Reviews and Comments

Surprisingly accessible introduction both to the epistemology of dialectical materialism, and to the theory of history and society found in historical materialism. Not as dated as I expected. I found only the "third feature of production" to be suspect, in a portion of its claim at least. Namely, that:

"the rise of new productive forces and of the relations of production corresponding to them... takes place not as a result of the deliberate and conscious activity of man, but spontaneously, unconsciously, independently of the will of man. ...men do not realize, do not understand or stop to reflect what social results these improvements [to instruments of production] will lead to, but only think of their everyday interests, of lightening their labor and of securing some direct and tangible advantage for themselves. ... Their conscious activity did not extend beyond the commonplace, strictly practical interests."

Human beings often reflect on the social results of improvements in instruments of production. And I'd argue that such self-awareness, the human tendency to think ahead, is what sets the stage for eventual class conflict on the basis of the contradictions that such self-awareness elucidates. Without "deliberate and conscious activity of man," one doesn't ever recognize the contradictions and consequently never revolutionizes oneself past them. Stalin himself seems to recognize this, as he says shortly after:

"Up to a certain period the development of the productive forces and the changes in the realm of the relations of production proceed spontaneously independently of the will of men. But that is so only up to a certain moment, until the new and developing productive forces have reached a proper state of maturity. After the new productive forces have matured, the existing relations of production and their upholders -- the ruling classes -- become that "insuperable" obstacle which can only be removed by the conscious action of the new classes, by the forcible acts of these classes, by revolution."

So perhaps the claim would be better stated as such: that the intellectual seeds necessary for the rise of new productive forces (and corresponding relations of production) are only ever planted in the existing productive forces (and corresponding relations of production); they cannot be gleaned in isolation from them. In this way, I believe one could make a stronger case for the notion that the human species cannot, by "deliberate and conscious activity" alone, "ascend" to some final destination, to some ultimate productive force and final relation of production, to some stage of development beyond that which the existing intellectual seeds enable. Humanity cannot, by mere "will" or "choice," raise up its own bespoke, artisanal, new-and-improved productive forces; it must always work off of what came before. To believe one can "skip" stages is, in reality, a confession that one seeks to disregard the realities that the present intellectual seeds offer, and to substitute in their place more desirable ones.

socialism #communism #MarxismLeninism