Two Interpretation of of Marx's Views on Historical Development

1) G. A. Cohen, Karl Marx's Theory of History:

Development Thesis: The productive forces have a constant tendency to develop further

Primacy Thesis: The productive relations are to be explained by the development of the productive forces embraced by those relations (to a far greater degree than vice-versa).

 Cohen's interpretation is supported by his analysis of Marx's 1859 Preface. Cohen admits that this text could be interpreted as a "zig-zag dialectic" between forces and relations of production, in which neither has long-term priority. He argues, negatively, that it makes no general assertion of this view, but more often mentions cases where the forces determine the relations. (Cohen, pp. 134, 138).

2) Richard W. Miller, "Producing change: work, technology, and power in Marx's theory of history," in T. Ball and J. Farr, After Marx, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984:

 Broad and narrow readings of "productive forces": Broad version is narrow version plus forms of organization of labor that facilitate production. Putting workers together in large workshops increases their productive force, compared with scattered production, even if the technology of production does not change at all. Hence that organization is a productive force. Example from Communist Manifesto:

The feudal system of industry, under which industrial production was monopolized by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild masters were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class; division of labor between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of the division of labor in each single workshop."

The mode of production includes productive forces (broad and narrow) and relations of production. Within the mode of production, the growth of the productive forces (broad sense) is the main source of change. This is the view defended in the 1859 Preface. It is a zig-zag theory. Example from The German Ideology:

"The form of intercourse determined by the existing productive forces at all previous stages,and in its turn determining these, [emphasis added] is civil society." [Note: "form of intercourse" probably means "relations of production."] "This conception of history thus relies on expounding the real process of production–starting from the material production of life itself–and comprehending the form of intercourse connected with and created by this mode of production, i.e., civil society in its various stages, as the basis of all history...."

Collected Works, 5:50, 53.

Miller thinks that the 1859 Preface's claim that social formations don't perish before all forces of production they have room for are developed must be understood as claiming that a social formation is viable as long as it does not actually inhibit the development of productive forces.

Millers says that in writing about history Marx also uses a broader notion of change in the mode of production in which the growth of the forces is not the only source of change. He argues that theManifesto's account is of "ultimately self-destructive conflicts inherent in the feudal economic structure," and cites Marx's discussions of ancient Rome and Asia. The following passage, from Capital, vol. 3, suggest that Marx also had a view like this in that book:

"The credit system appears as the main lever of overproduction and overspeculation in commerce solely because the reproduction process, which is elastic by nature, is here forced to its extreme limits, and is so forced because a large part of the social capital is employed by people who do not own it and who consequently tackle things quite differently than the owner, who anxiously weighs the limitations of his private capital in so far as he handles it himself. This simply demonstrates the fact that the self-expansion of capital based on the contradictory nature of capitalist production permits an actual free development only up to a certain point, so that in fact it constitutes an immanent fetter and barrier to production, which are continually broken through by the credit system. Hence the credit accelerates the material development of the production forces and the establishment of the world market. It is the historical mission of the capitalist mode of production to raise these material foundations of the new form of production to a certain degree of perfection. As the same time credit accelerates the violent eruptions of this contradiction – crises – and thereby the elements of disintegration of the old mode of production." CW 37:438-9

Miller also cites the Manifesto's first sentence, that history is the record of class struggles, as an instance of this broader view. Although Miller does not say so, he is in effect claiming that the view implicit in Marx's concrete analyses is not fully consistent with his explicit statements.