pianta_1989_the conditions of productions cns

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The conditions of production: A noteMario Pianta

Published online: 25 Feb 2009.

te this article:Mario Pianta (1989) The conditions of production: A note , Capitalism Nature Socialism, 1:3, 129 -134, DOI: 10.1080/10455758909358388

k to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10455758909358388

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The Conditions of Production: A Note*

By Mario Pianta

One point of departure of ecological Marxism can be found in the

contradiction between capitalist production relations and forces, on one

hand, and the conditionsof capitalist production, on the other.

1

In recent

years, the concept of conditions of production has often been used in

urban and regional research in order to relate the emergence of specific

spatial and social structures to the process of production. The provision

of adequa te general conditions of production has been seen as a

specific function of the state.

2

The concept of production conditions

has helped to explain a variety of state actions and policies, from the

construction of infrastructure and services to planning, which were

critical in the postwar growth, crisis, and restructuring of capitalist

production in Europe and the United States.

In this research, the conditions of production have generally

referred to the built environment, and to the social contradictions and

public policies to be found at that level. The eco-Marxist analysis

extends the concept to the natural environment, and to the social

contradictions and policies pertaining to capital's relation with nature.

* Adapted from: Mario Pianta, State Investments and Urban Restructuring: The Case of

Turin, 1960-1978, Ph.D Dissertation, London School of Economics and Political Science,

1983.

1

James O'Conn or, Capitalism, Nature, Socialism: A Theoretical Introduction, CNS,

1, Fall, 1988, p. 16. In an earlier work, O'Conn or used the terminology social capital

and social expenses (The Fiscal Crisis of the State, New York: St. Martin's Press,

1973).

2

M. Folin, The Production of the General Conditions of Social Reproduction and the

Role of the State, in Harloe and Lebas, eds., City, Class, and Capital (London: Arnold,

1981), p.51 .

CMS,3, 1989

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Despite the obvious differences between human-built space and natural

eco-systems, some similarities can be found in the way that capitalist

production requires and uses such conditions, and in the recurrent

conflicts about who should control them, how they should be controlled,

and for what end. A brief review of the research on the human-built

conditions of production may therefore be useful.

The original Marxian concept of general conditions emphasized

their relation to the process of production: the revolu tion in the mode of

production of industry and agriculture made necessary a revolution in the

general conditions of the social process ofprodu tioni.e., in the means

of communication and transport

3

Most of this infrastructure was

provided by the state. What is important about the general conditions,

however, is their relation to capitalist production. The intervention of the

state makes a difference in the form in which those general conditions

are provided, as in this case they are unprofitable activities performed

outside the circuits of capital.

Public infrastructure is the first and most immediate example of

general conditions. Folin, studying their role in the process of

production, criticized the traditional categories of public works and

social overhead capital developed w ithin the framework of

neoclassical econom ics. He noted that if we are to understand the

actual or possible role of infrastructure investment in relation to the

development and articulation of economic policy, then we have to start

from a critique of the categories of public work and social fixed capital,

as they cannot adequately grasp the impact which the transformation of

space has on economic development.

4

By contrast, using the concept of general conditions, it becomes

possible to analyze the role of the provision of infrastructure both in

relation to the gen eral econom ic functions of the state and the process of

capitalist production. This link has been stressed by H irsch, who

analyzed the dynamics of the general conditions and noted the change in

the material peculiarities of production resulting from the technological

transformations of the labour process which leads historically to ... a

3

Karl Marx,Capital I(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976), p.505.

4

M. Folin, Public Enterprise, Public Works, Social Fixed Capital, International

Journal of Urban and Regional Research 3,3, 1979, p.136.

CNS,3, 1989

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tendency for the general conditions of production established by the state

to expand.

5

The result of this process has been the increasing

importance - increasing with the socialization of production - of the

general m aterial conditions of the process of production and reproduction

which have to be produced or restored socially,

6

in particular through

the provision of infrastructure by the state.

The concept of general conditions has also been variously

extended to include new activities of growing importance in modem

capitalist production. Hirsch distinguished between general material

9

conditions of production in the narrower sense, e.g., roads, canals; and

general*conditions of production which for capital are incorporated in

labour power (e.g., health service), education, and also research in the

broadest sense.

7

In a similar way, Mandel distinguished between the general-

technical preconditions of the actual process of production (means of

transport and communication, the postal service, and so on); the

provision of the general-social preconditions of this same process of

production; ... and the continuous reproduction of those forms of

intellectual labour which are indispensable for economic production.

8

The concept of general conditions has been extended by Lojkine

to those factors so important to constitute other necessary conditions for

the overall reproduction of developed capitalist formations. They are, on

the one hand, the mea ns of collective consumption,which join themeans

of material circulation(i.e., the means of communication and transport)

and, on the other hand, the spatial concentration of the means of

production and reproduction of capitalist social formations.

9

In this

view, the general con ditions consist of, first, conditions of p roduction, as

in the case of material infrastructure, directly involved in the process of

5

J. Hirsch, The State Apparatus and Social Reproductio n, in Holloway and

Picciotto, eds.,State and Capital (London: Arnold, 1978), p.92.

6

Ibid., p.93 .

7

Ibid., p. 190.

8

E. Mand el, 1978, p.476.

9

J. Lojkine, Le Marxisme, l etat et la question urbaine (Paris: Presses Universitaires

de France), p. 126.

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production (e.g. roads, railways, etc.) . Their provision by the state

reduces the necessary private investment (and the organic composition of

capital), and thus allows the rate of profit to increase. Secon d, the

general conditions are conditions for the reproduction of labour power,

which indirectly effects the process of production . State intervention

here is the result of the increasing socialization of the activities of

reproduction, e.g., longer years of education and training, better health

care, etc. Third, the provision of the general conditions largely

characterizes the city, which is increasingly shaped by state intervention

with the provision of material infrastructure and activities of

reproduction of labour power (the same activities obviously are not

limited to the city). Also, the specific form of agglomeration of th e city

in capitalist societies is in itself an important element of the general

conditions not for all kinds of production, but certainly for tertiary and

command** activities. As Lojkine noted , the capitalist city is

characterized by an increasing concentration of means of collective

consumption and by a specific way of agglomeration of the whole of

the means of reproduction (of capital and labour power) which is to

become itself an increasingly determinant condition for economic

development

10

Folin explained that the concep t of general conditions

refers to infrastructural ac tivity and the whole phenomenon of the city

in order to throw more light on the specific role of the built environment

within the process of production and reproduction of social capital.

11

This perspective has been further developed by Lojkine. Starting from

the hypothesis that the forms of urbanization are first of all the forms of

the social (and territorial) division of labour,

12

he stressed that the city

is in no way an autonomous phenomenon, with laws of development

different from the laws of capitalist accumulation; it is not possible to

disassociate the city from the tendency of capital to increase labour

productivity by socializing the general conditions of production, of

which urbanization is an essential component.

13

The role of conditions of production in capitalism means neither

that they are always readily provided, nor that they always help

10

Ibid., p. 126.

11

Folkin, 1979, op.cit., p.345.

12

Lojkine, op.cit., p. 124.

13

Ibid., p. 141.

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accumulation; the specific form they take is rather the outcome of

particula r social relations and conflicts. Hirsch, after stating that the

provision of the general conditions of production is a basic function of

the slate, stressed that from this one cannot determine in the same way

what concretely must becom e the object of state 'infrastructural

provision

1

at any historical point in time, nor whether the state apparatus

will supply the need.

14

From this, Hirsch concluded that trying to

define infrastructure cnum eratively and conclusively is sense less, as the

general conditions provided by the state depend on the historically-

specific development of economic and social processes and on the

balance of class forces.

15

The possibility is thus open for the development of contradictions

between state and capital, between the political and the economic

spheres, and between state policies and the specific requirements of

economic development. As Hirsch put it, since these 'general social

conditions of production' do not automatically adapt to capital

accumulation, the crisis breaks out into the open when the process of

accumulation comes up against their limits. In the crisis, these limits are

in fact redefined and the general conditions of production arc

reorganized.

16

In this way, the development of state policy s the jo int

result of the process of capital accumulation together with the specific

conjuncture of social and political forces. The d evelopment of the

resulting general conditions of production is thus related to the

development of social relations and their contradictions.

From this brief survey, it is clear that many of the issues raised by

research on the built environment as a condition of production are

equally relevant to the extension of the concept to nature.

17

In particular,

conflicts about the definition, d evelopment, and control of the conditions

of production are common to human-built and natural space, and the key

role of regulation is played by the state in both cases. Similar, if not

exactly the same, are the policy tools used in the state regulation of both

environments: planning; the setting of standards (for public health and

14

Hirsch, op.cit., p.9 1.

15

Ibid., p.92.

16

Ibid., p.74.

17

O'Connor, op.cit.,p 23ff

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toxic emissions); public investment (from sewage to toxic waste

cleanup). In fact, looking at the problem from the perspective of spatial

policy, the attention and intervention in nature is a more or less direct

extension and update of the previous forms of state provision of

conditions of productions, with the same aims (e.g., a healthy and

productive labor force), and with the same need for people to struggle to

obtain and enforce better conditions.

What is often radically different is the scaleof the issue. While

most of the conditions of production provided by the built environment

are local, many of the conditions of nature are global (the ozone, global

warming, etc.) or international (acid rain, pollution in the Rhine, etc.),

raising new problems since there is no state which can act as regulator

of such forms of environmental degradation.

18

Both human-built and natural conditions of production are also

similar in relation to the issue of the political pressure by the right to

limit the role of the state and develop market (or pseudo-market) forms

of regulation. After the privatization of services in Britain and in the

USA, and the private construction of toll roads, from the Anglo-French

tunnel in Europe to various projects in the USA,

19

there is now a

booming debate on market ecology, with proposals by the US and

British governments to leave the protection of the environment to market

mechanisms, from the buying and selling of pollution rights to the setting

of prices for environmental goods.

20

With industry and governments

behaving in this way, there can be no doubt that nature has been

incorporated in the present cond itions of global capitalist production, and

that struggles about environmental quality and preservation are now as

crucial from a political point of view as urban struggles about local

conditions of production were in the 1970s.

18

M . Pianta and M. Renner, Th e State S ystem and the Consequences fo r

Environmental Degradation, IPRA Newsletter 27, 1, 1989.

19

Fifteen Mile s -that'll b e$1.50, Business Week August 14, 1989, p.27.

20

H owMuch is a Sea Otter Worth? Business Week August 21 , 1 989 , p .30;

GrowthCan BeGreen,

Th e

Economist August 2 6 ,1989,p. 12.

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