ABSTRACT
Historical materialism seems to slight the contribution of human beings to social change. Most readers of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, moreover, take the generalizations enunciated by historical materialism as universal laws that govern historical development everywhere. In analogous fashion, Marx and Engels claim, the transformation of the tools in the production process bring about different organizations of that process. Relations of production "correspond" to the forces of production. There is a significant difference, though, between the way in which work or military organizations are organized and the relations of production, namely, the rights of ownership and control. Political power is an important lever of change in the relations of production. The worker in the early factory was neither independent nor the owner of the means of production—he had become a very early version of the capitalist worker. Relations of production often change as a result of innovation in the forces of production.
