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Making Sense of Economic Determinism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

John McMurtry
John McMurtry*
Affiliation:
University of Guelph
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Extract

Perhaps no doctrine in our intellectual history has received more attention—critical, puzzled and celebrative—than that of “economic determinism”. To adequately catalogue the literature on Karl Marx’s epoch-making theory would require, no doubt, a considerable tome.

I am not, therefore, going to attempt such a task here, illuminating though it might be as a study in the history and sociology of ideas. Rather I am going to outline an interpretation which will—if I am successful—be both faithful to Marx’s texts and immune to the standard philosophical criticisms which have been hitherto advanced against the theory (e.g., that it is intolerably imprecise, that it is indefensibly monocausal, that it is refuted by historical fact, that it is committed to logically improper prediction, that it is incompatible with ethical and personal responsibility, etc.).

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , December 1973 , pp. 249 - 261
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1973

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References

1 Marx never himself employed the specific formulation “economic determinism”; but he talks so persistently through his mature work of the “economic structure” “economic base” and “economic form” in relationship to other factors of the socio-historical process such that it “determines” (“bestimmt” or “bedingt”) them that this label seems clearly apposite.

2 Acton, H. B. (Illusion of the Epoch (London: 1955), p. 271)Google Scholar condemns Marx’s, entire theory as “a philosophical farrago;” Hook, Sidney (Marx and the Marxists (N.Y.: 1955), p. 35)Google Scholar advises “Rigorous examination is one thing Marx’s ideas will not stand;” and so forth.

3 This is a claim advanced by Western social scientists generally: for example, Maciver, R. M. and Page, Charles H. in Society: An Introductory Analysis (Toronto: 1965) p. 563.Google Scholar

4 This sort of criticism has achieved the universality of a conventional wisdom.

5 This is Popper’s, Karl central point in The Poverty of Historicism (London: 1961)Google Scholar, especially pp. v-vii.

6 Berlin, Isaiah articulates the most famous version of this argument in Historical Inevitability (London: 1957)Google Scholar passim.

7 Engel’s, argument, given in his well-known letter to Bloch, J. in 1890 (Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence (Moscow: 1953) pp. 498–500)Google Scholar, is essentially that the “economic conditions” are “ultimately decisive”, that they determine action “in the last resort.” This, obviously, tells us very little.

8 This theoretical framework is derived (with the exception of (A)) from Marx’s celebrated Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.

9 Marx, Capital, Volume I (Moscow: 1965) p. 609.Google Scholar

10 The German Ideology (Moscow: 1964) p. 38. It is interesting to consider the relationship between Forms of Social Consciousness (F) and Human Nature as historically modified (A, ii).

11 See, for example, Mills, C. Wright’ The Marxists (N.Y.: 1962) p. 103.Google Scholar

12 I am indebted on this point to Cohen’s, Gerald A. article, “On Some Criticisms of Historical Materialism” (Aristotelian Society Supplementary, Volume XLIV, 1970).Google Scholar

13 The Poverty of Philosophy, p. 116.

14 Illusion of the Epoch, p. 162.

16 This definition is implicit in Marx’s most thorough discussion of the Forces of Production in Capital, Volume I, p. 177 ff.

17 That means of subsistence are Forces of Production is made clear in Capital, Volume I, p. 183, as well as Theories of Surplus Value Part I (Moscow: 1954) p. 378. As well, that which “trains, develops, maintains or reproduces labour-power itself” (Ibid, p. 167) is considered a Force of Production: hence schools and hospitals, among other things, would seem to count as Forces of Production.

18 One co-ordinated system of Productive Forces permits, of course, quite different interpersonal contents. For example, such a system may requires labour-power x functioning with machine y for time ti … .tn: but whether such labour-power is provided by one man or men acting in turns, and whether it is self-directed or commanded are extratechnical matters determined by the Relations of Production.

19 For the most extended general discussion by Marx of the power-right distinction, see The German Ideology, p. 357 ff, and p. 394 ff.

20 By the “power to exploit”, I mean the power to derive non-self-produced benefit: such as rent, profit, director shares, upper-rank renumeration, sale mark-up etc.

21 See, for example, The German Ideology, pp. 79–80.

22 “Right”, claims Marx (The Poverty of Philosophy, p. 75) “is only the recognition of fact”.

23 There are, of course people—“petty” owners—who are members neither of the ruling class nor of the labouring class, and my wording permits this.

24 Capital, Volume I, p. 235.

25 Capital, Volume III, p. 791.

26 Capital, Volume I, p. 734 ff.

27 The question might arise here, “Well, if Marx doesn’t mean ‘uniquely determine’ by his notion of ‘determine’, then what does he mean?” In the next pages, I exhibit three specific uses of the concept by Marx, but I make no attempt to reduce theses uses to any single sense. I might appeal to the later Wittgenstein in defence of this strategy and leave it at that. However, I think it is worth mentioning here that Marx’s concept of “determine” is most often used in the interesting sense of “limit:” a sense which is familiar in the pre-twentieth century philosophical tradition and which is, as well, the original meaning of the Latin “determinare.” (See p. 255 ff. for detailed discussion of this use). I might also point out here that such a use of “determine” is neatly consistent with Marx’s concept of an economic form.

28 Of course, in any pre-revolutionary or revolutionary stage, the Economic Structure is in the process of dissolution and correspondingly ceases, thus, to exert determining force. What happens in such stages, according to Marx, is that men reorganize their constraining Economic Structure through political action, a reorganization that is made both possible and technically desirable by the growth of the Productive Forces beyond the limits of the Structure to accommodate them.

29 Though the rate of profit in capitalist society declines, according to Marx, the mass of surplus labour grows (Capital, Volume III, p. 219).

30 None of the specific laws of the capitalist Economic Structure will be treated here, though it is in their operation that many contemporary Marxists see the brunt of Marx’s economic determinism (for example, French continental Marxists like Louis Althusser and Maurice Godelier).

31 Compare Hegel’s celebrated treatment of the Master-Slave relation in the Phenomenology.

32 These constraining influences of the Economic Structure are reported by Marx throughout his corpus, especially in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, The German Ideology and Capital, Volume I.

33 Marx consistently uses the German word “entsprechen” (meaning “correspond to” or “comply with”) to describe the relationship between the Economic Structure and the legal and Political Superstructures, the Ideology and the Forms of Social Consciousness. (e.g., in the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, The Poverty of Philosophy (p. 95 and p. 160), Capital, Volume I (p. 82 and p. 372) Capital, Volume III (p. 791), etc. The implication is, as I argue, that what does not “correspond to” or “comply with” the Economic Structure is excluded.

34 If one of these phenomena did occur, then the economic determinist principle, as I have applied it here, would be prima facie falsified. Such a falsification upon further investigation might lead to any of the following conclusions:

  • (1) The Economic Structure of the society is in a state of dissolution: a revolutionary stage has been entered.

  • (2) The phenomenon in question is, to use Marx’s frequent term, “accidental”: an exception to an otherwise firmly obtaining regularity.

  • (3) The phenomenon in question does in fact “correspond” with the Economic Structure in a manner not yet evident.

  • (4) The phenomenon in question, in company with other phenomena similarly recalcitrant, obtains and continues to obtain with no revolution ensuing: thus falsifying the principle of “economic determinism” as here applied.

35 One of Marx’s favorite illustrations of this “blocking” phenomenon is nineteenth century Political Economy which always remains “within the bounds of the bourgeois horizon,” “within a limited field of expression” (my emphases). Once the class antagonism of the Economic Structure becomes manifest, then these “bounds” are more restrictive than ever. “It was thenceforth no longer a question whether this theorem or that was true, but whether it was useful to capital or harmful, expedient or inexpedient, politically dangerous or not” (Capital, Volume I, p. 14-15).

36 “Determinatio est Negatio”, says Marx, echoing Soinoza (Ibid, p. 597).

37 “The tradition of all the dead generations”, says Marx, in one of his more lyrical passages, “weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living” (The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, (Moscow: 1967) p. 10.Google Scholar

38 Marx, it is interesting to remember, wanted to dedicate Capital to Darwin, and Engels—In his graveside speech on Marx—compared the theories of the two men.

39 Capital, Volume I, p. 176.

40 Ibid, p. 79.

41 The German Ideology, passim.

42 See especially Marx’s section “The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof” (Capital, Volume I, pp. 71–83).

43 Ibid, p. 449 ff .

44 Selected Correspondence, p. 157 and p. 367.

45 Capital, Volume I, pp. 596–7.

46 Economic and Philosphical Manuscripts (Moscow: 1961) p. 138 ff.

47 Marx, Karl on Colonialism and Modernization, ed. Avineri, Schlomo (N.Y.: 1969) p. 347.Google Scholar

48 Capital, Volume I, p. 229 and p. 368.

49 Ibid, p. 279 ff.

50 Ibid, p. 10. One of the most detailed accounts by Marx of the way Economic-Structural interests regularly assert themselves over superstructural and ideological considerations is in the pamphlet The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (Moscow: 1967). Here too his wit flashes: “Thus the Tories in England” he says, “long imagined they were enthusiastic about monarchy, the church and the beauties of the old English Constitution, until the day of danger snatched from them the confession that they are enthusiastic only about ground rent” (p. 38).

It is instructive to compare Marx’s contrast between the “hidden” Economic Structure and the “visible” Superstructure—Ideology to Freud’s contrast between the “latent” and “manifest” content of dreams (or to our own conventional “real motives” and “rationalizations”).

51 Economic monocausality is simply not claimed or implied by Marx’s texts (rather the opposite: see, for example, his claim that revolutionary class struggle is “political”, not “economic” in a letter to Bolte, 1871 (Selected Correspondence, p. 327) and in The Poverty of Philosophy, p. 150). Refutive historical events since Marx’s work do not tell against any of the principles of Marx’s theory of economic determinism (as I have defined them) but only, if at all, against their specific administration. The sort of prediction which Popper accuses Marx of making is by no means, as Popper claims, a commitment of his economic determinist theory. And the denial of ethical and personal responsibility which is said to be implied by Marx’s economic determinism is certainly not so implied: as the latter’s continual use of the vocabulary of praise and (more so) blame indicates.

52 It is well not to put too much weight on Marx’s use of the term “inevitable”. Among other reasons, it is sometimes improperly intruded into English translations. For example, the well known statement from the first Preface to Capital—“It is a question of these laws themselves, of these tendencies working with iron necessity towards inevitable results”—makes no mention of “inevitable results” in the original German.

53 Marx thought, for example, that the working class would resolve by revolutionary action the conflict between ever expanding Forces of Production and the Economic Structure which increasingly confined these Forces of Production within a narrow “shell”. It did not, apparently, occur to him that: (a) the working class might be too “determined” to ever mount such a collective assertion and, correlatively, (b) the growing Forces of Production might be progressively re-deployed as instruments to protect the Economic Structure (e.g., as weapons, administrative and policing personnel, and instruments of surveillance).