In the Marxian tradition that speaks of forces and relations of production, forces of production tend to be seen as ‘technology’, and the development of the forces of production thus derives from technological innovation involving, among other things, the replacement of living labour with the ‘dead labour’ of machinery. But in a cultural-materialist frame, forces of production are seen as a weave of *practices* - humans articulated with, interacting with, alternating with, mobilising, being enabled by materials, physical objects, machinery, documents.
This thorough-going ‘turn to practice’ is a product of the 80s and 90s - as ‘the knowledge economy’ became prominent and tools for ‘mental labour’ became critical, alongside the ongoing (but relocated) manual labour of Fordism and modern manufacture - and it adopts an even-handed stance regarding the contributions to practice made by human and non-humans.
One consequence of a ‘practice’ framing of forces of production is that there is no ‘base’ in the traditional historical-materialist sense; no ‘cultural, juridical etc superstructure’ riding on a determining economic base.
The ‘economic base’ - let’s say, ‘the real economy’, the provisioning of material means of subsistence and wellbeing - being made up of practices, necessarily contains culture and aesthetics; no practice is conducted without them, every practice is simultaneously in the material, the cultural and the aesthetic landscape. The question of what is ‘basic’, and whether it is ‘economic’, is then a practical question: of which practices are pivotal and have weight and momentum within the weave or dance, which formations of practice are dominant (and which are emergent, residual, marginal), which relations of production are hegemonic.
In a foprop perspective, the provisioning of means of subsistence and wellbeing in the §1 material landscape constitutes and is constituted by an *ecology* of practices, in which §2 cultural and §3 aesthetic landscapes also are in play; each under their own relations of production, which organise their own particular kind of material: configured *forms* of non-human physical stuff and human bodies, *formations* of self-aware collaborative visioning and organising, *forces* of preconscious and aware affiliation, perception and intention. And in making a living economy, practices of material provisioning and their cultural and aesthetic threads are intentionally woven under *altered* relations of production.
Somewhere in this complexity there may be ‘levers’ or leading elements, and certainly there are practices of secondary or marginal weight, but the relative forcefulness of constellations of machines and other physical means of production on one hand, and cultural and economic and aesthetic formations on the other, is a practical-historical matter.
The debate among British historians in the 50s about the transition from feudalism to capitalism \[Hilton et al xxx] was framed in terms of whether it was determined by forces of production (understood as technological means, mere forms of working organisation of people and stuff - more or less, technics) or by class struggle over the dominance of relations of production (feudal obligation, aristocracy and land; ‘free’ wage labour, commodity trade and financial accumulation, etc). But when forces of production are weaves of practices, and struggle is conducted through formations of practice (classes, parties, capitals, labour forces, elites, alliances), and practices are ordered by relations of production in all three landscapes - material, cultural and aesthetic - then questions of historical transformation and ‘new economy’ or ‘social’ economy have to be engaged in a different way.
The purpose of the foprop frame - and the college - is to facilitate the practical development of that different way. It is far more plural and local, even though the stakes in ‘new’ economy are hugely general: the hegemony of particular relations of production and particular kinds of formation and particular aesthetics, motivations and perceptions; and whether they are conducive to life and wellbeing.