Page 168 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

145 Historical Materialism

From forms of development of the productive forces, these relations
turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The
changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the trans-
formation of the whole immense superstructure.*1
The dialectic of forces and relations of production has often been
understood in a technologistic sense. The theorem then states that
techniques of production necessitate not only certain forms of
organizing and mobilizing labor power, bur also, through the
social organization of labor, the relations of production appro-
priate to it. The production process is conceived as so unified that
relations of production are set up in the very process of deploying
the forces of production. In the young Marx, precisely the idealist
conceptual apparatus (‘‘the objectification of essential powers in
labor’) lends support to this idea; in Engels, Plekhanov, Stalin,
and others the concept of productive relations “‘issuing’’ from
productive forces is borne instead by instrumentalist models of
action.*?
We must however separate the level of communicative action
from that of the instrumental and strategic action combined in
social cooperation. If we take this into account, the theorem can
be understood to state that (a) therc exists an endogenous learn-
ing mechanism that provides for spontaneous growth of tech-
nically and organizationally useful knowledge and for its con-
version into forces of production; (b) a mode of production is
in a state of equilibrium only if there is a structural correspon-
dence between the stages of development of the forces and rela-
tions of production; (c) the endogeneously caused development
of productive forces makes it possible for structural incom-
patibilities between the two orders to arise, which (d) bring
forth disequilibriums in the given mode of production and
must lead to an overthrow of existing relations of production.
(Godelier, for example, appropriated the theorem in this struc-
turalist sense.**)
In this formulation too it remains unclear what mechanism
could help to explain evolutionary innovations. The postulated
learning mechanism explains the growth of a cognitive potential
and perhaps also its conversion into technologies and strategies
that heighten productivity. It can explain the emergence of sys-