Relations of production

pp. 142-167

in: Alex Callinicos, Is there a future for Marxism?, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1982

Abstract

No discussion of historical materialism in Britain today can avoid confrontation with the arguments of two recent contributions to the subject — Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production by Barry Hindess and Paul Hirst and Karl Marx's Theory of History by G. A. Cohen. Both books are in their way highly ambitious attempts to state the basic concepts of historical materialism from opposed standpoints and in very different idioms — the first a key-work of post-althusserian marxism heavily influenced by the "revolution of language" sketched in Chapter 2 of this volume, in retrospect a stepping stone to the authors' openly "revisionist" "auto-critique", Mode of Production and Social Formation, the second defending "an old-fashion historical materialism", very close to Kautsky and Plekhanov, applying "those standards of clarity and rigour which distinguish twentieth century analytical philosophy".¹ I cannot hope here to match the authors' scope or their capacity for detailed argument, but shall merely attempt to elucidate Marx's concept of relations of production and draw out its consequences.