ABSTRACT

This seems, on the face of it, a very large claim. Can it really be sustainable to say that Marx could have been seriously mistaken in his historical observations and still be right in his general theory? At first glance, this claim suggests a rather casual approach to the relation between empirical specificity and theoretical generalization, or, perhaps, a reduction of historical materialism to an empty methodological abstraction, all form and no substance. Yet, on closer consideration, much can be learned by putting Marx to this test and asking how well his general theory stands up irrespective of historical error. So let us begin with an even larger claim: Marx was indeed seriously wrong in his historical observations, for reasons having less to do with his own shortcomings than with the existing state of historical scholarship at the time of his writing the Grundrisse; but the edifice he constructed on the foundation of this faulty knowledge reveals the power, not the weakness, of historical materialism as he conceived it, which pushed him beyond the limitations of existing scholarship.