Introduction

Abstract

Marxist theory has been plagued from its very inception by economic reductionism.¹ This has been a prominent feature of classical Marxism and, despite recent attempts to overcome the theoretical impasse into which it leads, still constitutes a major, perhaps the major, theoretical weakness of the Marxist paradigm. This deficiency has become ever more conspicuous in the course of the last years as, especially on the Continent, Marxist theory has undergone a period of severe crisis and internal disarray. In fact, I would argue that the present decline of Marxism is related, although by no means due, to its failure to deal in an intellectually satisfactory manner with the issue of economic reductionism.