Fetters on the Development of the Productive Forces

Compare the following two sentences:

"From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters." (January 1859)

"The stages of production that precede capital appear as so many fetters on the productive forces, regarded from the standpoint of capital." (December 1857)

Both sentences were written by Karl Marx, a bit more than a year apart. Both are about historical social relations imposing "fetters" on the development of the productive forces. The first sentence, from Marx's preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy has become part of the canonical definition of "Historical Materialism." The second is from notebook IV of Marx's 1857-58 manuscripts, the Grundrisse.

One might expect that scholars would have paid a great deal of attention to the relationship between the two sentences since publication of the Grundrisse in 1953. One would be wrong. Searches in Google Books and Google Scholar in German and English return no books or articles that quote the two sentences, even portions of the two.

Eric Hobsbawm, who edited and wrote an introduction to Pre-capitalist Economic Formations, a selection from the Grundrisse called it "an indispensable pendant to the superb Preface." By "pendant" Hobsbawm probably meant something like supplement or companion. The English translator of the Grundrisse, Martin Nicolaus called it "One long extended commentary on the contradiction between the forces of production and the relations of production." Neither examined the respective treatment in the two texts of the fetters on the development of the forces of production.

In my view, the standard reception of the preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy has been, if not a misinterpretation, a one-sided interpretation. Left out of that interpretation is the pivotal role of disposable time. The creation and appropriation of disposable time is both the secret of capital's accumulation and the focal point of labour's resistance to capital's domination.

The prominence of disposable time in Marx's discussion of the forces of production in the Grundrisse illuminates why Marx repeatedly referred to the limitation of the working day as the prerequisite or precondition for emancipation and hailed the enactment of the English Ten-Hour Bill as a victory of the political economy of the working class. 

In a future post, I plan to address the relationship between the political economy of the working class and the much better know "dictatorship of the proletariat." In my view, the former is to forces of production as the latter is to relations of production.

Below the jump break are the passages from the preface to A Contribution and the Grundrisse (shaded brown and indented) that I have combined to create an enhanced narrative of what Nicolaus called "the contradiction between the forces of production and the relations of production." This is the composite text I used in Marx's Fetters: A Remedial Reading.

In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production.

The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. 

Forces of production and social relations - two different sides of the development of the social individual - appear to capital as mere means and are merely means for it to produce on its limited foundation. In fact, however, they are the material conditions to blow this foundation sky-high.

‘Truly wealthy a nation, when the working day is 6 rather than 12 hours. Wealth is not command over surplus labour time’ (real wealth), ‘but rather, disposable time outside that needed in direct production, for every individual and the whole society.’ (The Source and Remedy etc. 1821, p. 6.)

The whole development of wealth rests on the creation of disposable time. … In production resting on capital, the existence of necessary labour time is conditional on the creation of superfluous labour time.

The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. 

At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production… or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto.

From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters.

The stages of production that precede capital appear as so many fetters on the productive forces, regarded from the standpoint of capital. But capital itself fosters the development of the productive forces so long as they require an external spur. 

1. Necessary labour as limit on the exchange value of living labour capacity or of the wages of the industrial population; 
2. Surplus value as limit on surplus labour time; and, in regard to relative surplus labour time, as barrier to the development of the forces of production; 
3. The transformation into money as limit of production; or exchange founded on value, or value founded on exchange, as limit of production; 
4. That real wealth has to take on a specific form distinct from itself, a form not absolutely identical with it, in order to become an object of production at all.

It is a form of discipline over them that becomes superfluous and burdensome at a certain level of their development. These inherent limits coincide with the nature of capital, with the essential character of its very concept. 

The more this contradiction develops, the more does it become evident that the growth of the forces of production can no longer be bound up with the appropriation of alien labour, but that the mass of workers must themselves appropriate their own surplus labour. 

Once they have done so - and disposable time thereby ceases to have an antithetical existence – then, on one side necessary labour time will be measured by the needs of the social individual and, on the other the development of the power of social production will grow so rapidly that even though production is now calculated for the wealth of all disposable time will grow for all. 

For real wealth is the developed productive power of all individuals. The measure of wealth is then not any longer, in any way, labour time, but rather disposable time. 

Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.