296
PARTISAN REVIEW
In terms of content , Borkenau argues that the mechanistic
world view is the world view of the period of manufacture . But pro–
duction methods of that period, however, contain very few forces
making for that world view . How, then, did it come to such a gigan–
tic generalization of experience with manufacturing methods? It is a
mere verbalism to say that world views are formed by analogy to
processes of production. For no such analogy exists in this case,
quite apart from the fact that one would have to show its mediation
by the processes of production which, in the period in question , do
not eliminate qualitative, organic, and spontaneous features of real–
ity, but encounter them and confront them at every turn . In any
case, for Borkenau, manufacture was
not
the typical method of seven–
teenth-century production, and the manufacturing bourgeoisie was
not
its ruling class. The modest starting point given with the technol–
ogy of manufacture is generalized
by philosophy
into an exceedingly
bold world view, at a time not determined by the development of
manufacture. So runs Borkenau's summary of the problem.
Grand philosophical generalization, he argues, would never
have taken place had there not been simultaneous forces at work
making for a mechanistic anthropology. Not the struggle of man
against nature as evidenced by technology , but the struggle of man
with the newly developing society is the seedbed of the generalized
mechanistic world view. The mechanization of labor as a productive
force and of society as a productive relation constitute the triumph
of capitalism. As in all periods , however, so in the era of manufac–
ture it is society which brings about theoretical generalization of an
idea thrown up by technology, since no world view can wholly main–
tain itself against the technology of its time . So it was not the sporadic
appearance of early manufacture which effected the triumph of the
mechanistic world view, but powerful social changes at the turn
from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century. In France, Holland,
and England that era marked the political ascent of the industrial
bourgeoisie with the associated gentry . Here, in the last analysis,
Borkenau relies implicitly on a role of mercantilism as the alliance of
absolutism and bourgeoisie becoming victorious over the feudal
nobility.
This drily theoretical statement of Borkenau's position gives no
hint of the depth of its scholarship and its vivid evocation of major
thinkers and ideas . Comparing Borkenau's work favorably with
Lucien Goldmann's
Hidden God
(1964), the late George Lichtheim
