Marx' Theory

Marx’ theory has 2 propositions:

1. The forms or conditions of production are the fundamental determinant of social structures.

• These structures in turn breed attitudes, actions and civilizations.

Marx illustrates this as:

• the “hand-mill” that creates feudal societies
• the “steam-mill” that creates capitalist societies

This stresses the technological element but also can be interpreted as mere technology not being all of it.

It is our daily work which forms our minds.

It is our location within the productive process which determines our outlook on things—or the sides of things we see—and the social elbowroom at the command of each of us.*

2. The forms of production themselves have a logic of their own.

They change according to necessities inherent in them so as to produce their successors merely by their own working.

The “hand-mill” system creates an economic and social situation in which the adoption of the mechanical method of milling becomes a practical necessity that individuals or groups are powerless to alter.

The rise of the “steam-mill” in turn creates new social functions and locations, new groups and views, which develop and interact in such a way as to outgrow their own frame.

The propeller is responsible for economic and, consequentially, for any other social change.

Both propositions are my invaluable working hypotheses.

Most of the current objections completely fail, all those for instance which in refutation point to the influence of ethical or religious factors, or the one already raised by Eduard Bernstein, which with delightful simplicity asserts that “men have heads” and can hence act as they choose.

Men “choose” their course of action not directly enforced by objective data.

They choose from standpoints, views and propensities that are molded by the objective set.

Is the economic interpretation of history more than a convenient approximation which is expected to work less satisfactorily in some cases?

Social structures, types and attitudes are coins that do not readily melt.

The social situation created in Sicily by the Norman conquest shows this.

The feudal type of landlordism in the kingdom of the Franks emerged during the sixth and seventh centuries.

It came about from the military leadership previously filled by the families who became feudal landlords after the conquest of the new territory.

Economists have been strangely slow in recognizing social classes.

These classes were simply sets of individuals that displayed some common character.

• Thus, some people were classed as landlords or workmen because they owned land or sold the services of their labor.

Social classes, however, are not the products of the classifying observer.

• They are ’live’ entities that exist as such.

Their existence entails consequences that are entirely missed by a schema which looks upon society as if it were an amorphous assemblage of individuals or families.

How important is social classes for economic research?

It is very important for:

• many practical applications and
• all the broader aspects of the social process

The social classes first entered through the Communist Manifesto that said the history of society is the history of class struggles.

Gobineau reduces human history to the history of the struggle of races as the racial theory of classes.

The division of labor theory of classes of Schmoller or Durkheim resolve class antagonisms into antagonisms between the vocational groups.

Marx has never worked out systematically what class struggle is.

He and his disciples offered applications of this under-developed theory to particular patterns of which his own History of the Class Struggles in France is the outstanding example. 7 Beyond that no real progress has been achieved.

The social theory of Engels was of the division of labor type/

• It was unMarxian in its implications.