Theory of Productive Forces

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The term "Theory of Productive Forces" should not be confused with the Marxist analysis of productive forces that is a cornerstone of Marxist theory.

The Theory of Productive Forces (sometimes referred to pejoratively by opponents as productive force determinism) is a widely-used concept in communism and Marxism placing primary emphasis on achieving abundance in a nominally socialist economy before real communism, or even real socialism, can have a hope of being achieved.

The concept has been used in all examples of state-supervised socialism to date. Joseph Stalin is one proponent of this view. The most influential philosophical defence of this idea has been promulgated by Gerald Cohen in his book Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence. According to this view, technical change can beget social change; in other words, changes in the means (and intensity) of production causes changes in the relations of production, i.e., in people's ideology and culture, their interactions with one another, and their social relationship to the wider world.

In this view, actual socialism or communism, being based on the "redistribution of wealth" to the most oppressed sectors of society, cannot come to pass until that society's wealth is built up enough to satisfy whole populations. Using this theory as a basis for their practical programmes meant that communist theoreticians and leaders, while paying lip service to the primacy of ideological change in individuals to sustain a communist society, actually put productive forces first, and ideological change second.

The Theory of Productive Forces is behind Stalin's Five Year Plans, Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward, and most other examples of attempts to build and refine communism throughout the world in the 20th Century, although Maoism's subsequent concept of the need for a Cultural Revolution did signal some limited steps away from reliance on the theory. The philosophical perspective behind the modernizing zeal of, in particular, the Russian and Chinese communists seeking to industrialize their countries is perhaps captured best by this thought in The German Ideology by Marx and Engels.

"...it is only possible to achieve real liberation in the real world... by employing real means... slavery cannot be abolished without the steam-engine and the mule and spinning-jenny, serfdom cannot be abolished without improved agriculture, and... in general, people cannot be liberated as long as they are unable to obtain food and drink, housing and clothing in adequate quality and quantity. “Liberation” is an historical and not a mental act, and it is brought about by historical conditions, the development of industry, commerce, agriculture, the conditions of intercourse [Verkehr]...

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[edit] Marx's View on Productive Forces

It is doubtful whether the Theory of Productive Forces was an analysis held by Marx himself. Marx saw social change in history as emerging essentially from the dialectical relationship between productive forces and relations of production, and who emphasized living human subjects as the central productive force (subjects who also actively produced and reproduced their social relations). In his polemic The Poverty of Philosophy, Marx wrote:

"M. Proudhon the economist understands very well that men make cloth, linen, or silk materials in definite relations of production. But what he has not understood is that these definite social relations are just as much produced by men as linen, flax, etc. Social relations are closely bound up with productive forces. In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations. The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill society with the industrial capitalist. The same men who establish their social relations in conformity with the material productivity, produce also principles, ideas, and categories, in conformity with their social relations. Thus the ideas, these categories, are as little eternal as the relations they express. They are historical and transitory products."

– 2.

Marx does not, as Stalin claimed, state here that "First the productive forces of society change and develop, and then, depending on these changes and in conformity with them, men's relations of production, their economic relations, change." Instead, Marx argues that "these definite social relations are just as much produced by men as linen, flax, etc." He does not say that productive forces linearly determine social relations; rather he says social relations are "closely bound up" with productive forces. It is through changing their "mode of production" or their way of "earning a living" that social relations are changed. This suggests a more complex causal relationship between productive forces and social relations exists than Stalin suggested. Possibly Stalin's interpretation owed more to the project of modernizing the USSR with a strong emphasis on heavy industry as the basis for growth.