A Critique of Mau: Mute Compulsion and Other Essays E-Book

Ib Gram-Jensen

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 302

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

The two first essays in A Critique of Mau: Mute Compulsion and Other Essays are critiques of Mau and Meiksins Wood for misreading Marx on the inevitability of the supersession of capitalism by socialism and eventually classless communist society. The third one discusses Hindess & Hirst: Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production as a link between Althusserian Structural Marxism on the one hand and Laclau & Mouffe's discourse analysis and Keith Jenkins' postmodernist rejection of history on the other. The fourth one summarises some main points made in the author's Structure, Agency and Theory, critique of which is countered in the fifth one. The sixth one defends some points made in his Experience and Historical Materialism, while the seventh and last one adds some further comments on the problem of reading Marx.

Leseprobe

For Susanne

Contents

Introduction

A Critique of Mau:

Mute Compulsion

A Critical Comment on Meiksins Wood: “History or Technological Determinism?”

Comments on Hindess & Hirst:

Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production

Human Agency

In Defence of

Structure, Agency and Theory

On

Experience and Historical Materialism

Once Again, the Problem of Reading Marx

References

Introduction.

The three first of the seven essays in this book are critiques of Søren Mau’s Mute Compulsion, Ellen Meiksins Wood’s essay “History or Technological Determinism” in her book Democracy Against Capitalism and Barry Hindess & Paul Q. Hirst’s Pre-capitalist Modes of Production respectively. The two firstmentioned are criticised for giving a misleading account of Marx’ (and Engels’) historical materialism, more precisely for the failure to recognise the conception of the dialectic of forces and relations of production as the motive power of historical development and transformations as a core element in that historical materialism, and the expectation and predictions of the inevitability of the transition from capitalism to socialism and eventually classless communist society based upon it.

Two comments are in order. Firstly, while this failure involves an astounding misreading of Marxian texts, neither book is rejected in toto; both are valuable in other respects. Secondly, the conception of the dialectic of forces and relations of production as the motive power of historical development and transformations is by no means considered valid by this writer. The point, however, is that it should be recognised as a weakness in Marx’ and Engels’ historical materialism, and the theoretical and strategic implications of its shortcomings dealt with, rather than evading them by failing to accept its reality. In this way, the critique is in continuation of that made of other texts in Experience and Historical Materialism and Structure, Agency and Theory, and serves as a warning to readers not to consider the latter proved wrong by Mau or Meiksins Wood.

This is not just a matter of getting the record straight, though it is also that; as noted in A Critique of Mau: Mute Compulsion, Mau’s and Meiksins Wood’s misreading of Marx reduces the failure of his (and Engels’) expectations and predictions about the inevitability of the supersession of capitalism to come true to a theoretical non-problem and glosses over a yawning gap in terms of revolutionary-socialist strategy.

Hindess & Hirst’s argument is rejected in its entirety. The critique of it is mainly made because it forms a link between Althusserian structuralism on the one hand and Laclau & Mouffe’s discourse-analytical approach and Keith Jenkins’ postmodernist rejection of history as a discipline on the other, and thus a continuation of the critique of discourse analysis in Structure, Agency and Theory, and of both in Experience and Historical Materialism.

The three next essays are made to counter critique of Structure, Agency and Theory and the argument on Marxian historical materialism in that and Experience and Historical Materialism, and some critique that might be made against some of the argument in the latter, more specifically in its Afterword. The first of them is a slightly modified translation of a paper read by this writer at a gathering in Copenhagen on 16 March 2022 arranged by the Institute of Marxist Analysis, setting forth some of the argument in Structure, Agency and Theory. The second one deals with critique against it made by a reviewer and at the said gathering. And the third one argues that some points which may seem provocative in the Afterword of Experience and Historical Materialism are actually at least to some extent vindicated by textual evidence. The closing seventh essay deals with the problem of reading Marx, with Mau as an example.

Readers may wonder why so much is made of Mau’s and Meiksins Wood’s misreadings of Marx, with so much going over the same terrain, and the same Marxian texts, twice or more. One answer is that this is part of an effort to demonstrate the very fact of these misreadings and suggest how surprising they are, or should be: how strange it is that people with such excellent qualifications for getting Marx’ (and Engels’) historical materialism right nevertheless get it so wrong in spite of the available evidence. Apart from methodical problems with the actual way of reading and interpreting this evidence, one cause would seem to be the hardening of a certain line of interpretation into an orthodoxy in various quarters, but no definitive explanation can be offered here.

Finally, a word on quotations. The essays have been written over a period of time, with no original plan to publish them together. As they turn, to a considerable degree, on related issues, quotations, often of considerable length, of or from the same passages tend to recur; apart from saving the trouble of inserting cross-references from essay to essay, it is probably more convenient for readers to be able to read them in the different contexts of the individual essays rather than having to leaf back to a previous one. As for the length of the quotations, the very extent to which Marx and Engels have been misinterpreted, often flagrantly inconsistently with the textual evidence, testifies to the need for careful documentation.

1. A Critique of Mau: Mute Compulsion .

If a somewhat “long series of quotations the aim of which is to prove that the presented reading is correct” is admissible, a critical examination of the argument on Marxian determinism in Mau’s Mute Compulsion is relevant. Firstly, because this book, which is a serious and otherwise valuable work in many ways, is so much at variance with the argument on this subject in Structure, Agency and Theory. Secondly, because it is likely to be widely read by people interested in historical materialism, and may well be referred to as an authoritative text by those critical towards such arguments on Marxian determinism1 as that in Structure, Agency and Theory. Thirdly, as an illustration of the extent to which the misreading of Marx and Engels to the effect that they did not consider the transition from capitalism to socialism and eventually classless communist society inevitable has become a kind of orthodoxy the substantiation of which is partly “done” by reference to various authorities, partly by reference to textual evidence which does not, in fact, support it. And fourthly, because Mau is indeed fundamentally wrong about a crucial aspect of Marx’ (and Engels’) historical materialism, their conception of the dialectic of forces and relations of production as the motive power of historical development and transformations. Readers of Mute Compulsion should be made aware of this, even if they may find much of interest in the book too. The mute compulsion of capitalist economic relations2 has not, to be sure, actually been forgotten in the Marxist tradition,3 but it is still an important point which is worthy of the renewed attention drawn to it by Mau, whose book contains several interesting observations.

Readers may wonder about this positive evaluation of Mute Compulsion as a whole on the one hand and the perhaps rather harsh criticism in this essay on the other. The explanation is, however, quite simple. In his Introduction to the book, Mau writes:

This book is not a Marxological treatise; its ultimate aim is to understand capitalism, not Marx. Sometimes, however, the former presupposes the latter. For this reason, I do occasionally engage in discussions of Marx’s intellectual development and other topics that might seem to be merely Marxological intricacies – but only when they ultimately help us understand capitalism.4

Mute Compulsion does contribute to the understanding of capitalism, especially the economic power of capitalism. Marx’ intellectual development is a secondary matter in it, but one on which the argument is so faulty that a warning against accepting it is called for – and this is the subject of this essay.

Before entering into the main quarrel with Mau’s reading of Marx, it may, as more than just a kind of curiosity, be noted that his reading of Parsons is misleading too. Parsons is given rather short shrift: “It is not uncommon to come across references to Marx in debates on power in social sciences. Some scholars are rather dismissive; Talcott Parsons, for example, regards Marx’s critique of capitalism as outdated, empiricist political economy.”5 Actually, Parsons writes:

The permanent importance of the Marxian exploitation theory for the present discussion lies, however, not in these peculiar technicalities which are now mainly only of antiquarian interest. It lies rather in the fact that, starting as Marx did from the element of class conflict, the center of his attention was on bargaining power. Thus in a particular case he reintroduced the factor of differences of power into social thinking, which had been so important in Hobbes’ philosophy and so neglected since. The particular classical trappings of the theory are of quite secondary importance and their correction in terms of modern economic theory does not alter the essentials, though it does the form of statement and some of the secondary results.6

This is not quite as dismissive as one would think from Mau’s words. Indeed, in a note to this paragraph Parsons warns against “throwing out the baby with the bath” by repudiating Marx altogether, adding that modern economist “have done this essentially because they have in general shared the implicit assumption of a natural identity of interests.”7 In fact the paragraph just quoted, and the following one,8 might seem to point towards a notion of “mute coercion” inherent in capitalist relations. And at a later point, Parsons does deliver what is in effect a summary of that notion:

Marx, through his doctrine of interests, elevated not only competition but the whole structure of the economic order into a great control mechanism, a compulsive system. This is the essential meaning of Marx’s conception of economic determinism. It is not a matter of psychological antirationalism, but of the total consequences of a multitude of rational acts. On the one hand, the system itself is the resultant of the myriad of individual acts but, on the other, it creates for each acting individual a specific situation which compels him to act in certain ways if he is not to go contrary to his interest. Thus for Marx exploitation was to be blamed on neither the unreasonableness nor the plain selfishness of the individual employer, but the employer was placed in a situation where he must act as he did, or be eliminated in the competitive struggle.

Thus, while “liberal” theory focused its main attention on the superior efficiency of an individualistic order, Marx stressed its compulsive aspect and through this the total structure of the system. The system itself would be thought of as self-acting. Once the individuals involved in it are placed in the situations that are given, their actions are “determined” so as to maintain the system as a whole, or rather drive it forward on the evolutionary course, to end at last in its self-destruction.9

Parsons has been quoted at some length, partly to suggest what is meant by the mute compulsion of capitalist economic relations, although Parsons does not, in the quoted passages, spell out the specific compulsion on agents without means of production apart from their labour-power to put this labour-power up for sale, thus making it possible for the owners of capital to appropriate surplus value and/or surplus labour from them. And partly to draw attention to the weakness of Mau’s reading of this theorist, a weakness which, as will be shown below, is also demonstrable in his reading of Marx himself.

Returning, therefore, to Mau, he offers a definition of the interaction between social circumstances and agency which is unobjectionable:

What drives history is not the immanent and necessary development of the productive forces, but human beings acting within a set of determinate social structures from which certain tendencies arise. Some modes of production thwart technological development, others – such as capitalism – accelerate some forms of it.10

But before that, he makes the following assertion, which must be quoted at full length:

The primacy ascribed to productive forces in orthodox historical materialism is, as I have already mentioned, also possible to find in many of Marx’s writings. In The German Ideology, he and Engels are quite unambiguous: ‘In the development of productive forces there comes a stage when productive forces and means of intercourse are brought into being which, under the existing relations, only cause mischief, and are no longer productive but destructive forces.’ In this familiar scheme, the relations of production are that variable which adapts to the immanently developing productive forces. This position is restated in writings such as The Poverty of Philosophy and the Communist Manifesto and achieved its paradigmatic formulation in the preface to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (quoted in chapter three). As he delved into a detailed study of technology in the early 1860s, however, Marx changed his views. He now began to regard the development of the productive forces as a result of the relations of production. Apparently, Marx did not realise just how significant a theoretical change this was, and he continued to hold on to some of the core ideas of productive force determinism in some of his writings from the 1860s. Perhaps the best example is a famous passage from chapter thirty-two of the first volume of Capital, where he claims that ‘capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a natural process, its own negation’. As Heinrich has rightly pointed out, however, this passage is merely ‘declamatory’ and does not constitute a ‘prerequisite for [the] essential arguments of the critique of political economy’. Marx’s productive force determinism relies on the unwarranted assumption of a transhistorically necessary tendency for the productive forces to develop, regardless of the specific relations of production under which they are put to use – an assumption which is essentially external to Marx’s general theoretical framework. After the publication of the French edition of the first volume of Capital (1872-75) – the last edition Marx prepared – productive force determinism disappears entirely from his writings. Towards the end of his life, he even explicitly opposed determinist readings of his work. In a 1877 letter to the editors of a Russian journal, Marx stressed that the sections on so-called primitive accumulation in Capital was no more than a ‘historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe’, not ‘a historico-philosophical theory of general development, imposed by fate on all peoples, whatever the historical circumstances in which they are placed’. He restated this point in his letter to Vera Zasulich from 1881, where he underlined that his analysis of ‘the “historical inevitability” of this process is expressly limited to the countries of Western Europe’.11

This is a mind-boggling misreading of Marx. For one thing, one should not confuse the question of primitive accumulation in different societies (Western and non-Western) with that of Marx’ (and Engels’) predictions of the inevitable supersession of capitalism by socialism and eventually classless communist society, one of which is made in the Manifesto of 184812and quoted, along with a new one on the same page, in Capital.13 For another, in his letter to the editorial board of the Otechestvenniye Zapiski, Marx writes that,

The chapter on primitive accumulation does not pretend to do more than trace the path by which, in Western Europe, the capitalist order of economy emerged from the womb of the feudal order of economy. [.....]. At the end of the chapter [on primitive accumulation – I. G.-J.] the historical tendency of production is summed up thus: That it “itself begets its own negation with the inexorability which governs the metamorphoses of nature”; that it has itself created the elements of a new economic order, by giving the greatest impulse at once to the productive forces of social labour and to the integral development of every individual producer; that capitalist property, resting already, as it actually does, on a collective mode of production, cannot but transform itself into social property. At this point I have not furnished any proof, for the good reason that this statement is itself nothing but a general summary of long expositions previously given in the chapters on capitalist production.14

Along with the prediction of the expropriation of the expropriators, (accompanied, as in Capital, by the explanation, in terms of the conception of the dialectic of forces and relations of production as the motive power of historical development and transformations, why petty industry was superseded by capitalist production in the course of primitive accumulation), this assertion about the negation of the negation is quoted in Anti-Dühring, written 1876-1878 and published 1878, where the conception of the dialectic of forces and relations of production as the motive power of the supersession of capitalism, through the agency of the working class, is emphasised for all it is worth.15

The assertion that the passage is merely declamatory16 is not supported by the textual evidence. It is, in fact, an integral part of a summary of the transition from small-scale industry based on the private property of the workers in their means of production to capitalism and further to “social property”, accounted for in terms of the conception of the dialectic of forces and relations of production as the motive power of historical development and transformations (and, as suggested by Marx in his letter to the editorial board, part of the overall context of the analysis of Capital, vol. 1). As Marx writes about the supersession of the first-mentioned mode of production by capitalism:

This mode of production presupposes the fragmentation of holdings, and the dispersal of the other means of production. As it excludes the concentration of these means of production, so it also excludes co-operation, division labour within each separate process of production, the social control and regulation of the forces of nature, and the free development of the productive forces of society. It is compatible only with a system of production and a society moving within narrow limits which are of natural origin. To perpetuate it would be, as Pecqueur rightly says, ‘to decree universal mediocrity’. At a certain stage of development, it brings into the world the material means of its own destruction. From that moment, new forces and passions which feel themselves to be fettered by that society. It has to be annihilated; it is annihilated.17

The precise place of the “famous passage” in the context may best be demonstrated by quoting the three last paragraphs, of which this passage is the second, of the chapter – at the undeniable price of a rather long quotation. Small-scale industry society had to be, and was, annihilated, and the direct producers expropriated. Eventually, with developed capitalism, “What is now to be expropriated is not the self-employed worker, but the capitalist who exploits a large number of workers.”

This expropriation is accomplished through the action of the immanent laws of capitalist production itself, through the centralization of capitals. One capitalist always strikes down many others. Hand in hand with this centralization, or this expropriation of many capitalists by a few, other developments take place on an ever-increasing scale, such as the growth of the co-operative form of the labour process, the conscious technical application of science, the planned exploitation of the soil, the transformation of the means of labour into forms in which they can only be used in common, the economizing of all means of production by their use as the means of production of combined, socialized labour, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world market, and, with this, the growth of the international character of the capitalist regime. Along with the constant decrease in the number of capitalist magnates, who usurp and monopolize all the advantages of this process of transformation, the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation and exploitation grows; but with this there also grows the revolt of the working class, a class constantly increasing in numbers, and trained, united and organized by the very mechanism of the capitalist process of production. The centralization of the means of production and the socialization of labour reach a point at which they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.

The capitalist mode of appropriation, which springs from the capitalist mode of production, produces capitalist private property. This is the first negation of individual private property, as founded on the labour of its proprietor. But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a natural process, its own negation. This is the negation of the negation. It does not reestablish private property, but it does indeed establish individual property on the basis of the achievements of the capitalist era: namely co-operation and the possession in common of the land and the means of production produced by labour itself.

The transformation of scattered private property resting on the personal labour of the individuals themselves into capitalist private property is naturally an incomparably more protracted, violent and difficult process than the transformation of capitalist private property, which in fact already rests on the carrying on of production by society, into social property. In the former case, it was a matter of the expropriation of the mass of the people by a few usurpers; but in this case, we have the expropriation of a few usurpers by the mass of the people.18

So, Marx himself does not seem to have considered the prediction of the inevitable “negation” of capitalism “essentially external” to his general theoretical framework. Nor, indeed, does there seem to be any sound reason to think that it is merely declamatory. It is, to be sure, not derived from his analysis of Capital, but a core element of the “general conclusion” and “guiding principle of my studies” he arrived at in the course of his studies of political economy in Paris and Brussels and summarised in the “15 sentences” in the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy dated January 1859.19 While it cannot be said to be well-founded theoretically, and is, in the opinion of this writer, actually wrong, there is no doubt that it informed Marx’ strategic outlook to the end of his intellectual career.20

Indeed, the prediction of the inevitable supersession of capitalism is actually repeated in the two first of his four drafts of 188121 of the letter to Vera Zasulich which is cited by Mau to support his assertion that Marx “explicitly opposed determinist readings of his work”:

Another circumstance favourable to the maintenance of the Russian Commune (in its development) is that it is not merely contemporary with capitalist production and has also lived beyond the period in which this social system was still found to be intact, whereas today, no less in Western Europe than in the United States, this social system finds itself at war with science, with the popular masses and with the forces of production it begets. In a word, it finds capitalism in a crisis which will only end with its abolition, with the return of modern societies to the “archaic” form of common property [.....].22

Above all, in Western Europe the ruin of common property and the rise of capitalist production are separated by a huge timespan comprising a whole series of successive economic revolutions and evolutions of which capitalist production is only the latest. On the one hand it has developed the social productive forces eminently, on the other hand it has shown its own incompatibility with the forces of its own making. Its history is nothing but a history of antagonisms, crises, conflicts and disasters. Finally, it has revealed its purely transitional nature to the whole world except those who are blind because of their interests.23

According to these drafts, capitalism finds itself at war “with the forces of production it begets” and “has shown its own incompatibility with the forces of its own making.” The accordance of these remarks with the argument in the first section of the Manifesto, sentence 5-7 of the “15 sentences” in the preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy,24

Capital, 1, ch. 24.7, and Anti-Dühring, Part III, ch. II,25 is unmistakable. And as these drafts, as well as Anti-Dühring, and Marx’ letter to the editorial board of the Otechestvenniye Zapiski, are later than the publication of the French edition of the first volume of Capital, Mau’s proposition that Marx’ “productive force determinism”, his expectation that the transition from capitalism to socialism and eventually classless communist society is inevitable, “seems to disappear entirely from his writings” from the latter point in time is quite simply wrong.

Marx does reject determinism in one context: primitive accumulation,26 but not in another: the supersession of capitalism by socialism and eventually classless communist society. Unless one specifies about what Marx is supposed to nourish or not nourish determinist ideas, the discussion about determinism or no determinism easily becomes futile. What is argued here and in Structure, Agency and Theory is that Marx and Engels were determinists in the precise sense of expecting and predicting that the transition from capitalism to socialism and eventually classless communist society is inevitable. The (as it is untenable) basis of their expectations and predictions is their conception of the dialectic of forces and relations of production as the motive power of historical development and transformations – classically formulated in Marx’ 1859 Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (but running through their texts from at least Die deutsche Ideologie to Marx’ first two drafts of his letter to Vera Zasulich, that is, in effect, to the end of his intellectual career) – involving the assumption that the class with an interest in the continued development of the productive forces will accomplish a historical transformation (revolution) when this development has been fettered by the relations of production.27 Mau completely fails to read Marx correctly here. Finally, he quotes a passage from Marx’ 1861-63 Manuscripts which goes:

Natural laws of production! Here, it is true, it is a matter of the natural laws of bourgeois production, hence of the laws within which production occurs at a particular historical stage and under particular historical conditions of production. If there were no such laws, the system of bourgeois production would be altogether incomprehensible [unbegreiflich]. What is involved here, therefore, is the presentation of the nature of this particular mode of production, hence its natural laws. But just as it is itself historical, so are its nature and the laws of that nature. The natural laws of the Asiatic, the ancient, or the feudal mode of production were essentially different.

To which Mau adds the comment that, “So, the expression ‘natural laws’ refers to the essential and historically specific determinations of a mode of production, not to the way in which a transhistorical technological drive smashes through the fetters of historical particularities.28

Once again, Mau makes an interpretation which Marx’ words do not support. Firstly, it is of course a truism that different modes of production are qualitatively different from each other in terms of the conditions for production and their developmental “laws” or logics: otherwise, they would not be different modes. But the passage does not state that there are no “laws”, whether one likes to call them “natural” or “social”, or “(trans)historical”, of historical transitions from one mode of production (and type of society) to another. And Mau seems to overlook, or ignore, that Marx had no problem with the words of a Russian reviewer that,

For Marx only one thing is important: to find the law of the phenomena the investigation of which he is engaged in. And not only the law ruling them insofar as they have a finished form and constitute a whole [in einem zusammenhang stehn], as they are observed in a given period, is important to him. Most important of all to him is the law of their transformation, their development, i. e. their transition from one form to another, from one order of the whole to another. [.....] it is quite sufficient when, along with the necessity of the present order, he demonstrates at the same time the necessity of a different order into which the former must pass, quite regardless of people believing it or not, of their being conscious or unconscious of this. Marx considers the social movement a process of natural history ruled by laws that are not only independent of the will, consciousness and intentions of people, but on the contrary determine their will, consciousness and intentions. [.....] The scientific value of such investigation lies in the explanation [Aufklärung] of the specific laws ruling the origin, existence, development, death of a given social organism and its substitution by another, higher one. And the book by Marx actually has this value.29

Marx quoted this in his “Afterword” to the second edition of Capital, and added this comment: “Depicting what he calls my real method so accurately [treffend] and, as far as my personal application of it is concerned, so favourably, what has the author depicted but the dialectical method?”30

When a book of such merit as Mau’s Mute Compulsion contains such mistakes as those pointed out here, the non-determinist nature of Marx’ historical materialism (perhaps a mature, or late, version of it) has certainly (but erroneously) become an established “fact”, or one might say, orthodoxy.31 This is to some extent understandable, as it reduces the failure of Marx’ and Engels’ expectations and predictions about the supersession of capitalism to come true to a theoretical non-problem, but on the other hand it glosses over a yawning gap in terms of revolutionary-socialist strategy. Marx’ 1859 Preface posits that,

[.....]. No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society. Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation.32

This is nothing less than a promise that neither the actual transition from capitalism to socialism, nor the eventual transition from socialism to classless communism, that is, the establishment of the effectively collective command of the means, process and outcome of production at a sufficiently high33 level will offer insuperable problems. Not only is the question of class capacities thus in effect considered non-existent,34 the experience of post-1917 “real existing socialism” suggests that there are indeed real problems and pitfalls involved in such a process, just as the twentieth-century record of advanced capitalist societies suggest that they have more stamina than expected.

This does not mean that Marx’ analysis and critique of capitalism as an exploitative, antagonistic, alienating and crisisridden and, in human terms, irrational mode of production is wrong, nor that historical materialism as an approach to the study of society and history should be abandoned. But it does suggest that the elaboration of a realistic strategy for the transition from capitalism to socialism and further to classless communist society in the abovementioned sense is an urgently necessary task.

1 Determinism, that is, in the sense of considering the transition from capitalism to socialism and eventually classless communism inevitable.

2 Marx, Das Kapital, 1, p. 765.

3 Dobb, p. 7-8, p. 10, p. 16-17. Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State, p. 403-404. Sørensen, p. 172-173. Laclau, Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory, p. 75. Therborn, p. 30. Cohen, p. 83. Gram-Jensen, Structure, Agency and Theory, p. 312, p. 320-321, p. 535, and, more obliquely, p. 482, p. 498, p. 543-544, p. 546-547.

4 Mau, p. 12.

5 Mau, p. 29-30. Cf. Parsons, p. 108-110. In the Danish edition, the reference is, correctly, to Parsons, The Structure of Social Action (New York & London: The Free Press & Collier-Macmillan, 1966), p. 108 ff, p. 489. In the English edition it is to Parsons, “Power and the Social System” in Lukes, Power, 108 ff, 489).

6 Parsons, p. 109.

7 Parsons, p. 109 (note 2).

8 Parsons, p. 109-110.

9 Parsons, p. 491-492.

10 Mau, p. 108.

11 Mau, p. 107-108.

12 Marx & Engels, Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei, p. 474; cf. ibid., I, passim.

13 Marx, Das Kapital, 1, p. 790-791.

14 Marx, [“Brief an die Redaktion der “Otetschestwennyje Sapiski””], p. 108-111 (translation from Marx & Engels, Selected Correspondence, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, p. 312). Cf. Marx, Das Kapital, 1, p. 791 (“Aber die kapitalistische Produktion erzeugt mit der Notwendigkeit eines Naturprozesses ihre eigene Negation.”)

15 Engels, Anti-Dühring, p. 159-161 (MEW, 20, p. 123-124 (Marx, Das Kapital, 1, ch. 24.7), p. 188-189 (MEW, 20, p. 146-147), Part III, ch. II, passim. In his introductory note to the French edition of Engels’ Die Entwicklung des Sozialismus von der Utopie zur Wissenschaft, written about 4/5 May 1880, Marx recommended Anti-Dühring as to some extent an introduction to scientific socialism (MEW, 19, p. 181185). His and Engels’ cooperation in the process of writing Anti-Dühring (Anti-Dühring, p. 13-14 (MEW, 20, p. 9)) is corroborated by MEW, 34, p. 34, p. 36, p. 37, p. 39-40.

16 For this, Mau refers to Michael Heinrich, “Geschichtsphiloso-phie bei Marx” in Diethard Behrens (ed.), Geschichtsphilosophie oder Das Begreifen der Historizität, Freiburg, ca ira, 1999.

17 Marx, Das Kapital, 1, p. 789 (translation of the following passages from Alan W. Wood, Marx Selections, p. 272-274). Cf. Marx & Engels, Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei, p. 467-474, Marx, “Marx an Pawel Wassiljewitsch Annenkow in Paris, 28. Dezember [1846]”, p. 549, and Marx, Das Elend der Philosophie, p. 140-141.

18 Marx, Das Kapital, 1, p. 790-791. At the end of the last paragraph, the footnote is inserted quoting the prediction in the Manifesto (MEW, 4, p. 474) of the defeat of the bourgeoisie and the victory of the working class as inevitable.

19 Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, p. 20-22 (MEW, 13, p. 8-11). Marx was expelled from France in January 1845, and from Belgium in March 1848 (Wheen, p. 90, p. 126); as the conception of the dialectic of forces and relations of production as the motive power of historical development and transformations is traceable at least as early as Die deutsche Ideologie, written (MEW, 3, p. 10), 1845-46 (p. 72-73, p. 212, p. 338, p. 424), Marx’ dating seems correct).

20 Cf. Structure, Agency and Theory, Part One, ch.s 2-3 and Appendix Three.

21MEW, 19, p. 572 (note 155), p. 618

22 Marx, [“Entwürfe einer Antwort auf den Brief von V. I. Sassulitsch”], p. 385-386; cf. p. 390 (“in a word, it goes through a crisis which will end with the abolition of capitalism and the return of modern society to a higher form of the “archaic” type of collective possession and collective production”), p. 392, p. 397-398.

23 Marx, [“Entwürfe einer Antwort auf den Brief von V. I. Sassulitsch”], p. 397, cf. p. 397-398.

24 Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, p. 21 (MEW, 13, p. 9): “At a certain state of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins and era of social revolution.”

25 Just two quotations to exemplify the point: “The contradiction between socialized production and capitalistic appropriation manifested itself as the antagonism of proletariat and bourgeoisie.” (p. 321; MEW, 20, p. 253); and, “the productive forces are in rebellion against the mode of production which they have outgrown.” (p. 327; MEW, 20, p. 258).

26 The letter actually sent to Vera Zasulich rejects nothing more than that the analysis of the primitive accumulation in Capital deals with more than that process in Western Europe; it does not deal with the question of the transition from capitalism to socialism and eventually classless communist society, and whether it is inevitable or not, at all (Marx, [Brief an V. I. Sassulitsch, 8. März 1881] (MEW, 19)/ “Marx an Vera Iwanowna Sassulitsch in Genf, 8. März 1881” (MEW, 35)).

27 Marx, “Marx an Pawel Wassiljewitsch Annenkow in Paris, 28. Dezember [1846]”, p. 549; Das Elend der Philosophie, p. 140-141; A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy