Would anyone care to dispute the object-level claim I made, or are people just spree-downvoting?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_determinism
Wikipedia seems to be pretty unambiguious about Marx being the first notable theorist here. It's not about "neutrality", there just isn't any evidence that this claim is mistaken.
Neither of the above. Your comment's style was suboptimal, technological determinism is different from economic determinism, and the neo-reactionary position is neither. (This is obvious from the fact that they think that they can reverse the left-ward trend of history, but that it will take a concentrated effort.)
(I did not downvote.)
People want to tell everything instead of telling the best 15 words. They want to learn everything instead of the best 15 words. In this thread, instead post the best 15-words from a book you've read recently (or anything else). It has to stand on its own. It's not a summary, the whole value needs to be contained in those words.
I'll start in the comments below.
(Voted by the Schelling study group as the best exercise of the meeting.)