Title: Ideology and Mode of Production
1Ideology and Mode of Production
- Mathew Forstater
- Economics and Black Studies
2Marxist Approaches to Ideology
- Traditional Historical Materialism (THM), e.g.,
Plekhanov, took a position that could be
described as economic determinism. The economic
base determined the political, ideological, and
cultural superstructures of the mode of
production.
3Mode of Production
- A particular articulation of the forces of
production and relations of production. - The mode of production controversy was
stimulated by several developments
4Mode of Production
- A particular articulation of the forces of
production and relations of production. - The mode of production controversy was
stimulated by several developments - The English publication of Marxs Grundrisse
(Formen, 1964 full text, 1973)
5Mode of Production
- A particular articulation of the forces of
production and relations of production. - The mode of production controversy was
stimulated by several developments - The English publication of Marxs Grundrisse
(Formen, 1964 full text, 1973) - Althussers reading of Capital (1968, 1970)
6Mode of Production
- A particular articulation of the forces of
production and relations of production. - The mode of production controversy was
stimulated by several developments - The English publication of Marxs Grundrisse
(Formen, 1964 full text, 1973) - Althussers reading of Capital (1968, 1970)
- Advances in economic anthropology (especially
since Marxs time)
7Developments in Marxist theory
- The new alternative view that resulted rejected
economism, including the
8Developments in Marxist theory
- The new alternative view that resulted rejected
economism, including the - Interpretation of the superstructure as a mere
reflection of the economic base
9Developments in Marxist theory
- The new alternative view that resulted rejected
economism, including the - Interpretation of the superstructure as a mere
reflection of the economic base - Mechanistic vision of society and social change
10Developments in Marxist theory
- The new alternative view that resulted rejected
economism, including the - Interpretation of the superstructure as a mere
reflection of the economic base - Mechanistic vision of society and social change
- Linear view of stages of development (primitive
communism, antiquity, feudal, capitalism,
socialism, communism, with Asiatic mode at a
tangent)
11Last Instance Determination
- Many of these formulations tended to stop short
of entirely vacating the position of identifying
the economic base as the location of ultimate
primacy. Instead, the economy is said to
determine the superstructures, in the last
instance.
12Last instance determinism
- Samir Amin, e.g., writes that
- Of course, whatever the mode of production may
be, the economic instance is the determinant one
in the last analysis, if we accept the fact that
material life conditions all other aspects of
social life. (1976, p. 24)
13Economism, materialism, and social transformation
- Implicit in Amins statement is the notion that
what is economic is material, but that the
rest of social life is not. - The purpose of this presentation is, in part, to
challenge this view, and to investigate whether
an alternative one can assist in understanding
societal transformation.
14Revised Historical Materialism (RHM)
- The most rigorous formulations of last instance
determination are largely associated with the
names Althusser and Godelier, although the
concept can be traced back through the Frankfurt
School, Gramsci, Lukacs, and Korsch, among
others, to Engels, who wrote that he and Marx
often overstated their economism as a rhetorical
device intended to clearly distinguish their
position from the dominant idealist and bourgeois
interpretations of history.
15Antonio Gramsci
- Gramsci, e.g., wrote that
- The claim presented as an essential postulate of
historical materialism, that every fluctuation of
politics and ideology can be presented and
expounded as an immediate expression of the
economic structure, must be contested in theory
as primitive infantilism. (1971 1930-32)
16Louis Althusser
- Althussers position is neatly summarized by
Balibar - The economy is determinant in that it determines
which of the instances of the social structure
occupies the determinant place. (1970, p. 224)
17determinant versus dominant
- Jonathan Friedmans (1975) translation of the
last two words of the previous sentence as
dominant position (instead of determinant
place), highlights (where Brewsters does not)
Althussers crucial distinction between
determinant and dominant.
18Example of feudalism
- The political instance may be dominant in the
feudal mode of production, but it is because the
specificity of that mode of production requires
that particular non-economic means of
guaranteeing the relations of production
necessary for its reproduction. The economic
base thus determines that the political instance
is dominant in feudalism.
19kinship-based and capitalist systems
- In many pre-capitalist modes of production,
kinship occupies the dominant position, but
Althusser argues that this dominance is
ultimately determined by the economic base. - For Althusser, in capitalism the economic base
determines that itself is dominant and thus the
capitalist mode is one in which the base is both
determinant and dominant.
20Maurice Godelier
- Godelier (1978) criticizes Althussers version of
last instance determinism for - reifying the economic instance
- being ahistorical
- failing to draw the crucial distinction between
institutions and functions
21Maurice Godelier
- Godelier (1978) criticizes Althussers version of
last instance determinism for - reifying the economic instance
- Althusser presents his analysis as though the
economy selects the instance to be dominant,
ascribing the power to choose to a theoretical
category.
22Maurice Godelier
- Godelier (1978) criticizes Althussers version of
last instance determinism for - 2) being ahistorical
- Many have criticized Althussers method as
super-theoretical, lacking the necessary
grounding provided by the historical approach.
23Maurice Godelier
- Godelier (1978) criticizes Althussers version of
last instance determinism for - 3) failing to draw the crucial distinction
between institutions and functions - Most importantly, this failure prohibits
Althusser from seeing how, in particular social
formations, political and ideological
institutions function as relations of production
and therefore as infrastructure. This is what
Marx shows in the Grundrisse.
24Ideology
- Raymond Williams three common definitions
- (i) a system of beliefs characteristic of a
particular class or group - (ii) a system of illusory beliefsfalse ideas or
false consciousnesswhich can be contrasted with
true or scientific knowledge - (iii) the general process of the production of
meanings and ideas.
25Ideology as false consciousness
- This is the bourgeois presentation of Marx and
Engels, and can be found in some of their early
writings (e.g., The German Ideology), but a
broader idea of ideology can be found in Marx
that is closer to versions (i) and (iii).
26consciousness and its products
- are always, though in variable forms, parts of
the material social process itself whether in
what Marx called the necessary element of
imagination in the labour process or as the
necessary conditions of associated labour, in
language and in practical ideas of relationship
or, which is so often and significantly
forgotten, in the real processesall of them
physical and material, most of them manifestly
sowhich are masked and idealized as
consciousness and its products but which, when
seen without illusions, are themselves
necessarily social material activities.
(Williams, 1977, 61-62)
27Stephan Feuchtwang
- The separation of consciousness or the ideal
from non-consciousness or the social as
independent factors of human reality either takes
ideas and consciousness out of social reality or
divides every social unity into two aspects
along the same categorical linesMarxs
materialism precisely is not a fundamental
categorical separation of thought from material
human being. (1975)
28Feuchtwang, Investigating Religion
- Ideological production, the production and
communication of ideas, is no more purely ideal a
practice than economic production is purely
material. It is nothing if it is not socialSince
ideologies are social, they are qualities of
historically specific relations between concrete
individuals, and so they are material.
29Keith Tribe, 1978
- What is the history of economics the history
of? - The economy is presented as prior to or
independent of its discursive characterizations
and the latter conceived as an adequate or
inadequate reflection of it. But how can this
economy be presented as independent of discursive
characterization and thus given privileged status
as a measure of the discourse(s) that succeed or
fail to reflect it? Only on the condition that
some dubious metaphysical distinction is made
between the real world and the world of
ideas. However, a sleight of hand intervenes
whenever this form of distinction is invoked, for
it is not in fact the economy which governs the
periodisation of economic thought but a certain
description of it, a particular discursive form.
The pretended privilege of the real world over
the world of ideas is nothing more than the
privilege of one discursive order over another in
which unconditioned descriptive statements
condition theoretical ones since the
confrontation takes place within discourse, it
cannot be anything else. What is particularly
insidious about this procedure is that it is
assumed that since the economy is real and
material, mere reference to the texts of
economic histories is sufficient for the
character of the economy in question to be
established.
30Marxs Grundrisse the Formen
- Contrary to the traditional lineal view of
successive modes of production, in the Formen,
Marx posits alternative possible paths out of
primitive communalism. Two of these are the
Asiatic and the Germanic. - In these, the relationship between the
individual, the means of production, and the
community differ.
31Asiatic and Germanic Modes
- Whereas in the Asiatic MOP, the individual
(household or extended family) has access to the
means of production as a result of their
membership in the community, in the Germanic MOP
individual membership in the community is
mediated by possession of means of production.
32Germanic Mode of Production
- As Marx emphasizes, in the Germanic mode, the
individual household made up of the extended
family (or homestead of several families) is the
unit of production. There is no central
political authority. The community only exists
in its assembly. Often this takes the form of
kinship or age-set organization, ideological
(religious or ritual) institutions that function
as relations of production.
33Germanic Mode
- Another form of the property of working
individuals, self- sustaining members of the
community, in the natural conditions of their
labour, is the Germanic. Here the commune member
is neither, as such, a co-possessor of the
communal property, as in the specifically
oriental form (wherever property exists only as
communal property, there the individual member is
as such only possessor of a particular part,
hereditary or not, since any fraction of the
property belongs to no member for himself, but to
him only as immediate member of the commune, i.e.
as in direct unity with it, not in distinction to
it. This individual is thus only a possessor.
What exists is only communal property, and only
private possession. (pp. 476-477)
34Community in GMOP
- Among the Germanic tribes, where the individual
family chiefs settled in the forests, long
distances apart, the commune exists, already from
outward observation, only in the periodic
gathering-together Vereinigung of the commune
members, although their unity-in-itself is
posited in their ancestry, language, common past
and history, etc. The commune thus appears as a
coming-together Vereinigung, not as a
being-together Verein as a unification made up
of independent subjects, landed proprietors, and
not as a unity. (p. 483)
35Articulation of domestic and communal forms of
production
- Individual property does not appear mediated by
the commune rather, the existence of the commune
and of communal property appear as mediated by,
i.e. as a relation of, the independent subjects
to one another. The economic totality is, at
bottom, contained in each individual household,
which forms an independent centre of production
for itself. (pp. 483-484)
36complementary communal property
- True, the ager publicus, the communal or people's
land, as distinct from individual property, also
occurs among the Germanic tribes. It takes the
form of hunting land, grazing land, timber land
etc., the part of the land which cannot be
divided if it is to serve as means of production
in this specific form. But this ager publicus
does not appear, as with the Romans e.g., as the
particular economic presence of the state as
against the private proprietors, so that these
latter are actually private proprietors as such,
in so far as they are excluded, deprived, like
the plebeians, from using the ager publicus.
Among the Germanic tribes, the ager publicus
appears rather merely as a complement to
individual property, and figures as property only
to the extent that it is defended militarily as
the common property of one tribe against a
hostile tribe. (p. 483)
37an initial, naturally arisen spontaneous
community
- Family, and the family extended as a clan
Stamm, 63 or through intermarriage between
families, or combination of clans. Since we may
assume that pastoralism, or more generally a
migratory form of life, was the first form of the
mode of existence, not that the clan settles in a
specific site, but that it grazes off what it
finds -- then the clan community, the natural
community, appears not as a result of, but as a
presupposition for the communal appropriation
(temporary) and utilization of the land. - (p. 472)
38cultural-historical mediators
- When they finally do settle down, the extent to
which this original community is modified will
depend on various external, climatic, geographic,
physical etc. conditions as well as on their
particular natural predisposition -- their clan
character. This naturally arisen clan community,
or, if one will, pastoral society, is the first
presupposition -- the communality
Gemeinschaftlichkeit of blood, language,
customs -- for the appropriation of the objective
conditions of their life, and of their life's
reproducing and objectifying activity (activity
as herdsmen, hunters, tillers etc.). (p. 472)
39Ideology and communal relations of production
- In the Germanic formthe basis is rather the
isolated, independent family residence,
guaranteed by the bond with other such family
residences of the same tribe, and by their
occasional coming-together Zusammnenkommen to
pledge each others' allegiance in war, religion,
adjudication etc. (p. 484)
40Age-set organization
- The clan system in itself leads to higher and
lower ancestral lineages Geschlechtern, 64
Geschlechter may also refer to the sexes,
linguistic groups, generations, etc. It is not
entirely certain which of these distinctions Marx
had foremost in mind here. (p. 474)
41Ideology functioning as relations of production
- obligation of all members of the gens to help
those of their own who require this, to carry
unaccustomed burdens. (This occurs originally
everywhere among the Germans, remains longest
among the Dithmarschen.) (p. 478)
42Communal form of production
- the commune, on the one side, is presupposed
in-itself prior to the individual proprietors as
a communality of language, blood etc., but it
exists as a presence, on the other hand, only in
its real assembly for communal purposes and to
the extent that it has a particular economic
existence in the hunting and grazing lands for
communal use, it is so used by each individual
proprietor as such, not as representative of the
state (as in Rome) it is really the common
property of the individual proprietors, not of
the union of these proprietors endowed with an
existence separate from themselves. - (p. 484)
43Cultural-historical mediators
- these different forms of the commune or tribe
members' relation to the tribe's land and soil --
to the earth where it has settled -- depend
partly on the natural inclinations of the tribe,
and partly on the economic conditions in which it
relates as proprietor to the land and soil in
reality, i.e. in which it appropriates its fruits
through labour, and the latter will itself depend
on climate, physical make-up of the land and
soil, the physically determined mode of its
exploitation, the relation with hostile tribes or
neighbor tribes, and the modifications which
migrations, historic experiences etc. introduce
(p. 486)
44definite mode of lifecultural historical
mediators
- From The German Ideology
- The way in which men produce their means of
subsistence depends first of all on the nature of
the actual means of subsistence they find in
existence and have to reproduce and conscious
choice within a cultural-historical context.
45 The German Ideology
- This mode of production must not be considered
simply as being the production of the physical
existence of the individuals. Rather it is a
definite form of activity of these individuals, a
definite form of expressing their life, a
definite mode of life on their part.
46Grundrisse Marxs mediators
- The study in detail of the materialist dialectic
in the Grundrisse would have to be a study of
Marxs mediations. (Nicholaus, p. 40)
47The Formen
- There are multiple possible paths of historical
social transformation - There are a plurality of instances capable of
functioning as infrastructures (i.e., relations
of production)
48Socialist transformation
- What lessons are there in the Formen for
potential paths out of capitalism and the
possibilities for socialism or other
post-capitalist possibilities?