Who Encounters What Here?
6 Pages Posted: 9 Jul 2013
Date Written: January 15, 2013
Abstract
A distinctive feature of the Marxist method is that analysis of ideas and theories go hand in hand with social relations that produce them. The encounter between Critical Realism and Historical Materialism needs to be located in the transformations of capitalism into transnational monopoly finance capitalism in the beginning of the 20th century, a change that Lenin referred to as a new ‘epoch’. The trajectory of Marxismis also subject to historical materialist methods of analysis. Not taking a historical materialist approach to developments within Marxism renders Marxism into an ideology rather than a living guide to emancipatory political action.
Keywords: Critical Realism, Marxism, human geography, Historical Materialism, academic and revolutionary Marxism, geographies of knowledge, Marxist method, philosophy of science, transnational monopoly finance capitalism
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation