Obligations to the Other Animals by Christine M. Korsgaard (Oxford U. Press 2018) , pp. 48–50, 67, 196. The debate over human nature and historical materialism Pages 150–160 (i.e. chapter 6, section 4) of G.A. Cohen's seminal Karl Marx's Theory of History (KMTH) (1978) contain an account of the relation of human nature to historical materialism. Cohen argues that the former is necessary to explain the development of the productive forces, which Marx holds to drive history. This basic view is endorsed by Geras (1983) and . The view, however, was criticised by Erik Olin Wright and Andrew Levine in an article entitled Rationality and Class Struggle, first published in the New Left Review. It can be found as chapter 1 of Marxist Theory (ed. Alex Callinicos, 1989). It was also criticised by Joshua Cohen, in a review of KMTH in the Journal of Philosophy. G.A. Cohen draws out some difficulties with his own presentation in KMTH in the article "Reconsidering Historical Materialism". (First published 1983 in Marxism: NOMOS XXVI, ed. Chapman and Pennock; now available in Marxist Theory ed. Alex Callinicos, 1989; and in History, Labour, and Freedom, G.A. Cohen, 1988). The article's contentions (for a five-point summary, see Callinicos pp. 173–4) concern the connection of Marx's historical materialism to his "philosophical anthropology" – basically, his conception of human nature. Chapter 5 of G.A. Cohen's History, Labour and Freedom (1988) is entitled Human Nature and Social Change in the Marxist Conception of History and is co-authored by Cohen and Will Kymlicka. (First published 1988 in the Journal of Philosophy.) The purpose of the chapter is to defend Cohen's contention in his KMTH that there is an autonomous tendency of the productive forces to develop, where "autonomous" means "independent of particular social relations". The text is a response to the criticisms of J. Cohen, Levine and Wright. That is, G.A. Cohen and Kymlicka seek to show that there are no grounds for an a priori denial' of the claim that "extra-social features of human nature and the human situation operate powerfully enough to generate an historical tendency capable of overcoming recaltricant social structures" (p. 106). There may be thought to be a tension between the claims of this article and those of "Reconsidering Historical Materialism". Footnotes Marxist theory Philosophical anthropology Philosophical theories