Marxist dialectic holds final and multiple determinations in mutual tension, not unity

Evidence

But there is, I believe, a considerable space where one could take one’s stand between (a) the postmodernist cult of utter non-determinacy and (b) the idea of a unitary determination which has lasted from Hegel up to some of the most modern of the Marxist debates. For the main thrust of the Marxist Dialectic, as I understand it, comprises a tension, a mutually transformative relation, between the problematic of a final determination (of the ideational content by the life-process of material labour, for example) and the utter historicity of multiple, interpenetrating determinations, so that – in Engels’s words – the ‘outcome’ of any particular history hardly ever corresponds to the ‘will’ of any of those historical agents who struggle over that outcome. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 203

Categorization

• DEFINE: Precise statement of Ahmad’s alternative between unitary determination and non-determinacy: the dialectic as tense co-presence of a final determination with interpenetrating historical determinations.
• DEEPTHINKING: The Engels quote — that historical outcomes correspond to no single agent’s will — is a dense, paradigm-level formulation of structural causation that repays weeks of reflection.
• XREF: connects to: Marxism has two codes, economic and praxical, chosen by rhetorical need — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 579; Marxist dialectic holds one final determination against multiple interpenetrating historical determinations.

Related

• Marxist dialectic holds one final determination against multiple interpenetrating historical determinations. (similarity 0.93)
• Post-Marxism is built on abandoning the dialectic as a mystification (similarity 0.81)
• Economic determination in Marxism operates through how levels combine, not their inner content (similarity 0.80)