Analytical Marxism and the Debate on Social Evolution

According to Erik Wright, Andrew Levine and Elliott Sober (1992, 50) a theory counts as historical only when it has built into it ‘the idea of direction’ . Both Darwinism and classical historical materialism are in their view genuinely historical theories: Darwinism because it posits (in the words of one authority) that ‘any population (with the properties of multiplication, heredity and variation) will evolve by natural selection so as to become better adapted to its environment’ (Smith 1975, 96); Marxism likewise because it portrays societies as developing so as to improve their forces of production. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.