Marx, “Society and Economy in History” MER 136-142 Letter to P.V. Amnenkov re. Proudhon’s Philosophy of Poverty, Dec. 28, 1846

Intro. Orientation:

1. materialist conceptionof history
2. Division of labor in human historical development
3. evolution of machinery
4. dialectics as a process that finds final resolution in a social condition beyond conflict (contradictions)
5. (re. Marxology – refutes the hiatus theory of “early” and “late” Marx)

Problem: To understand what causes social change – what determines the direction or course of history.

Method: Critique

• Of Proudhon (idealist, dualism) and his theory of “eternal reason” as the motive force of history presented in “The Philosophy of Poverty”
• Of Hegel (idealist dialectics)
• Present alternative (materialist dialectic). Became “The Poverty of Philosophy”. Argues that economic categories and forms are transitory and historical (contra Proudon who posits eternal, determinative categories)

Key categories used in critique:

• Society: the product of men’s reciprocal actions (136)
• Civil society: social constitution, organization of the family, of orders or of classes. (137)
• Productive forces or faculties; “Assume a particular state of development in the productive faculties of man and you will get a particular form of commerce and consumption.” (136) Acquired from preceding generation (137)
• Commerce: both trade and exchange, and a broader meaning corresponding to German Verkehr—roughly what we might term the forms of social intercourse.
• Consumption
• Division of labor: not defined in this excerpt. Marx argues that the division of labor corresponds to the larger social relations; it cannot be a fixed concept.
• Competition
• Machinery

Proudon posited the evolution of the division of labor and of machinery as determinative of human history. Marx argues that these categories are historically specific phenomena which are the product of actual relations.

Machinery not same as productive forces

§         pre-1825 (England) developed by demand

§         post-1825 (England) developed through class conflict

§         competition with England on home and world markets (other European nations)

Humans produce social relations as well as machinery and they produce ideas, categories – the abstract ideal expressions of their social relations

Proudon argues that reason determines course of history

Marx argues that “every succeeding generation finds itself in possession of the productive forces acquired by the previous generation, which serve it as the raw material for new production, a coherence arises in history, a history of humanity takes shape which is all the more a history of humanity as the productive forces of man and therefore his social relations have been more developed. Hence it necessarily follows that the social history of men is never anything but the history of their individual development, whether they are conscious of it or not. The material relations are the basis of all their relations. These material relations are only the necessary forms in which their material and individual activity is realized.” (137)

Next class: Feurbach and his materialism