ABSTRACT
The aim of the author is to insist that humans should be regarded as particularizing beings just as readily as the generalizing creatures capable of orienting themselves to new situations by reflecting on past experience that is usually regarded as the uniquely human attribute of "mind" or "consciousness." The epistemology of the social sciences requires the union of the "objective" in the form of an accurate account of an actor's overt behavior and the "subjective" intentionality of his/her purpose in acting. Marxism is the most complex and influential stage theory, which only lost its full credibility with the collapse of the Soviet Union and its national satellites in 1989-1991. Capitalism as a form of market economy involves a minority of "private" owners of the means of production paying wages to laboring nonowners who produce goods or services that are then sold for a profit that accrues only to the owners.
