Economic determinism

[Redistribute the Rep]

Why do some people associate it with Marxism?

[Tim Cornelis]

Undialectical understanding of historical materialism.

[Rafiq]

Why do some people associate it with Marxism?

It stems from the error of trying to translate the scientific conception of history in terms of formalism. Bourgeois ideologues cannot conceive history scientifically (though they can get very close - Hegel, for one), they are only ever capable of conceiving it in terms of the metaphysical. Althusser referred to part of this generally as empiricism, wherein the abstraction of the essence of an object is automatically conflated to constitute the object itself.

Bourgeois ideologues will look for "primacy" either in the economic or something else - which is precisely why, for example, Max Weber criticized historical materialism for putting primacy on the economic rather than the "cultural" or even "religious". Meanwhile, Marxists recognize this to be a false dichotomy - the "economic" is largely an ideological abstraction, and you cannot divorce the fundamental foundations of the production and reproduction of life, from its practical expression in cultural or religious domains. Marxists conceive societies in terms of totalities, rather than looking for a static "thing" that everything in a society truly derives from.

To paraphrase Engels, Marxists do not claim much beyond the fact that before pursuing other domains of life, man must first find a means to clothe, feed and shelter himself.

[Sewer Socialist]

This is quite a popular misconception, and I'm interested in its origins. Is Wikipedia's assertion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_determinism#Criticism) correct in that this originates in Kautsky and Bukharin? I've never actually read their work, but it doesn't sound like something they'd write. Does it actually originate in Weber, or is he inspired by someone else's analysis?

[ñángara]

I think Georgi Plekhanov was one of those guys: (taken from the wikipedia)

Plekhanov not only found materialism to be the motor force in history, but went on to outline a particular type of materialism—the "economic determinism model of materialism as the specific element that moved history
See Georgi Plekhanov "A Few Words in Defence of Economic Materialism" and "On the Economic Factor" contained in the Selected Philosophical Works: Volume II, pp. 183-210 and 251-282.

[Sewer Socialist]

Hm, neither of the works cited (A Few Words in Defense of Economic Materialism, and On the Economic Factor) appear on marxists.org.

Wikipedia is consistantly linking it to the theorists of the 2nd International, though.

[Hit The North]

Under capitalism we do have a form of economic determinism, in that it is the economy which dictates the development of other areas of social life. As Marx points out the logic of the commodity begins to infect all forms of life that had hitherto existed in the realms of tradition, sentiment, religion, etc. In capitalist societies, arguably the dominant framework for social action is via the instrumental rationality of the market-place. Public institutions of health, education, law, welfare are increasingly shaped by this logic. The private realm, too, becomes subject to the logic of accumulation as personal and family lives are shaped and remade under the impact of economic changes.

Next to the power of these material, economic factors, other transformative areas of social life such as tradition, history, culture, pale in significance and represent much weaker forces.

I remember reading either Marx or Engels about how different laws of determination happen in different modes of production, so the feudal mode was held together by coercive political power, whilst the capitalist mode is held together by coercive economic power. Can anyone point me to the text where this discussion was written?

But it stands to reason, that if 'capitalism' refers to a society that is the rule of capital over labour, then economic factors would be decisive in driving change and in our understanding of it.

[ckaihatsu]

The term 'economic determinism' may be confusing because it *seems* to equate to Marxism's historical materialism -- after all, what's more deterministic than *economic* factors -- but, to be precise, the factors of actual determinism can be seen to be real, *material* factors, of a *class* nature, and not strictly economic:





[L]abor wants to get paid more while ownership wants to get things done for less

[Rafiq]

Under capitalism we do have a form of economic determinism, in that it is the economy which dictates the development of other areas of social life. As Marx points out the logic of the commodity begins to infect all forms of life that had hitherto existed in the realms of tradition, sentiment, religion, etc. In capitalist societies, arguably the dominant framework for social action is via the instrumental rationality of the market-place. Public institutions of health, education, law, welfare are increasingly shaped by this logic. The private realm, too, becomes subject to the logic of accumulation as personal and family lives are shaped and remade under the impact of economic changes.


That is in part why Marx and Engels referred to the antagonism between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie as kind of the first real, open class antagonism in history, because before capitalism a fundamental gap between "economic" processes and their implications in political, religious, i.e. superstructural domains was not present. For example, class interests in feudalism (and in Asiatic societies as well, for an orientalist lack of a better word) couldn't be expressed beyond religious schisms, Roman and Greek politics were fundamentally integrated with social considerations - i.e. a "political class" was also the class of those with hegemony over the means of production (i.e. individually) and so on.

For Marx, this "gap" between the economic and other domains of life actually was the foundation of the emancipation of labor and consciousness of social processes, because - as they say, what goes out must also come in. Meaning, if a gap between the superstructure and the base can exist, then the for the first time in history can it be possible for consciousness of the base to exist.

[Sibotic]

Because Marxists aren't determined by the economy, ergo people have a problem with this because it makes them thinking human beings and they will stigmatise that by any means possible. If anything, such lack of self-direction should be a limitation, except that others possess it and thus things occur by rote according to the needs of capital. There is always the acknowledgement that many beliefs put forward by people only take on sense for them because they're actually ideological (eg. derivatives of 'rights theory,' negative freedom-based views, deterministic utilitarianism, hedonism and views stressing the feelings), which by the way for such ideological perspectives distorts many conceptions of rhetoric or eloquence into a fairly mild thing, which leads to the pretence that only feeling and instincts are constitutive despite this being obviously self-contradictory, and indeed these being derivative rather than standing alone - hence, the reduction of the human being to someone who can't produce, when in fact they can produce and the whole thing is an artificiality built on sand, where the interest and feelings of humans - obviously not their instincts, which can't motivate anything except their own wankery - can quickly be restored to order and tear it apart on a mass scale, especially given its instability, like there was never anything there - which, by the way, there was never anything substantial. Wars were just a pacifistic exercise of the international capital, which subordinated and motivated both sides towards a certain, fixed, outcome. Capital is a system in denial of its own basis, of everything about it really, but people act as if it's on a level plane, when in matter of fact and etc. it isn't.

Economic determinism, if by that we mean that humans are passive adjuncts of the economic system of production and relations, is a historical phenomenon relating to capital, and hence a subjugation of individual to society - which doesn't think - is an inherent part of all capitalist apologism. People try to distract from this, and we disagree with them, as individuals who don't care about pandering to them or such derivatives - which is all they frequently can do -, but of course they would, because the economic basis of capitalism, in a general sense, is its own abolition. It's parasitical and a passing show, and don't let Shakespeare or another tell you otherwise, little authority they often have in things or thinking about them. Our view would also imply the abolition of division of labour, because artists who are divorced from this understanding are falsifying, and lack real content at the expense of feeling, or artists can't refrain from thought, philosophy, etc., while philosophy or the overall systematisation integrates it in its account of human thought and in such a scenario becomes a route to practical activity or ceases to be seen as something unrelated to it.