What Causes Revolution?
“At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production — …or with the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution.”
Marx, “Preface to a Critique of Political Economy”
Marx amplified and modified this statement later by his extensive historical studies. There is a tension between technological determinism on one hand and class struggle as the motive force in history in Marx’s writings. Obviously, there is a dialectical interaction between the two. The ground of class struggle is shaped by the forces of production. Marx synthesized this by saying “men make history, but not in conditions of their own choosing”.
Determinism?
“determinism has resulted in passivity and often reformism.”
Too often, Marxists and would-be Marxists have stressed the technological determinist element in Marx’s writings. This determinism has resulted in passivity and often reformism. This was especially true of Bernstein, Kautsky and much of the Second International. This attitude downplayed the importance of socialist agency and therefore rejected the need for a revolutionary party to lead the revolution. As Kautsky said of his German Social Democratic Party, “We are a revolutionary party, but not a revolution-making party.”
How should Marxists interpret Marx’s statement from the Preface on the causes of revolution? John Molyneux in What Is the Real Marxist Tradition? squares the circle between technology and class struggle by expanding the definition of forces of production. He said “For Marx, the forces of production signify not only the instruments in the sense of tools, machines etc. but the total productive capacity of society including the productive activity of the working class. ‘Of all the instruments of production, the greatest productive power is the revolutionary class itself’ Thus, the contradiction between the forces and relations of production is not separate from the class struggle but is the very ground on which the latter arises.”
Molyneux’s stress on class struggle is important and is in line with Marx’s overall theory. However, Molyneux did not take into account that in the statement from the Preface, Marx is discussing material productive forces, i.e. technology.
“History does nothing”.
Incorporating the driving force of class struggle requires an expansion of the meaning of the Preface statement. In actual historical circumstances, material forces of production are not agents. They do not on their own clash with relations of production. Instead, it is often the case that classes that use and want to use new technologies clash with classes who want to hold them back.
As Trotsky and others argued, “History does nothing”. It has no definite pre-determined result. Instead, history is the record of people who organize, fight and clash with each other. “ The history of all hithertoo existing society has been the history of class struggle”, The Communist Manifesto.
Often the conflict that propels revolution is between classes that primarily embody different relations of production rather than between classes that embody different forces of production.
The Initial Bourgeois Revolutions
“Most of the bourgeois changes did not involve new forces of production initially”
For example, the conflict of the bourgeoisie with the feudal aristocracy in England was primarily between classes using different relations of production. It was not primarily between exploiting classes using different technologies . On the margin, the bourgeoisie used some technologies that the Feudal lords did not. However, these were secondary to the clash between different relations of production that the two classes employed. The bourgeoisie was held back by royal support to policies that favored the aristocracy over merchant capitalists ,putting out capitalists and manufacturers. This was a motive force for the bourgeois revolution in England.
Most of the bourgeois changes did not involve new forces of production initially. In the putting out system the merchant capital merely took control of previously existing production processes. Manufacture originally simply meant combining artisans using traditional techniques within one workshop. The breakdown of skilled artisans into unskilled detail workers evolved from the establishment of capitalist relations of production.
Capitalists’ ability to employ manufacture and the putting out system as well as international trade was inhibited by feudal relations in England. Capitalist relations of production opened the way for vast developments in technology but mostly much later.
Capitalism prioritizes accumulation. The drive for profit necessitates continual revolutionizing of the means of production especially after capitalist relations of production are firmly established. Capitalist forces of production arose out of capitalist relations of production. Capitalist forces of production were not the primary cause of the first bourgeois revolutions. Instead, the need for capitalists to develop their relations of production against Feudal restrictions compelled them to rebel against the Feudal order.
Later Bourgeois Revolutions
“In order to compete militarily and economically with already existing capitalist states, the newly developing capitalist states needed to adopt capitalist technology.”
The bourgeois revolutions after England, France and Holland were motivated by the need to develop capitalist productive forces. In order to compete militarily and economically with already existing capitalist states, the newly developing capitalist states needed to adopt capitalist technology. This process was a closer approximation of Marx’s statement in the Preface.
However, even the later bourgeois revolutions were clashes between the classes that wanted to enhance bourgeois relations and forces of production against those who wanted to hold them back.
Socialist Revolution
“Workers first take political power and use it to take economic power.”
In the case of a socialist revolution, the working class has no new forces of production that it is trying to develop that is stopped by bourgeois relations of production. It has no independent economic power. The bourgeoisie may prevent or slow the application of certain technologies for example solar and wind power. These new technologies will only be fully available after the conquest of power by the working class. This differs from the initial rise of capitalism where existing independent economic power around capitalist relations of production existed. These relations only sometimes included particular technologies.
Capitalists develop economic power and use it to seize political power. Workers first take political power and use it to take economic power.
The class interest of the proletariat supports more benign technology in energy use but this is only partially realized under capitalism. The socialist revolution will not be led by capitalists who want to promote solar power or wind power. There will be economic conflicts within capitalism over those technologies but this will not be the motive force of socialist revolution.
A rigid interpretation of the Preface statement is not accurate about actual historical processes. The conflict is between classes, not between abstract forces and relations. The class struggle interpretation needs to be applied concretely. Its form varies from one revolutionary situation to another.
The dogmatic interpretation of Marx’s Preface statement is a basis for technological determinism. Marx made statements that bolster that position, but the core of his doctrine prioritized class struggle as the motive force of history and the way forward to the transformation to communism.
Lenin’s definition of a revolutionary situation apt. He said revolution breaks out when “The ruling class is no longer able to rule in the old way and the oppressed classes are no longer willing to be ruled in the old way.”
