"Vulgar Marxism" and economic determinism?

[Jacob Cliff]

From my understanding, these refer to the method of explaining all social phenomena with the prevailing mode of production/the economic makeup of society. From my understanding, this is quintessential to Marxist theory. Do we not explain society through analyzing the mode of production? Do we not look at the economic base to explain the superstructure? What other factors are needed to be taken into account?

Also: is this quote by Engels not exemplify this "vulgar Marxist" approach?

"The final causes of all social changes and political revolution are to be sought, not in men's brains, not in man's insight into internal truth and justice... but in the economies of each epoch."

[Ocean Seal]

Vulgar Marxism is to dismiss all other dynamic explanations for change and reduce history to economic conditions. IE: why start a mass party when the mass party will start itself?

[ckaihatsu]

Do we not explain society through analyzing the mode of production? Do we not look at the economic base to explain the superstructure? What other factors are needed to be taken into account?


It's been awhile since I was last around this topic, but, just offhand, I think the point of calling the economic deterministic perspective 'vulgar Marxism' is because it implicitly ignores the dynamic of *class struggle*.

(In other words one could read the 'Business' section every day and be an expert on stock price movements and understand capitalism perfectly *empirically*, but the system is never going to go belly-up on its own, regardless of how bad things get -- inevitably there *has* to be class consciousness and the self-organization of the working class to *overthrow* bourgeois economics, once and for all.)

Also:


[1] History, Macro Micro -- Precision

http://s6.postimg.org/nmlxvtqlt/1_History_Macro_Micro_Precision.jpg (http://postimg.org/image/zbpxjshkd/full/)

[ckaihatsu]

Here's from here....





Comrades are correctly identifying 'economic determinism' as being a strawman construction that's casually and incorrectly attributed to Marxism.

The danger here is that 'economic determinism' *implies* that human society, and its economy, is simply, irreversibly on "auto-pilot", due to its economics. It's basically saying that the world is on a course of *predestination*, which is neither Marxist nor factual. 'Economic determinism' strips mass consciousness and human agency out of the equation, which -- finally -- is decidedly *counter-revolutionary* in its conclusion, since it would mean that class struggle simply isn't deterministic at all.


http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2687018&postcount=6

[Rafiq]

The problem with economic determinism is not really that it is reductionist. The problem is that it is a positive claim - it assumes there is a given substrate that which other things can just as easily determine (but do not). But as Marx stated, historical materialism is not some kind of dogma or arbitrary positive claim - it is merely the onset of a scientific evaluation of history.

What does this mean? As Engels stated:

According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining factor in history is the production and reproduction of real life. Neither Marx nor I have ever asserted more than this

And ultimately, the basis of reproducing real life relegate back to one's relation to their own basis of life - not just in terms of subsistence, but life in general. Hence class is not a separate factor which "determines" anything (otherwise, there would be no reason for the superstructure to exist at all), for the superstructure exists to reproduce the conditions of production themselves.

[RedWorker]

It's worth reading the rest of text (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_09_21.htm+) from what Rafiq quoted, namely:

"Marx and I are ourselves partly to blame for the fact that the younger people sometimes lay more stress on the economic side than is due to it. We had to emphasise the main principle vis-à-vis our adversaries, who denied it, and we had not always the time, the place or the opportunity to give their due to the other elements involved in the interaction. But when it came to presenting a section of history, that is, to making a practical application, it was a different matter and there no error was permissible. Unfortunately, however, it happens only too often that people think they have fully understood a new theory and can apply it without more ado from the moment they have assimilated its main principles, and even those not always correctly. And I cannot exempt many of the more recent "Marxists" from this reproach, for the most amazing rubbish has been produced in this quarter, too...."

[RedWorker]

"According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. Other than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure — political forms of the class struggle and its results, to wit: constitutions established by the victorious class after a successful battle, etc., juridical forms, and even the reflexes of all these actual struggles in the brains of the participants, political, juristic, philosophical theories, religious views and their further development into systems of dogmas — also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form. There is an interaction of all these elements in which, amid all the endless host of accidents (that is, of things and events whose inner interconnection is so remote or so impossible of proof that we can regard it as non-existent, as negligible), the economic movement finally asserts itself as necessary. Otherwise the application of the theory to any period of history would be easier than the solution of a simple equation of the first degree."