Lecture 7

Sociology 621
September 28, 2011

CRITIQUES & RECONSTRUCTIONS OF CLASSICAL HISTORICAL MATERIALISM

Many criticisms have been raised against historical materialism, both from outside of the Marxist
tradition and from within. Some of these I engage in the sections from my book Reconstructing
Marxism assigned for this session. What I will do here is briefly list five criticisms. Some of
these can be countered fairly effectively, others are more serious. I will not discuss all of these in
detail, but focus on a few of these which are a little more complex.

1) The development thesis: the forces of production do not have a systematic tendency to
develop over time.

2) Fettering: There is no general reason why class relations inevitably fetter of forces of
production. A good argument may be possible for why a particular kind of class relations
have this property, but there is no general argument for why all forms of class relations
ultimately do this.

3) Economic reductionism: HM is a form of economic reductionism, especially in the

explanation of superstructures, and this is illegitimate.

4) Transformation: Even if relations do fetter the forces of production, there is no reason to

suppose that there will always emerge any historical agents capable of transforming those
relations. There is no inherent tendency for Class Capacities sufficient to challenge ruling
classes to be generated in conjunction with fettering. Permanent stagnation is possible.

5) functional explanations: Functional explanations in social science are not legitimate

forms of explanation, both as they apply to the relations of production and to the
superstructure.

In light of these criticisms I will offer a less deterministic theoretical goal of historical
materialism that retains a general sense of history having an overall, systematic pattern to it, but
rejects the strong claims to determinacy implied by classical historical materialism.

1. Critique of the Development Thesis (skip)

Joshua Cohen criticizes G.A. Cohen for claiming that there is any inherent tendency for the
forces of production to develop. Above all Joshua Cohen emphasizes that while the premises
about individual motivations and circumstances adopted by G.A. Cohen may be sound -- that
individuals are, among other things, motivated to improve their material situation under
conditions of scarcity -- there is no reason to imagine that this individual motivation is
universally translated into an interest in the development of the forces of production. There are
many other ways of enhancing material welfare: conquest, increasing exploitation, etc.
“Blockages” of the development of the forces of production, therefore, will not be pathological
and the systematic development of the forces of production will be much more contingent upon
specific institutional arrangements.

Response: In order to respond to J. Cohen’s arguments, a weaker version of the development

thesis needs to be adopted. Rather than positing an inherent drive for the forces of production to
advance, a softer claim can be made:

the probability of development of the forces of production is greater than the probability of
their regression.

Note that this does not imply that for some given period of time the probability of development
is greater than the probability of stagnation. Suppose 10,000 years ago that in a 100-year period
the probability of a significant development of the forces of production -- a development which
significantly affect productivity -- is .1 and the probability of stagnation .9 (forgetting for the
moment the probability of regression). This means in two successive 100 year periods the
probability of stagnation is .81, in four successive centuries .35, in 1000 years .01, in 4000 years.
So, the probabilities are extremely high that at least once in every 4000 years there will be some
significant advance in the forces of production even if in any given century the probability is
only .1. So long as the probability of development is greater than the probability of regression (so
this will not have an equal or greater chance of being undone), there will be a sticky downward
tendency for the forces of production to develop. This sticky downward quality, I think, is all that
is needed for the forces of production to have a directionality to them.

2. Inevitability of fettering of forces of production

The pivotal argument in HM is that in all modes of production based on class relations,
eventually the relations of production fetter the forces of production. But why should we believe
this as a general, law-like proposition? This may be true for a particular type of relations of
production like feuedalism, but why should we believe this is always true? Neither Marx nor
Cohen offer a generic argument for this. The most one can say is this:

In class societies the relations of production create powerful classes with interests in the
status quo. They defend superstructures which preserve those relations of production and
thus create a certain kind of social rigidity. This rigidity itself may tend to become a
fetter, since the relations of production are unlikely to adjust flexibly to new conditions.

But is this credible? In fact this is precisely what capitalism has accomplished: incredible
flexibility in its own institutional transformations.

Cohen’s proposal of use-fettering is a reasonable response: the plausibility of alternatives to

capitalism comes not from the an absolute fettering of development of the PF which might make
capitalism unsustainable but from its deepening irrationality, The core idea here is this:
capitalism creates a world of unbelievable productivity, yet perpetuates toil and poverty on a
massive scale. The gap between the kinds of lives we could live because of our productiveness
and the lives we do live because of the capitalist organization of this productivity is the
fundamental irrationality of the system: eliminanable human suffering and alienation in a world
capable of sustaining human emancipation.

But irrationality – unfortunately -- generates much weaker predictions about the future: at most
we may have a theory of capitalisms futures.

3. Economic Reductionism: critique of the theory of the superstructure

Probably the most common critique of historical materialism is that it is an example of economic
reductionism or economic determinism (or class reductionism or technological reductionism
depending upon precisely what is the context of the discussion). Sometimes this criticism comes
from the simple intuition that the world is much more complex than is mapped by historical
materialism. This, however, is not a cogent criticism by itself: historical materialism would not
be a good theory if it was a complex as the world. The whole point of theory construction is to
radically simplify the complexities of the world in order to explain the underlying patterns and
mechanisms.

More to the point, however, the criticism of reductionism suggests that important features
of society are not determined at all by the processes mapped in historical materialism, or at least
much less shaped by the dynamics postulated within historical materialism than by other
autonomous mechanisms. The most notable form of this criticism in recent years has come from
feminists who argue powerfully that the form of gender relations cannot be explained by the
dialectic of forces and relations of production, but the same arguments can be raised about many
other aspects of social relations: nationality, ethnicity, etc.

Response: G.A. Cohen has responded to this kind of criticism by arguing for restricted instead of
inclusive historical materialism. The intuition behind this distinction comes from the obvious
fact that no defender of historical materialism ever believed that the dynamics in the theory were
capable of explaining every feature of institutions in the “superstructure.” As Cohen points out,
the fine grained details of religious practices -- that there are exactly 39 articles in the creed of
the Church of England rather than 38 or 37, for example -- probably cannot be explained by the
arguments of historical materialism. Historical materialism is meant to explain the “most
important” features of religion, not such “irrelevant” details. The problem, of course, is in giving
a nonarbitrary meaning to “most important” and “irrelevant”. Why is the number of articles in a
creed “unimportant”? It is certainly possible, for example, that some things may be of extreme
symbolic importance to the members of a religion and yet of no explanatory importance
whatsoever for the development of the forces of production or the stability of the relations of
production.

Restricted historical materialism tries to provide a criterion for what it is that defines the
“relevance” of a property for historical materialist explanations, namely:

historical materialism explains those properties of noneconomic institutions that are

consequential for stabilizing the relations of production.
The explanandum in the base-superstructure argument is thus not all noneconomic phenomena,
but only those noneconomic phenomena which have significant effects on reproducing or
strengthening the economic structure of society. These -- the argument goes -- are to be
explained by the productive relations themselves. Let me give a specific example which Cohen
uses to illustrate the nontrivial quality of these claims.

Illustration from the Protestant Ethic & the Spirit of Capitalism: One of the most celebrated
arguments in sociology is Weber’s claim that the religious doctrines of Calvinism played a
crucial role in generating capitalism. The argument should be familiar: Calvinism postulates a
radical form of predestination: you are saved or damned by God’s will alone. This created great
psychological anxiety in people because of the fear of damnation. Being economically successful
in this world was then taken as a sign that you were saved. Orienting ones behavior towards such
signs, therefore, was a practical response to the religious anxiety generated by the doctrine. This
in turn helped to promote capitalism.
As Weber framed the problem, this explanation contradicts the base/superstructure thesis
of historical materialism:
while it is true that the religious doctrine significantly strengthens the productive relations
of capitalism, it is false that the doctrine is functionally explained by this fact. Capitalism,
in a sense, is a contingent byproduct of a religious practice that was generated by entirely
different dynamics, dynamics lodged in the internal development of Christianity in the
reformation.
Cohen offers an alternative account, based on recent scholarship on the sermons of Calvin:
Weber based his interpretation on the basis of the mature writings of John Calvin as they
appeared in published sermons. If one looks very closely at the texts of his sermons from the
very beginning one observes that initially the themes of predestination and worldly asceticism
were not very prominent. Only gradually over the years of his preaching to the urban burghers of
Geneva did these themes become prominent. One could argue, then, that these themes emerged
and developed in the doctrine precisely because they were well received by actors who were in
the process of forming and elaborating capitalist relations. Calvin was a preacher. Some Sundays
his sermons would have been very well received, other times less well received. He would have
introspectively thought about what worked, what didn’t, what resonated, what didn’t. The
developed form of what we call “Calvinism” or the “Protestant Ethic”, therefore, emerged and
consolidated because it served the function of rationalizing the practices of actors in this way. If
this is correct, this would be consistent with restricted historical materialism.

RHM is still an ambitious theoretical claim, but far more restrictive than the claim that
historical materialism explains everything. A nonreductionist account of gender, culture, race,
nationality, etc. can then be combined with a materialist explanation of those properties of each
of these which are most systematically functional for the reproduction of the relations of
production. In such a combination there is no necessary implication that the functional aspects
are in fact the most important for understanding the overall character of gender or anything else.

4. Transformation
A central element of the General Theory of History in historical materialism is that when a
particular class structure fetters the development of the productive forces – when long term
stagnation sets in – those relations will be transformed into more suitable relations of production.
Such transformation requires an historical agent, a collective actor capable of challenging the
dominant class of the existing social structure. While it may be that there are plausible arguments
for capitalism that such an agent will be generated by the contradictions of capitalism, there is no
reason to believe that this should be true across all possible class structures. There are several
problems here. It may be that we can say that whenever stagnation sets in that there will be
people with strong interests in overthrowing the existing ruling class: fettering is bad for
significant portions of the population and so they have an interest in change. But it is not the case
that interests by themselves generate capacities for struggle. This means that permanent
stagnation, permanent fettering, is conceivable.

5. Functional Explanation

Historical materialism as elaborated in Marx’s work requires functional explanations. This is

most obvious in the base/superstructure model, which is replete with functional explanations.
Take the example of the relationship between legal rights and economic powers: the powers
would be empty without legal rights, so it seems like legal rights in the superstructure explain
economic powers in the base. Only by interpreting this relationship as part of a functional
explanation can the base be understood as having causal primacy over the superstructure. More
subtlely it is the case for the forces/relations of production dialectic as well.
If a functional explanation is correct, then there must exist some sort of underlying
mechanism -- sometimes called a “feedback mechanism” -- which explains how it comes to pass
that the structure is reproduced by virtue of its beneficial effects. In the case of functional
explanations in biology, Darwinian natural selection constitutes the core of such mechanisms.
Cohen argues that an elaboration of such mechanisms is certainly useful in defending a
functional explanation and is ultimately important for the theory within which the functional
explanation figures to be complete. But he insists that a specification of such mechanisms is not
logically necessary for believing a functional explanation to be valid.

The critique of functional explanations

Cohen’s book launched a vigorous debate over the problem of functional explanation in general,
and functional explanation in Marxism in particular. Most of the themes in this debate appeared
earlier in the many debates over the functionalism in the work of Talcott Parsons and others a
generation earlier. But there were new twists because of the Marxian context of the discussion.

There are three kinds of critiques of functional explanations that I want to stress here: first,
Elster’s critique that social functional explanations generally fail because they lack any coherent
account of underlying mechanisms; second, the critique that functional explanations tend to
unrealistically assume that functionally explained outcomes are optimal for the system in
question; and third, functional explanations tend to minimize the possibility of intrinsic
contradictions within the functional adaptations of a system.

Critique #1: The problem of underlying mechanisms

Perhaps the leading figure in the recent critique of Marxian functional explanations is Jon Elster.
He argued that the search for functional explanations in social science reflected a kind of
theological impulse -- searching for some kind of ultimate purpose in social arrangements. In
earlier times, such a search for purpose existed in the physical sciences as well. People wanted to
know “what is the purpose of the sun?” and the answer was found in its beneficial effects to
humankind -- the purpose of the sun to warm us. The mechanism behind this functional account
was theological: the sun exists and has these benificial effects because God so willed it.

The heart of Elster’s argument against functional explanations concerns the distinction between
intentional and functional explanations:

$ in intentional explanations, a social phenomenon is explained by its anticipated

consequences in the minds of the actors;

$ in functional explanations it is explained by its actual consequences.

A legitimate example of a functional explanation in social science, Elster maintains, is the

explanation for why capitalist firms tend to follow profit-maximizing strategies in the market.
Regardless of the intentions of owners of firms, it is the actual consequences of their strategies
which determines the liklihood of the firm surviving over time, because of the power of the firm-
killing mechanism of competition, even if individual capitalists randomly adopted particular
strategies, the strategies which would be empirically found in a population of firms would tend to
be profit maximizing. The profit-maximizing intentions of capitalists may improve the speed
with which this distribution of strategies is generated among firms, but it is not essential for the
explanation.

Elster’s main point of criticism of functional explanations in social science is that in most
such explanations it is impossible to construct the kind of plausible mechanisms found in the
example of profit-maximizing firms. At a minimum this is a criticism of sloppy explanatory
practice, positing functional explanations with no heed to the plausibility of mechanisms. More
generally it reflects the use of a functional idiom to hide explanations based on implausible
intentional explanations (especially conspiracies). When superstructures are functionally
explained by their benefits to capitalism, lurking behind the explanation is a conspiracy of a class
conscious, farsighted bourgeoisie which imposes its will on the state. If indeed this is the nature
of the real explanation, then it should be articulated in this form and subjected to appropriate
empirical scrutiny, but not framed as a functional explanation in which superstructures
automatically adjust to the functional requirements of the economic base.

The central problem with functional explanations in social science is that most functional
arrangements in society could never have emerged simply as nonintentional functional
adaptations. The key property of intentionality is the ability to anticipate several steps into the
future. This allows for rational intentional actors to take one step backwards, two steps forward.
Functional adaptations operating behind the backs of actors cannot traverse such a trajectory,
since the initial one step backwards makes the structure in question less beneficial than initially.
Revolutions, transformations of social relations, large scale institution building, always involve
costs; thus the adaptations cannot be explained purely functionally.

The result of all this is that functional explanations are in general unlikely to be
persuasive. In the specific case of historical materialism, moreover, the pivotal functional
relation -- that the relations of production are the way they are because they further the
development of the forces of production -- is particularly lacking in plausibility. Until some
credible mechanism is postulated which could account for the selection of optimal new relations
of production under conditions of fettering by old relations of production, there is no reason to
believe the theory.

Response:

In order for Cohen’s functional arguments to be complete, something like a Darwinian or

Lamarkian mechanism has to be postulated. (Lamark proposed an alternative mechanism for
biological evolution than Darwin: animals modified their fitness by acquiring adaptive traits --
eg. by stretching their necks through effort -- and these acquired traits were then passed on to
offspring. The selection process, in a sense, operates on the traits themselves). In a Darwinian
mechanism there has to be something which differentially kills off societies with fettering
relations of production or institutions that are dysfunctional for the base; in a Lamarkian
mechanism there needs to be a process which would modify particular features of the relations of
production within a society when the forces of production are fettered or modifes particular
aspects of institutions when they become destabilizing (i.e. a mechanism which selects directly
on the nonadaptive traits rather than on the society or institution as a whole).
Elster admits that there are special cases where this kind of process works in social
science, most notably in the case of market competition. But he insists that for most of the
problems addressed by historical materialism, the explanation fails because the explanation of
institutional adaptation and change necessarily involves conscious intentionality.
I think this is an arbitrary and misleading restriction on the structure of explanations
needed in social science. While it is certainly true that much institutional adaptations and change
involve conscious deliberation and intentionality -- the anticipated effects of the change help
explain why people execute the change -- whether or not a given change becomes consolidated
and deeply institutionalized depends, in significant ways, on its actual effects, not simply its prior
anticipated effects. Human intentionality and intelligence plays a crucial role in this process of
functional adjustment: when things are going badly, when interests are threatened, when ruling
classes feel threatened, they seek solutions and try to modify institutions. In Elster’s view, if they
randomly changed institutions and kept doing so until conditions improved, this would count as a
functional explanation. This would obviously be an extremely inefficient process for reproducing
social relations. The fact that people use their intelligence to do some preliminary filtering of
changes does not seem to me grounds for describing the resulting changes and configurations as
entirely the product of intentionality. To use Elster’s favorite example: the fact that capitalists do
not randomly adopt business strategies does not destroy the functional explanation for the
tendency for profit maximing strategies to occur; the deliberate search for such strategies just
means that the selection process will be more efficient.

Critique #2: Against optimality assumptions

The sheer fact that HM uses functional explanations is thus not a basis for its indictment.
Nevertheless, this does not mean that the specific functional explanations proposed in HM are
convincing. In particular, the idea that functional explanations imply optimal functionality seems
implausible. That is, as formulated by Cohen, historical materialism’s functional explanation
states that the relations of production that exist do so because, of all possible relations of
production, they are the relations that best further the development of the forces of production.
Similarly, the institutional features of the superstructure exist/persist because, of all possible
institutional properties, they best reproduce the economic base. This seems quite implausible.
[But note: it is implausible for biology as well. As Steven Jay Gould has argued, there are
countless properties of animals which are suboptimal, less than perfect adaptations. If some other
mutation had occurred the animal might be “fitter” than they actually are. Natural selection only
posits a device of selecting between alternatives that happen to occur -- a property which
enhances fitness relative to another is likely to prevail, but a third property, if it were to occur,
might have been even better, and it may be entirely contingent that the third property failed to
occur.]

This suggests that the simple functional explanations of historical materialism should be
replaced by two somewhat less deterministic forms of functional explanation:

1. functional compatibility: institutional properties are the way they are because, at a
minimum, they allow for the reproduction of the class structure; the relations of production
are the way they are because they allow for the development of the forces of production. An
explanation invoking functional compatibility implies that there is a kind of negative
selection at work: dysfunctional properties set in motion a set of pressures which increase
the probabilities that they will be abandoned or transformed. Where more than one
functionally compatible option exists (in the sense of being historically available), which
one is adopted will depend upon contingent historical facts.

2. functional superiority: where two institutional alternatives are historically possible and
one more effectively reproduces the economic base than the other, there will be a tendency
for the functionally superior institutional alternative to prevail. Where two forms of relations
of production are historically possible and one more effectively encourages the development
of the forces of production, there will be a tendency for the functionally superior relations of
production to prevail. “Tendency” means that, all other things being equal, the probability of
the superior solution occurring is greater than the inferior one.

The second kind of explanation stresses the fact that the selection of a functionally superior
alternative is only a tendency; the first kind of explanation indicates that contingent factors will
determine which alternative is actually selected among functionally compatible possibilities.

If we replace functional-optimality explanations with these two quasi-functional explanations,

we get a much less rigidly deterministic, more probabilistic theory of historical trajectories,
variations of social forms within historical epochs, and superstructural institutions. In each case
there is greater scope for contingency, for the effects of historically specific structural factors and
conditions. To understand such factors requires, I would argue, sociological materialism, not
simply historical materialism. That is, to understand how the specific social structural conditions
of production in a given society make certain options easier or more difficult to achieve.

Critique #3: Contradictory functionality

Even if we drop claims to “optimality”, functional compatibility still seems to suggest that the
institutions that make up the superstructure all fit nicely together to create a smoothly
functioning system, a system within which all of the parts are “compatible.” Even if this does not
imply the best of all possible arrangements from the point of view of system-reproduction, it still
seems to suggest that the parts of the system all work harmoniously together.
As we will see when we discuss the state and ideology, I think this assumption should be
dropped. Rather than seeing capitalist society as a tightly intergated system of coherent elements,
with a coherent superstructure smoothly reproducing the base, it is better to see society as a
loosely coupled system, more of a patchwork of institutional elements in which it is a variable
property of the system the extent to which the parts function harmoniously. This opens the
possibility of seeing systematically contradictory features of institutional arrangements -- not just
haphazard institutional failures, but genuine, contradictions within the state, ideology, law and
other aspects of the “superstructure.”

5. Where does this leave us?

Let’s try to remember where we started and what the point is of all of this meandering
engagement with a theory of history. Historical materialism helped solve a particular problem for
Marxism: Marxism is an attempt at building a social scientific theory of class emancipation. It is
grounded in a critique of a powerful dimension of oppression in capitalist society -- class-based
exploitation and domination -- and, as an emancipatory theory, envisions the possibility of a
world within which this form of oppression is eliminated. For many people, no matter how
abhorrent they find class inequality, this may seem pie-in-the-sky, a messianic fantasy rather
than an objective around which collective struggles can be organized.

Historical materialism provided a compelling theory of this future to capitalism. The

theory of the past epochs of human history added credibility to the basic claims by
showing that past forms of class domination were overthrown once they had exhausted
their capacity for material development. The specific theory of capitalist development
attempted to show that for capitalism, as well, it was the case that eventually it would
exhaust its capacity for such development. Taken together, these lent great force to the
political project of struggling for the radical transformation of capitalism.

If the arguments we have reviewed are correct, then this perspective on the future of capitalism --
the materialist theory of the history of the future – has to be significantly modified. We no longer
have a credible theory of the inevitability of the demise of capitalism and we really only have a
sketch of a theory of its possible futures. What we have is this:

1. There is a “sticky-downward” tendency for the forces of production to develop in

history. The development of the forces of production will therefore tend to have a
cumulative, directional character. This suggests that history has a weak directionality and
historical reversal is unlikely.
2. Different forms of relations of production are functionally compatible with different
levels of development of the forces of production. That is, a given set of productive
forces can be productively deployed only under certain forms of production relations.

3. Taken together, this is the basis of fairly compelling theory of the trajectory of epochal
history that culminates in capitalism, although there is a possibility of very long term,
perhaps indefinite, stagnation under certain kinds of class relations.

4. But this does not give us what we really want: a compelling theory of capitalisms
future.

5. However, we do have a powerful critique of capitalism rooted in the theory of

exploitation and emancipatory potential resulting from the incredible productivity
capitalism has created.

6. And we do have basic elements of a powerful theory of the contradictory institutional

impediments to the realization of that emancipatory potential within capitalism – the
theory of the state and ideology.

7. And these in turn can form the basis for creative thinking about how to take advantage
of those contradictions for the advancement of the emancipatory project.