Marx's historical determinism spoils the whole marxist thing for me; economics, social interaction and life isn't that simple or preordained. determinism is not intellectually honest, only rigorous since it's harder to lie to oneself than to tell the truth. unless you're ari fleischer.
I wonder what would be an example from Marx of this sort of thing? I'm aware of this kind of thinking in interpretations of Marx, particularly the "mechanistic materialism" that was dominant in the 2nd International, but there have been a lot of other schools of marxism since then. I am also aware of the anti-humanist structuralist tradition in marxism, which I personally don't have much time for. My view is that typically 19th century mechanistic and determinist models were imposed on Marx's thought from an early stage, but even since very early in the 20th century there have been other interpretations, although marginalised. I don't think that right now there is any shortage of alternative views. The autonomous tradition for example has a particular slant on agency, I think.The dominance of mechanistic and structuralist thinking, what I would call vulgar marxism, is not as complete as it once seemed. My own preoccupation at the moment is precisely with agency and subjecti! vi! ty - I think that any worldview that does not balance the internal with the external is flawed. At the same time one needs to acknowledge also that philosophically it is very difficult or perhaps impossible to identify an individual essence that remains unconditioned while itself providing the conditions for action or thought. (BTW I don't know who Ari Fleischer is) Tahir