Who encounters what here? Comment on Kevin Cox ‘Marxism and critical realism: a brief encounter'

A distinctive feature of Marxist method is that analysis of ideas and theories go hand in hand with social relations that produce them. The encounter between Critical Realism and Historical Materialism needs to be located in the transformations of capitalism into transnational monopoly finance capitalism in the beginning of the 20th century, a change that Lenin referred to as a new ‘epoch’. The trajectory of Marxism is also subject to historical materialist methods of analysis. Not taking a historical materialist approach to developments within Marxism renders Marxism into an ideology rather than a living guide to emancipatory political action