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Social Ontology and the Origins

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Erik K. Olsen
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To cite this article: Erik K. Olsen (2009) Social Ontology and the Origins of Mode of
Production Theory, Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society, 21:2,
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RETHINKING MARXISM VOLUME 21 NUMBER 2 (APRIL 2009)
Social Ontology and the Origins of

Mode of Production Theory
Erik K. Olsen
Marxian social theory witnessed significant development and change from the early
to the middle decades of the twentieth century. This paper argues that a distinctly
new approach to Marxian social theory emerged during this period, based on the
‘‘mode of production’’ and ‘‘social formation’’ concepts. A distinctive feature of this
new social theory is a set of core propositions that together provide a specific
conception of society or social ontology. Taking inspiration from Althusser the essay
argues that, during this period, Marxist social theory moved away from an image of
society as relatively complex and open and adopted a conception of society analogous
to Hegel’s ‘‘expressive totality’’ wherein the different aspects of society simply
express one privileged aspect or part (i.e., the technology of production). This essay
traces the development of the mode of production and social formation approach
from its roots in the contradictory positions taken by Friedrich Engels through its
emergence in the works of such writers as Nikolai Bukharin, Liudvig Mad’iar, Maurice
Dobb, V. Gordon Childe, Maurice Cornforth, Oskar Lange, and Otto Kuusinen. It also
contrasts this with the very different conception of society evident in the work of
Second International writers such as Georgy Plekhanov, Antonio Labriola, Karl
Kautsky, and Eduard Bernstein. The objective is to identify the theoretical choices
made by these writers that resulted in identifiable changes in Marxist social theory.
This makes it possible to recognize these changes as distinct theoretical innovations,
and thereby to question whether we should continue to make these same choices
today.
Key Words: Mode of Production, Social Formation, Social Ontology, Marxist Social
Theory
The terms ‘‘mode of production’’ and ‘‘social formation’’ have had a curious life in
Marxian theory. Marx used them frequently but not always consistently, and never
gave them explicit definitions. Despite this, by the end of the 1950s, they had come
to form the basis of a theory of society, social change, and history that received the
imprimatur of the highest Soviet political authority when Kuusinen et al. declared it
to be ‘‘the essence of historical materialism’’ (1963, 116). No Marxian theory of
society has been as influential or controversial as the mode of production and social
formation (MPSF) theory that emerged at that time. Some leading Marxist theorists
continue to defend its basic tenets (e.g., Cohen 1978, 2000; Laibman 1992, 2007), but
it no longer inspires the way it once did.
ISSN 0893-5696 print/1475-8059 online/09/020177-19

– 2009 Association for Economic and Social Analysis
DOI: 10.1080/08935690902743096
178 OLSEN
The disenchantment with MPSF theory that began in the 1970s (notably with
Hindess and Hirst 1975, 1977) has become widespread, and this has adversely
affected Marxian theory significantly across many disciplines. This is, in part, because
MPSF theory is typically presented as though it existed more or less fully formed in
Marx’s texts, and this particular approach simply elucidates his fundamental insights.
Instead, I argue that this approach is one possible exegesis of Marx’s work that
developed gradually in the writings of a number of Marxists over the course of several
decades. Many prominent theorists contributed to its development, and they made
distinct theoretical choices that inaugurated identifiable changes in Marxist social
theory. Their work profoundly affected the development of Marxist social theory, and
it continues to do so today even if that influence is not always recognized or
acknowledged. This essay traces that history and identifies those choices and
innovations in order to reevaluate them. My focus here is on origins and early
development, but later iterations of this approach share a common basis in the work
discussed here, and hence, in greater or lesser degrees, are subject to similar
criticism.
The primary change that MPSF theory introduced into Marxism, and perhaps its
most enduring legacy, is a fundamental shift in Marxist social ontology from one that
conceives of society as something akin to a complex or ‘‘decentered’’ totality
(Cullenberg 1994, 16/7) to one that conceives of it as what Althusser called a
Hegelian ‘‘expressive totality.’’ The first section of this essay establishes precisely
what I mean by an expressive-totality social ontology.
Cullenberg (1996, 121, 127), following Althusser, distinguishes between a Cartesian
totality, which is constituted by elements that exist prior to and independently of it,
and a Hegelian totality that exists prior to and independently of its subordinate parts
(which are simply expressions of the totality). In place of these two diametrically
opposed conceptions, we can posit a complexly structured totality that is irreducible
to either a pregiven part or whole, and that exists instead as a unity of parts and
whole that are mutually constitutive of one another. This is the Marxian over-
determined totality. Like Cullenberg, my reading of the social ontology of MPSF
theory is informed by Althusser’s work, but with one important difference. Cullenberg
states, ‘‘It is beginning with the work of Louis Althusser that the idea of a decentered
Marxist totality takes shape’’ (134). Instead, I find clear prefigurations of the
overdeterminist position in several well-known early Marxist theorists. But this poses
an important question. If Marx held that society and everything in it are complexly
mutually constitutive, and several prominent early Marxist theorists expressed quite
similar opinions, how then did a social theory based on a vastly different conception
of society emerge and come to dominate Marxism for a significant part of the last
century? This other approach must have come from somewhere. It must have a
history. This paper critically examines that history from the period after Marx’s death
until the full realization of this alternative approach in the form of MPSF theory.
The second section of this paper finds the shift from a complex to an expressive
social ontology rooted in the contradictory positions expressed by Friedrich Engels.
Parts of Engels’s work reprise G. W. F. Hegel’s social ontology and philosophy of history,
substituting the material for the ideal but leaving much else unchanged. Late in life,
Engels reconsidered this question and considerably weakened the deterministic role of
MODE OF PRODUCTION THEORY 179
the economy in society in several well-known letters to Joseph Bloch (2001), Franz
Mehring (2004a), and W. Borgius (2004b). These letters provide a basis for later Marxist
writers who place limits on the deterministic role attributed to the economy. This
‘‘relative autonomy’’ thesis*/an ontological claim*/is one of the basic differences
that distinguish the writings of the Second International/era from the later Soviet and
Soviet-affiliated writers who produced MPSF theory.
In varying degrees, Second International/era writers embraced economic deter-
minism, but, heeding Engels’s late-life warnings, largely refrained from presenting
society as simply an expression of the underlying economic conditions. Nowhere in
this period is there found anything remotely resembling a social theory based on the
MPSF concepts. Instead, these theorists conceived of society through the well-known
base and superstructure metaphor. While they mostly agreed that the base
determined the superstructure only ‘‘in the last instance,’’ they did not propose a
general theory of the mechanisms through which this determination occurred and
they rejected the idea that the relationship between the two domains was unilinear.
The difference between their work and that of the later MPSF theorists is stark.
Clearly MPSF theory developed later, and I argue that it brought important changes
into Marxian social theory, not all of which have been sufficiently acknowledged.
The origins of MPSF theory are found in the return to a social ontology consistent
with Engels’s reprise of Hegel, if not back to Hegel himself. Nikolai Bukharin made
important early contributions to this in the late 1910s and early 1920s. This was
followed by the formalization of MPSF theory as a tractable explanation of the
relationship between the social essence and its epiphenomenal expression. A
succession of authors contributed to this: beginning with Soviet, Comintern, and
Asian Marxists during the late 1920s and 1930s, and followed by Maurice Dobb, V.
Gordon Childe, Maurice Cornforth, Oskar Lange, and Otto Kuusinen in the 1940s and
1950s.
Society As an Expressive Totality
Althusser describes the Hegelian ontology in this way:
A system (of classical philosophy) was . . . conceived precisely in order to

deal with the effectivity of a whole on its elements: the Liebnizian concept
of expression. This is the model that dominates all Hegel’s thought. But it
presupposes in principle that the whole in question be reducible to an inner
essence, of which the elements of the whole are then no more than the
phenomenal forms of expression, the inner principle of the essence being
present at each point in the whole . . . it presupposed that the whole had a
certain nature, precisely the nature of a ‘spiritual’ whole in which each
element was expressive of the entire totality as a ‘pars totalis’. (Althusser
and Balibar 1970, 186/7, emphasis in original; see also 17, 96, and 1977, 203,
204)
For Hegel society has several distinct, though somewhat contradictory, character-
istics: complexity, holism, telos, and rationality. The whole is logically prior to the
180 OLSEN
individual elements, which exist only as partial expressions of its underlying essence.
Society, itself a whole or totality, is composed of diverse elements, but this
complexity is unified into a whole by reason. The Idea is the omnipresent essence
immanent in all aspects of this holistic totality but is not temporally contained within
any one; it is present in and transcendent of the different social totalities in which it
is manifest. Since human society expresses the Idea, social development is simply a
reflection of its development. Since the Idea is itself rational, then social
development through time (i.e., history) is a rational process (Hegel 1956, 9/10).
The sum total of human consciousness and reason as it develops through history is
‘‘Spirit’’ (Geist), which is the guiding principle of the Idea (8). In any given society the
institutions, laws, morals, and beliefs embody a certain stage in the development of
the Spirit that Hegel called ‘‘the spirit of the age’’ or Geist der Zeit (Inwood 1992,
276), and societies form a stadial succession that represents the increasing perfection
of the Spirit. ‘‘History in General is therefore the development of Spirit in Time’’
(Hegel 1956, 72). Transitions from one form of society to another result from a
contradiction that emerges between the society and the development of the Spirit
that prevents it from progressing in the society in which it exists (74/9). The old
society decays and is destroyed once it has served its purpose, but a new National
Spirit is formed from the remnants of the old and a new society emerges that
incorporates what was advantageous about the old order and preserves it (78).
Therefore, Spirit develops through history because it never wastes the gains of
previous epochs.
For Hegel creation has a purpose: its end or telos. Creation is the beginning of a
journey with a destination. History is the record of progress toward this end. The
future is the continuation of this metanarrative to its completion. Social development
is progress toward its end and is therefore teleological. If this end is not assured, then
it is a process without a destination and, therefore, without rationality. For something
to begin it must have a purpose; otherwise, its existence is without reason.
Accordingly, human society must also have an ultimate objective or it is a beginning
with no end. In that case, society would be a ‘‘bad infinity’’ that could not be said to
be rational (Weiss 1974, 4).
What is the objective or purpose of human society? For Hegel, at least in The
Philosophy of History (1956), society and all things corporeal were created by the
Absolute (i.e., god) from itself in order to come to know itself and achieve self-
realization, Absolute Knowledge, and freedom through experience. Society and all its
aspects are the epiphenomenal expression of this underlying essence*/contained in
Hegel’s interrelated concepts of the Idea and Spirit*/that gives it its raison d’être.
History is the teleological development of society toward the final end, and specific
societies are simply different waypoints of this journey. But for this teleology to be
realized, society must be construed as a unified whole capable of purposeful
development. Contingent or aleatory aspects may exist in society, but these are
ultimately inconsequential because social development is leading to an end that was
predetermined at the outset. All aspects of society are subordinated to the
attainment of this result. They have no independent existence; they are simply
aspects of the larger totality. The conception of an expressive or spiritual social
totality is an intrinsic part of this theistic and teleological theory of history.
Althusser challenges Marxian theorists not to uncritically or unconsciously import

Hegel’s social ontology. He argues that it is precisely on this issue that Marx
transcended Hegel, and consequently he condemns the expressive totality as at best a
regression from Marxian theory to Hegelian (Althusser 1977, 202/4). This is the basis
for his famous rejection of the proposition that Marxism can be thought of as a simple
inversion of the Hegelian dialectic that substitutes the material for the ideal but
leaves the rest of its structure intact, and for his challenge to find Marx’s own unique
dialectic by reading it in Capital (Althusser 1977, 89/127, 161/217; 1970, pt. 1; 1976,
pt. 3). The following section demonstrates that MPSF theory does precisely what
Althusser warns against: it adopts the Hegelian ontology and philosophy of history
with some modifications, but leaves its basic structure intact.
The Origins and Formalization of Mode of Production and

Social Formation Theory
The first appearances of a relatively well-developed MPSF theory in English begin in

the 1950s, with Maurice Cornforth’s work (1953) being the earliest example.
Translations of Oskar Lange’s Political Economy (1963 [1959]) and Otto Kuusinen et
al.’s Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism (1963 [1959]) are the most comprehensive
early presentations of the theory and its orthodox statements.1 There has been
significant development and modification, but these early formulations provide the
orthodox statement that later interpreters work upon. The theory of society
contained in these works can be summarized in three propositions:
1. All societies are composed of a mode of production and a political, cultural, and
ideological superstructure. (The term ‘‘social formation’’ is sometimes used to
designate the specific understanding of society embodied in proposition 1.)
2. The mode of production is composed of two distinct components: the forces and
relations of production.
3. The social formation obeys three basic sociological laws (Lange 1963, 23, 30, 36;
see also Kuusinen et al. 1963, 120/5; Cornforth 1953, chap. 5).
These basic laws are:
. First Law: ‘‘the law of the necessary conformity between production relations and
the character of the productive forces.’’
. Second Law: ‘‘the law of necessary conformity between superstructure and the
economic base.’’
. Third Law: ‘‘the law of the progressive development of the productive forces.’’
Together these three propositions constitute a theory of what the most basic or
significant existents in the social domain are and how they exist, and therefore they
1. Judging by Bochenski’s (1963) English summary, Konstantinov et al.’s (1958) textbook Osnovy
Marksistskoj Filosofii (Fundamentals of Marxist philosophy) is also very similar to these works.
182 OLSEN
provide a social ontology as defined by Lawson (2004). The first two propositions
define the elements of a society and establish the distinctive nomenclature of the
theory; the third establishes how these constitutive elements relate to one another
and change.
Collectively the three propositions depict society as an ordered totality, an
‘‘internally balanced and harmonized whole’’ (Lange 1963, 27), whose characteristics
are determined by, or express, the nature of the productive forces. Since, according
to the first law, the production relations must conform with the character of the
productive forces, and the second law dictates that the superstructure must conform
with the economic base (or mode of production), then the entire social formation
(the combined mode of production and superstructure) is uniquely determined by the
productive forces. The social formation thereby expresses the determination

emanating from the productive forces or technology.2 The third law introduces
change into the social structure. The autonomous, progressive development of the
productive forces is said to drive the social formation stadially through a series of
qualitatively different forms (primitive communal, slave, etc.). In the same way that
the Idea or Spirit serves as both the unifying basic instance of society and the cause of
its development in Hegelian theory, the forces of production are the unifying and
determining element of the social totality in MPSF theory. Very little else is changed.
The forces of production fulfill the role of the Hegelian social essence by being both
pervasive in their effects and transcendent of any particular social whole; they
determine every aspect of the social formation but are not reciprocally determined;
their progress continues from one stage of society to the next, each stage being
simply a vehicle for their progressive development. While Marx uses some of the
terms that are distinctive of MPSF theory, this overall approach to society is not found
in his work.
Marx’s Preface
The most frequent reference to Marx in the formative literature of MPSF theory is to a
portion of the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Marx
1970, 20/2). But Marx wrote the Preface in 1859, at the beginning of the period that
resulted in Capital and his other mature works (Dussell 2001). That alone should make
one question whether it can be considered a reliable summary of his work.
Furthermore, most of Marx’s important mature writings were largely unknown at
the time when MPSF theory originated, but even the portion that was
known*/Capital*/played a very minor role in the development of the theory. The
almost exclusive reliance on the Preface for textual support also fails to acknowledge
that its meaning and import are subject to debate.
2. The three propositions are distinctive of MPSF theory, but are not necessary to capture the
expressive totality. Some later MPSF theorists dismiss the ‘‘mode of production’’ nomenclature,
but still maintain the three sociological laws and hence the expressive totality (Cohen 1978;
2000, 79/84).
Numerous authors from a range of different theoretical positions have rejected the
reading of the Preface that sees it as an argument for simple economic determinism.
Eduard Bernstein and Georgy Plekhanov typically opposed one another vigorously, but
both explicitly repudiated the interpretation of Marx’s Preface that casts the
superstructure as a simple expression of the economic base (see discussion of
Bernstein and Plekhanov below). David Guest’s Textbook of Dialectical Materialism
(1939, 56/57) warns against the mechanistic view of society that might be drawn from
an excessively economistic reading of Marx’s Preface. Raymond Williams (1977,
75/82) questions the simple determinist reading because it interprets the Preface
strictly in isolation from Marx’s other varied and nuanced uses of the terms ‘‘base’’
and ‘‘superstructure.’’ Williams also questions the tendency to use the Preface as a
way of separating economic from noneconomic processes, and contrasts this with
Marx’s efforts to show not only their indissoluble connections but their mutual
constitution. Hindess and Hirst (1975, 16/7) likewise reject such a reading of the
Preface by noting that the terms ‘‘foundation’’ and ‘‘correspond’’ that link economic
and noneconomic factors in the Preface do not imply causation; hence, rather than
presenting a nascent social theory, the Preface points to the need for such a theory.
Antonio Gramsci went further than any of these theorists in his rejection of a
determinist reading of the Preface, and found there instead the basis for an
antieconomistic Marxian theory. It was while elaborating his rejection of an
economistic reading of the Preface that Gramsci developed his two central concepts,
‘‘hegemony’’ and ‘‘historical bloc’’ (Forgacs 2000, 190).
Looking beyond the Preface to other parts of Marx’s mature writing, the claim that
MPSF accurately represents Marx’s theory of society and history becomes even more
difficult to sustain because the theory is plainly incompatible with them. In the
introduction to the Grundrisse (1973), for example, Marx describes the relationship
among various aspects of the economy and society as ‘‘organic,’’ and his historical
analyses illustrate this. Marx’s nuanced and multifaceted discussion of the develop-
ment of capitalism in Britain in volume 1 of Capital (1967, pt. 8), for example, would
be irrelevant if he held a view of society and social change based on a simple
expressive totality. Instead, the three basic sociological laws of MPSF theory imply
that a history of technology would be sufficient to describe the origins of capitalism in
Western Europe. The analysis Marx does provide would not only be unnecessary, but it
would distract attention from the primum agens. Marx’s writing on the prospects for
changes in class relations in nineteenth-century Russia (collected in Shanin 1983)
provides another, similar counterexample. In neither case does he approach the
question from the perspective of how the social structure conforms to the necessity
imposed by production technology. Instead, he analyzes these situations in terms of
the complex set of forces and factors that contest and shape one another.
Technological change is a factor in this social change, but it is hardly the sole, or
even primary, determining factor. Rather, it is one among a host of factors that
together serve to uniquely overdetermine any historical conjuncture. The basis for
the expressive-totality ontology in Marxist theory is found not in Marx but rather in
Engels.
184 OLSEN
Engels’s Reprise of Hegel’s Philosophy of History
After Marx’s death, Engels’s Anti-Dühring (1987) came to be the main point of
reference for ‘‘the philosophy of Marx and Engels,’’ and this influential text helped to
establish simple economic determinism as the leitmotif of Marxism. Socialism:
Utopian and Scientific (1975) extracts several of Engels’s basic arguments in the Anti-
Dühring from the polemics, refines the format, and streamlines their presentation.
This short work, whose brevity and popular style made it far more influential than the
original polemic against Dühring, provides a derivation of scientific socialism from
three precursors: the Utopian socialism of Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, and
Robert Owen; the ‘‘new German philosophy’’ of Immanuel Kant, Johann Fichte,
and, especially, G. W. F. Hegel; and the materialism of Francis Bacon, Charles Darwin,
and Marx. Note that Engels does not claim to be explicating Marx’s theory per se, but
rather claims that Marx is one contributor to scientific socialism. Later readers
typically miss that distinction and assume that Engels is merely popularizing Marx’s
work. Not only is this inaccurate: it also denigrates Engels’s original contribution.
Part 2 of Socialism presents Engels’s discussion of the new German philosophy. It is
here that Engels describes the Marxian dialectic as a relatively straightforward
inversion of the Hegelian dialectic, with material conditions simply replacing Spirit
and the Idea. According to Engels, Hegel’s dialectic rightly emphasizes interconnec-
tion, process, and change. Every existent exists in its interconnections and
concatenations, in flux and in motion, as an endless maze of connections and
interactions, in which everything moves, changes, comes into being, and passes away.
The basic problem he identifies with Hegel’s dialectic is its idealism. Hegel’s theory is
idealist because, for him, thoughts are not the abstract images of actual things and
processes, but rather things and their development are realized images of the Idea
(Engels 1975, 69). This idealist defect results in a vision of history that is an inverted
image of the true course of history. Replacing idealism with modern materialism, he
argues, allows us to see history as the process of development of humanity as a
consequence of the development of material conditions. This new theory is a vision of
history in terms of class struggles, and the economic structure of society (not
material conditions in general) forms the real basis from which the social super-
structure is to be explained (71/2).
The problem with Engels’s proposed inversion is not whether it is the Idea or the
economy that is the essence of society and history, but rather whether something
more than simply an inversion occurred in Marx’s work. The question must also be
asked whether society should be construed, as it is in Hegel, as an expressive whole
with a transcendental essence, pervasive rationality, and inherent developmental
logic. In order for complexly interdependent phenomena to have a pervasive
rationality, they must be viewed simply as elements of a totality that provides that
rationality. No matter how complexly interrelated the subordinate phenomena may
be, if the whole obeys a particular logic or rationality, then the subordinate
phenomena that constitute it must also. The behavior of the parts ultimately reveals
or expresses the governance of the social essence. Engels recognizes Hegel’s linkage
of the complex interconnection of phenomena with the necessity for an ‘‘inner logic’’
that guides the development of the process of history (Engels 1975, 68), and he
preserves it in his theory. His innovation is simply to substitute one ‘‘inner logic’’ or
essence for another, and he declares the transformation of the Hegelian dialectic
complete.
Part 3 of Socialism uses the interpretation of dialectics developed in part 2 as
the basis for a theory of society and social change that many Marxists, and MPSF
theorists in particular, have sought to prove and expand upon ever since. Here
Engels presents his basic outline of a materialist conception of history, largely in
the form of an argument for the objective necessity of a transition from
capitalism to socialism. He argues that the ultimate cause of all social change is
change in the ‘‘modes of production and exchange’’ (74). He goes on to argue
more precisely that it is in fact the development of the forces of production that
makes change in the relations of production an objective necessity. From this one
can deduce that it is the development of the forces alone that drives changes in
the relations of production and, through them, the rest of the social whole.
Socialism is the ultimate end toward which human progress is moving (98), but a
primary contradiction emerges in capitalist society that prevents this evolution.
There is an incompatibility between the development of the forces of production
and the relations of production*/what Engels calls here the ‘‘mode of appro-
priation’’*/in a market-based economy or ‘‘mode of exchange.’’ His subsequent
theory of transition is analogous to Hegel’s but with one basic difference: for
Engels, it is the development of the forces of production that precipitates the
transition from one social form to another. The new, higher form of society is that
which is necessary to reconcile the contradictions between the forces of
production, the mode of appropriation, and the mode of exchange in order to
facilitate the further development of the forces.
It is notable that Engels’s argumentation makes almost no reference to Marx’s
Capital. The Anti-Dühring devotes one of its three sections to a discussion of
Marx’s economics, and at the conclusion of section 2 of Socialism, Engels states that
Marx’s discovery of surplus value is the key to unlocking the secret of capitalist
production (1975, 73). But he does not discuss Marx’s economics further in the text. It
seems that when he condensed his ideas in the later text, he concluded that this was
irrelevant for his argument. Engels’s simple inversion of the Hegelian dialectic
preserves the basic elements of Hegel’s social theory*/complexity, holism, telos, and
rationality*/but of particular importance is that he also retains Hegel’s essentialist
holism (the expressive totality) and teleology. He criticizes Hegel for inverting the
objects of essence-expression, but he accepts Hegel’s essence-expression mechanism
as sound. Later he severely qualified this position (Engels 2001, 2004a, 2004b), and
for a brief time his admonitions against strict determinism were influential, but this
did not endure.
Marxism During the Second International
Two things are characteristic of the writings of influential theorists of the Second
International/era. The first is that, in varying degrees, they embraced economic and,
186 OLSEN
in some cases, technological determinism. The second is that they rejected simple
determinism and mechanistic causality. Antonio Labriola, for example, describes
society as ‘‘not a homogenous whole, but a body of specialized articulations, or,
rather, a multiform complexus of objects and interests’’ (1908 [1896], 185/86). Yet
he also maintained that one object in this social complex*/the economic
structure*/held a tenuous priority over the rest. A problem that Labriola wrestles
with is how to balance the antagonistic imperatives of social complexity and
economic primacy. For him, Marxist theory must embrace both.
To understand the interlacings and the complexus in its inner connection and
its outer manifestations; to descend from the surface to the foundation, and
then to return from the foundation to the surface; to analyze the passions
and the intentions, in their motives, from the closest to the most remote,
and then to bring back the data of the passions and of the intentions and of
their causes to the most remote elements of a definite economic situation;
there is the difficult art which the materialistic conception must realize.
(1908, 230)
Similarly, Eduard Bernstein (1961 [1899], 6/18) contemplates Marx’s Preface and
what it means for complexity and determinism in society. He is convinced by Engels’s
letters that, while the economy is ultimately determinant, the superstructure should
not be thought of as a simple expression of the economic base. Bernstein (2003
[1909], 69/71) also criticizes a ‘‘one-sided’’ interpretation of the Preface while
maintaining an ultimately deterministic role for the economy as a ‘‘basic premise.’’
Later Georgy Plekhanov would also cite Engels’s letters to reject the idea of the
superstructure as a simple expression of the base even more forcefully than
Bernstein, and then go on to attack Bernstein for suggesting that Marx’s Preface
might imply otherwise (1976e [1907]), 66/68). Plekhanov provides an interesting
example of the evolution of Second International thinking on structure and
determination in society. In The Development of the Monist View of History (1976a
[1895], chap. 5), society appears a simple, mechanistic expressive totality, but
shortly after the content of Engels’s letters became known, Plekhanov rapidly
abandoned that position to present a very different image of society as a relatively
complex system of mutual interaction and diverse causality in subsequent works
(1976b [1896], 147 ff.; 1976c [1896]; 1976d [1901], 618/21). When he published The
Fundamental Problems of Marxism (1976e [1907]), he was actively crusading against
simple technological determinism in Marxian theory, and had been for over a decade.
Karl Kautsky likewise came to reject simple technological determinism. In 1927, he
describes society using the base and superstructure concepts, but, citing Engels’s
letters for support, rejects the idea that they can be understood as a simple unity or
that there is a clearly deterministic relationship between them, though he clings to
determination by the economy ‘‘in the last instance’’ (1988, 229, 233). He also notes
that many different kinds of ‘‘social labor,’’ which for him means the relations
between direct producers and owners of the enterprise, are compatible with one type
of technology (192). This is a dramatic turn from his 1918 assessment of the Bolshevik
revolution (Kautsky 1964), which he opposed on the grounds that industry had yet to
mature sufficiently in Russia to make the transition to socialism viable, but this
simplistic assessment was a break from the bulk of his writings, not their logical
extension.3 This inconsistency is symptomatic of the conundrum faced by Second
International theorists who had a problem when simultaneously balancing their
varying degrees of social complexity with ‘‘in the last instance’’ economic determin-
ism, and would sometimes abandon complexity and fall back on simple determinism
when they found it necessary. This tension is a consequence of Engels’s contradictory
legacy.
An Official Ontology
The collapse of the Second International and the success of the Russian Revolution
altered the intellectual landscape of Marxism. Soviet writers recaptured the sense of
inevitability and irreversibility that Engels’s more deterministic writings had given the
transition to socialism and, indeed, their own success, in part by resurrecting the
Hegelian social ontology intact and ignoring Engels’s qualifications in later life. An
officially sanctioned literature emerged that was heavily influenced by Engels’s early,
unequivocal determinism and that banished any ambiguity by jettisoning complexity
in favor of the certainty provided by the simple, mechanistic, expressive-totality
ontology. A new generation of theorists emerged for whom Marxian social theory was
not a ‘‘difficult art,’’ but rather a process of simple deduction from a few basic
axioms. Furthermore, the simple expressive totality allowed them the politically
expedient conclusion that the modernization of production and industrialization,
which the Soviet leadership unanimously agreed was their most pressing imperative
(Bukharin and Preobrazhensky 1966 [1919], § 94), would itself bring about the
transition to socialism. The unequivocal primacy of the forces of production in
precipitating social change made it possible to collapse their political objective*/the
struggle for socialism and communism*/into their economic objective of industria-
lization. National objectives became theoretical imperatives. But just how the
effects of a change at the level of production technology work their way throughout
society requires a theory of society and social change, as well as a theory of history
with which to find empirical support. MPSF theory ultimately provided that social and
historical theory.
The first substantial work on Marxian social theory published after the collapse of
the Second International was Nikolai Bukharin’s Historical Materialism: A System of
Sociology (1925 [1921]). Georg Lukács (1966 [1925], 26) went so far as to call it the
only systematic Marxist summary of historical materialism since the Anti-Duhring.
Historical Materialism was a basic text in higher party schools and was widely
translated. It is a work of serious scholarship that exhibits Bukharin’s erudition and
considerable intellect. It also gives ample support for Lenin’s (1960) assessment (now
well known, but suppressed at that time) that Bukharin was a ‘‘most valuable and
major theorist of the Party,’’ but also that his theoretical views ‘‘can be classified as
fully Marxist only with great reserve, for there is something scholastic about him (he
3. See, for example, Blackledge (2006), who rejects the conventional reading of Kautsky as
strictly fatalist and determinist Marxism.
188 OLSEN
has never made a study of the dialectics, and, I think, never fully understood it).’’
Buhkarin’s disregard for dialectics is evident throughout Historical Materialism, but
most notably when he proposes that the sole scientific method of explanation is
based on the principle of correspondence. He argues that if something exists, it is
because it is called into existence by some other phenomena to which it corresponds.
Both in nature and in society there exists objectively . . . a law of nature

that is causal in character . . . Such a law is a necessary, inevitable,
invariable and universal relation between phenomena . . . If certain phenom-
ena are actually present, there must necessarily be also present certain
other phenomena corresponding to them. The explanation of any phenom-
enon means the finding of its cause, in other words, the finding of a certain
other phenomenon on which it depends, i.e., the explanation of the cause
and effect relation between the phenomena. (Bukharin 1925, 30/31;
emphasis in original)
This correspondence principle dictates that causes are simple and direct, and this
cause-effect mechanism provides the basis for objective laws. The Marxist study of
society and history consists of applying the correspondence principle in order to
uncover the laws of the ‘‘social-historical process’’ (48/51). Society, for Bukharin, is a
whole consisting of parts or elements that exist in relationship with one another.
These parts or elements constitute a ‘‘real aggregate’’ or system (85, 87). But this
system of mutual interaction is ordered by the correspondence principle. Since
certain phenomena cause others to come into existence, this is a unilinear system of
cause-effect relationships originating from some original determining element. This
primal or original determining element is the ‘‘social technology’’ or means of
production (60). Social analysis therefore begins with an analysis of this underlying
essence (120, 155, 229).
Bukharin’s approach is inspired by the natural sciences rather than idealist
philosophy, but his system of simple, unilinear determination once again presents
an image of society as an expressive totality. He aims to break with idealism and
teleology by embracing the materialism of the natural sciences, but he simply
replaces one mechanism of essence-expression with another. The opposition to
Bukharin’s Historical Materialism came from Karl Korsch, Lukács, and later from
Antonio Gramsci. Lukács’s critique focused on Bukharin’s reliance on an undialectical,
positivist methodology borrowed from the natural sciences, which led him to fetishize
technology (Lukács 1966 [1925], 29). Korsch characterized Bukharin’s work as
‘‘mechanistic materialism’’ (1971 [1935], 62) and criticized him for replacing Marx’s
‘‘fluid’’ dialectical method with a frozen, undialectical system of causal interconnec-
tion (1970 [1923], 56/7), as well as for his positivism (1977 [1924], 141).4 Gramsci
(1971, 419/72) found Bukharin reductive and teleological, and he criticized his use of
sociological ‘‘laws’’ and ‘‘ultimate causes.’’ Something that is common to all these
criticisms is that they have a basis in social ontology. Bukharin casts society as an
expressive totality, via the correspondence principle, and consequently society
4. Goode (1979, 79/81) discusses Korsch’s critique of Bukharin.

appears rigidly determined, mechanistically developing, and subject to laws

emanating unambiguously from an ultimate cause.
From the vantage point of the present, it is not Bukharin’s theoretical work, but
rather, Joseph Stalin’s Dialectical and Historical Materialism (1940) that is generally
considered the seminal document of Soviet orthodoxy. But Bukharin (and others) had
already labored to produce the simple, unequivocal, strictly determinist Marxism
later advocated by Stalin. Stalin’s book confirmed expressive holism, technological
determinism, and mechanistic teleology as the definitive statement of official Marxist
theory because it had the weight of an official pronouncement. It was also
instrumental in the development of MPSF theory. It is the first text in English
translation to present the expression ‘‘mode of production’’ as a conception of social
structure and it is also the first explicitly to define it as consisting of the forces and
relations of production (Stalin 1940, 29). Again, however, these ideas were not
Stalin’s. The definitions he used, and the new ontological conception of a ‘‘mode of
production,’’ seem to have emerged out of the heated debates in the Soviet Union
and the Comintern triggered by the work of the Hungarian Liudvig Mad’iar (or Magyar)
(1928), which caused a smoldering controversy over the idea of an ‘‘Asiatic mode of
production’’ to flare up.5 This controversy lasted well into the 1930s, and only
conclusively ended when Stalin’s Dialectical and Historical Materialism excluded the
Asiatic mode of production from the list of modes that have existed in human history.6
The formalization of MPSF theory appears to have begun as part of the struggle over
the validity of this concept in Marxian theory and its applicability to Russia.7 The lack
of a general theory of modes of production was an obstacle to resolving this debate.
The efforts to overcome this obstacle established the mode of production concept,
and the nascent theory associated with it, as a central part of Comintern social
theory.8 Stalin’s inclusion of these ideas in Dialectical and Historical Materialism
introduced them very prominently to Western Marxists. Its influence can be seen in
the work of several prominent Marxist scholars of that era, notably in the writings of
Maurice Dobb and V. Gordon Childe in the United Kingdom in the 1940s.
5. Sawer (1977, 83) notes that the term ‘‘Asiatic mode of production’’ had not come into use by
Marxists in the mid-1920s. There is a good reason for this: MPSF theory had yet to be developed.
Mad’iar’s work has never been translated into English; Dirlik (1978, 191/9) provides a useful
summary.
6. Dunn (1982) and Fogel (1988) survey this debate. Wittfogel (1957) does so from an
anticommunist perspective.
7. Almost none of the original theoretical literature on this topic has been translated into
English. Bailey and Llobera (1981) translate excerpts of the early debates, but not enough to
follow the discussion. d’Encausse and Schram (1969) describe the importance afforded Asia in
the Comintern and provide translations of many documents and speeches, but the work they
present focuses on the political rather than theoretical questions.
8. See Thalheimer (1936 [1927], chap. 12) for an early, explicit definition for the term ‘‘mode of
production’’ that differs significantly from those of later British and Soviet writers. Clearly this
concept underwent significant theoretical development in the intervening period.
190 OLSEN
The 1940s
The basic structure of MPSF theory did not appear in Western Marxism until the early
1940s. Dobb was the first English-language author to adopt the new nomenclature
when he defined a mode of production as ‘‘not only the ‘forces of production,’ but
also the ‘relations of production’’’ (1947/8, 7). This comes from a paper contributed
to a symposium in 1942, and it is the earliest example I have found of this distinctive
definition in a work originally authored in English.9 The eminent archaeologist V.
Gordon Childe followed suit (1944, 23; see also Childe 1946a, 1947b), adding that the
forces-relations combination provided the basis for a taxonomy of prehistoric
societies superior to the method then prevalent, which relied solely on the degree
of technological sophistication (e.g., Stone Age, Bronze Age, etc.). He initially

rejected technological determinism (1944, 23), but eventually came to adopt it,
attribute it to Marx, and argue that there was archaeological evidence to support it
(1946b, 250). But Childe differed from the emerging official position in his influential
book History, where he proposed that Marxism attributes a deterministic role to
technology only ‘‘in the long run’’ (1947a, 6, 69/72) rather than in the immediate
sense implied by Bukharin and Stalin. By taking that position, he does not accept that
the First Law of Sociology will necessarily be satisfied, and proposes instead that
societies whose production relations fail to come into conformity with new
productive technologies will ultimately stagnate and likely come to ruin. For Childe,
Marxian theory is an evolutionary theory: those societies whose social relations adapt
to the development of the productive forces survive and thrive, while those that are
unable to adapt must stagnate and eventually perish (82/3). History, he argues, is a
cumulative process, but ‘‘progress is neither automatic nor inevitable. There are
many paths in history; some lead to dead ends, some to annihilation’’ (66).
History provoked a debate in the pages of The Modern Quarterly, the theoretical
journal of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), that was illustrative of the
theoretical changes occurring at that time. The journal published reviews of the book
by Christopher Hill (1949), Samuel Lilley (1949), and George Thomson (1949). Each
lauded Childe’s book but also criticized him for attributing too much causal influence
to technology, or the means of production, while giving too little attention to the
relations among classes and class struggle. Lilley in particular criticized the
technological determinist currents in History, and consequently became the focus
of attacks from Sam Aaronovitch (then part of the leadership of the CPGB) and J. H.
Prime, both of whom used Stalin’s writings to repudiate Lilley’s critique. What
Aaronovitch (1949/50) and Prime (1949/50) expressed was the official Marxist
position then coalescing around the MPSF concepts. Their conflict with the reviewers
of History is indicative of the emerging fissure in British Marxism that Richard Johnson
(1979) characterizes as the ‘‘economism’’ of Dobb (shared by Childe) in contrast to
the ‘‘culturalism’’ of Hill, Rodney Hilton, Eric Hobsbawm, and E. P. Thompson.10 An
9. See also Dobb (1945, 7). An undated pamphlet by Arnot, believed to have been published in
1942, also contains this same definition and uses the concept extensively.
10. Kaye (1995) discusses this understanding of the British Marxist historians group.
important but overlooked aspect of this division is the social ontology that the
respective groups employed. Dobb and Childe, though there were important
differences between them, tended to see society as holistic and deterministic; the
‘‘culturalist’’ writers implicitly adopted a model that, while not properly Cartesian,
was much more so than that of Dobb and Childe. Decades later when E. P. Thompson
attacked Althusserian Marxism as ‘‘Stalinist,’’ his views remained fixed by the
dichotomy that defined British Marxism, and he failed to grasp that Althusser
endeavored to break from it.
Dobb’s Studies in the Development of Capitalism was the first effort in English
formally to develop the concept of a ‘‘mode of production’’ into a comprehensive
theory of society. Dobb never provides a fully developed mode of production theory of
society, either in Studies or elsewhere, but he does make important strides in the
reconceptualization of the term ‘‘mode of production’’ as a formal theoretical
concept. In doing so, he incorporates the expressive-totality social ontology into his
work. Capitalism, according to Dobb, is a mode of production and a mode of
production is a ‘‘system’’ (1946, 7). Several different types of economic system have
existed in history and what is significant in studying these modes or systems,
according to Dobb, is identifying when one has ‘‘grown to proportions which enable it
to place its imprint upon the whole of society and exert a major influence in moulding
the trend of development’’ (11). For Dobb, a mode of production or economic system
is the basis of every society, and each historical epoch should be understood as
defined by its single dominant mode or system. Since society is determined or
‘‘moulded’’ by a single mode of production, and each mode of production is itself a
system, then society itself exists as a ‘‘socio-economic system’’ (12/3). Instead of a
‘‘complexus,’’ for Dobb society is a mode of production or system that is unified by
one dominant type of economic relation. Instead of questioning the relationship
between the economic base and the noneconomic superstructure, he presents society
as a coherent whole whose features express underlying economic relations. Changes
in economic relations transform the entire society, and these transformations mark
the passage from one stage of historical development to another, for the society as a
whole.
The novelty of Dobb’s approach is demonstrated by his famous exchange with Paul
Sweezy. They disagree and wrestle with what it means to refer to a ‘‘system of
production’’ and how this idea is or is not similar to a ‘‘mode of production’’ in Marxist
theory (Hilton 1976, 33/4, 57/8). Sweezy’s Theory of Capitalist Development (1942),
published only four years prior to Dobb’s Studies, scarcely even uses the term ‘‘mode
of production’’ and certainly does not make it a formal concept for Marxian theory.
For two eminent Marxist scholars to differ so dramatically over such a basic concept
clearly illustrates that Dobb was introducing something new in Marxian theory, or at
least new to Western Marxism. Dobb’s Studies represents an important step in the
development of MPSF theory, but it only begins the formal theoretical development of
this approach in Western Marxism. Maurice Cornforth (1953) continued this develop-
ment in the West while Soviet scholars continued it in the East. By the later 1950s,
MPSF theory and the Hegelian expressive totality had become Marxist orthodoxy.
192 OLSEN
Conclusion
MPSF theory is the product of theorists who introduced identifiable changes that had
important consequences for Marxian theory. This was criticized at different times by
Marxists who shared little in common except a dislike of certain symptoms of the
expressive-totality ontology. It represents not ‘‘old-fashioned Marxism,’’ but rather,
regression to a modified Hegelian philosophy of history.
I argue that while Marxist theorists typically reject Hegel’s teleology and
metaphysics loudly, they introduce both into their work sub voce by accepting that
Marx’s basic understanding of society*/his social ontology*/is simply an inverted form
of Hegel’s expressive totality. But this essay should not be interpreted to mean that I
propose a complete break between Marx and Hegel. The point I do wish to make,
which I also take from Althusser and others, is that Marx transformed Hegel’s
dialectical ontology: he did not simply reject or ‘‘invert’’ it. Althusser proposed
overdetermination both to describe this difference and as an antidote for the
simplistic determinism to which the expressive totality gives rise. It is also true that
he, along with Balibar, worked to preserve the basic form of MPSF theory by radically
revising it, replacing the expressive with an overdetermined totality. But this essay
demonstrates that MPSF developed after the simple, Hegelian, expressive ontology
had been established in Marxian theory, and it provided a version of Marxist social and
historical theory that was consistent with this ontological premise. In other words, it
was not corrupted by this ontology, it embodies it. Hindess and Hirst (1975, 1977)
encountered this in the 1970s when they tried to develop a general theory of modes of
production that also rejected essentialism. They successfully deduced that MPSF
theory and antiessentialism were irreconcilable, but they never uncovered precisely
why this was so. This essay provides an answer for that question and for another one
as well: namely, whether the essentialism they encountered in MPSF theory is
endemic to Marxian theory. The history I have outlined here indicates that the answer
to this question is no. This ontological essentialism and strict determinism are
recognizable amendments to Marxian theory.
These theoretical changes were intimately related to twentieth-century political
developments. It is not difficult to imagine that the Marxian theory produced by
revolutionaries might be different from that embraced by those with state power.
Exploring these connections would be a productive line of future inquiry.
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Althusser challenges Marxian theorists not to uncritically or unconsciously import

The Origins and Formalization of Mode of Production and

The first appearances of a relatively well-developed MPSF theory in English begin in

These basic laws are:

productive forces. The social formation thereby expresses the determination

Engels’s Reprise of Hegel’s Philosophy of History

Marxism During the Second International

Both in nature and in society there exists objectively . . . a law of nature

4. Goode (1979, 79/81) discusses Korsch’s critique of Bukharin.

appears rigidly determined, mechanistically developing, and subject to laws

of technological sophistication (e.g., Stone Age, Bronze Age, etc.). He initially

Goode, P. 1979. Karl Korsch: A study in Western Marxism. London: Macmillan.

Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

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