Material conditions condition but never fully determine historical practice.

Evidence

We can’t be materialists in that way any longer. But I do think that we are still required to think about the way in which ideological/cultural/discursive practices continue to exist within the determining lines of force of material relations, and the expropriation of nature, which is a very different question. Material conditions are the necessary but not sufficient condition of all historical practice. Of course, we need to think material conditions in their determinate discursive form, not as a fixed absolute. I think the discursive position is often in danger of losing its reference to material practice and historical conditions. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 747 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Material conditions are necessary but not sufficient for all historical practice. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 747; Culture as constitutive of practice retains contingency and is never finally determined; Material conditions explain the Revolution better than its iconography — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 716 (+7 more)

Related

• Material conditions are necessary but not sufficient for all historical practice. (similarity 0.96)
• Societies only rise or fall when material conditions make it possible (similarity 0.86)
• Historical materialism requires retaining economic determination without economic reductionism (similarity 0.85)
• Historical materialism is fundamentally historicist, not metaphysical (similarity 0.85)
• Societies only undertake tasks whose material conditions are maturing (similarity 0.84)
• Nature cannot anchor materialism because social and cultural structures now overdetermine the natural. (similarity 0.83)
• Historical specificity, not mere materialism, defines Marx’s theory of culture (similarity 0.82)
• Marx treats culture as accumulated human mastery over nature, not mere description (similarity 0.82)
• Material conditions explain the Revolution better than its iconography (similarity 0.82)
• Historical materialism requires no metaphysical-materialist foundation (similarity 0.82)
• Historical specificity distinguishes Marx’s materialism from vulgar or technological determinism (similarity 0.81)
• Marx’s concept of historical specificity deepened between German Ideology and Capital (similarity 0.81)
• Mature Marx employed structural rather than sequential causality (similarity 0.81)
• Historical materialism rearranged rather than explained world history (similarity 0.80)
• Immanentism is progressive only when historicised and materialist (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Material conditions are necessary but not sufficient for all historical practice. #corroborates (0.90) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 747
• Historical materialism requires retaining economic determination without economic reductionism #expands (0.70)
• Culture as constitutive of practice retains contingency and is never finally determined #qualifies (0.60)
• Situations are structurally biased toward dominant definitions but never fully determined by them. #corroborates (0.60)
• Marxist analysis needs both material grounding and historical specificity to avoid twin errors #expands (0.55)
• Ideology and material practice relate through systematic disjuncture, not correspondence #complicates (0.55)
• Historical conjunctures are overdetermined accumulations of heterogeneous contradictions #expands (0.50)
• Material conditions explain the Revolution better than its iconography #complicates (0.45) — Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self- A Life in…, 716
• Historical materialism rearranged rather than explained world history #complicates (0.40) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 81