29 Aug 2016

We must make a distinction between technique and mode of production

But we must then also make a distinction between such techniques of production and the mode of production which is their particular social form. We call the technical changes improvement and progress, welcome some of their effects and deplore others, and can feel either numbed or divided; a state of mind in which, again and again, the most abstract and illusory ideas of a natural rural way of life tempt or at least charm us. Or we can fall back on saying that this is the human condition: the irresolvable choice between a necessary materialism and a necessary humanity. Often we try to resolve it by dividing work and leisure, or society and the individual, or city and country, not only in our minds but in suburbs and garden cities, town houses and country cottages, the week and the weekend. But we then usually find that the directors of the improvements, the captains of the change, have arrived earlier and settled deeper; have made, in fact, a more successful self-division. [...] An immensely productive capitalism, in all its stages, has extended both the resources and the modes which however unevenly, provide and contain forms of response to its effects.

Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (Oxford University Press, 1975) pp. 293-294

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