Marx never reduced economic development to technical instruments alone

Evidence

The passage from Zur Kritik contains the phrases “level of development of the material forces of production”, “mode of production of material life”, “economic conditions of production” and the like, which certainly affirm that economic development is determined by material conditions, but it never reduces these to the mere “metamorphosis of the technical instrument”. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1633

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies that historical materialism determines economic development by material conditions broadly, not by technological change narrowly — a definitional boundary-marking move.
• XREF: connects to: Marx always treated economics as political economy and human interaction — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 490; Marx refused to reduce history to a single ultimate economic cause — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1633; Marx reaffirmed economic determination was universal across all epochs including feudal and antique ones (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Marx always treated economics as political economy and human interaction #corroborates (0.90) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 490
• Marx refused to reduce history to a single ultimate economic cause #corroborates (0.85) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1633
• The economy never operates free of political and ideological practices #corroborates (0.85)
• The economy can never act detached from political and ideological practices. #corroborates (0.85)
• Capital’s systemic imperatives cannot be reduced to economic rationality alone #expands (0.85) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 151
• Marx reaffirmed economic determination was universal across all epochs including feudal and antique ones #contradicts (0.80)
• Marxism is not economic reductionism and requires attending to ideas in their own terms #corroborates (0.80)
• Marx defined the economic structure as objective conditions independent of human will #complicates (0.75)