RUBIN: Some Notes on the Introduction

Two sciences deal with the productive relations in society: historical materialism and political economy. "The subject of both sciences is the same: the changes of production relations which depend on the development of productive forces."

This is the key distinction for Rubin's book--productive forces, here glossed as "means of production and technical methods," and production relations. This is like another base/superstructure division within the base. Changes in production relations, the configuration of which defines a type of economy, seemingly take place as a result of changes in productive forces. Anyway, Rubin says the former "correspond" to the latter. Rubin says the distinction between the two (PF and PR in the future for the sake of convenience) is an "abstraction."

Historical materialism studies the changes in production relations that take place and inquires into the changes in productive forces that drive this change. Political economy studies a particular formation of production relations, capitalism. The theory of production relations of capitalist society is called the "theory of commodity fetishism." Thus, commodity fetishism is the key to Capital.

One other science is mentioned--the science of social engineering, which focuses on productive forces and their interaction with production relations, and thus is a mirror image of political economy.

Some questions we might ask: what is the nature of the "correspondence" between changes in forces and relations? Do the former (as is implied here) somehow determine the latter? We may ask all the same questions we ask when presented with a base/superstructure division: does the superstructure have some sort of effectivity on the base? In what way? As I suggested last week, the real/formal subsumption distinction may be a case where productive relations move ahead of forces in production. There is clearly a very complicated relationship between the two, in any event.

Also, is Rubin's division of Marxism into two "sciences" tenable? Are there times (German Ideology) when Marx wears a "historical materialist" hat, and times (Capital) when he wears a "political economist" hat? Are the two only separable by abstraction, as Rubin says PF and PR are?