Marx, Gellner, Power
The development of Marxism in the Soviet bloc during the second half of the 20th century is compared favorably with the advances Ernest Gellner makes in his materialist account of history. The place of the base-&-superstructure metaphor & the question of whether politics or economics is really the epiphenomenon of the other are debated. Dialectical Marxism, as practiced by philosophers V. P. Tugarinov (1958) & Georg Klaus (1965), developed a theory of feedback loops, in which political superstructures gained relative autonomy & determined economics in turn. Gellner applied a similar theory to the development of the modern industrial nation. The possibility that violence can both be transformative & have a maintenance function requires such a dialectical materialist theory of social systems. 14 References. H. von Rautenfeld