international historical sociology: recovering sociohistorical causality

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International Historical Sociology: Recovering Sociohistorical CausalitySébastien Rioux

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International Historical Sociology:Recovering Sociohistorical Causality

Sebastien Rioux

Renewed interest in the concept of ‘‘uneven and combined development’’ has ledsome to argue for an international historical sociology that transcends the binarybetween a societal and international reality. This paper suggests in its place analternative reading of Marx’s materialist conception of history and ultimately arguesthat a feminist historical materialism is a sociologically more promising frameworkfrom which an international historical sociology can arise.

Key Words: Historical Sociology, International Relations, Uneven Development,Feminist Historical Materialism, Labor, Body

The architect of the Red Army and revolutionary Leon Trotsky is habitually known as

the theoretician of the permanent revolution.1 Running parallel to Marx and Engels’s

conception of the revolution en permanence, Trotsky offers the first systematic

articulation of the permanent revolution that Lenin called the ‘‘uninterrupted’’ or

‘‘continuous’’ revolution.2 Less known on the other hand is Trotsky’s law of uneven

and combined development, on which rests his notion of permanent revolution (Knei-

Paz 1978; Lowy 1981). Forged in the context of the February revolution (1905),

Trotsky’s law is palpable in the pages of Results and Prospects (1906) (Lowy 1981,

51�/2, 87�/8). Trotsky identifies a dynamic contradiction between the primitive

sociohistoric development of Russia and its capitalist counterparts whose state

organization was built on superior and more stable foundations (Trotsky 2005, 13�/4).

This contradiction was overcome by the Russian Revolution of 1917. The formulation

of the ‘law’ was finally fully developed by the author in the first chapter of his

magnum opus History of the Russian Revolution (1932) which, in the words of George

Novack, ‘‘gave to the Marxist movement the first explicit formulation of that law’’

(1972, 84).

ISSN 0893-5696 print/1475-8059 online/09/040585-20– 2009 Association for Economic and Social AnalysisDOI: 10.1080/08935690903145820

1. On the concept of permanent revolution, see: Trotsky 2005, 101�/265; Deutscher 2003,120�/44; Horowitz 1969, 17�/28, 95�/115, 193�/4; Howe 1978, 25�/8; Knei-Paz 1978; Lowy 1981,chaps. 1�/3; Molyneux 1981, 17�/46; Wistrich 1979, 51�/62.2. Trotsky’s and Lenin’s understanding of the revolution as a never ending process does not havesubstantial differences (Horowitz 1969, 28).

RETHINKING MARXISM VOLUME 21 NUMBER 4 (OCTOBER 2009)

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Though there have been important contributions on Trotsky’s law (Elster 1986;

Knei-Paz 1978; Mandel 1991; Novack 1972; van der Linden 2007), Justin Rosenberg

gives the most stimulating reflection of its potential. Rosenberg’s primary motivation

was to recover the lost history in international relations (IR) by showing the

importance of the geopolitically combined but socially uneven development of the

international system under the spread of the world market (Rosenberg 1996, 9).

Further, he argues that what we habitually call ‘the international’ is in fact an

intrinsic and constitutive aspect of human social development (Rosenberg 2006,

2007). Rosenberg’s main achievement has been to raise consciousness about the

necessity of an international historical sociology capable of transcending the binary

between a societal inside/outside.

The first part of this paper concentrates on Rosenberg’s claim that the concept of

uneven and combined development provides a conceptual framework for an

international historical sociology. His theoretical understanding of the concept and

his own application of it is brilliantly executed and innovative. Not only does it enrich

our understanding of social and international theory, but it calls for a wider and richer

epistemology crossing academic divisions of knowledge production. Recognizing the

importance of Rosenberg’s claim for an international historical sociology, this paper

argues that the concept of uneven and combined development fails to account for

sociohistorical causality, which is necessary for an international historical sociology to

arise. I therefore argue that a feminist historical materialism is a sociologically more

promising framework.

International Historical Sociology

Marxism ‘‘is still widely seen as a theory of domestic society’’ (Burchill et al. 1996,

24), conceiving the ‘‘domestic analogy’’ as a ‘‘preference for endogenous explana-

tions of society’’ (135). Accordingly, Marxism is still characterized by the idea that

from a society can be derived the entirety of its social causality. This is perfectly

captured by Rosenberg, for whom the domestic analogy is a more general problem of

classical historical sociology.

The case, in fact, is general: in the classical sociological tradition we finddynamic theorizations of internal change over historical time (the sequenceof ancient, medieval and modern forms of society); and we find comparativetheorizations of external difference across cultural space (contrastingEuropean social structures with the Ottoman, Indian and Chinese amongothers). What we do not find, however, is a drawing together of thesedynamic and comparative moments of analysis in order to theorize aspecifically inter-societal dimension of social change*/even where, as inMarx’s analysis of capitalist expansion, the object of analysis necessarilyinvolves more than one society (2006, 312; emphasis in the original)

Rosenberg makes clear that such a task requires ‘‘a conceptual framework which,

proceeding from the relational structure of societies as explanans (sociology),

systematically incorporates the causal significance of their asynchronous interaction

586 RIOUX


(international) into an explanation of their individual and collective development and

change over time (historical)’’ (335).

It is important to note that Rosenberg thinks of ‘the international’ as synonymous

with ‘intersocietal’ (336 n. 4). Refusing to enclose himself in the spatiotemporal

dimension of the modern international system in which ‘the international’ refers to

this interactive dimension between nation-states, Rosenberg seeks a line of argument

based on a sociological generalization of what constitutes and is constitutive of

societies, and by which the domestic analogy can be transcended. Here the modern

international system is seen as one peculiar historical instance of the more

fundamental reality of the porosity of the societal boundary. This is premised on

the argument of the anthropologist Eric Wolf, who defines society as a ‘‘changing

alignments of social groups, segments, and classes, without either fixed boundaries or

stable internal constitutions’’ (1997, 387). Moreover, Wolf argues that we cannot

‘‘think of societies as isolated and self-maintaining systems. Nor can we imagine

culture as integrated totalities in which each part contributes to the maintenance of

an organized, autonomous, and enduring whole’’ (Wolf 1997, 390). What is truly

interesting here is the extent to which the term ‘society’ carries fluidity and porosity

and how the binary inside/outside is transcended by a dynamic conception of society.

The theoretical shortcomings of both the classical historical sociology and the realist

theory of IR have forged either a conception of society in abstraction of ‘the

international’ or a conception of the latter in abstraction of the former. Rosenberg’s

purpose is not to offer a theory that accounts for each side of the binary, but more

importantly to show that the ‘‘intellectual requirements of social theory and

international theory are*/and always have been*/one and the same’’ (2006, 336).

Therefore, what Rosenberg is seeking is to abolish this binary understanding of

historical change by integrating within the concept of development itself the social

causality that classical historical sociology represses as externalities. In other words,

what is asked is nothing less than a ‘‘reconceptualization of ‘development’

itself*/one which removes, in fact, the source of the ‘domestic analogy’ problem

for historical sociology’’ (313). The concept of development, he notes, ‘‘connotes

processes of directional change over time which can be theorized by analysing the

causal properties of particular structures of social relationships’’ (330). Following the

Greek conception of development as growth, Rosenberg, in accordance with

Aristotle, distinguishes between development and history*/‘‘between that which

can be generalized and that which cannot; between the logically consequent and the

empirically fortuitous; in short, between theoretical necessity and historical events’’

(331). This epistemological rupture therefore requires that ‘‘for the concept of

development to rise from mere description to a method of historical explanation,

more must be posited of it than the bare idea of directional change over time’’ (331).

First, the source of this change must be derived from causal propertiesintrinsic to the ‘nature’ of the phenomenon itself . . . ‘‘Actually,’’ says[Robert] Nisbet, ‘‘immanence is the core attribute of the whole theory ofsocial evolution’’ . . .Second, in order for the movement of the change to be explained by the ideaof a developmental process, each of the steps which compose it must beshown both to arise from its predecessor and to create the causal conditions

INTERNATIONAL HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY 587


for its successor. This is the doctrine of continuity, formulated in Leibniz’sdictum, natura non facit saltum*/nature does not make leaps.And finally, in order to move beyond philosophical abstraction, developmentmust be posited of some particular physical, mental, biological or socialthing. That is, it must specify a ‘persisting entity’ which undergoes the‘succession of differences in time’ . . . which composes the process ofdevelopmental change arising from its nature. (331; references omitted)

Simply put, immanence, continuity and persistence are the three requirements of the

concept of development. And yet, Rosenberg focuses his attention on the last

criteria, persistence.

So long as the ‘persisting entity’ is an individual society, as it is in classical historical

sociology, ‘externalities’ will always exist. The logic of this statement can be

explained as follows: since externalities are an intrinsic aspect of the causal structure

of social development, the latter cannot be entirely derived from society alone. But,

asks Rosenberg,

what happens if . . . we try to get around this problem by switching focus to the‘super-entity’ of human social development as a whole, thereby rendering allevents ‘internal’ by definition? The answer, says Nisbet, is that the problem isonly multiplied by the vast number of social structures to which distinct (self-contained) developmental trajectories must now be imputed . . . For thisreason, Nisbet argues, when development is posited of humanity as a whole,the concept simply cannot keep its feet on the ground*/it must lose itsempirical basis in any concrete ‘persisting entity’. (332)

History defeats any grand narrative, any pretension to subsume it under a single

notion of development. ‘‘History, argues Nisbet, in any substantive sense is plural. It

is diverse, multiple, and particular . . . Not only are there many histories; there are

many chronologies, many times’’ (Rosenberg 2006, 333; emphasis in the original).

Acknowledging Nisbet’s argument, he writes that ‘‘this is an ontological quality of

human history which the classical concept of development represses, and which,

together with all the interactive determinations which flow from it, returns again and

again to defeat the latter’s pretensions to historical explanation’’ (333). Thus, the

theoretical capacities of the classical concept of development have been diminished,

either as incapable of accounting for the ‘externalities’ when the ‘persisting entity’ is

a concrete society, or of accounting for the latter when the former is rendered

internal at the level of the social whole.

Still, the theoretical shortcomings of classical historical sociology are not by any

means a justification to abandon it*/quite the contrary. For, argues Rosenberg,

there is a way of reconciling all three requirements of the concept ofdevelopment. And that is by recognizing*/positing theoretically*/that theinner causal structure of development itself as a historical phenomenon isintrinsically both uneven and combined (whether or not we use those actualwords).For, as we earlier saw, the premise of unevenness recognizes that the ‘super-entity’ of humanity as the overall subject of the historical process*/a subjectwhich does after all have both ontological and empirical substance*/isinternally differentiated (across the dimensions of space, time, number and

588 RIOUX


social form, etc.). And the corollary of combined development then furtherposits just that interactive, synthetic texture which*/from the point of viewof any one of its parts*/appears (for any unilinear concept of development) inthe form of disruptive ‘externalities’. (333�/4; emphasis in the original)

Thus, Rosenberg has found a way to account for the social whole (the ‘super-entity’ of

humanity) without repressing the multilinearity (uneven development) and inter-

activity (combined development) of its parts (human societies).

Certainly Rosenberg himself recognizes the practical impossibility of assembling the

entirety of historical facts (336). The point is rather methodological, for postulating a

multilinear and interactive ontology at the level of human social development as a

whole implies a completely new epistemology by which particular social development

has to be taken in relation to its wider intersocietal reality. Thus, his revised concept

of development causes a major shift: development, once fixed at the level of a

concrete society, is now positioned at the level of the social whole, the ‘super-entity’

of humanity. And this, as we saw, was only possible by postulating that development

itself*/taken as a whole*/is both uneven and combined.

Indeed it follows within this revised concept of development that Leibniz’sdictum*/nature does not make leaps*/does not, and cannot hold at the levelof the parts . . . Rather, what Trotsky saw was that in order for the substanceof Leibniz’s rule to be preserved, a multilinear and interactive conception ofhistorical causality itself had to be interpolated within it.It is, after all, only relative to the prior course of local development thatthese were leaps*/ in the sense of manifesting underivable discontinuities.Revisualized within their wider context of uneven and combined develop-ment, however, the chains of causality could be re-established. (334;emphasis in the original)

Only the ‘super-entity’ of humanity (persisting entity) does not know any disconti-

nuities (continuity), since only it represents the whole from which social causality can

be entirely derived (immanence).

One needs to understand that Rosenberg’s argument is premised on both his

acceptance of the three requirements of the concept of development (immanence,

continuity, and persistence) and his conception of the social totality as both uneven

and combined.

Social development is a differentiated totality. (Thus spoke the ‘law ofunevenness’.) As that differentiation is intrinsic, so the condition of being aninterrelated fragment of a wider whole is effectively universal to humansocieties; and in turn the practical and existential consequences of thiscondition enter directly, and in principle, into their ongoing relationalconstitution. (Unevenness ‘gives rise’ to combined development.) The factof unevenness thus radically infuses with its consequences the nature ofsocial causality itself. (328)

And having shifted the very meaning of development at the level of the social whole,

Rosenberg can now revisit the concept of ‘the international’. Since, as he argues, it is

the condition of human societies to be ‘‘an interrelated fragment of a wider whole,’’

what we habitually call ‘the international’ ceases to be the residual outside of



classical historical sociology and becomes a constitutive dimension of the social

itself. As a result, ‘the international’ becomes ‘‘nothing other than the highest

expression of uneven and combined development. This is its sociological definition’’

(328) or, to put it another way, the ‘‘crystallisation, in a particular historical form, of

this wider attribute of social development*/its generic unevenness’’ (2007, 3). Hence

Rosenberg’s call for an international historical sociology is nothing less than a call for

a historical sociology of the social totality of human development.

No doubt, Rosenberg raises a powerful argument for the theoretical enrichment of

both social and international theory. More than that, in fact, he beautifully shows that

their respective intellectual requirements have always been the same. I agree with the

need for an international historical sociology. However, his strength is also the source

of his weakness. Keeping in mind that Rosenberg’s purpose is to show the theoretical

inadequacy of the actual definition of ‘the international’ as a residual and

unproblematized ‘outside’, I argue that his project can be pursued through three

general critiques that all lend themselves to further development.

First, as we saw, Rosenberg’s relational views posit that the inner causal structure

of development as a whole is both uneven and combined. This, he argues, enters into

the ‘‘ongoing relational constitution’’ of its parts. I do not dispute this claim.

However, I argue below that multilinearity and interactivity are in fact ontologically

prior to the ‘‘ongoing relational constitution’’ of uneven and interactive societies.

Second, there are limitations in conceiving that immanence, continuity, and

persistence are requirements of the concept of development. Not only has Rosenberg

set a trap for himself by limiting his thinking to the triad of uneven-combined-

development as a solution to the domestic analogy of classical historical sociology,

but his reconceptualization has too narrowly focused on the third requirement of the

notion of development: persisting entity. Following Marx’s materialist conception of

history, I argue that all three requirements are more fundamentally requirements of

history, the latter being the sole basis on which any notion of development can arise.

In his ‘‘Critique of Hegel’s Doctrine of the State,’’ Marx writes that ‘‘the crux of the

matter is that Hegel everywhere makes the Idea into the subject, while the genuine,

real subject . . . is turned into the predicate. The development, however, always takes

place on the side of the predicate’’ (1992, 65). In the same way, Rosenberg has made

the superentity of humanity the subject of development. Though he reveals the

importance of conceiving social development in the multiplicity of its determina-

tions, he also erases the real subjects of history: those who actually make it and from

which any concept of development must arise.

Third, and related to the last point, I consider Rosenberg’s argument tautological.

His claim that social development is a differentiated totality characterized by the

interactivity of its (uneven) parts falls short of explanatory capacity. As Marx

explained, ‘‘[T]he argument that the different members of an organism stand in a

necessary relation to each other derived from the nature of the organism is*/pure

tautology’’ (1992, 66). And quite correctly, for to argue, as does Rosenberg, that ‘‘the

inner causal structure of development itself as a historical phenomenon is

intrinsically both uneven and combined’’ does not tell us much more about what

this inner causal structure is made of, or why it is both uneven (multilinearity) and

590 RIOUX


combined (interactivity), or, more important, how to account for it. Pursuing his

critique, Marx points out that

the mere fact that I say ‘this organism (i.e. the state, the politicalconstitution) is the differentiation of the Idea into various elements etc.’does not mean that I know anything at all about the specific Idea of thepolitical constitution; the same statement can be made with the same truthabout the organism of an animal as about the organism of the state . . . Ourgeneral definitions do not advance our understanding. An explanation,however, which fails to supply the differentia is no explanation at all. (66�/7;emphasis in the original)

What we need therefore is an understanding of the differentia from which causality

can be recovered and explanation arises.

Cynthia Enloe has argued that ‘‘when you try to explain anything, you are seeking

causality’’ (2007, 18). This is simply because explanation is ‘‘the discovery of what

causes what’’ (12). Any theory of social change is by definition a conceptual

framework trying to discover the causes for any historical phenomenon. Therefore

it seems difficult to maintain, as Rosenberg does, that the concept of uneven and

combined development is a method of historical explanation. If the purpose of any

such theory is to offer an explanation of the causality of sociohistorical change, it

should be clear by now that the concept of uneven and combined development

cannot claim to offer such an explanation. As far as Trotsky’s law is relevant, it

remains nothing more than a general proposition concerning historical development.

To sum up, Rosenberg has offered a Hegelian solution to a Kantian problem by

transcending the binary between two false abstractions (‘society’ and ‘anarchy’).3 As

a result, he maintains ‘society’ as the basic unit of analysis with the crucial and

fundamental reconceptualization that it is part of an uneven and combined social

totality. And this is where the concept of uneven and combined development cannot

help us. It is not the predictive capacity of the concept that is the problem (Elster

1986; van der Linden 2007), but rather the fact that it remains an abstraction unable

to yield any historical explanation. Beyond the methodological unity that the concept

of uneven and combined development carries, it offers no clues as to how we can

recover the sociohistorical causality allowing us to account for social change.

Rosenberg’s strength has been to show that human development is an ontological

whole; his weakness is to posit this whole as the historical subject. The second part of

this paper attempts to offer a method of historical explanation capable of meeting

the demands of an international historical sociology.

Changing the Starting Point

Marx ends his doctoral thesis, entitled ‘‘Difference Between the Democritean and

Epicurean Philosophy of Nature’’ (1841), with these words:

3. For a critique of the Hegelian totality, see Cullenberg 1996, 121�/5.



Epicurus has thus carried atomistics to its final conclusion, which is itsdissolution and conscious opposition to the universal. For Democritus, on theother hand, the atom is only the general objective expression of theempirical investigation of nature as a whole. Hence the atom remains forhim a pure and abstract category, a hypothesis, the result of experience, notits active [energisches] principle. This hypothesis remains therefore withoutrealization, just as it plays no further part in determining the realinvestigation of nature. (Marx 2006, 146; emphasis in the original)

Though Marx recognizes that Epicurus’s atomistic philosophy of nature went further

than that of Democritus, ‘‘[T]he main conclusion that emerges is that the

metaphysical basis of atomism is weak in explanatory potential, and problem-ridden

where it is not incoherent’’ (Meikle 1985, 15). Ultimately, atomism fails to conceive of

the universal. Marx emphasizes the importance of an ‘‘active principle’’ determining

‘‘the real investigation of nature.’’ Rosenberg’s problem is precisely that what he

considers to be the general in the whole*/the multilinearity and interactivity of the

superentity of humanity*/cannot be this active principle, for the uneven and

combined character of human development cannot account for, neither can it

explain, development itself. The circularity of Rosenberg’s argument is self-

defeating. If one is to make sense of human development at all, one needs to

uncover the roots of the notion of development itself, its active principle.

Marx’s Relational World-View

Hegel’s metaphysical solution to Kant’s dualism of transcendental knowledge was to

postulate an immanent whole.4 The latter, argues Hegelian scholar Frederick Beiser,

has to be conceived as an internally related organic totality, as life (Beiser 2006, 86).

Bertell Ollman has highlighted this fundamental aspect of Marx at length.

In Marx’s case, all conjunction is organic, intrinsic to the social units withwhich he is concerned and part of the nature of each; that it exists may betaken for granted. On this view, interaction is, properly speaking, innerac-tion (it is ‘‘inner connections’’ which he claims to study). Of production,distribution, consumption and exchange, Marx declares, ‘‘mutual interactiontakes place between the various elements. Such is the case with everyorganic body.’’ What Marx calls ‘‘mutual interaction’’ (or ‘‘reciprocaleffect’’ or ‘‘reciprocal action’’) is only possible because it occurs withinan organic body. This is the case with everything in Marxism, which treats itsentire subject matter as ‘‘different sides of one unit.’’ (Ollman 1980, 16�/7;emphasis in the original)

Marx’s early critique of political economy is premised on the argument that it fails to

‘‘grasp the way the movement is connected’’ or the ‘‘essential connection,’’

4. In consideration of length I have omitted a digression on Hegel’s metaphysical system. Hegelis part of this philosophical tradition beginning with Aristotle and finding in Spinoza, Leibniz,Fichte, and Schelling powerful thinkers of the totality. The rediscovery of the ancients in theRenaissance period reactivated this millennium debate between transcendence and immanence.

592 RIOUX


therefore offering the explanatory poverty of a science of the accidental (Marx 2001,

107).

Marx’s organic conception lies in his acceptance of one of the greatest Hegelian

theoretical developments, the philosophy of internal relations (Ollman 1980, 26�/40,

256�/62). In his Logic, Hegel argues, ‘‘Essential relationship is the determinate, quite

universal mode of appearing. Everything that exists stands in a relationship, and this

relationship is what is genuine in every existence. Consequently, what exists does not

do so abstractly, on its own account, but only within an other; within this other,

however, it is relation to self, and relationship is the unity of relation to self and

relation to another’’ (Hegel 1991, §135A). To be is to be-in-relation; it is to be-

determined. The ‘‘concrete,’’ says Marx in the Grundrisse, ‘‘is concrete because it is

the concentration of many determinations’’ (1993, 101).5 The concreteness of reality

itself is possible because it is a determinate and relational reality.

Everything that exists is by nature determined, a being-in-relation. ‘‘A being which

does not have its nature outside itself is not a natural being, and plays no part in the

system of nature. A being which has no object outside itself is not an objective being.

A being which is not itself an object for some third being has no being for its object;

i.e., it is not objectively related’’ (Marx 2001, 181�/2; emphasis in the original). One

needs to appreciate the influence of both Aristotle and Hegel here. Contrary to

Aristotle who places the static nature, essence, or ergon of being within the being

itself, or Hegel who posits it in the outside Idea, Marx argues that the universal is

neither a static inside or outside but, as Scott Meikle has powerfully argued, ‘‘the real

essence of the finite real, i.e. of what exists and is determined’’’ (Meikle 1985, 43). As

such, Marx’s universal does not, and simply cannot, refer to an essence which is

logically prior to its concrete manifestations. What fundamentally distinguishes him is

that he places this fluidity and openness of the universal within concrete beings.

From the philosophy of internal relations stems unevenness and interactivity: since

to be is to be-in-relation, and since to be is to-be-part-of-the-system-of-nature, it

means not only that no being is entirely determined in the same way, but also that the

constitution of being needs to be derived from its relational ontology. This

philosophical thinking allows no ‘inside’ or ‘outside’; it maintains from the outset

that they are mutually constitutive. Thus, and contrary to Rosenberg’s position, it is

not development that is both uneven and combined, but more fundamentally nature

itself, the system to which the species being belongs and that it is part of.6

It is important to note the shift in terms of levels of analysis: nature (not

development) is ontologically both uneven and combined. But all of this seems to

provide no real advancement to my argument, for even my shift from development to

nature remains a tautology. Indeed, neither one nor the other puts forward much

5. One should not understand ‘‘determined’’ as a logical necessity denying any kind of choices.Rather, it is through our relationships that we are objectified, real and concrete beings. In thissense, determinations carry movement and change.6. Marx’s reference to the term of species-being (Gattungswesen) is inherited from Feuerbach‘‘who takes as the Gattung mankind as a whole, hence the human species’’ (Marx 2001, 241).Building on feminist and postcolonial insights, I argue later that who has been considered amember of the species is historically variable.



more than the mere fact ‘‘that the different members of an organism stand in a

necessary relation to each other.’’ However, this shift is an important one if one is to

recover the source of human history, of what actually causes it. So long as this point

has not been elucidated, the notion of development remains a vague abstraction

without conceptual clarity. And it is precisely because Rosenberg’s approach focuses

on the result that it is unable to account for the social causality it pretends to

describe. Simply put, the concept of uneven and combined development is not a

method of historical explanation.

Marx’s Theory of Universals

With Marxist philosopher Alan G. Nasser, I argue that Marx had a theory of universals.

‘‘There is a temptation, reflected in language, to treat universals as connoting fixed

or static features of the world; to grasp (begreifen) something through a (universal)

concept (Begriff) is to grip the thing in thought, to get a hold of it, to hold it still.

Marx resisted the temptation’’ (Nasser 1975, 492; emphasis in the original).7 Marx’s

sixth thesis on Feuerbach goes on, saying that ‘‘the essence of man is no abstraction

inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social

relations’’ (Marx 1998, 570). Since Marx had a dynamic understanding of social

relations, he had a dynamic understanding of the essence or nature of man.8 Marx’s

use of terms like ‘essence’, ‘nature’, ‘life-activity’, ‘active life-process’, and

‘universal’ to explain the historical becoming of human beings carries fluidity and

movement, openness and change.

Questioning the relationship between the particular and universal is anything but

new. Speaking of Aristotle, Meikle notes:

In the histories he found nothing general, but only accounts of particularevents that took place in a certain locality over a given period of time. Theirbasis, therefore, was chance, or accident, and in Aristotle’s estimation thatwas no basis for science . . . The efforts of the historical writers failed toreveal any such essential forms, natures or ‘causes’, and were accordinglyjudged to be unserious. In dealing with particularity rather than withgenerality in the particular, they could provide little of worth, for ‘thegeneral is honoured because it reveals the cause’, and ‘we have scientificknowledge when we know the cause’. To know the cause, we must look forthe general and identify a line of necessity, and that is possible only inrelation to some identified whole in whose development or movementaccording to its nature (ergon or telos) the necessity lies. (Meikle 1985, 18)

In a similar way, Hegel argues in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy that ‘‘only a

history of Philosophy thus regarded as a system of development in Idea, is entitled to

the name of Science: a collection of facts constitutes no science’’ (1955, 31). The

7. On Marx’s conceptual fluidity, see Ollman 1980, chap. 1.8. As I shall argue below, this emphasis on ‘man’ is the expression of the naturalization ofwomen and, by the same token, the naturalization of part of what actually constitutes the socialrelations (see Mies 1994).

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idea is that by recovering the causality, one can actually offer an explana-

tion*/though always partial because never total*/of movement and change. And

Marx, who carefully studied both authors, also tried to grasp the general by which to

make sense of the particular.

Nasser notes that ‘‘the resolution of this apparent contradiction [between

humanity’s specific historical conditions and the necessity to transcend its concrete

phenomenal form] lies in Marx’s anthropological use of what Hegel called the

‘‘concrete universal,’’ the universal which differentiates itself into and manifests

itself as its particulars’’ (Nasser 1975, 492). In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels

write that their approach ‘‘is not devoid of premises. It starts from the real premises

and does not abandon them for a moment. Its premises are men, not in any fantastic

isolation and fixity, but in their actual empirically perceptible process of develop-

ment under definite conditions. As soon as this active life-process of development is

described, history ceases to be a collection of dead facts’’ (1998, 43; emphasis

added). The search for the universal is a continual theme in Marx’s early writings.

Marx’s real and concrete universal*/the life-activity or active life-process*/is

labor. Indeed, he says in his Manuscripts that ‘‘the entire so-called history of the

world is nothing but the creation of man through human labor’’ (Marx 2001, 145;

emphasis in the original).9 He further substantiates it in volume 1 of Capital, arguing

that the labor process ‘‘is purposeful activity aimed at the production of use-

values . . . It is the universal condition for the metabolic interaction [Stoffwechsel]

between man and nature, the everlasting nature-imposed condition of human

existence, or rather it is common to all forms of society in which human beings

live’’ (1990, 290). It is important to note that, for Marx, labor is not only a process,

but a social process. However, due to their overwhelming focus on the narrow sphere

of production, many have accused Marx and Marxists alike of falling into a

‘productivist’ model of labor, especially in reference to a postindustrial society of

supposedly ‘immaterial’ labor.

Sean Sayers has recently argued that the productivist critique is mistaken and that

Marx’s concept of labor, read in the context of Hegel’s philosophy, offers a richer

framework. According to his view, ‘‘Marx conceives of labor as ‘‘formative’’ activity,

as activity through which human beings give form to materials and thus objectify

themselves in the world’’ (Sayers 2007, 432). He notes that ‘‘all labor operates by

intentionally forming matter in some way. Symbolic labor is no exception: it involves

making marks on paper, agitating the air and making sounds, creating electronic

impulses in a computer system, or whatever. Only in this way is it objectified and

realized as labor’’ (445). This view of labor as formative activity has a dual character:

it is formative because it gives form to matter and because, in the process, it also

transforms the one performing labor. The strength of this conception of labor is that it

9. Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff (1987, 2008) focus on surplus labor rather than labor assuch. However, since the term ‘labor’ unites both necessary and surplus labor, I find it morecompelling for sociohistorical analysis as it seems to me more in line with Marx’s anthropologicalphilosophy. It is only through the universal category of labor as what is necessary to produce andreproduce the species that Marx could build his theory of exploitation. As such, labor carries afundamental ethical anthropology. On the latter, see Nasser (1975).



makes the process of production complex by extending it outside the sole act of

production of use values, showing that different forms of labor (e.g., computer

programming, architectural planning, organizational meetings) are essential to the

process of production.

However, and for all its strength, labor, thus defined, remains harnessed to the

productive scheme. In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels ask what are the

premises ‘‘of all human existence and, therefore, of all history’’ (1998, 47)? They

answer by arguing that there are three simultaneous premises to human existence: (1)

‘‘men must be in a position to live in order to be able to ‘make history’’’*/that is, they

must produce the means by which to satisfy their needs (eating and drinking, housing,

clothing, etc.), the production of material life itself; (2) ‘‘the satisfaction of the first

need, the action of satisfying and the instrument of satisfaction which has been

acquired, leads to new needs’’; and (3) ‘‘men, who daily re-create their own life, begin

to make other men’’ (47�/8). Marxist feminist Maria Mies has demonstrated that the

naturalization*/and therefore the ahistorical character*/of women’s reproductive

labor has had in consequence the systematic erasure of the third premise (or moment)

to human existence (Mies 1994, 44�/52). The nonproblematization of women’s

reproductive labor (e.g., giving birth, housework, childcare) is symptomatic of a

conception of labor that focuses solely on the process of production.

In distinguishing ‘man’ from animal in that the former ‘‘makes his life activity itself

the object of his will and his consciousness’’ (Marx 2001, 113), Marx reproduces the

naturalization of women’s labor since, like animals, pregnancy, giving birth, and

lactation, for instance, are seen as natural processes, as unconscious life activity. On

the other hand, Marx argues that ‘‘labor, life-activity, productive life itself, appears in

the first place merely as a means of satisfying a need*/the need to maintain physical

existence. Yet the productive life is the life of the species. It is life-engendering life’’

(113; emphasis in the original). A narrow focus on production leads to the myth of the

male self-birth by which is sealed the grand erasure of one fundamental aspect of what

constitutes the life of the species, its very reproduction (McNally 2001, 12).

Sayers’s definition of labor as formative activity should be extended to reproduc-

tive labor as well. The labor associated with childbearing or childbirth, for instance,

is a conscious process; it is at every moment a formative activity. Feminist historical

materialism, notes Sue Ferguson, understands that ‘‘women’s reproductive labor and

household relations in general are as much a part of ‘the ways people co-operate to

meet their daily and future needs’ as is the market’’ (1999, 6).

The social reproduction theory has convincingly argued that labor is not*/and in

fact should not be*/limited to the wage-labor relationship.10 In linking the production

of life and the production of the means of life as one integrated process, the social

reproduction theory allows ‘‘an analysis of the ways in which the labouring population

is produced, sustained, and reproduced on a daily and generational basis*/that is, by

retaining the class analysis inherited from socialist feminism*/gives feminist political

economy the tools to fulfill part of its goal: a way of understanding society from a

10. I am grateful to Genevieve LeBaron for insightful comments and discussions on socialreproduction theory.

596 RIOUX


materialist perspective that puts women, gender, race, and class at the heart of its

analysis’’ (Luxton 2006, 40). This methodological widening of classical historical

materialism also seeks to transcend orthodox Marxist’s fetishism of commodities and

the market.

Marx’s critique revealed those social relations which are immediatelywrapped up with the sphere of commodity production: those betweenlaborers and capitalists. That he did not analyze in any detail the socialrelations of human reproduction is problematic from a feminist point ofview. It has tended to reinforce the message among those struggling tochange the world that the only (or perhaps the most) important arena ofhuman activity is the formal economy, or the market; thus, reproductiveactivities, in which women have historically played a central role, have beenneglected as sites for political struggle . . . In other words, Marxist economicsis often just that, another form of Economics*/not the defetishizing socialcritique of political economy it was intended to be. (Ferguson 1999, 5�/6)

The labor involved in the generational reproduction of the species is as much a

condition of human existence as the labor necessary to the daily reproduction of the

individual. This entails a reconceptualization of the economy as ‘‘not simply that

arena in which goods (commodities) are produced [but as] that system through which

people organize to meet all their human needs’’ (4).

On the one hand, the assumption that capitalism is solely characterized by the

wage-labor relationship reproduces the liberal binary between the private (non-

capitalist household) and the public (capitalist factory) and fails to problematize how

states, markets, and households are interrelated (Jenson 1986; Luxton 2006, 35�/40).

On the other hand, in conceiving nonclass issues as externalities to capitalist

exploitation, Marxists offers a reductionist view of the complex relationships of

exploitation defining and shaping the process of social reproduction. In both case, the

analysis falls into the theoretical trap of dual systems theory (Young 1980). The latter

is just another form of domestic analogy by which a binary is established (production/

reproduction or class/nonclass). In the same way that classical historical sociology

derives the causal explanation from society itself, Marxists have tended to derive

capitalist development from class struggles in production alone. Yet, not only is the

‘‘informal labor associated with the household . . . a structural feature of capitalist

accumulation’’ (Peterson 2002, 13), but racialized, sexualized, and gendered social

relations are fundamental to capitalist history and reproduction (Agathangelou 2004;

Bannerji 2005; Hennessy 2006; McClintock 1995; McNally 2006, chap. 4). Somewhere

along the path orthodox Marxists have forgotten what Marxism is all about: a theory of

the social totality. There is something fundamentally debilitating in the pretension to

account for history*/the social whole*/while, at the same time, excluding from it the

vast majority of its determinations: that is, the specific social relations in which those

who actually make history are embedded.

Marx’s concrete universal is Rosenberg’s second requirement: continuity. And

having found the ‘‘active life-process of development’’ by which ‘‘history ceases to be

a collection of dead facts,’’ Marx offers nothing less than the beginning of history:

‘‘as everything natural [which is part of the system of nature] has to have its

beginning, man too has his act of origin*/history*/which, however, is for him a known



history, and hence as an act of origin it is a conscious self-transcending act of origin’’

(Marx 2001, 182; emphasis in the original). The discovery of this universal by which we

become conscious of our journey is the coming to be, the becoming, of history. In

their social relations to nature through labor, human beings not only relate to each

other, but make history together. In doing so, they also produce and reproduce the

yardstick by which their development can be judged.

[M]an’s relation to nature is immediately his relation to man, just as hisrelation to man is immediately his relation to nature*/his own naturaldestination. In this relationship, therefore, is sensuously manifested,reduced to an observable fact, the extent to which the human essence hasbecome nature to man, or to which nature to him has become the humanessence of man. From this relationship one can therefore judge man’s wholelevel of development. (Marx 2001, 134; emphasis in the original)

It is important to note that what is continuous is labor as a universal, as the never ending

condition to fulfill if the species is to survive. It is hardly to be doubted that history is

universal in the sense that it is the result of the continuous social reproduction of the

species.

However, Marx’s materialist conception of history does not narrowly insist on the

continuity of labor as a universal. As we saw, Marx’s interest lies on the differentia,

on the discontinuity of its specific historical character. Though the American

sociologist Robert Nisbet argues that any notion of development presupposes a

continuous persisting entity through time and space*/as exposed in the preceding

section, he carefully notes that ‘‘discontinuity, not continuity, is the principal

identifying characteristic of social change. How could it be otherwise? We do not live

in tightly closed, insulated social systems, each endowed, like and organism, with its

own autonomous pattern of growth or change’’ (1970, 332). In the same vein, Marx

makes clear that ‘‘production in general is an abstraction, but a rational abstraction

in so far as it really brings out and fixes the common element and thus saves us

repetition. Still, the general category, this common element sifted out by

comparison, is itself segmented many times over and splits into different determina-

tions’’ (Marx 1993, 85; emphasis in the original). Since this common element, in its

actualization, is fluid and changing across space and time, so is the general character

of the universal. Therefore, concludes Nasser, ‘‘it is not only the act of social

production that is in flux, but also its reflection in thought, the universal concept,

production’’ (Nasser 1975, 493; emphasis in the original). To historically substantiate

it (i.e., to concretize it) is to uncover the basis for causality to arise, for the universal

is the abstract continuous core by which our concrete discontinuous history reveals

itself.

Marx’s Concrete Particulars

Too often, idealism is confused as nonmaterialism. Yet both Hegel and Marx were

materialists. The difference lies in the priority that Hegel assigns to the Spirit. In his

Philosophy of Spirit, Hegel argues that

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the procession of mind or spirit from Nature must not be understood as ifNature were the absolutely immediate and the prius, and the originalpositing agent, mind, on the contrary, were only something posited byNature; rather, it is Nature which is posited by mind, and the latter is theabsolute prius. Mind which exists in and for itself is not the mere result ofNature, but it is in truth its own result. (Hegel, quoted in Sayers 1980, 88�/9;emphasis in the original)

On this basis, Marx formulated the well known critique from his Grundrisse.

It [the concrete] appears in the process of thinking . . . as a process ofconcentration, as a result, not as a point of departure, even though it is thepoint of departure in reality and hence also the point of departure forobservation [Anschauung] and conception. Along the first path the fullconception was evaporated to yield an abstract determination; along thesecond, the abstract determinations lead towards a reproduction of theconcrete by way of thought. In this way Hegel fell into the illusion ofconceiving the real as the product of thought concentrating itself, probingits own depths, and unfolding itself out of itself, by itself, whereas themethod of rising from the abstract to the concrete is only the way in whichthought appropriates the concrete, reproduces it as the concrete in themind. (Marx 1993, 101)

Thus, Hegel fell into the illusion of conceiving of thought*/the abstract concrete or

abstract determination*/as the concrete being.

Ultimately, the totality of abstract determinations leads to the highest possible

one, the Absolute Idea, the self-comprehending whole. ‘‘But abstraction compre-

hending itself as abstraction knows itself to be nothing: it must abandon

itself*/abandon abstraction*/and so it arrives at an entity which is its exact

opposite*/at nature. Thus, the entire Logic is the demonstration that abstract

thought is nothing in itself; that the Absolute Idea is nothing for itself; that only

Nature is something’’ (Marx 2001, 189; emphasis in the original). Beyond his

materialist claim, Marx raises a critique against Hegel’s conception of development

as the development of the Idea. The subject of development cannot be the whole,

the result, the development itself. Here lies both Hegel’s and Rosenberg’s error. As I

said, we need to uncover the predicate, the cause, the finite real from which arise

the notions of history and development.

We already saw in the last section that Marx’s ‘real premises’ to history are ‘men’.

We need to pause here. On the one hand, Marx was an heir of the Enlightenment

project and therefore inclined toward normative binaries (e.g., civilized/noncivi-

lized, rational/irrational, reason/nature, men/women) in which the second term is

systematically inferior to the first. Marx’s constant use of ‘men’ is also related to his

own bias toward the wage-laborer as the revolutionary subject of history. On the

other hand, this unfortunate and highly problematic terminology could be rescued by

replacing the term ‘men’ by ‘species beings’ or ‘human beings’. However, such a

category does not come without its own problems. Indeed, feminist and postcolonial

theorists have shown that the category of ‘human’ not only presupposes a category of

inhuman, but also that who has been considered (in)human has varied across space

and time. Furthermore we have seen with Mies that, in associating nature with



women’s reproductive labor, a fundamental aspect of human social relations has been

excluded from the constitution of the species. We must be more self-reflective in

using these categories rather than taking them as natural givens. Theoretical

blindness to histories of oppression, exploitation, and exclusion is the reproduction

of the sanitized history of the dominant groups, the reproduction*/and the proof*/of

their power. Decolonization is not just a material but a theoretical practice. History is

collectively lived so should it be collectively written.

In his ‘‘Critique of Hegel’s Doctrine of the State,’’ Marx asks, ‘‘[W]hat is the final,

solid distinguishing factor between persons? The body’’ (1992, 100; emphasis in the

original). Bodies are everywhere present in Marx’s writings. This is hardly strange

given the attention given to the body (conceived as an organic unity) in classical

political economy (Ruccio and Amariglio 2003, 119�/29). Consider the amount of pages

Marx dedicates in volume 1 of Capital to describing the effects of capitalism on

human bodies and the violent and forced transformations inscribed in human flesh. It

is indeed striking how meticulously he details the impacts of those transformations on

human bodies and life through various governmental reports and commissions (the

Reports of the Inspectors of Factories, the Reports of the Children’s Employment

Commission, the Reports on Public Health, and diverse reports from doctors to name

but a few). Consider finally the impressive and various terminology that Marx uses:

‘blood’, ‘flesh’, ‘living personality’, ‘whipped’, ‘mutilation’, ‘lung diseases’, ‘perso-

nified labor-time’, ‘commodity’, ‘wear and tear’, ‘mortal’, ‘living labor’, ‘branded’,

‘sick’, ‘human material’, ‘physical deterioration’, ‘children’, ‘women’, ‘men’,

‘energies’, ‘chained’, ‘alienated’, ‘exploited’.11

The human body, as the bearer of life-activity, is a body-in-relation, a determined

body representing the most concrete and irreducible aspect of human being. In

Hegelian terms, the body is pure being. Hegel said in his Logic that ‘‘pure being makes

the beginning, because it is pure thought as well as the undetermined, simple

immediate’’ (1991, §86; emphasis in the original). The body plays the same role in

Marx’s framework as thought in Hegel’s one. Whereas the former is concrete

determination, the latter is abstract determination. And as soon as I begin to

understand this body through its relationships*/that is, its determinations, it begins

to reveal itself; it is becoming.

Our capacity to accomplish this task is linked to what David Ruccio and Jack

Amariglio have called the problem of recognition, ‘‘that is, the degree to which ‘the

body’ in any of its constructions and appearances is visible to practitioners of a field’’

(Ruccio and Amariglio 2003, 101). On the one hand, feminists have shown how the

body, when problematized, is often implicitly referring to a sanitized white male

body. This is why McNally argues that ‘‘a reinstatement of the body within critical

theory must begin with the maternal body*/understood in both its biological and

social senses*/as the body which subverts the myth of male autonomy by exposing its

dependence on an other and its relation to social labor’’ (2001, 12). On the other

hand, the concept of body recognizes the importance of human agency and the

complexity of its relations, desires, needs, and sensations (Hennessy 2006, 387�/8).

11. I owe this distinction on the body in volume 1 of Marx’s Capital to David McNally.

600 RIOUX


‘‘To talk meaningfully about the human body,’’ notes McNally, ‘‘is to talk about bodies

that are the site of dynamic social processes, bodies that generate open-ended

systems of meaning’’ (2001, 7). The body is always a historic and linguistic site of

struggle, the site through which its historical becoming is articulated. Bodies are

always participating in a complex matrix of social relations in which power is always

social, for it is produced and reproduced by and on bodies through their mutual

relationships.

Marx’s particular concrete, the body, is Rosenberg’s third requirement: persisting

entity. The body is the real bearer of the universal, for it is through body that labor is

materialized. It is through the actualization of what is a potentiality*/our capacity to

labor*/that the species reproduces itself on a daily and generational basis. The unity

between Marx’s universal and particular, the laboring body, is what causes history.

Conclusion

In a letter to the editor of the Otyecestvenniye Zapisky, Marx (1877) wrote that

‘‘events strikingly analogous but taking place in different historic surroundings led to

totally different results. By studying each of these forms of evolution separately and

then comparing them one can easily find the clue to this phenomenon, but one will

never arrive there by the universal passport of a general historico-philosophical

theory, the supreme virtue of which consists in being super-historical.’’ One purpose

of this essay was to show that the theory of uneven and combined development is

precisely that: a general historico-philosophical theory. Recognizing the theoretical

necessity of an international historical sociology, I have argued that the concept of

uneven and combined development cannot account for social change and fulfill the

intellectual requirements of it. I then shifted all requirements of the concept of

development*/immanence, continuity, and permanence*/as three requirements of

history, therefore showing that Marx’s combination of his organic world-view (the

immanence of Nature), his concrete universal (the continuity of labor), and his

concrete particular (the persisting entity of the body) is the way to reconcile all three

requirements to history. No conception of history can arise so long as we have not

resolved the question of its origin, of what causes it. It is the necessary detour if an

international historical sociology is to arise.

Moreover, in shifting the persisting entity from the ‘super-entity’ of humanity to

the body, I have shown that the domestic analogy identified by Rosenberg is in fact

much more pervasive than he acknowledges. Indeed, binary thinking (production/

reproduction and class/nonclass) continues to plague Marxism and its capacity to

account for historical development and to reveal the intricacies and complexities of

capitalist social relations. As such, a feminist historical materialism allows uncovering

the different sites and scales of capitalist exploitation. Thus, it offers a powerful

political capacity to unite anticapitalist struggles.

However, it should be clear that, in unraveling the roots of history, Marx never

offered much more than an entry point to it. Indeed, in unpacking Marx’s emphasis on

differentia, I tried to show that the unity between his universal and particular is, by

the same token, the unity of history. This dialectical relationship between unity and



difference, between continuity and discontinuity, is materialized in the laboring body,

which is always and at the same time the source of history and the basis from which to

recover sociohistorical causality. By historicizing this unity we reveal not only the

historically specific character of human social reproduction, but its universal

character. It’s because history is always particular and universal that Marx’s

materialist conception of history constitutes a powerful normative critique of our

past and present condition, a critique through which we can imagine and struggle for

a better future. As we collectively make history, let us never forget that the task of

defining its inner causal structure is also a social one.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to George C. Comninel, Thierry Lapointe, Jonathan Martineau, and

Ellen Meiksins Wood for their comments on an earlier draft. Thanks as well to the

panelists and participants of the panel on Postmodern Marxism and Globality (I):

Critical Perspectives on Approaches to Economy and Subjectivity, where this paper

was first presented at the International Studies Association, 2008, and to the

reviewers Yahya M. Madra and Adam Morton for their insightful suggestions. Special

thanks to Leo V. Panitch and Genevieve LeBaron, the former for having sparked this

reflection and the latter for creative and stimulating discussions and reflections.

This research was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of

Canada.

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