Capitalist society has a dynamic tendency towards constant technological change — change in products, methods of production, and in the ways workers are managed in the production process. But technological development under capitalism is inherently conflicted — it provides human benefits but is also highly destructive in various ways.
Capitalist firms make money by producing commodities they sell to us. Many of these products are things we do want to have produced — drugs that help to lengthen people’s lives, food we consume, clothes we wear, houses we live in. Benefits from desired products form the positive side to capitalist technological development.
There are those who look primarily at the positive contribution of capitalist technological development, and see only a drive for “human progress.” Among socialists there are those who think the problem with capitalist technological development is not the technology it does develop, but its failure to develop production of goods and services that are desirable but not profitable. This idea of capitalist technology as “progressive” and “class-neutral” or “socially neutral” is called productivism.
For socialists who hold this view the goal of socialism is to “unleash production” from the “fetters” of the capitalist profits system. As Matthew Huber and Leigh Philips — contemporary productivists and growth enthusiasts — put it, socialism “releases production from those constraints….As markets limit production to merely the set of things that are profitable, socialism always promised to be so much more productive than capitalism.” Thus they do not critique the technology that capitalism does actually develop, but it’s failure to develop production of things that would be socially beneficial but not profitable. Their view implies that the existing capitalist technological development is not inherently antagonistic to working class interests.
In the 20th century productivism was often a feature of both social-democratic and “Marxist-Leninist” forms of socialist politics. Productivism was a popular interpretation of Marx’s theories in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. As Michael Löwy writes:
“With the process of Stalinist bureaucratization, productivist methods both in industry and agriculture were imposed by totalitarian means while ecologists were marginalized. The catastrophe of Chernobyl was the ultimate example of the disastrous consequences of this imitation of Western productive technologies.”
But there is also a dark side to capitalist technology — in environmental devastation as well as in effects on workers. The destructive character of capitalist technological development is rooted in autocratic control and exploitation of workers. There is a constant tendency to externalize costs onto workers, the larger community, and nature. The tendency to externalizing costs drives the vast problem of environmental pollution.
When a power plant burns coal to produce power, it generates emissions that may damage the respiratory systems of people down wind. The power firm doesn’t have to pay for this damage or for the contribution to global warming. This is called a “negative externality” because the damage is to people who are “external” to the firm’s sale of electric power to its customers. Global warming is a massive “negative externality” that presents humanity with the need for a green transition away from the burning of fossil fuels.
Destructive extractivist practices are also part of the dark side — such as over-fishing, clear cutting of forests. Land grabbing against indigenous peoples is another part of this — trying to get materials on the cheap.
Historical Materialism
Among socialists in the early 20th century, productivism found support in a particular interpretation of Marx’s theory of historical change — called historical materialism by his followers. Marx’s theory is based on his hypothesis about the way a society is built around its “mode of production” — the way humans organize the production of goods from the resources and capacities of nature. In Marx’s hypothesis, a mode of production has two components. The “social relations of production” are the economic structure — the way groups have social power in social production, such as the class structure and competitive dynamics of the capitalist setup. The second structural component is the “forces of production” that have been developed in that society. The forces of production include both the humans who work in production and their skills and know-how as well as the land, buildings and equipment they work with.
The theory was said to be “materialist” for two reasons. First, the ability of humans to produce material goods is central to human survival and “conditions” human life. As Marx wrote in 1844: “Industry is the actual historical relationship of nature…to man.”
In his student days Marx studied the ancient Greek naturalists and materialists who he admired. In Theses on Feuerbach, Marx compliments these earlier thinkers for understanding the reality of the world as existing independently of human consciousness. But he criticizes them for ignoring the active role of humans in creating the world we perceive, through human production and human struggle. In 20th century philosophy this thesis of the world around us existing independently of human consciousness is called realism. This is why libertarian socialist thinker G.D.H. Cole, in The Meaning of Marxism, calls Marx’s theory “the Realist Conception of History.”
Marx looks at structures of power over the control of production as real and central in human history. Marx adopts a realist theory of explanation where structural causes are a key component. Thus the class structure — “social relations of production” — form the primary structural or background cause in shaping the course of events.
In the realist theory of explanation there are always two elements needed for an explanation. For example, it might seem that a bridge collapse could be explained by passage of a heavy truck over the bridge. If the bridge collapsed under the truck, the movement of that truck onto the bridge may be the triggering or stimulus cause of the collapse. But to have a complete explanation, we’d need to look at the structural condition of the bridge and its carrying capacity. This would be a structural component in the explanation of the collapse. The mere fact an event A takes place is not sufficient to explain a following event B. The causal powers, capacities, susceptibilities, tendencies of the things in that situation are also an essential part of why A was able to cause B. Thus explanations of the direction of events require a structuring cause as well as a triggering cause.
Social events also need to be explained by looking at the background or structural factors. Thus Richard Miller (in Analyzing Marx) gives this example: “That a policeman was reported to have beaten up a black taxi driver on a certain day does not explain why there was a ghetto rebellion in Detroit in the 1960s, even though it was the cause of the rebellion.” To have an explanation, it’s necessary to look at the background condition — a structural problem of racist mistreatment in this case. This created “underlying tensions and frustrations” that “made it inevitable that some incident would trigger a rebellion.”(p. 290) Beating up the black taxi driver was just the triggering cause.
For Marx the “mode of production” is made up of structural features and structural antagonisms that provide the ultimate background conditions — structuring cause — that shape the course of social history, linking initial triggering events to their subsequent effects. The structures don’t actually “cause” anything by themselves, but are essential components in explaining what happens.
The theory of historical materialism can be interpreted in different ways. In the first half of the 20th century both social-democratic and Leninist Marxists tended to identify “development of the productive forces” with technological “progress.” The idea is that technological development under capitalism is “progressive” because the capitalist drive to increase labor productivity builds a potential for improved living standards.
G.A. Cohen’s book Marx’s Theory of History: A Defense provides perhaps the clearest and most rigorous defense of this productivist version of historical materialism. In academic philosophy in the English-speaking world in the mid-20th century there was a strong emphasis on clarity of writing and rigor in reasoning, and Cohen tries to adhere to these standards in building a defense for this version of historical materialism.
On Cohen’s reading, the theory assumes that the tendency of productive forces to develop is primary over the economic or class structure in explaining the course of history. Cohen expresses this idea in two principles:
(1) The productive forces tend to develop throughout history.
(2) The nature of the social relations of production of a society is explained by the level of development of the productive forces.
A particular class structure (“social relations of production”) may come to block (“fetter”) further technological progress. And this is then seen as the cause of a shift to a new mode of production. This implies that the tendency towards technological advance is a trans-historical force that can blow up systems of “social relations of production” that are inadequate for advancing technological development. This is essentially a form of technological determinism.
On this view, a key internal structural conflict in the capitalist “mode of production” is between the interests and power of the dominant economic class and the potential for technological progress. This idea was especially attractive to intellectuals in less developed countries who became leaders of Marxist-Leninist parties. It fit in with their focus on the technological development of their countries — as with the present obsessive focus of the Chinese Communist Party leadership on growth of the productive forces.
There is a fundamental question here that affects revolutionary politics: If the boss power hierarchy over workers is a product of technological efficiency, this implies that the structure of boss power over workers exists because it’s needed for an effective system of production. This is why productivism is part of the ideological justification for the bureaucratic boss class in Marxist-Leninist ideology. But if the managerial power structure over workers is not needed for technical efficiency, but for the extraction of profit from labor and maintenance of the position of a dominating class, it follows that worker self-management of production — without the power of an oppressor class over workers — is consistent with an effective economy.
Cohen’s theory must assume that the tendency to technological advance is independent of the “social relations of production,” that is, the system of class control over human beings in production. But the history of how capitalism develops technology to control workers — from Taylor’s speedup schemes to Ford’s “progressive production” to the latest forms of lean production as in Amazon warehouses — shows this is clearly false. There is a necessary connection between the capitalist methods of technological development and labor control, work degradation and adverse impacts on worker health.
In capitalism “improved efficiency” is typically understood as reducing the expense per unit of output. Amazon’s tight labor control is used to minimize worker hours per unit of output — and thus is a contribution to “efficiency.” Ford’s “progressive production” techniques in his auto factories enabled Ford to reduce the price of the Model-T from $800 in 1908 to $250 in 1924. Cohen must claim that all the video surveillance and algorithmic managerial techniques and computer programs for labor control in Amazon warehouses are not part of the technology of capitalist production. If the development of “work relations” of control are part of capitalist technology, then there is not the sharp separation of technology from the social relations of production that Cohen’s productivist theory requires, and this makes the theory incoherent.
Cohen’s theory is also rather implausible as a reading of history. A trend towards constant change in techniques to enhance productivity has really only existed since the emergence of industrial capitalism. For centuries human technique tended to improve only rarely — via one-off inventions, like the changes in medieval plowing techniques. Moreover, “development of the productive forces” does not seem to play a role in major historical changes. When Marx gives an historical sketch of how capitalism emerged in England, “technological progress” does not play a role.
Marx notes how “the old nobility had been devoured by the great feudal wars.” As merchant houses were gaining wealth from trade, this enabled them to buy up the landed estates of impecunious aristocrats. The merchants were aware of the rising demand for wool in Europe. With their orientation to money-making, they saw that the landed estates would be more profitable if the land were used for raising sheep, to produce wool. When this first got underway, Marx notes that wage workers were only “a very small part of the population.” But with the eviction of large numbers of peasants from their traditional use of the lands — and the seizure of common lands, ratified by parliament — huge masses of people were now tramping the roads, separated from access to the land which they formerly used for their livelihood. By the mid-1600s in England there were more than half a million property-less wage-workers — often employed by tenant farmers or entrepreneurial land barons.
This shift did not make farming activity more “efficient.” The methods of raising sheep were the same as earlier on. Marx also points to the loot acquired from early conquest and colonialism:
“The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the indigenous population of that continent, the beginnings of the conquest and plunder of India, and the conversion of Africa into a preserve for commercial hunting of blackskins, are all things which characterize the dawn of the era of capitalist production.”(Penguin 1976 edition of Capital Vol. I, p. 915)
With the expansion of European trade and colonialism, merchant houses used their wealth to set up manufacturing — such as the early system of contracting with artisans. But these early manufacturing systems also were not the result of technological change:
“With regard to the mode of manufacturing itself, manufacture…is hardly to be distinguished, in its early stages, from the handicraft trades of the guilds, other than by the greater number of workers simultaneously employed by one and the same individual capital. The workshop of the medieval master craftsman is simply enlarged.”(p.305)
Thus in Marx’s sketch of the historical origins of capitalism, technological development plays no role in the story. Of course, once the capitalist mode of production was established, its characteristic structural features would generate the dynamic tendency to constant technological change.
Moreover, Cohen doesn’t really offer a plausible account of causal processes in history that would explain the independent trans-historical tendency to technological progress. Cohen’s theory assumes a kind of teleology or inevitable direction towards “progress” in history. To defend the idea of teleology in history, Cohen makes an analogy with evolutionary theory. Evolution is able to explain functionality of biological structures and processes through the theory of natural selection which eliminates any cosmic designer in favor of physical processes. For example, eyes have the function of providing sight. The meaning of “function” is cashed out in terms of the way having sight explains survival of an animal species due to sight. The contribution of this activity to animal survival and production of offspring explains why the eye structures are reproduced down through the generations. But biological theory provides a back story to explain how this works by identifying the causal mechanisms such as random mutation and DNA copying. Cohen does not have a plausible account of the causal mechanisms that would explain a trans-historical tendency to development of the productive forces.
The fundamental defect of this productivist version of historical materialism is that it reverses cause and effect. In reality, the capitalist social relations of production largely shape the form of technological development that takes place within the capitalist regime. Competition forces firms to constantly seek to reduce expenses per unit of output, and the class power over workers in production enables them to carry out labor control schemes and constant work intensification. Thus there is an inherent tendency to deskill workers, degrade work and shift costs onto workers through stress and chemical exposures. The persistent and inherent cost-shifting tendency in capitalism is a structural feature that shapes technological decisions by capitalist firms. Capitalism has an inherent tendency to degrade work, damage worker health, and degrade the environment. Thus the dark side to capitalist technological development is rooted in the capitalist “social relations of production.” The capitalist class structure thus has causal primacy in shaping the “development of the productive forces.” This is why “development of the productive forces” under capitalism is not class neutral or socially neutral.
There are Marxists who reject the technological determinist reading of historical materialism. Thus Ellen Meiksens Wood suggests that Marx’s theory holds that in history the different “modes of production” in various societies will have their own “laws of motion” — characteristic conflicts and dynamics — not pre-determined by some trans-historical “tendency of the development of the productive forces”:
“While technological determinism takes the form of retrospective or even teleological predictions, with the benefit of hindsight, with such a degree of generality that no empirical evidence could possibly falsify it, historical materialism demands empirical specification which does not assume a predetermined outcome. So the general historical hypothesis is that every social formation will have its own characteristic “laws of motion” which are derived from the social relations of production.”
There are certain useful insights in Marx’s “mode of production” hypothesis. The way humanity makes its living through modification of nature in production processes does seem very fundamental to human societies. Moreover, the way power over social production is structured is essential to explaining the course of events in capitalist society. But here the technological determinist version of historical materialism gets in the way because it seems inconsistent with Marx’s emphasis on worker self-activity, self-organization and the struggle with the dominating classes as the path for worker “self-emancipation.”
Marx suggests that it is through struggle, self-organization and solidarity that workers change their own thinking and develop class consciousness and class cohesion. This is how a class changes from being an objectively oppressed “class in itself” to a “class for itself” — with the consciousness, confidence and organizational capacity to fight for its liberation. This is the process that Marxists call class formation. Marx believed that capitalism sets the stage for this by bringing larger masses of workers together in the capitalist workplaces. Thus as workers form unions, build greater unity and develop a class-wide alliance they “form” themselves into a force that has developed the capacity for overthrowing the capitalists, and creating a labor-managed mode of production — thus “emancipating” themselves from the class oppression regime. If this transition takes place, it will have been the structural conflict between classes that will provide the structural cause for the change — not a conflict between the economic class structure and the “development of the productive forces.”
This emphasis on the protracted process of building working class self-organization, militancy, and solidarity, and the coming together of organized social forces in an alliance or class front with the capacity to challenge the dominating classes for control is also central to anarcho-syndicalism. This is an area where there is a certain overlap between social anarchist strategy and certain aspects of Marxism.
The class-struggle oriented social anarchist movement first came together as the “federalist socialist” tendency in the International Workingmen’s Association of 1864-78. The social theory developed by various autodidacts and activist writers in this movement over the years was a foundation for the anarcho-syndicalist unions of the early 20th century. This theory was influenced by Marx but was more elastic. Agreeing to some extent with Marx’s emphasis on the central role of the “mode of production” and class struggle, social anarchism tended to see several distinct fault lines or structural conflicts in capitalist society — the class oppression and exploitation that drives capitalist dynamics and class struggle, the state as a relatively autonomous source of coercive force and class oppression, and the patriarchist subordination of women as another source of oppression.
Just as the development of the productive forces is supposed to explain why we have the economic structure we do, on Cohen’s theory, the “social relations of production” are supposed to explain the features of the legal and governmental system. The idea is that the state institutions survive over time because of their role in sustaining and protecting the capitalist accumulation game. The state — the legal and political institutions — are said to be “superstructural” because their function is to protect and sustain the economic base.
But this assumes the class system is independent of the state. In reality, class oppression is inherent to the state itself. We can see this in the subordination of workers in the public sector to a top-down corporate-style managerial bureaucracy — teachers, public transit workers, road maintenance workers, and so on. Moreover, political power and coercive public institutions were also implicated in the emergence and creation of capitalism — a point emphasized in social anarchist theory. Many of the “social relations of production” in history can’t even be specified without looking at the way political power is organized. Thus the base/superstructure distinction is incoherent.
There can be conflicts between technological development and entrenched class power (as we see in the conflict between the green tech transition and entrenched fossil capital) but these conflicts are only one fault line in the society. There is the fundamental class conflict between the subordination and exploitation of workers and the direct resistance and struggle developed by workers and their organizations to fight back. And there are other structural fault lines such as around capitalism’s tendency to exploit caring work through shifting of costs to unpaid or poorly paid care workers (especially women). And today, of course, capital’s inherent tendency to degrade nature through cost-shifting has reached crisis proportions — threatening the very human civilization capitalism is based on. What we are beginning to see increasingly today is a convergence between the class struggle and the struggle against capitalism’s tendency to environmental devastation. The growing green unionist tendency in various countries today is a living realization of this convergence.