Engels himself admitted that Marxism’s economic reductionism was partly his and Marx’s fault

Evidence

Marx’s “materialism” adds to this premise at least one other requirement: that the relationship must be thought within determinate historical conditions. It must be made historically specific . It is this second requirement which distinguishes a historical materialist theory of human society and culture from, say, a materialism grounded in the simple fact of man’s physical nature (a “vulgar,” or as Marx calls it, an undialectical materialism) or one which gives the determining instance to technological development alone. What Karl Korsch, among others, has called “the principle of historical specificity” in Marx’s materialism is clearly enunciated in The German Ideology (where Marx’s theory becomes, for the first time, fully “historical”) and afterward in his mature work. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 881 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Engels completed rather than developed Marx’s unfinished theoretical legacy; Engels’s defenses of Marxism were trapped by the very concepts they defended; Marxism is not economic reductionism and requires attending to ideas in their own terms (+3 more)

Related

• Engels could not halt Marxism’s absorption into crude economic determinism (similarity 0.86)
• Marx’s concept of historical specificity deepened between German Ideology and Capital (similarity 0.83)
• Marxism is not economic reductionism and requires attending to ideas in their own terms (similarity 0.83)
• A new Marxist paradigm seeks to overcome economism and reductionism (similarity 0.83)
• Historical materialism is fundamentally historicist, not metaphysical (similarity 0.82)
• Political economy blinded Marx and Engels to industrial movements’ ideological nature. (similarity 0.81)
• Historical specificity distinguishes Marx’s materialism from vulgar or technological determinism (similarity 0.81)
• Engels rather than Marx originated systematic Marxism as a worldview (similarity 0.81)
• The Second International enshrined reductive economic determinism as official Marxism (similarity 0.81)
• Engels transformed Marx’s work into systematic Marxism after his death (similarity 0.81)
• Marx distinguishes material economic transformation from ideological forms of consciousness (similarity 0.81)
• Historical specificity, not mere materialism, defines Marx’s theory of culture (similarity 0.81)
• Historical materialism requires retaining economic determination without economic reductionism (similarity 0.81)
• Serious attention to ideology in its own terms strengthens rather than weakens Marxism. (similarity 0.80)
• Marxist analysis needs both material grounding and historical specificity to avoid twin errors (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Engels’s defenses of Marxism were trapped by the very concepts they defended #expands (0.55)
• Marxism is not economic reductionism and requires attending to ideas in their own terms #corroborates (0.50)
• Marxist theory requires holding both relative autonomy and economic determinacy at once #complicates (0.45) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 371
• Historical specificity distinguishes Marx’s materialism from vulgar or technological determinism #qualifies (0.45) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 881
• The Second International enshrined reductive economic determinism as official Marxism #complicates (0.40)