Historical Materialism Annotated By Technological Determinism

One of the most important western Marxism in20th，analytic Marxism advancedmany new views on Marx’s historical materialism. William Shaw’s technologicaldeterminism is an representative theory. Today, through analyzing this theory critically,we not only grasp the values of this thought, but also comprehend Marx’s historicalmaterialism objectively and perfectly by considering the theoretical limitations of thisthought.This thesis is made of introduction, text, conclusion. In the part of introduction, itmainly reflects western Marxism’s fundamental opinions of historical materialism. Thepart of text includes three chapters. In the first chapter, it claims that Shaw’s researchadopted the analytic method mostly, and that his thought backgrounds lay in thetheoretical limitations of traditional human-oriented Marxism, and technologicaldeterminism faction in20th. In the second chapter, it mainly reviews Shaw’s view of theconnotation and relationship] between force and relation of production, and his positionof the primacy of force of production. At the same time, it researches the meaning,contents, and demonstrations of Shaw’s technological determinism.In the third chapter, it criticizes Shaw’s technological determinism, and thinks theprimacy of force of production is not technological determinism at all. Moreover,technological determinism did not grasp the dialectic relationships among nature,technology, and society. In the part of conclusion, it advanced the correspondentstandpoint about the relative problem of scientific technology and social development.Through analyzing the thought claims and theoretical basis of Shaw’stechnological determinism, the thesis contends that Shaw’s technological determinism isa false theory by the method of logical analysis, and that there is an interrelationbetween technological advancement and human society development. That is,technological advancement has an important influence on social production andcivilization development, and human, culture and system of social developments havean important function on technological advancement.