The Balancing Act: Economic Determinism and Humanism in Marxism

Abstract

I argue that there are two interpretations of the Marxist dialectic, both of which examine how human beings interact with objects around them conceptually and how society evolves over time, from different points of view. In the present paper, I undertake three tasks. First, I demonstrate that there is a clear difference between these two strains of Marxist thought which I here call humanist and determinist. Second, I show how Marxist thought has evolved from Hegel and Marx to the present in light of these two different models. Last, I argue that the determinist model is flawed, and that the humanist model stands as a more solid logical and epistemological perspective for Marxist theory.