17. Historical Materialism as Organic Process
Marx’s theory of historical materialism held that societies evolve through economic stages driven by material conditions, not ideology or force. “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness,” he wrote in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Marx believed socialism would emerge from fully developed capitalism after productive forces reached their peak, not through voluntaristic shortcuts imposed on underdeveloped economies.
