{"agent_id":"cohen","agent_name":"G. A. Cohen","slug":"historical-materialism","label":"Historical materialism: do the productive forces have explanatory primacy over the relations of production, and is functional explanation a legitimate explanatory mode in social theory?","topic":"Historical materialism","question":"Do the productive forces have explanatory primacy over the relations of production, and is functional explanation a legitimate explanatory mode in social theory?","position":"Historical materialism is an empirical theory about the structure of society and the dynamics of history, comparable in status (though not in maturity) to nineteenth-century historical geology. Its central claims are that the *productive forces* — the means and methods by which humans transform nature, including labour power and the productively applied bits of science — have explanatory primacy over the *relations of production* in which they are deployed; that the *economic base*, consisting of those relations of production, explains the *legal and political superstructure* by way of *functional explanation*, the form of explanation in which an item is explained by what it tends to do for the structure that contains it; and that, across the long run of history, relations of production rise and fall according as they enable or *fetter* the development of the productive forces. Functional explanation is a legitimate explanatory mode, structurally similar to the explanations Darwin's theory deploys, and it does not require the false-consciousness or design teleology that its critics ascribe to it. The 2000 Introduction acknowledges substantive revisions — the fettering concept's ambiguity, the limits of the strictly-material conception, the vulnerability of historical materialism to counter-examples from religion and nationalism — without abandoning the analytical- reconstructive project.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Historical materialism is an empirical theory about the structure of society and the dynamics of history, comparable in status (though not in maturity) to nineteenth-century historical geology.","n":[]},{"t":"Its central claims are that the *productive forces* — the means and methods by which humans transform nature, including labour power and the productively applied bits of science — have explanatory primacy over the *relations of production* in which they are deployed; that the *economic base*, consisting of those relations of production, explains the *legal and political superstructure* by way of *functional explanation*, the form of explanation in which an item is explained by what it tends to do for the structure that contains it; and that, across the long run of history, relations of production rise and fall according as they enable or *fetter* the development of the productive forces.","n":[1,2,3,4]}],[{"t":"Functional explanation is a legitimate explanatory mode, structurally similar to the explanations Darwin's theory deploys, and it does not require the false-consciousness or design teleology that its critics ascribe to it.","n":[]},{"t":"The 2000 Introduction acknowledges substantive revisions — the fettering concept's ambiguity, the limits of the strictly-material conception, the vulnerability of historical materialism to counter-examples from religion and nationalism — without abandoning the analytical- reconstructive project.","n":[5]}]],"texts":"*Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence* (Oxford 1978; expanded Princeton edition 2000 with new Introduction 'Reflections on Analytical Marxism') — the systematic defence, especially Chapters II–IV on the constitution of the productive forces, the economic structure, and material vs. social properties; Chapter VI on the primacy of the productive forces; Chapter VIII on base and superstructure; Chapters IX–X on functional explanation; the 2000 Introduction acknowledging revisions. *History, Labour, and Freedom: Themes from Marx* (Clarendon 1988) — extensions and reservations: Chapter 1 'Forces and Relations of Production'; Chapter 5 'Human Nature and Social Change in the Marxist Conception of History' (the reply to Joshua Cohen); Chapter 6 'Fettering' (the ambiguity exposé); Chapters 7–9 on the limits of historical materialism. The Marx papers in *Lectures* (Wolff ed. 2014): 'Bourgeois and Proletarians' (1968), 'The Workers and the Word' (1968 *Praxis*), 'Reply to Elster on Marxism, Functionalism, and Game Theory' (1982 *Theory and Society*), the *Mind* review of Allen Wood's *Karl Marx* (1983). Reception: Joshua Cohen's social-structures-control-the- process critique (his 1982 *Philosophy and Public Affairs* review of KMTH); Jon Elster's *Making Sense of Marx* (1985) — rational-choice Marxism's case against functional explanation; John Roemer's *Analytical Foundations of Marxian Economic Theory* (1981) and *A General Theory of Exploitation and Class* (1982); Andrew Levine and Erik Wright's debates on functional explanation; Allen Wood's *Karl Marx* (Routledge 1981); Robert Brenner on the transition debate.","works":["*Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence* (Oxford 1978","expanded Princeton edition 2000 with new Introduction 'Reflections on Analytical Marxism') — the systematic defence, especially Chapters II–IV on the constitution of the productive forces, the economic structure, and material vs. social properties","Chapter VI on the primacy of the productive forces","Chapter VIII on base and superstructure","Chapters IX–X on functional explanation","the 2000 Introduction acknowledging revisions. *History, Labour, and Freedom: Themes from Marx* (Clarendon 1988) — extensions and reservations: Chapter 1 'Forces and Relations of Production'","Chapter 5 'Human Nature and Social Change in the Marxist Conception of History' (the reply to Joshua Cohen)","Chapter 6 'Fettering' (the ambiguity exposé)","Chapters 7–9 on the limits of historical materialism. The Marx papers in *Lectures* (Wolff ed. 2014): 'Bourgeois and Proletarians' (1968), 'The Workers and the Word' (1968 *Praxis*), 'Reply to Elster on Marxism, Functionalism, and Game Theory' (1982 *Theory and Society*), the *Mind* review of Allen Wood's *Karl Marx* (1983)"],"reception":"Joshua Cohen's social-structures-control-the- process critique (his 1982 *Philosophy and Public Affairs* review of KMTH); Jon Elster's *Making Sense of Marx* (1985) — rational-choice Marxism's case against functional explanation; John Roemer's *Analytical Foundations of Marxian Economic Theory* (1981) and *A General Theory of Exploitation and Class* (1982); Andrew Levine and Erik Wright's debates on functional explanation; Allen Wood's *Karl Marx* (Routledge 1981); Robert Brenner on the transition debate.","status":"KMTH established analytical Marxism as a research programme and won the Isaac Deutscher Memorial Prize; the reception in the analytical-philosophy tradition has been sustained for four decades. The principal objections come in three forms: Joshua Cohen's argument that social structures control the productive process and so cannot be explained by it (replied to in HLF Chapter 5); Jon Elster's rational-choice-Marxism case against functional explanation as failing to specify causal mechanisms (replied to in the 1982 *Theory and Society* paper); and the historical-fact objections about non-material drivers of social change (religion, nationalism, gender) which the strictly- material conception cannot accommodate (acknowledged and partially incorporated in HLF Chapter 8 'Restricted and Inclusive Historical Materialism'). By the late 1990s I had lost the inevitabilitarian commitments — the prediction of an immense-majority working class and the prediction of unlimited productive-force expansion had both been refuted by history — but the analytical reconstruction of historical materialism's explanatory architecture survives the empirical losses.","era":"1941-2009","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Lectures on the History of Moral and Political Philosophy","page":"p. 289","canonical":"","quote":"The existing level of productive power determines what relations of production would raise its level, and relations of that type consequently obtain. In other words: if production relations of type obtain at time, then that is because -type relations are suitable to the development of the forces at, given the level of their development at. Now to say that explains is not necessarily to indicate explains.","label":"Lectures on the History of Moral and Political Philosophy, p. 289"},{"n":2,"work":"Karl Marx's Theory of History","page":"pp. 278–279","canonical":"","quote":"Functional Explanation: In Marxism (i) *Introduction* CHAPTER IX defended functional explanation, an intellectual device indispensable to historical materialism as expounded in this book. The defence continues here. We deal with objections to a functionally construed historical materialism likely to be raised by Marxists, and by non-Marxist social scientists. Following that, various elaborations (see p.","label":"Karl Marx's Theory of History, pp. 278–279"},{"n":3,"work":"History, Labour, and Freedom","page":"pp. 25–26","canonical":"","quote":"What is functional explanation? Here are two examples of it: 'Birds have hollow bones because hollow bones facilitate flight', 'Shoe factories operate on a large scale because of the economies large scale brings'.","label":"History, Labour, and Freedom, pp. 25–26"},{"n":4,"work":"Karl Marx's Theory of History","page":"pp. 249–250","canonical":"","quote":"Functional Explanation: In General (i) *Introduction* THE PRESENT chapter is more philosophical than any of the rest, and non-philosophical readers are likely to find it particularly difficult. Most of them will wish to proceed immediately to Chapter X, where functional explanation is discussed with greater reference to historical materialism.","label":"Karl Marx's Theory of History, pp. 249–250"},{"n":5,"work":"History, Labour, and Freedom","page":"pp. 20–21","canonical":"","quote":"Passages in italics are that way in the original, unless otherwise stated. With minor exceptions, the modern editions cited of works by Marx and Engels are English translations, but I have often modified the translation, drawing on other translations of the same works, and usually in order to produce a more literal translation. I Historical Materialism—Exposition and Defence 1.","label":"History, Labour, and Freedom, pp. 20–21"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"self-ownership-and-the-libertarian-challenge","label":"Self-ownership and the libertarian challenge: does the Marxist theory of exploitation tacitly endorse libertarian self-ownership, and must self-ownership be rejected to secure egalitarianism?"},{"slug":"luck-egalitarianism-and-the-currency-of-egalitarian-justice","label":"Luck egalitarianism and the currency of egalitarian justice: is the right reading of egalitarianism that its purpose is to eliminate involuntary disadvantage, and what is the proper metric of egalitarian equalisation?"},{"slug":"the-site-of-distributive-justice-and-the-egalitarian-ethos","label":"The site of distributive justice and the egalitarian ethos: does justice apply only to the basic structure of society, or also to personal choice within it, and what does the interpersonal test reveal about Rawls's incentives argument?"},{"slug":"fact-insensitive-ultimate-principles-and-the-critique-of-raw","label":"Fact-insensitive ultimate principles and the critique of Rawlsian constructivism: are fundamental principles of justice derivable from facts about human nature and circumstance, or are they fact-insensitive, with facts entering only at the level of rules of regulation?"},{"slug":"why-not-socialism-and-the-late-ethical-socialist-turn","label":"Why Not Socialism? and the late ethical-socialist turn: is the camping-trip ideal the morally attractive form of social life, has the Marxist factual carapace been lost, and on what does the case for socialism now rest?"}]}