Productive force

Summary

Dominique Pagani addresses the notion of productive force within his reading of Marx. He presents it as a material and economic notion, which he illustrates with a series of tools: flint, the plough, the hand mill, the steam mill, the steam engine12. He also includes the human body and human intelligence3, and even the mimeograph, which he describes as progress in the reproduction of speech4. Productive forces come first in the order of determination, and this, in his view, is what makes Marx's thought a materialism; nature is part of the process of production5. He explains that productive forces develop faster than the relations of production and faster than mentalities. They then come into contradiction with them, and this is what creates a revolutionary situation67. He sees the relations of production as a mere fixing of production. For him, giving primacy to these relations led to the bureaucracy of the communist regimes8.

1. 1#2.8 Between crisis and war: philosophising?1 Aug 2017 · 1:06:37
2. 2#9.14 How can sciences of history be real?5 Feb 2021 · 55:31
3. 3Marx on the Beach 1/21 Feb 2016 · 51:41
4. 4#14 Return to the logics of the subject17 Jul 2020 · 49:37
5. 5#2.8 Between crisis and war: philosophising?1 Aug 2017 · 1:11:59
6. 6Marx on the Beach 1/21 Feb 2016 · 1:20:24
7. 7#9.14 How can sciences of history be real?5 Feb 2021 · 1:04:42
8. 8Tonight, we repoliticise (part 1)12 Mar 2018 · 1:24:57

Summary produced automatically from 8 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.