ABSTRACT
Marx’s materialist conception of history identifies the dominant factors in explaining social structures and their historical changes, and sketches a scenario of historical change based on the dominance of these factors. Marx’s postulates cohere with two of his other beliefs: that human fulfillment consists in developing and exercising people’s powers of social production; and that the human race eventually tends to do what its deepest and most long-term interests demand. Teleological explanations arise in connection with what are sometimes called ‘goal-directed systems’: systems which exhibit a persistent tendency to achieve or maintain a certain state, or to change in a specifiable direction. The explanations proposed by historical materialism are typically teleological in the sense just described. Marx proposes to explain the social relations prevailing in a community by showing how they manifest or contribute to its tendency to make efficient use of its productive powers.
