Marx’s Method: Narrative
After Marx has laid out the model spatially, he repeats the gesture, as if to say, “Again, again, again . . . Let’s do it again.” But differently, in another way:
[Salvador Dali's The Persistence of Memory]
Model 2: “Narrative”
Human beings, first of all (before they are even “able to ‘make history’”), “live” (the first circumstance) (181). “Life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing, and many other [material] things” (181). “The first historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy these needs, the production of [the means of production, i.e. a certain organization of the productive forces, which thereby produces] material life itself”—“an historical act, a fundamental condition of all history, which today, as thousands of years ago, must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in order to sustain human life” (181). “Even when the sensuous world is reduced to a minimum, to a stick [for example, . . .] it presupposes the action of producing the stick” (181-2).
“The satisfaction of the first need [. . .] leads to new needs” (the second circumstance) (182). How to define need, then? How to delimit it? Not only does the (current state of the) (established order of the) social formation stimulate its own demand, stimulating further needs. What is being spoken of, after all, is not the dominant mode of production currently operative, but the first moments of history (or the first moments in all (periods) of history, in all series). Rather, “the production of new needs is the first historical fact,” like the production of the means of production itself (and thereby of material life) (182) (my emphasis). Needs generating further needs is not a phenomenon specific to the current form of the political economy. It is rather a problem of species, perhaps of “nature,” operative, as it were, in all of history, in all political economies.
“[Individuals], who daily remake their own life, begin to make other [individuals], to propagate their own kind: the relation between man and woman, parents and children, the family” (a third circumstance) (182). This reproduction, i.e. “the production of life, both of one’s own labour and of fresh life in procreation,” is both natural (an instinct) and social (taking place with other individuals) (182). Production thus entails (not only reliance on natural givens but also) the co-operation of several individuals, i.e. the engendering of social relations (the fourth circumstance), in which the (particular) mode of production corresponds with the (particular) mode of relations. The “mode of co-operation [moreover] is itself a ‘productive force,’” i.e. ‘engendering’ is itself ‘production’ in the context of generalized production (182).
“Increased needs create new social relations and the increased population [that results from that creates] new [and further] needs,” determining the status of the different social relationships created (e.g. whether the family is still primary in comparison to other social relationships created) (182). Throughout this, there is a “materialistic connection of [human individuals] with each other” (183). These four circumstances, moreover, are not “different stages [succeeding each other chronologically], but just [. . .] aspects or [. . .] moments, which have existed simultaneously since the dawn of history and the first men, and which still assert themselves in history today” (182). The model is thus a “narrative” only in a limited sense (in the same way that the “schematic” is representative in a limited way). There are indeed sequences traceable between the different ‘historical’ moments. No moment, however, has any necessary logical priority (in the same way that the “geographical” schematic divisions are not completely definitive).
Similarly, it would seem that “only [. . .] after having considered four moments, four aspects of the primary historical relationships, [. . . is] man [. . . found to] possess[] ‘consciousness,’” and with it (implied) ideas and ideology in general (183) (my emphasis). “‘Spirit,’” however, is “from the start [. . .] afflicted with the curse of being ‘burdened’ with matter,” as exemplified (embodied?) by (i.e. which “makes its appearance in the form of”) language (183). Language, the social ‘thing’ that it is, which is “as old as consciousness, [. . . which, in fact,] is practical consciousness that exists also for other [individuals], and for that reason alone [does] it really exist[] for [one] personally as well,” reveals that consciousness and ideas in general—ideology—“only arises from the need, the necessity, of intercourse [i.e. relation] with other men” (183).
This still sounds (as in crude materialism) as though ideology (as embodied in language) is secondary to social relations (i.e. intercourse), but in fact “where there exists a relationship, [language, and thereby ideas, thereby ideology] exists for [an individual]” (183). As soon as there are social relations, language exists; in fact, social relations necessitate language: language co-exists with social relations. Since human intercourse or social relations (the ‘co-operation of individuals’ and their reproduction, i.e. the fourth and third moments of history) are co-existent with the previous moments of the production of needs and the means of production, it follows that consciousness, ideas, and ideology in general, which arise with social relations, also do not come after material conditions. Ideology coexists with materiality.
“Consciousness is, therefore, from the very beginning a social product [coexistent with material conditions, also social and historical], and remains so as long as men exist at all. Consciousness is at first [. . .] merely consciousness concerning the immediate sensuous environment and consciousness of the limited connection with other persons and things outside the individual who is growing self-conscious. At the same time it is consciousness of nature, which first appears to [human beings] as a completely alien, all powerful, and unassailable force, [. . . in which this is] a purely animal consciousness of nature (natural religion) just because nature is as yet hardly modified historically [by human beings]. [. . . In a dialectical dynamic,] the restricted relation of [human beings] to nature determines their restricted relation to one another, and their restricted relation to one another determines [individuals’] restricted relation to nature” (183).
“[A human being’s] consciousness of the necessity of associating with the individuals around him is the beginning of the consciousness that he is living in society at all” (183). With further development, there develops (again, in no necessary chronological order) “increased productivity, the increase of needs, [. . .] the increase of population,” and with that the “division of labour, which was originally nothing but the division of labour in the sexual act, then that division of labour which develops spontaneously or ‘naturally’ by virtue of natural predisposition (e.g. physical strength), needs, accidents, etc.” (184) (my emphasis). This culminates into the “division of material and mental labour,” which, in fact, is the moment when the “division of labour [. . .] becomes truly such” (184).
“From this moment onwards consciousness can really flatter itself that it is something other than consciousness of existing practice, that it really represents something without representing something real,” as in idealism, and analogously, that material bodies and forces and their interactions determine everything else, including consciousness, as in crude materialism (184). The false dichotomy between the material and the ideal, as with every other phenomenon, is thus itself rooted in concrete social and historical conditions, namely the particular way in which the social formation from which it arose is organized (namely, with material and mental labor divided). The social formation of course includes not only the material means of production but also the conscious (and unconscious) production of ideology. This is really already implied by the fact of their division: if the material and the mental are being divided from each other, does not that indicate that they both exist, that they coexist (without necessary priority)?
“The forces of production, the state of society, and consciousness can and must come into contradiction with one another, because the division of labour implies the possibility, nay the fact, that intellectual and material activity—enjoyment and labour, production and consumption—devolve on different individuals, and that the only possibility for their not coming into contradiction lies in the negation in its turn of the division of labour” (184) (my emphasis). Division in labor implies the assignment of different labors/tasks to different individuals, who (by nature? due to the particular social organization?) conflict with each other (for now, for no certain reason). As such the social forces and entities that come to embody the (material and ideological) life of these individuals, themselves divided, must also come into conflict, reach a contradiction. At the heart of this conflict (which explains, for example, ideology’s conflict with, or the clash of ideals against, the existing relations) is the coming into contradiction of “existing social relations [. . .] with existing forces of production,” the most concrete manifestation in which the conflicts are played out.
“All these contradictions are implicit” in the division of labor, in which is simultaneously determined “the distribution, and indeed the unequal distribution, both quantitative and qualitative, of labour and its products,” one of which (“hence”) is property (related to capital), defined as “the power of disposing of the labour-power of others” (184, 185). “Division of labour and private property are [. . . really] identical expressions: in the one the same thing is affirmed with reference to activity as is affirmed in the other with reference to the product of the activity” (185).
The division of labor further implies the contradiction between the interest of the individual and communal interest (by “all individuals who have intercourse with one another”), in which communality is not imaginary but is “the mutual interdependence of the individuals among whom the labour is divided” (185). In that sense the division of labor makes production particularly social. The contradiction is heightened as the community “takes the independent form [of] the State [. . . based on old ties of family and tribe but most of all on bonds of class,] already determined by the division of labour, which in every such mass of men separate out, and of which one dominates all the others,” which “represent[s] its interest [. . .] as the general interest” (185, 186) (my emphasis). Thus the concept of the community (esp. the State) is questioned while at the same time the social nature of individuals (involved in human activity) is asserted.
The division of labor leads to a further contradiction within man himself—alienation—as the human being is separated from his activity, in which he has an exclusive one, which, moreover, is not voluntary (chosen and performed) (185). Compounded by the fact that the State itself seems alien to individuals in which “their co-operation is not voluntary but has come about naturally,” “the social power, i.e. the multiplied productive force, which arises through the co-operation of different individuals as it is determined by the division of labour, appears to these individuals [. . .] not as their own united power, but as an alien force existing outside them, of the origin and goal of which they are ignorant, which they thus cannot control, [. . .] independent of the will and the action of man” (hence the seeming independence and determination of such forces as supply and demand) (186). Eventually, history reaches a point when these contradictions become too intense, things come to a head, and the state (of things) explodes: the social formation devolves into social chaos. From thence change becomes potential. From thence transformation—of material conditions, of ideological states, i.e. of life itself—is made possible: history breaks.
Bibliography
Marx, Karl. “The German Ideology.” In Karl Marx: Selected Writings, edited by David McLellan, 175-208. Second Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
