Historical Materialism is still relevant & necessary - key to centering political analysis on class relations, and understanding the laborer as a source of revolutionary potential

My analysis draws from the theoretical framework of historical materialism. The use of this theory demands some comment since it has fallen into disarray and been abandoned by many Marxists. The theory lost credibility when its prediction that capitalism inevitable would evolve into socialism was seemingly proved wrong. Theoretically it has been challenged for its tendencies of evolutionism, technological determinism, functionalism and economic reductionism (Giddens, 1981). By partly coinciding with and incorporating this criticism, some Marxists have responded to Giddens' comments stating that a reconstructed historical materialism holds true and is a valuable analytic tool (Wright, Levine, and Sober, 1992). A weak version of the model is sound, they say, to help structure our understanding of past and current history, provided that the theory does not pretend to prophesy the future. In accord with them I find it relevant to evoke historical materialism here because

"the idea that class struggle is crucial to understanding social change is grounded in historical materialist claims. If historical materialism where rejected altogether, these concepts and ideas would lack adequate foundations" [].

I will not, though, give a full account of the controversy surrounding the theory, but merely highlight parts where it relates to my inquiry into free software development.

Historical Materialism

Historical materialism [] starts with the assumption that human consciousness is conditioned by its physical environment, and therefore that primacy in society flows from its material base to its organisation of social life. At the core lie the 'forces of production' (predominately machinery, raw materials, labour power, and knowledge), that influence the 'relations of production', i.e. the composition of ownership in society. The class that dominates the relations of production favour a certain legal, political and ideological constitution of society (superstructure) that will support their social order. But because the forces of production develop continuously, while the established order tends to conserve its position, the organisation of society will increasingly become at odds with its material production. A point is reached when the old establishment fetters the emerging productive forces. The struggle between the ruling class and those classes it submerged (which has been ongoing) now burst into revolutionary change. A new social order emerges that better corresponds to the material basis of production (Cohen, 2000).

The prime example of this transition is that from feudalism to early capitalism. Privileges and tradition prevented free social and geographical mobility and fuelled the resistance to factory discipline, while Christian values despised capitalist virtues. In order to flourish, the bourgeois class had to tear down these barriers to the free flow of capital, wage labour, and market exchange. In the same way, the theory claims, will capitalism be fettering the future forces of production [].

There are numerous difficulties with this theory. A common objection from post-Marxists (and Marxists too) is that the 'chain of direction' breaks down because the superstructure becomes productive in itself in "... the information age, marked by the autonomy of culture vis-a-vis the material bases of our existence" [].

This argument, however, also implies that historical materialism up till now has been working. If so, the theory should not be discarded hastily, but its failure ought to be closely examined in order to unravel the precise changes. I have no such ambition here. Nevertheless, in this article I maintain that though historical materialism is difficult to defend theoretically, in practice certain features of the Information Age, far from rendering historical materialism obsolete, reflect and strengthen some of its features.

Still, even if the basic assumption is true, Wright, Levine, and Sober point out that "in order to conclude that there will be an overall epochal trajectory of social changes of the kind historical materialism postulates, a case must be made that, in general, the tendency for the forces of production to develop is a more potent cause of the destabilization of production relations than the superstructure is of their stabilization" []. Cohen has difficulties in assuring that fettering could fuel a successful revolution against capitalism. He says, reluctantly, that restriction to the pace of development in productivity is not a sufficient cause of destabilization. Instead he leans towards Use Fettering, the irrational deployment of productive powers, such as the bias in capitalism towards consumption at the expense of leisure. Use Fettering is more promising: "... since the discrepancy between capacity and use is more perceptible than, and is, therefore, a more potent stimulant of unrest, protest, and change than, the shortfall in rate of development ..." []. I will return to his distinction between Development and Use Fettering later in this paper and argue that they both accord with the intellectual property regime.