ABSTRACT
An unsettled and unsettling dilemma has beset the Marxist theoretical tradition: the problem of the relation between Marxism and economic determinism. The historically predominant tendencies within the tradition have affirmed and elaborated variations on the theme that economic aspects of the social totality determine its non-economic aspects. Words and concepts such as base-superstructure, forces-relations of production, objective-subjective social conditions, proximateultimate-last instance determinism and moral-material incentives were borrowed from Marx and Engels or newly invented to specify the identity of Marxist theory and economic determinism. The continuing felt need among Marxists to make this specification is itself a response not only to non-Marxists’ criticisms of economic determinism (qua “Marxism”) but, more to the point here, a debate with other Marxists’ rejection of the identity.
