Rationality and Class Struggle

Two of the pivotal concepts in Marxist theory are the forces of production (roughly, technology) and relations of production. In Marx's own writing there is a tendency for the forces of production to be given primacy over the relations of production. Contemporary Marxist theorists, on the other hand, have generally reversed the order of causal primacy, emphasizing the ways in which the relations of production determine the forces of production. This paper systematically examines the problem of the causal linkage between these two fundamental categories. Specifically it provides an extended critique of a recent defense by G.A. Cohen of the classical Marxist position. Cohen argues that social change is basically explained by the rational interest classes have in the development of the forces of production. When a given social structure blocks that development, class struggle will eventually produce the necessary structural change for the forces to advance once again. In this sense, he argues, the forces of production are primary in the explanation of the relations of production (i.e., the persistence or change of the relations is explained by development or stagnation of the forces). The heart of the critique presented in the paper is that social change is as fundamentally shaped by the capacities of classes for struggle as it is by their interests in various outcomes of struggle, and that while their interests may plausibly be tied to the development of the forces of production (and thus explained by those forces), their capacities for struggle are much more determined by the relations of production themselves.