ABSTRACT
Karl Marx's functional thesis connecting economic power relations to the political and ideological superstructure is more closely akin to our theory of social viability. In this chapter, the author agrees with Marx that "in the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will." Marx's claim for a transcendent way of life is closely linked to an argument for a privileged position for Marxist theory. George Lukacs, among others, reasons that Marxism is privileged because it is the theory of the proletariat, the only class that acts in the interest of humanity rather than in its own narrow class interest. The inadequacy of positing capitalist hegemony is also illustrated by Marx's attempt to explain why capitalists, particularly in England, did not directly control the state apparatus. The organizational dilemma explains the disparity between the egalitarian communism described by Marx and the authoritarian communism experienced by the Soviet and other peoples.
