Productive forces

Summary

Dominique Pagani takes productive forces to mean everything that makes production possible, "from the chipped pebble to the particle accelerator," and first of all the human body and intelligence12. He takes up Marx's formula that the hand-mill gives feudalism and the steam-mill the bourgeoisie. In his view, the development of these forces marks out the great periods of anthropology, down to the divisions of prehistory3. For Marx, he says, this development is also what matters most4. These forces come into contradiction with the relations of production, that is, of property: the same hoe gives different worlds depending on whether it is put to private or collective use5. They evolve faster than mentalities and act on cultural structures; his example is television, which makes the Corsican language disappear6. From this he draws a criterion for judging the standard of living and excess consumption: they are measured against what the productive forces of the time allow, not against the past. He adds that, in his view, productivity has multiplied since 1936 without a comparable fall in working time.

1. 1Marx on the Beach 1/21 Feb 2016 · 51:49
2. 2On Marx6 Oct 2018 · 50:05
3. 3H for Hegel22 Dec 2014 · 9:33
4. 4K for Karl25 Dec 2014 · 9:28
5. 5Hegel on the Beach 5/52 Feb 2016 · 25:33
6. 6Neo-fascism and the ideology of desire: Clouscard, as relevant as ever2 May 2024 · 1:09:59

Summary produced automatically from 14 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.