The Concept of Primacy in Historical Explanation

G.A. Cohen interprets Marx as a technological materialist: the productive forces are “primary” in history. There are several mistakes here. First, for Marx technology is neither always nor predominantly the direct stimulus - either causal or functional - of the social relations of production. Second, it is not even the case that for Marx primacy in explanation is a matter of being a direct stimulus. It has to do rather with being a framework that underlies interconnections between direct stimuli and their results. It turns out that this framework cannot be technology but only the relations of production. Third, technological development is not an autonomous process but is for Marx one that is dependent on the cooperation of producers. This introduces the political element of the class struggle into technological development and refutes a technological reading of why a given class rules

Class conflict · Economics · Epistemology · Historical materialism · Marxist philosophy · Materialism · Neoclassical economics · Political science · Politics · Relations of production · Sociology · Law · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism · Political theory and Gramsci

• The Labor Theory of Value and the Concept of Exploitation

  G A Cohen•Marx, Justice and History•1980

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• Technology and the Human Condition

  Eugene E Selk, Bernard Gendron•Technology and Culture•1977

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