Here’s Engels letter to Bloch in which he makes a case against economic reductionism, at least, in the “first instance.” E.P. Thompson, by no means an economic determinist and in a reply to (or polemic against) Louis Althusser, a French Marxist, said that the economic factor is present not only in the last instance, but in every instance and the role of historians is to uncover how and to what degree. Thompson, it should be said, thought highly of Engels, who in letters at the end of his life, addressed and challenged dogmatic interpretations of the writings of Marx and himself. In the wake of the lively, at times contentious, debate over the rise and fall of Trump, Engels observations/letters when he was an old man, are worth reading (or reading again).