In Marx’s work, the contradiction of capitalism is between ‘the social relations which structure capitalist society’ and ‘the material productive forces which have been developed under capitalism’. I’ve previously discussed how I distinguish ‘material’ from ‘social’, and this post tries to more explicitly apply this framework to help explain the problems that Marx saw with capitalism. Once again, I am heavily indebted to G.A. Cohen’s Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence, particularly Chapter 11.
Capitalism develops productive forces beyond the point where capitalist social relations are the most useful way of organizing material production for the enrichment of people’s lives. Capitalist social relations would be best replaced by more democratic, representative, and rational social structures around our highly efficient forces of production.
The material productive forces include things like: machinery, technical knowledge, and information processing. These multiply workers’ ability to produce useful things, regardless of our ideological stances or social relationships. Under capitalism, the development of our productive forces has advanced steadily and speedily. This is primarily a result of capitalism’s pursuit of profit-for-profit’s sake, which in turn is largely the consequence of an environment of market competition and the threat of potential competition. Capitalists, insofar as they are to remain capitalists in a competitive economy, are compelled to reinvest a considerable amount of profits back into the development of productive forces.
Productive forces are in tension with the social relations of capitalism in at least three main ways.
Capitalist social relations focus on producing useful commodities and services—but only those which can be reliably exchanged in a way which results in profits for the capitalist class. The production of usefulness to society becomes secondary to exchangability on the market.
This means that the social relations in the production process are such that the working class will ultimately be undemocratically subordinated to the capitalists’ will. Members of the capitalist class will have final say over decisions involving production, as to direct production for the advancement of their personal profits. Capitalist relations simultaneously seek to extract as much value out of people, and thus to control as much of people’s labor power as possible. The working class is not free to direct the majority of our labor power, or to influence the intended use and purpose of what we create. In other words, the working class is intolerably alienated from our ability to creatively labor and affect the world.
Capitalist social relations also prioritize business-cycle profits and growth, above the longer-term health of our natural world and resources. (That is, the natural world beyond that of human life and labor power, which are themselves part of our natural world and resources. The unnecessarily deteriorated quality of human life and labor were addressed in points 1 and 2.) Capitalism’s individualistic profit-motivated social relations are not compatible with broader material forces such as climate and biodiversity, which work together with other aspects of nature to help develop and maintain a pleasing human existence.
Capitalism’s social relations cannot survive over time, against the harm and destruction it unnecessarily imposes on humans and the rest of nature. Whether this simply means our advancement beyond the material and social relations of capitalism or if it means the eventual destruction of human society—socialism or barbarism—that depends on the proletariat’s capacity to collectively usurp the capitalist class. The capitalist principle of profit extraction will either run up against the social limits of what the working class will accept, or the material limits of the rest of the natural world.
With more democratic forms of social relations, the production and maintenance of human life and world ecology would not be so limited:
Objects and mutual aid can be brought to existence in ways which are more materially useful, efficient, and desirable. Our productive capacity is not inherently limited to the mere production of only those commodities and services which can be leveraged for personal capitalist profits. That is our situation today only because of the constraints of capitalist social relations. Some salient contemporary examples of capitalist social relations fettering our productive capacity include: healthcare, energy, working conditions, affordable housing, public transportation, social connections among people, and education.
There are more desirable ways to live amongst each other socially than the capitalist social relations of domination, misinformation, and violent and deprivational disciplining which is imposed upon the worldwide working class majority. These relations not only shape our workplaces, they spread into our political and social institutions, neighborhoods, and close relationships. If we had direction over our labor power, we would feel more connected to, responsible for, and invested in the world which we are collectively creating.
Informed, democratic relations in the production process would be vastly more in tune with living as part of the natural world. Protection of nature has been thwarted continuously and intentionally by capitalists who would muddy the waters to protect their investments.
Marx’s criticism of capitalism is precisely about how capitalist social relations fall behind and become incompatible with realizing the potential of our material forces for reproducing society.
Capitalist social relations seemingly were previously developed as a result of—and for the further promotion of—the capitalist mode of production. These social relations of domination have outlived any usefulness they may have once possessed. (Capitalist social relations were arguably an advancement beyond feudal relations.) Capitalist social relations are significantly self-perpetuating and resilient. These were arguably once useful properties, in service of the reliable development of our productive forces. But they now work against us as we try to develop our social relations further, to match the social and technical possibilities opened up by our now-highly-developed productive forces.
Humans, insofar as we can act freely and rationally, will realize through experience how our social relations are holding back the effective use of our productive forces. Consequently, we would be rational to fight for the democratic social relations of communism. Capitalist social relations seek to deprive us of our freedoms and capacity for rational collective action; usually by misinforming, surveilling, and disciplining the working class. If taken to their conclusion, capitalist social relations would turn us into mere machines in the service of capitalist profit: mechanistic laborers set in the direction of creating profit for our employers, and mechanistic consumers living on the margins as capitalists hoover up as much of our savings as possible.