Historical Materialism: A System of Sociology
Therefore: the transition from one form of society to another is accompanied by a temporary lowering of the productive forces, which cannot in any other way find an opportunity for further evolution.
The law of decline is distinguished from the law of the transition period by the fact that the transition in the former case does not lead to a higher economic form; in this case, the decline in the productive forces will continue until society receives some impulse from without, or until its equilibrium has been found on a lower basis, whereupon we have a "repetition", or a permanent state of stagnation, not a higher form of economic relations.
An analysis of the causes of a decline will in general show that they are due to the impossibility of breaking down the given property relations; they therefore remain fetters on evolution, and react on the productive forces, so that the latter continue "going down" all the time. This may be the case, for example, when the
opposing classes in a revolution are of about the same strength, making a victory impossible for either class; the society is doomed.
The conflict between the productive forces and the production relations has determined the will of the classes in a specific manner. But revolution has not advanced beyond its earliest phases. The classes give battle; neither is victorious; production falls asleep; society dies out. Or, we may have the case in which the victorious class is incapable of disposing of the tasks imposed upon it, or, the revolution may not mature to the "boiling point"; but the evolution of the productive forces has been proceeding in an environment in which it has determined a quite specific class alignment, namely, a completely parasitic ruling class, and a completely demoralized oppressed class. Here there will be no evolution; sooner or later a simple, one might say a "bloodless", disintegration and dissolution will take place. Or, we may have a case of mixed type. All these cases show that the evolution of the productive forces has led to an economy and to such forms of "superstructure" as have a reverse influence of such nature on the evolution of the productive forces as to oblige them to go down. Of course, when the productive forces go down, the level of the entire social life will also go down.
Greece and Rome may be taken as examples of social decay, later Spain and Portugal. The ruling classes, maintained by the slaves conquered in countless wars, became parasites, also a portion of the free burghers. Their technology permitted them to wage wars, thus conditioning a corresponding economy, which produced a specific state order; but the material condition of the classes also determined their: being, their social psychology (a mentality of parasitic degeneration;, among the rulers; of degeneration by stupefaction and oppression among the oppressed). Such a superstructure was too heavy for its basis, the productive forces, which ceased to grow, ultimately becoming a negative quantity. In place of this perfectly simple explanation, most scholars present an unspeakable confusion, of which an excellent, specimen is afforded by the latest book of P. Bitsilli: The Fall of the Roman Empire. Vassilyev, a professor at the University of Kazan,.who enumerates - in a work already quoted by us - all the theories explaining the fall of the ancient world, particularly emphasizes the theory of biological degeneration. This degeneration, in the case of ,x: the rulers, according to Professor Vassilyev, is a necessary consequence and the natural end of any civilization (with certain reservations): for, brawn is replaced by brain, the nervous system develops its wants, a biological deterioration results. Mr. Vassilyev therefore believes that the materialist Marxian conception of history should be replaced by the materialist Vassilyev conception, which is much "profounder". Mr. Vassilyev points out that the progress of the social sciences has taken the following path: first, there was an analysis of ideology; then, of policy; then, of the social order; then, of economy (Marx). We are told that we must now penetrate still more profoundly, descending to the material nature of man, his physiological constitution, the changes in which constitute the "essence" of the historical process. There is no doubt that the material nature of man changes; but, if we proceed beyond the limits of social laws, we must advance from biology to physics and chemistry, and then we shall become fully aware of Mr. Vassilyev's error. The fact of the matter is that the law of cause and effect in social science must be a social law. If we wish to explain the social properties of man's material nature, we must determine what are the social causes whose influence has altered the physiology (and also the psychology) of man. We shall then find that this phase is determined above all by the conditions of material being, i.e., by the situation of the given groups in production. Mr. Vassilyev is therefore not digging deeper, but walking backwards; his theory is actually the time-honored theory of the inevitable aging of the human race. Besides being useless because it is based on a mere analogy with physical organisms, it is not capable of explaining the simplest phenomena. Why, for instance, has the infinitely more complicated European civilization not passed away, whereas Rome degenerated? Why did Spain "fall" and not England? Commonplaces about degeneration will explain nothing, for the simple reason that this degeneration is a product of social conditions. Only an analysis of these conditions can result in a proper view of the subject.
An analysis of the causality of the transition period and the periods of decay will also throw light on the question of what determines the evolution of the productive forces, and what is the influence under which they are changing. Obviously, they are changing under the reversed influence of the basis, and of all the superstructural forms. Marx himself recognizes this. Thus, he informs us in Capital (Chicago, 1909, Vol. iii, p.98): "Such a development of the productive power is traceable in the last instance to the social nature of the labor engaged in production; to the division of labor in society; to the development of intellectual labor, especially of the natural sciences." Strictly speaking, the matter does not end here : Marx emphasizes only the most important factors influencing the productive forces in industry. "But," our opponents may object, "why do you begin at just this point?" Our answer is: "For the simple reason that, no matter what interactions may be taking place within society, the internal social relations at any given moment will-insofar as we are considering society in its condition of equilibrium-correspond with the relation existing between society and nature."
e.The Evolution of the Productive Forces and the Materialization of Social Phenomena (Accumulation of Civilization)
A consideration of the process of production and reproduction, where the productive forces are growing, will present us with a general law; namely, as the productive forces grow, more and more labor is applied in the production of instruments of production. With the aid of these constantly increasing instruments of production, which are a part of the social technique, a much smaller part of the work than formerly will produce a much greater quantity of useful products of all kinds. When manual labor was used, comparatively little time was devoted to the manufacture of instruments of production. Men worked in the sweat of their brows with their insignificant, wretched tools, and their work was not very productive. But in a highly evolved society a great portion of their labor is devoted to the production of immense labor tools - machines, mechanisms - in order to produce further immense instruments of production, such as huge factories, electrical power stations, mines, etc., which consume a large part of the human forces available. But the use of these tremendous instruments of production vastly increases the productivity of living labor; the investment yields more than compound interest.
In capitalist society, this law is expressed in the relative increase of constant capital as compared with variable capital. That portion of capital that has been devoted to the construction of factory plants, machines, etc., grows more rapidly than the portion put into wages. In other words, in the evolution of the productive forces in capitalist society, the constant capital grows more rapidly than the variable capital. We may state this in another manner, as the productive forces of society grow, they are being constantly realigned, with the result that an increasingly greater share of these forces goes into the branches producing instruments of production.
The growth of the productive forces, the accumulation of man's power over nature, is expressed in the higher and higher "specific" weight assigned to things, to dead labor, to the social technique.
It is reasonable to inquire whether similar phenomena are presented by other fields of social life, for we have seen that the superstructural labor is also labor, differentiated labor, which has been segregated from material labor. And we have seen that the outline of the superstructure includes both material elements and personal elements, as well as ideological elements proper. Where is there here an accumulation, an aggregation of "mental" culture? Do we here encounter anything resembling the material process of production?
Let us anticipate: Yes, there is such a similarity, expressed in the fact that the social ideology is crystallized or congealed in things which are quite material. Let us remember that we are enabled to reproduce the ancient "mental cultures" out of the so called "monuments" of earlier epochs; the remnants of old libraries, the books, inscriptions, clay tablets, statues, paintings, temples, old musical instruments, and thousands of other things. In a way, we may regard these things as a congealed, materialized ideology of ages long gone by, enabling us to judge the psychology and ideology; of their contemporaries with precision, as the remnants of working tools enable us to judge of the stage reached in the evolution of the productive forces, and even of the economy of these epochs. Furthermore, in the superstructural work, in ideological labor, instruments of consumption frequently serve also as instruments for further production. A picture gallery contains instruments of enjoyment; for the public which goes to view them, it consists of consumption products. But they are also instruments of production, not in the same sense - of course - as brushes and canvas, for the coming generations learn art, a new "tendency" in painting, from them. A new school of does not descend from heaven, but grows out of an earlier stage, even though it may renounce and denounce the old ideological system. Nothing is made of nothing. As, in the political field, the old state is destroyed during a revolution, while the new state will contain many old elements in a new arrangement, so, in the ideological field, even the greatest interruptions do not wipe out a certain succession and connection with the past: the new building is not constructed on the "bare ground". Paintings, for the painter, are an instrument of production, an accumulated artistic experience, a congealed ideology, from which any further movement in this field must take its start.
Perhaps the following objection might be made: "All this may be very fine, but what has the sublime doctrine of Christianity in common with the material symbols that have been traced on parchment or paper, or with the pigskin in which the Gospels are bound? What is the connection between the scientific ideology as such and the masses of paper that have been piled up in the libraries? Surely there is a difference between the ideologies, the most delicate product of the collective human mind, and such gross material things as books, considered as things!" But this argument may be due to a misunderstanding. To be sure, paper per se, or coloring matter, or pigskin, would in these cases have no meaning for us if they were without a social being. We have shown in chapter vi ( b. Things, Men, Ideas ) that a machine - considered outside of its social connection - is merely a piece of metal, wood, etc. But it has also a social being, in that men interpret it as a machine in the labor process. Similarly, the book, in addition to its physical being, as a piece of paper, also has a social being; it is considered as a book in the process of reading. Here, the book is a congealed ideology, an instrument of ideological production.
If we approach the question of the accumulation of mental culture from this angle, it will be easy to admit that this accumulation takes the form of an accumulation of things, of crystallized, material shapes. The "richer" a field of mental culture is, the more imposing, the broader the field of these "materialized social phenomena". Figuratively speaking (and not forgetting its character as an ideology), the material skeleton of mental culture is the "fundamental capital" of this culture, which increases with the "richness" of this culture, and is dependent "in the last analysis" on the stage reached in the material productive forces. The childish inscriptions, masks, rude images of idols, drawings on stones, art monuments, rolls of papyrus, other manuscripts, parchment books, temples and observatories, clay tablets, with their cuneiform writings; later, the galleries, museums, botanical and zoological gardens, huge libraries, independent scientific exhibitions, laboratories, sketches, printed books, etc., etc., are an accumulated crystallized experience of humanity. The new library stacks, with their new books, considered together with the olds stacks and books, are an interesting physical manifestation of collaboration of many generations in their uninterrupted succession.
We have become so accustomed to many phenomena in this field as to lose sight of the historical boundaries. Our present-day psychology and ideology, for instance, finds its crystallization in the daily newspaper. Yet, the newspaper itself is a modern phenomenon, beginning approximately in the Seventeenth Century. No doubt important official news was already posted on walls ("published") in ancient Rome and among the Chinese (Eighth Century A.D.), but this was barely a beginning ( cf. K. Bücher: Das Zeitatngswesen in Kultur der Gegenwart , Berlin and Leipzig, 1906, part i, section i.). Books, in our sense, are also not found before the invention of printing, when there were only rolls of papyrus and parchment codices, then the most perfect method of preserving the accumulated "wisdom of centuries", clay tablets:(Babylon) preserved in gigantic libraries. For example, Ashurbanipal's famous library ( cf . Pietschmann: Das Buch, in Kultur der Gegenwart). Libraries (called by Leibnitz "treasuries of all the riches of the human spirit") may therefore be found in very ancient times, and it is to the remnants of such libraries that we owe most of our information on many secrets of times long past (a short study on libraries is found in Die Bibliotheken, by Fritz Milkau, in Kultur der Gegenwart). Important examples are: the above mentioned library of Ashurbanipal (Seventh Century B.C.), also the libraries of the most ancient ecclesiastical schools (Third Century B.C.). Hermann Diels ( Die Organisation der Wissenschaft, in Kultur der Gegenwart , p.639) rightly observes: "Among all institutions of learning, libraries have ever been the most important and most essential means of preserving, disseminating and transmitting learning and of supplementing the evanescent viva vox of living teachers." Art objects, of course, play the same rôle, as preserved in collections, galleries, museums, cathedrals, etc.
The accumulation of mental culture is therefore not only an accumulation of psychological and ideological elements in the minds of men, but also an accumulation of things.
f. The Process of Reproduction of Social Life as a Whole
We are now in a position to recapitulate this subject:
A constant "metabolism" is taking place between nature and society, a process of social reproduction, a labor process operating in cycles, constantly replacing what is consumed, extending its basis as the productive forces develop, and enabling mankind to widen the boundaries of its existence.
But the process of production of material products is simultaneously a process of production of given economic relations. Marx says: Capitalist production, therefore under its aspect of a continuous connected process, of a process of reproduction, produces not only commodities, not only surplus-value, but it also produces and reproduces the capitalist relation; on the one hand the capitalist, on the other, the wage-laborer." 7) This formula of Marx is not only applicable to capitalist production, but universally applicable in general. If we consider the case of the ancient slaveholding economy, each production cycle in it will be accompanied by the slaveholders' receiving his share and the slave his; in the next cycle, the slaveholder will also discharge his role, while the slave will discharge his; if reproduction should expand, the sole alteration will be in the fact that the share and power of the slaveholder, the number of his slaves, the amount of surplus labor produced by them, will become greater. Thus, the process of material production is simultaneously a process of the reproduction of those production relations, of that historical envelope, in which they are operative. On the other hand, the process of material reproduction is a process of constant reproduction of the corresponding labor forces. "Man himself," writes Marx, "viewed as the impersonation of labor power, is a natural object, a thing, although a living conscious thing, and labor is the manifestation of this power residing in him." 8) But at various historical periods, in accordance with the social technique, the mode of production, etc., specific labor forces, i.e., labor forces with the required skill, are available. The process of reproduction is constantly reproducing this skill; it therefore reproduces not only the things, but also the "living things", i.e., workers possessing certain qualifications; it also reproduces relations among them with expanding reproduction, it makes the adjustments corresponding to the new level of the productive forces, in this case assigning the persons, who may not be the same (for new types of skill, new "living machines" are required), to posts in the labor field which may not be identical. But the fundamental texture of the production relations nevertheless remains intact (except in the case of revolutionary periods) and continues to be reproduced on a progressively larger and larger scale.
If the totality of the various types of skill of the labor forces be designated as a social physiology, it may be said that the process of reproduction is constantly reproducing the economy of society and therefore also its physiology.
All types of work have thus far required a specific physiological type, a result of specialization. We may therefore distinguish - even by his external appearance - a transport worker from a metal works clerk, butcher, stool-pigeon, etc., not to mention a musician or a member of the "liberal professions" in general. Therefore, not only is the psychology of men their social psychology, but their physiological structure is a product of social evolution. As he works upon nature, man alters his own nature. What we call "social physiology" may not be considered as opposed to economy, for it is a part of economy. The difference simply is this: in discussing economy, we analyze the connections and the type of these connections between men, their: material relation with each other, what we call social physiology is not a connection, but a property of these same elements.
Simultaneously with the process of reproduction, we have a similar motion of the entire vast machine of social life: the mutual relations between classes are reproduced, also the conditions of the state organization; also the relations within the various spheres of ideological labor. In this aggregate reproduction of the entire social life, the social contradictions are also constantly reproduced. The partial contradictions, a disturbance of equilibrium emanating from the impulses imparted by the evolution of the productive forces, are being constantly absorbed by a partial realignment of society within the frame of the given mode of production. But the basic contradictions, those arising from the very nature of the given economic structure, continue to be reproduced on a larger and larger foundation, until they attain the proportions that bring about a catastrophe. Then the entire old form of production relations will collapse, and a new form arises, if the social evolution continues. "The historical development of the antagonisms, immanent in a given form of production, is the only way in which that form of production can be dissolved and a new form established." 9) This moment is succeeded by a temporary interruption in the process of reproduction, a disturbance which is expressed by the destruction of a portion of the productive forces. The general transformation of the entire human labor apparatus, the reorganization of all the human relations, brings about a new equilibrium, whereupon society enters upon a new universal cycle in its evolution, by extending its technical basis and accumulating its experience (as congealed in objects), which serves as the point of departure in any new forward step.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Plekhanov: Articles attacking Struve in the collection, Criticism of Our Critics (the best work on the analysis of the production relations from the point of view of revolution). Rosa Luxemburg: Sozialreform und Revolution . Karl Kautsky: Die soziale Revolution . Karl Kautsky: Anti-Bernstein. Heinrich Cunow: Die Marxsche Geschichts-, Gesellschafts-und Staatstlaeorie, vol. i. Werner Sombart: Sozialismus and soziale Bewegung. N. Lenin: State and Revolution . N. Lenin: The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky . N. Bukharin: Oekonomik der Transformationsperiode. Hermann Beck (editor): Wege und Ziele der Sozialisierung. J. Delevsky (Social-Revolutionary): Social Antagonisms and the Class Struggle in History . Karl Marx: particularly, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy ; also, Marx's historical writings.
1) N. Beltov (Plekhanov) : Concerning the Materialistic Interpretation History, in Criticism of Our Critics , p.333. The italics are mine. N. B.
2) Karl Marx: Capital, vol. iii, Chicago, 1909, p.919. My italics. N.B.
3) Karl Marx: Capital , vol. iii, Chicago, 1909, p.1030.
4) Communist Manifesto, Chicago, 1912, pp.40, 41; also quoted by Cunow, ibid., Vol. i, p.321
5) Quoted by Cunow, ibid ., p.182.
6) Ibid., vol. 1, pp.321, 222.
7) Capital, Chicago, 1915, vol. i, p.633
8) Ibid., vol. i, v. 225.
9) Capital , vol. i, p.534, 535.
Contents | Chapter 6 | Chapter 8
Bukharin Archive
Chapter Eight - The Classes and the Class Struggle
N.I. Bukharin: Historical Materialism - a System of Sociology