What drives production? Why production? Once it has started, all else falls into line; history is only intelligible by its light. This means that whatever brought production into being must be invisible, or at least minimally visible. In order to address this problem, we consider two options:
- Production precedes itself.
- Production comes to be through the action of precedent forces.
The first option leads to a Spinozism with production as Nature: Nature is productive of new forms. Production–taken as the principle that renders human history intelligible–is part of a larger world of which production is also the fundamental logos. To claim that production is preceded only by production is the same as saying that nothing precedes it, it has only changed and this change has been misrecognized. First of all, if nothing precedes production, then all of being is the production of being–production is the fundamental mode of presence.
Is this perspective the true materialism? As a materialist, one can claim that the universe is made up of matter and energy. If one is not to neglect energy for matter, or vice versa, one needs to focus on a third term that describes their interaction. From this perspective, it is possible to accord both terms a fundamental place, with production as the non-dualistic name for what matter and energy constitute in concrete situations. This can also be said as follows: matter and energy are moments abstracted from a the process of production, this follows from the primacy of production: it is before all else, as being it is as close to eternity as we will get, it constitutes and it reality for us.
Well burrowed, old mole! 