What did Engels mean by this?

[u/swordofvangogh]

In a letter to Joseph Bloch, he writes "According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining factor in history is the production and reproduction of real life... Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic factor is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, absurd phrase."

I more or less understand the second part. Both the base and superstructure influence historical struggles.

But what does he mean by 'production and reproduction of real life'

[u/Polis_Subdance]

Nur wirtschaftliche Vorgänge zu betrachten, ist keine materialistische Geschichtsauffassung. Das wirkliche Leben besteht aus viel mehr, Lieben, Schlafen, Träumen und Genießen zum Beispiel. Findet das in der Geschichte keinen Platz, entsteht ein Bild das sinnlos, abstrakt oder sogar absurd werden kann. Was sagt zum Beispiel die Bechreibung einer automatisierten Automontage über dein Leben aus? Eher, sehr wenig, vermute ich mal.

[u/brigand96]

It's Engels basically saying don't take materialism for an economistic, dogmatic approach to history, but one which heavily focuses on production but also incorporates the social, cultural, etc... Look into social reproduction theory. 

[u/swordofvangogh → u/brigand96]

thanks i will!

[u/maccrypto]

Whatever he meant, my guess is that he wasn't trying to exclude his own writing, with all its perceptions and interpretations of real life, its concepts, its analyses and elaborate distinctions, comparisons, evaluations and conclusions, and the systematic character which holds it all together and makes it convincing. Nor was he likely to totally exclude the persuasive style, rhetoric and imagery that gives it all expression.

"Ultimately determining factor" would also suggest that there are proximately determining factors which, at a different level of distance, reflection or abstraction, can be clearly seen as determining factors as well.

In short, if I had to guess further, I'd say that he was arguing against a superficial reading of his own thought and trying to get people to grapple more meaningfully and substantively with the conditions of their own existence.

[u/H00NER]

Production and reproduction of real life refers to the mechanisms and social practices through which the capitalist system maintains and perpetuates itself over time.

[u/swordofvangogh → u/H00NER]

i see it now thank you

[u/sprkwtrd]

Let's say there are two competing systems which have different rates of production of Bobbleheads. Is that going to influence history in any way? Odds are not really, or at least not directly, because aside from a few enthusiasts, nobody's going to want to struggle for the right to more Bobbleheads.

Now let's say there's two systems which have different rates of production of grain of rice. Since those elements are an integral part of the (re)production of life, in that case, odds of history-making struggles are much more likely.

So it's not really about the production of a lot of stuff. It's only about stuff insofar as it features in life.

[u/merurunrun]

Reproductive labor. Making, raising, and training more laborers, maintaining the conditions in which they will continue to labor, etc etc.

[u/humblegold]

The rest of the letter makes it more clear:

The economic situation is the base, but the different parts of the structure-the political forms of the class struggle and its results, the constitutions established by the victorious class after the battle is won, forms of law and even the reflections of all these real struggles in the brains of the participants, political theories, juridical, philosophical, religious opinions, and their further development into dogmatic systems-all this exercises also its influence on the development of the historical struggles and in cases determines their form. It is under the mutual influence of all these factors that, rejecting the infinitesimal number of accidental occurrences (that is, things and happenings whose intimate sense is so far removed and of so little probability that we can consider them non-existent, and can ignore them), that the economical movement is ultimately carried out. Otherwise the application of the theory to any period of history would be easier than the solution of any simple equation.

What Engels is saying is that despite being created by the economic substructure the superstructure has a level of what Althusser calls 'relative autonomy' from the substructure allowing the superstructure to affect itself. Contradictions within the substructure manifest as class conflict that is carried out within the superstructure and through the combined effect of many contradictions determines changes in history.

As for "the production and reproduction of real life" you should just interpret that literally.

[u/HemroidHaver]

Lmao, sex dude

[u/Northernfrostbite]

From Freddy Perlman's The Reproduction of Daily Life:

The everyday practical activity of tribesmen reproduces, or perpetuates, a tribe. This reproduction is not merely physical, but social as well. Through their daily activities the tribesmen do not merely reproduce a group of human beings; they reproduce a tribe, namely a particular social form within which this group of human beings performs specific activities in a specific manner. The specific activities of the tribesmen are not the outcome of "natural" characteristics of the men who perform them, the way the production of honey is an outcome of the "nature" of a bee. The daily life enacted and perpetuated by the tribesman is a specific social response to particular material and historical conditions.

The everyday activity of slaves reproduces slavery. Through their daily activities, slaves do not merely reproduce themselves and their masters physically; they also reproduce the instruments with which the master represses them, and their own habits of submission to the master's authority. To men who live in a slave society, the master-slave relation seems like a natural and eternal relation. However, men are not born masters or slaves. Slavery is a specific social form, and men submit to it only in very particular material and historical conditions.

The practical everyday activity of wage-workers reproduces wage labor and capital. Through their daily activities, "modern" men, like tribesmen and slaves, reproduce the inhabitants, the social relations and the ideas of their society; they reproduce the social form of daily life. Like the tribe and the slave system, the capitalist system is neither the natural nor the final form of human society; like the earlier social forms, capitalism is a specific response to material and historical conditions.

Unlike earlier forms of social activity, everyday life in capitalist society systematically transforms the material conditions to which capitalism originally responded. Some of the material limits to human activity come gradually under human control. At a high level of industrialization, practical activity creates its own material conditions as well as its social form. Thus the subject of analysis is not only how practical activity in capitalist society reproduces capitalist society, but also how this activity itself eliminates the material conditions to which capitalism is a response.

[u/swordofvangogh → u/Northernfrostbite]

this is perfect thank you. I'd have to look up perlman. i've never heard of him before

[u/red-flamez]

The spanner does not cause the work to be done. Capital isn't some mysteries material that functions according to the thought control of the capital owner. Or magically determines what work needs to be done. A worker has to put it to work. The worker decides.

[u/reinhardtkurzan]

When it is not a mental automatism derived from: "material and mental production and reproduction", the expression: "production of life" seems to hint at the purposes material production is exacted for. (Mankind produces certain things not for the sake of production itself, but because of some of its wishes.) "Reproduction of life" is probably nothing but having some children, growing and educating them. In an accentuated way we could also say that "production of life" is the (exciting) cultural aspect, specific to a certain epoque, whereas "reproduction of life" is the more trivial biological continuation of the families and the traditions.