Pardon me, my dear friends, I'm having a mad day today, but I think I should wonder whether something which we throw around a lot is actually of as much substance as we'd like it to b. So basically Marxism developed a theory of capitalism in the 19th century which made capital the organizing principle of, capitalism. This does not have to be reduced to a form of determinism, or even of precedence of the mode of production (aka the economy) over the sphere of social and cultural relations. I am even wondering if the word capitalism has a reduntancy to it even. Because even if it is the organizing principle of society, that does not mean it's the main social substance. If you look at the car it revolves around the engine, but we cannot say that the car is merely an engine. Therefore, I propose to call it crapitalism, because crapitalism is shit
Pardon if I misunderstood the
Pardon if I misunderstood the point, but I do think that the Marxism you present here does indeed advance the view that - in a certain way - capital takes precedence (or that it acts as a "social substance", even though this notion seems vague to me).
On that view, social development is viewed as primarily capitalist social reproduciton, which jives well with facts I think. Social and cultural relations though can't be "derived" simply from the relations of production; in some sense these relations do retain somewhat of an autonomous status. For instance, the way people cook their food (also including selection of foodstuffs) and how they eat it (e.g. together, going out, neighborhood bbq etc. etc.) is influenced by the scope of the economic interactions (for instance, imported food, cooking technology) but it cannot and should not be simply reduced to it. I don't think that such a view that "privileges" capital as the most important lever of social change necessarily entails such a meaningless reduction (what you call determinism).
On the other hand, capital itself is decisively influenced by working class struggles and responses to changes in composition and actual moves to ensure enough of a rate of accumulation and profit. I also think this fact illuminates this heuristic distinction between "spheres" of social action in the sense that it shows "the economy" being much more inclusive of different activities than a neutral, technical and ultimately bourgeois-ideological position would allow. If this is kept in mind, I think the pitfall of any such determinism is more easily avoided.
If capital and its
If capital and its accumulation is the pole which society revolves upon, but the proletariat is the reverse pole that disrupts this revolving, then the social cultural swirl (which is swirling around the pole) is also a pole to the reverse pole of proletarian struggles. That is, culture is the liquid that any working class moves in, and which bolsters or corrodes the movements toward revolution, which undermines the capitalist pole. So by your proposition ('capital itself is decisively influenced by working class struggles'), culture (I am using this term loosely) is a pregnant area which counter-determines the economy... so that, while the mode of production is the province of bourgeois elements, culture is a much more contested area, where a lot of different forces swirl around. These forces spring from the loins of the material substructure, because that's where life comes from. But a child is not destined to become a mere reflection of their parent, it is possible they will have an entirely autonomous or original existence.
The Pigeon wrote: So by your
The Pigeon
Precisely.
I don't think any account of the "economy" which disregards this fact, or even attempts to refute it, can get very far. But I also think that we need to be careful with attributing effects to working class struggles which are dubious at best since this power of "variable capital" is historically variable itself. For instance, where I live we would be hard pressed to demonstrate that active workers' struggles had significant impact upon the national economy as a whole.