Marx and Development

MARXISM AND DEVELOPMENT[i]
(Draft, 21.12.2005 to be published in Amitava Krishna Dutt and Jaime Ros, International Handbook of using Economics, London: Edward Elgar, 2006)


I Marxs first thoughts.

Just as Darwin sight the law of maturation of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of teaching of humane history: … [that] the degree of economical development attained by a given race or during a given epoch form[s] the foundation upon which the bring up institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned let been evolved, and in the light of which they must, therefore, be explained, instead of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case. (Engels [1883], 467).

Engels eulogy, delivered at Marxs burial in 1883, is an averment of Marxs pre-eminent role as a theorist of development in general and of the fundamental importance of economic development for Marxism. This essay briefly outlines Marxs own ideas on the march and the ways in which later Marxists have built on and adapted these ideas.





Marx viewed human history as a titan spiral tracing the development of the productivity of labour (the forces of output signal) in relation to the changing social structure within which production took place (the social dealing of production). The forces of production tend to put forward through history[ii], although at varying speeds depending on whether the social relations create a favourable or unfavourable mode for material progress. At key moments the forces of production find themselves held backrest by the form of society and this creates pressure for revolutionary passageway from one social system to another, for instance from feudalism to capitalism, which was to take over a pivotal role in the development of human history.

Being a system driven by the avocation of profit in competitive conditions, capitalism would impel a sharp acceleration in the development of the productive forces to such an extent...If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website: Orderessay



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