Nineteenth Century Thought by Anand Prakash Read Free Book Online Page B

when 'material forces' demanded capitalist relations of free give and
take, while relations of production continued to impose on.
     
    From forms of development of the
forces of production these relations turn into their fetters. Then comes the
period of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the
entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed.   In considering such transformations the
distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the
economic conditions of production which can be determined with the precision of
natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic, or
philosophic-in short ideological forms in which men become conscious of this
conflict 11 and fight it out. Just as our opinion of an individual
is not based on what he thinks of himself, so can we not judge of such a period
of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness 12 must rather be explained from the contradictions of material
life, from the existing conflict between the social forces of production and
the relations of production. No social order ever disappears before all the
productive forces, for which there is room in it, have been developed; and new
higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of
their existence have matured in the womb of the old society.
    ANNOTATIONS
    society notions of feudal
bondage and hierarchy. According to Marx, this was the stage when 'conflict'
arose. Another word used by Marx for 'conflict' is 'contradiction.' What does
'capitalist contradiction' mean?
    11.    Ideological
forms in which men become conscious of this conflict: See
the long sentence of which this is a part. The reference is to various
superstructures which are termed 'ideological forms.' From these, let us pick
up 'aesthetic form.' Isn't it interesting that literature (aesthetic form) is
called an ideological form? Do we, while reading literature, become conscious
of the said conflict (the conflict in capitalism, for instance, between forces
of production and relations of production)? How? The process in which this
occurs must be highly complex.
    12.   This
consciousness: Here, we go back to the point raised above
(n.3 and 4) with respect to 'progress of human mind' Also pause at 'a period of
transformation' and 'its own consciousness.' In the context of the paragraph in
Marx, we cannot know a period by its own consciousness since that would be
idealistic. In fact, says Marx, we should understand and explain a given
consciousness with reference to 'the contradictions of material life.' Apply
this to one of the literary works such as Hard Times by Dickens and see
the way in which Dickens's own consciousness can be explained from the
contradictions of material life in mid-nineteenth century.
     
    Therefore, mankind ·always takes up
only such problems as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely,
we will always find that the problem itself arises only when 13 the
material conditions necessary for its solution already exist or are at least in
the process of formation. In broad outlines we can designate the Asiatic, the
ancient, the feudal, and the modem bourgeois methods of production as so many
epochs in the progress of the economic formation of society. The bourgeois relations
of production 14 are the last antagonistic form 15 of the social
process of production-antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism,
but of one arising from conditions surrounding the life of individuals in
society; at the same time the productive forces developing in the womb of
bourgeois society 16 create the material conditions for the solution
of that antagonism. This social formation constitutes, therefore, the closing
chapter of the prehistoric stage of human society.
    -Marx, Critique of Political
Economy (1859).
     
    ANNOTATIONS
    13.    The
problem itself arises only when: The problem is linked up
with the