ABSTRACT
Marx’s two-tiered view is the first of several theories of technological determinism in which science and/or technology are the major, if not the only, drivers of historical and social changes. Some of Marx’s remarks suggest that he adopts technological determinism; but as Cohen (1978) argues, a better understanding of his model of explanation is not causally deterministic, but functionalist. The task then is to discover what functional role science plays in the complex of items that make up the two-tier model of base and superstructure. It is important to note that science as a system of ideas or theories does not appear directly in the economic base, either as one of the means of production or as part of the relations of production (viz., patterns of ownership). Nor is it, as some claim, part of the superstructure of “ideological forms of consciousness” which the economic base is said to determine. Science and its applications are often treated as a third, relatively independent, item within the forces of production alongside labor power and the means of production (see Capital, vol. 1, Ch. XIv, section 5). That science is an independent force of production would undercut some of the over-simple accounts, proposed since the 1920s by Hessen, Bernal and others, of the role of science in the two-tier model. Marx also endorsed Bacon’s view that scientific method is separate from the nexus of items in the two-tiered model. On the functionalist model the role of science and its applications within capitalist (and other) social systems is to facilitate and promote the growth of surplus value (and thus profit) at increasing rates through innovation in the technological basis of production, and through the transformation of the abilities and knowledge of laborers who use that technology (another aspect of the “knowledge economy”). At best this is schematic, and alleged instances need to be empirically explored, such as Marx’s own claims in Capital on the role of chemistry (see Capital, vol. 1, Ch. Xv, section 1). There Marx presents a case for the claim that, with the development of new ways of weaving cloth through the mechanization of spinning, capital accumulation could proceed apace on this technological basis only if new ways of making dyes other than the prevailing traditional ones could come into existence. Here a technological change in methods of spinning, along with capital accumulation, created a need for research in pure and applied chemistry to discover new ways of making dyes, a function that the newly emerging chemical industry did perform.
