Marx's materialism

Dear WSN,
Richard Moore comments:
"Marx came up with a model.  He identified certain forces and
predicted those forces would play themselves out in a
certain way.   I don't see it happening.  Instead, I see
elite agency changing the rules as necessary to keep society
on a certain path."

   For Marx, there is "no royal road to science." If Richard Moore
wishes to understand the utility of Marx's thinking for world society
today, he would do best to consult _Capital_ rather than the wsn list.
Marx's theorization of capital's basic laws of motion and its immanent
crisis tendencies offered in successive volumes of _Capital_ are more
applicable today than ever before. Whether one agrees with Marx or not,
no one can claim to be serious student of the world capitalist system
without engaging these arguments.
    In the passage I've extracted from Mr. Moore's post, I would like to
draw attention to two big problems. First, to reduce Marx's life-work to
the status of a predictive model of capitalism butchers the very essence
of Marx's historical-geographical materialism. Second, the fact that
capitalist "elites" (sic) continue to make history would come as no
suprise to Marx.
    My guess is that Mr. Moore is reacting rather more to ossified and
vulgar interpretations of Marx(ism) and rather less to the Marx-Engels
corpus.
    Sincerely, Jason

Jason W. Moore
Sociology, Johns Hopkins