Practice question · Multiple choice
Marx says the relations of production become a "fetter" on the forces. Why is that the part of the theory that makes it testable rather than merely suggestive?
Hints
- Ask what the theory forbids from happening.
- Compare the fetter with a claim that could accommodate either outcome.
Show the answer
D. Because it names a condition and predicts crisis there
Why
A theory earns testability by saying WHEN its outcome should appear. The fetter does that. Hegemony, which explains why the predicted crisis fails to arrive, is the part that risks absorbing any result.
Practise Historical Materialism
The app has 4 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. History I is free to start.
More questions on Historical Materialism
- Sort each verdict on historical materialism: what survives or what fails?
- Marx predicted revolution in the most industrialised countries, and it came first in one of the least.
- Which are genuine contributions historical materialism made to the discipline?
- Complete the mechanism.
- Put Marx’s modes of production in his sequence.
- Match each mode of production to how its surplus was extracted.
- Weber argued that Calvinist ideas helped produce capitalism. Does that refute historical materialism?