Economism: Entry from The Dictionary of Marxist Thought, ed. Tom Bottomore. Oxford: Blackwell, 1983
A concept developed by Lenin in several articles of 1899 ('Retrograde Trend in Russian Social-Democracy', 'Apropos of the Profession de foi', etc. in Collected Works, vol. 4), which criticized some groups in the Russian social democratic movement for separating political from economic struggles and concentrating their efforts on the latter; an attitude which Lenin associated with 'Bernsteinian ideas' (see BERNSTEIN).'If the economic struggle is taken as something complete in itself,' he wrote 'there will be nothing socialist in it.' In a later article (1901) Lenin defined 'economism' as a separate trend in the social democratic movement, with the following characreristic features: vulgarization of Marxism which downgraded the conscious element in social life; a striving to restrict political agitation and struggle; a failure to understand the need 'to establish a strong and centralized organisation of revolutionaries'. His pamphlet of 1902 What is to be Done! was directed primarily against economism, made a distinction between trade unionist politics and social democratic politics, and denounced 'bowing to spontaneity' (i.e. the notion of a spontaneous movement towards socialism as an outcome of economic development).
Lenin used the term, therefore, mainly in the context of practical politics, and it took its place in the broader framework of his ideas about the need for a centralized and disciplined party which would bring a developed class consciousness to the working class from outside (see LENINISM). But economism also has a theoretical significance, as a form of Marxism which emphasizes (and in the view of its critics over-emphasizes) the determination of social life as a whole by the economic base (see BASE AND SUPERSTRUCTURE), and in general insists upon the determinism of Marx's theory. Gramsci (1971, part II, sect. 1) begins his discussion of economism by considering its political manifestations - identifying economism with syndicalism, laisse-faire liberalism, and various other forms of 'electoral abstentionism', which all express some degree of opposition to political action and the political party. He goes on, however, to relate it to a particular theoretical orientation in the social sciences, namely 'the Iron conviction that there exist ohjective laws of historical development similar in kind to natural laws, together with a belief in a predetermined teleology like that of a religion'. In recent debates, economism has been most strongly, though very inadequately, criticized by the structuralist Marxists (see STRUCTURALISM) in the course of their relation of the base/ superstructure model and of teleology. Poulantzas, in his study of the Communist International's policy towards fascism (1974), argues chat the policy was based upon a particular kind of economism which reduced imperialism to a purely economic phenomenon (a process of linear economic evolution), explained fascism in Italy by the economic backwardness of the country, and did not expect fascism in Germany, which had a highly industrialized,
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advanced economy. Economism, in its various shades of meaning, and the criticisms of it, raise some fundamental questions (which have also been put in other terms) about the precise role of economic (and technological) development in Marx's theory of history (see HISTORICAL MATERIALISM), and in particular about how much weight should be assigned to this development as against the (relatively) independent influence of ideology, classconsciousness, and political action seen as a manifestation of human agency. TBB
Reading
Gramsci, Antonio, 1929-35 (1971): 'Some Theoretical and Practical Aspects of Economism'. In Selections From the Prison Notebooks, pt. II.
Lenin, V. I. 1902 (1961): What is to be Done!
