| | Marx's Theory of History |  | Author: William H. Shaw
Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr
Category: Book
List Price: $11.95
Buy Used: $7.87
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Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 2616165
Media: Paperback
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.8 x 0.5
ISBN: 0804710597
Dewey Decimal Number: 335.411
EAN: 9780804710596
ASIN: 0804710597
Publication Date: February 1980
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: rubbing on cover/ name or gift inscription inside book/ PAGE EDGES STAINED
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| Customer Reviews:
Marx's Theory of History (Still the Best Paradigm) August 22, 2004
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
William Shaw's Marx's Theory of History examines Marx's technological determinism, particularly as it is put forth in his "Preface" to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859). Indeed, Shaw writes "It would not be misleading to see this entire essay as a struggle to elucidate a portion of that dense statement" (4). In this Preface, Marx writes "In the social production of their life men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real basis, on which rises a legal and political superstructure, and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness". Furthermore, Marx writes of an overwhelming "economic foundation of society," a strict economic determinism, which many (including the Soviet philosophers and bureaucrats) have seen as the sum of Marx's theory of history, posthumously called historical or dialectical materialism. Shaw denies that his object is to defend this interpretation of history, but rather to "excavate" it, to "highlight some of its internal difficulties". Yet defending it is what Shaw often winds up doing. Perhaps this is because Shaw is aware that this strict determinist approach to Marx is qualified (if not contradicted) by much of Marx's other writings. Yet he believes that only a "fundamentalist" approach to Marx's philosophy is a useful tool in the study of its relevance to history. In this respect, after an exhaustive philosophic analysis, Shaw concludes that Marx's philosophy is flawed but tenable, which isn't particularly illuminating.
Shaw's book is far too narrowly focused to be truly useful to a historian. He himself admits that absolute economic determinism has been repudiated by both history and philosophy, and ravaged by the vacuum of the Soviet Union, still a spectre as of Shaw's writing in 1978. Shaw's book is a carefully considered intellectual exercise but of little value to anyone other than a philosophy student who is particularly taken with Marx and history.
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