Analytical Marxists stress that Marx did not just want to provide a plausible historical narrative but sought ‘to provide a theory,’ as Debra Satz well put it, ‘which explains the real causal structure of history.’ But it is also the case, as Richard Norman stresses, that ‘Marxism claims to be a systematic theory, whose various elements hang together in an organized way.’ It claims to be able to trace the connection between different aspects of social existence where these aspects are not viewed as merely conventional or ideological connections but ‘real, objective connections... to be established by an examination of historical facts...’ For Marxists, analytical or otherwise, historical materialism is central in such an account. It is for Marxists the theory which seeks to explain in a systematic scientific way epochal social change. Keeping this firmly in mind, I want to start from a series of issues emerging principally from a consideration of three essays in this volume which both significantly complement and conflict with each other. Seeing how this works out points to a way Marxian social theory can be developed. I then want to set such an account against more discouraging conclusions for Marxist social theory pointed to in Allen Buchanan’s careful survey article on analytical Marxism as well as some remarks with a similar overall thrust by Jon Elster.2 The three articles in question are Sean Sayers’s ‘Analytical Marxism and Morality,’ Richard Norman’s ‘What is Living and What is Dead in Marxism?’ and Debra Satz’s ‘Marxism, Materialism and Historical Progress.’