Engels could not escape economic determinism using Marx’s own conceptual tools

Evidence

Marx had established that the economy is determinant in the last instant, but that the superstructures had their own “effectivity” which could not be simply reduced to their base. But “the precise structural mechanism connecting the two is always left unclear by Marx” (Stedman Jones). The clarification of this problem was one of Engels’s most urgent and important tasks: the more so since Marxism was fast becoming absorbed into the dominant field of “positive science,” which reduced it to a simple economic determinism in which the superstructures were a pale and automatic reflex of the base—a tendency which was destined to be disastrously installed as the official version in the Second International. Engels struggled vainly to combat this reductionism. But he struggled to do so on the ground, essentially, of his and Marx’s formulations of The German Ideology period: and the development and clarification he undertook were sustained by precisely those conceptual tools and instruments which had produced the formulation in this form in the first place. That is, essentially as an inversion of the idealist premises left intact in Left Hegelianism—by setting the Hegelian dialectic right-side up, and working from its “revolutionary” aspect. In the letters, Engels wrestles with this inheritance valiantly, courageously, and often elegantly. But the conceptual chickens are fast coming home to roost. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 499

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clear explanation of how economy-determines-last-instance with superstructural effectivity relates to the Second International’s economic reductionism.
• XREF: connects to: Engels could not halt Marxism’s absorption into crude economic determinism — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 499; Engels invoked contingency and accident to soften economic determinism — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 500; Marxist theory requires holding both relative autonomy and economic determinacy at once — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 371 (+4 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Engels could not halt Marxism’s absorption into crude economic determinism — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 499; Engels invoked contingency and accident to soften economic determinism — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 500; Marxist theory requires holding both relative autonomy and economic determinacy at once — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 371 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Engels could not halt Marxism’s absorption into crude economic determinism #expands (0.94) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 499
• Engels invoked contingency and accident to soften economic determinism #complicates (0.80) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 500
• Marx’s mature thought held that economic determinacy persisted but was conceived differently #complicates (0.76) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 497