Agreeing with much of Louis Proyect's commentary on Cohen, though not dismissing his accomplishments, I like to take issue with the claim that any developmental conception is teleological. Louis corrects me that Cohen still holds a teleological view: "History is not a relay-race. In a relay-race there is a goal: to get to the finish-line. One is always moving forward. In real history, capitalism can not be analogized to a relay-race since this assumes that one can detect the finish-line after a certain number of laps. Looking back in history, you would be tempted to assign the mid-1700s as the last lap for feudalism, even if this is arguable. Can one find such a last lap for capitalism?" Ricardo: So it does appear that Cohen's softer version still sees the end in the beginning, even if it concedes that not every single society goes through a one-two-three developmental process, but takes the baton at a later stage through external influences. In footnote 56 of the article Proyect cites, which I cited this morning and used yesterday, Cohen recognizes this problem as "a possible accusation of Hegelianism", an accusation which William Shaw had made. But I do recall that article by Shaw, as well as his book, Marx's Theory of History, as arguing that the development thesis may still be defended in the *empirical* sense that human history has in fact seen such a development. This development, however, cannot be characterized as continuous technological innovation, as Cohen's development thesis has it. Here I start with E.L. Jones's *Growth Recurring, Economic Change in World History* (1988) and the distinction he draws between "extensive" and "intensive" growth. By extensive growth he means that total output and population are both increasing at about the same rate. By intensive that economic growth exceeds population growth, in that output or productivity per person is rising. >From this distinction, Jones goes on to say that we can empirically detect, in the very long term, continuous extensive growth throughout history. But history does not show continuous increases in per capita productivity, no automatic transition from extensive to intensive growth. Such transition cannot be postulated but depends on a whole set of institutional factors. Let's not miss the active variable in Jones's analysis, however; where institutions function more as barriers or blocks to something that is pressing forward in history, something that brings extensive growth but is somehow blocked from achieving intensive growth. What is this? Although none of this is definite in Jones, this active variable is none other than the neo-classical principle of rational improvement, about which Jones says that "there is no reason to believe that everyone has been a profit maximizer...[or] that everyone has it or that all society expresses it equally" (41-42). In other words, Jones is falling into the same error as Cohen (of postulating a capitalist rationality, even if there are some who don't act that way), although he has improved upon Cohen by making the distinction between extensive and intensive growth. And I do think that socialism has to be more than a "rational choice".....
