by the owners of the means of production with a view to the accumulation of capital via exploitation, i.e. the extraction of surplus-value (the difference between the value of what workers produce and what they earn). Subjection of the workers to an exploitative relation is made possible by their previous dispossession of the means of production – they are forced to sell their labour- power in order to survive. At the same time, capitalists themselves are subject to a key compulsion: by virtue of the fact that capitalism is characterised by the generalised production of commodities, competition from other capitalists forces each capitalist to constantly mobilise the previously extracted surplus-value as capital (i.e. to plough it back into the purchase and employment of additional labour-power and additional means of production, and to improve and upgrade production methods in order to achieve greater efficiency). Generally speaking (in the absence of monopoly and other modifications to this basic schema), those capitalists that do not act thus are unable to sell and, consequently, thrown out of the market (Marx 1982[1867]).
The capital relation thus contains within itself an in-built tendency for the constant upgrading and expansion of production: “the bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production” (Marx and Engels 1969[1848]:8). This is
61 historically unprecedented, for previous modes of production were essentially static in that they were not characterised by any similar mechanism whereby production might be similarly subject to such incessant compulsions for the development of the productive forces. Quite the contrary: their ‘laws of motion’ largely ensured the preservation of the status quo, which is why they translated into only very slow and gradual change in the material conditions of life, and maintained themselves largely unchanged over centuries or millennia, whereas the period following the emergence and expansion of capitalism has been characterised by historically-unprecedented economic growth.
Faced with such a simple and powerful explanation for the mechanism that drives capital accumulation and economic growth, it is either comic or tragic (or both) to read Snowdon and Vane (2005:597), in their otherwise brilliant treatment of modern macroeconomics, pose the question “Why have some countries grown rich while other remain poor? It is hard to think of a more fundamental question for economists to answer”, only to follow it with a lengthy enumeration of models and theories that take capitalism to be universal and to have been with us from the early days of humankind, while completely ignoring the Marxist account. Only ignorance or ideological reluctance can account for such disregard for what is arguably the most powerful explanation of modern economic growth to credibly fit the historical evidence.
Of course, this is not say that the historical origins of capitalism – and particularly the fact that it originated and developed earlier in some regions rather than others – need not be accounted for. Quite the contrary, and in fact there has been much debate about these issues. I would argue that one of the most powerful explanations for the head start of Western Eurasia in the pre-capitalist period is that put forth by Jared Diamond (1997), which is based on geographical conditions that favoured the adoption and subsequent development of food production, animal husbandry, writing and other technologies.
However, the fact that capitalism emerged in England out of all the regions with similarly advanced levels of technological development at the dawn of capitalism (including much of the remainder of Western Eurasia, or China) has to do with factors and features that are absent from Diamond’s account. These, too, have been the object of much discussion, epitomised in the debates between Maurice Dobb (1946) and Paul Sweezy (1976) and in the debates around the contributions of Robert Brenner (1976, 1982). Competing explanations have revolved around the external imposition of capitalism upon feudalism through trade (Sweezy), or, alternatively, capitalism arising out of feudalism by virtue of contradictions inherent to feudalism itself, resolved according to the power of the various
62 classes in contention (Dobb, Brenner). Crucially, whatever the case, it is clear that capitalism originally arose in England as a rural and agrarian phenomenon in the middle of the second millennium AD, and that it was only the creation of a proletariat out of the dispossessed peasantry and the accumulation of agrarian capital which obtained as a result of agrarian capitalist relations that rendered possible industrialisation a few centuries later (Wood 2002).
Once it had emerged, capitalism began to spread, once again by virtue of its own internal ‘laws of motion’. The in-built compulsion upon capitalists to accumulate ceaselessly requires that they seek to subject, by economic or political means, ever-increasing portions of the geographical and social worlds to the imperative of accumulation: “Capitalism is the first mode of economy (…) which tends to engulf the entire globe and to stamp out all other economies, tolerating no rival at its side. Yet at the same time it is also the first mode of economy which is unable to exist by itself, which needs other economic systems as a medium and soil” (Luxemburg 1913:447). The geographical widening and social deepening of capitalist social-productive relations has been a long and protracted process, however:
even after a few centuries of capitalism being in existence, only about 47% of the world’s employed population (and about 27% of the total working-age population) are currently estimated to be directly subject to capitalist social-productive relations (wage or salaried employment) (ILO 2010:54). I am well aware of the significant problems that beset attempts at quantification of this key aspect, but the figure nevertheless provides a valuable indication. And of course it is not a coincidence that there is a very close correspondence between the share of the wage and salaried in the employed population and the level of development of the productive forces – hence the level of ‘development’ as broad signifier (Figure 3.1).
63 Figure 3.1 Percentage of wage and salaried workers among those employed worldwide, latest
available year11
The above is not the same as saying that social formations that are more
‘backward’ (in the sense that they objectively find themselves at an earlier stage of a transition that is postulated to be bound to occur universally) are somehow immune or isolated with regard to capitalism. Nor that the segments of those formations that are predominantly organised along non-capitalist logics do not interact with capitalism. Quite the contrary: they maintain meaningful linkages – through trade, the provision of means of subsistence, the provision of labour-power as they disintegrate or on a seasonal basis, etc.
However, it is the fact that their predominant form of social-productive organisation has taken longer to become capitalist (hence to adopt ‘laws of motion’ conducive to expanded accumulation) that is to account for their lesser degree of ‘development’. The key determinants of the level of development of the productive forces are therefore features that are internal to the social formations and consist of their social-productive configurations.
Of course, the social-productive configurations of less developed social formations do not develop in isolation from what is taking place elsewhere. Moreover, these formations may be, and indeed are, subject to ‘secondary’ surplus extraction on the part of more advanced social formations. Even though the latter is arguably only a compounding factor, not the determining one, it is on this secondary surplus extraction that the neo- Marxist theories addressed in the next section have largely focused on.
11 Source: ILO (2010:56).