Page 172 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

149 Historical Materialism

a universal developmental sequence for cognitive development—
from preoperational through concrete-operational to formal-op-
erational thought. The history of technology is probably con-
nected with the great evolutionary advances of society through
the evolution of world views; and this development might, in
turn, be explicable through formal structures of thought for
which cognitive psychology has provided a well-examined onto-
genetic model, a model that enables us to place these structures
in a developmental-logical order.*®
In any case, since the ‘‘neolithic revolution’”’ the great technical
discoveries have not brought about new epochs but have merely
accompanied them. A history of technology, no matter how ra-
tionally reconstructible, is not suited for delimiting social forma-
tions. The concept of a mode of production takes into account
the fact that the development of productive forces, while certainly
an important dimension of social development, zs not decisive for
periodization. Other proposals for periodization are guided by a
classification of forms of cooperation; and certainly the develop-
ment from household industries, through their coordination in
cottage industry, through factories, national enterprises involving
division of labor, up to multinational concerns, does play an
important role. But this line of development can be traced only
within a single social formation, namely the capitalist; this shows
that social evolution cannot be reconstructed in terms of the
organization of labor power. The same holds for the development
of the market (from the household economy, through town and
national economies, up to the world economy), or for the soczal
division of labor (between hunting and gathering, cultivating and
breeding, city crafts and agriculture, agriculture and industry, and
so on). These developments increase the complexity of social
organization; but it is not written on the face of any of these
phenomena, when a new form of organization, a new medium of
communication, or a new functional specification means develop-
ment of productive forces (increased power to dispose of external
nature) and when it serves the repression of internal nature and
has to be understood as a component of productive relations. For
this reason it is more informative to determine the different modes
of production directly through relations of production and to