SOAN 2112 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Productive Forces, For Marx, Technological Determinism
Document Summary
Marx and engels had proposed that callous self-interest governs individuals, classes, and nations, driving the world forward. Marx"s focus on the connections between economic development and social- class formation was reduced to a form of technological determinism. Economic and historical changes were thus made to depend directly on technical changes in the instruments of work. In time, both economic and technological determinism came to be regarded as one-sided and misleading. Mode of production determines the general character of the social, political and spiritual processes of life it is social existence that determines social consciousness. Engels discovered after marx"s death that their so-called materialist conception of history was widely misunderstood, he undertook to clarify their position in several letters. The effect of these letters was to reaffirm the causal priority of economic conditions. Marx and engels introduced the concept mode of production : it embraces both productive forces and relations of production.