Chance, Necessity, and Mode of Production: A Marxist Critique of Cultural Evolutionism

Abstract

Cultural evolutionism and historical materialism are two fundamentally divergent theories of evolution. The nonrecognition by cultural evolutionists of Marx's distinction between “social formation” and “mode of production” has led them to interpret his thesis of the determination of superstructures by economic base as “techno‐economic change begets new levels of general evolution.” In fact, Marx's actual thesis was aimed at explaining the interrelationships between superstructures and economy within a previously established mode of production. As a consequence, Marx's analysis of how a new mode is “given” has been consistently ignored. Marx poses the problem of the origins of capitalism, not in terms of economic determinism, much less technological fatalism, but in terms of chance and necessity. In this paper, I attempt to draw the theoretical implications of such an approach in respect to general cultural evolution . [Marxism and cultural evolutionism; mode of production; economic determinism criticized; capitalism, rise of; cultural evolution, chance in]