Economic determinism is a socioeconomic theory that

economic An economy is an area of the production, distribution and trade, as well as consumption of goods and services. In general, it is defined as a social domain that emphasize the practices, discourses, and material expressions associated with t ...

relationships (such as being an owner or capitalist, or being a worker or proletarian) are the foundation upon which all other societal and political arrangements in society are based. The theory stresses that societies are divided into competing economic classes whose relative political power is determined by the nature of the economic system. In the writing of American history the term is associated with historian

Charles A. Beard Charles Austin Beard (1874–1948) was an American historian and professor, who wrote primarily during the first half of the 20th century. A history professor at Columbia University, Beard's influence is primarily due to his publications in the f ...

(1874–1948), who was not a Marxist but who emphasized the long-term political contest between bankers and business interest on the one hand, and agrarian interests on the other.

Relation to Marxist philosophy

According to

Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

, each social mode of production produces the material conditions of its reproduction. Otherwise said, it is the ideology that is responsible for grounding secondary civil services such as politics, legislature, and even culture to an extent. Roughly speaking, ideology is the guiding influence of the mode of production, and without it, difficulties would theoretically arise with reproduction. Marx did not believe that the same economic rules governed all of history, but that each new era brought with it new economic factors. Furthermore, Marx and Engels are said to have believed, should a revolutionary force change the mode of production, the dominant class will immediately set out to create a new society to protect this new economic order. In the modernity of their era, Marx and Engels felt the propertied class had essentially accomplished the establishment of a new societal and economic order, instinctively creating a society protective of their capitalist interests. They made this statement to the Bourgeoisie in the ''

Communist Manifesto ''The Communist Manifesto'', originally the ''Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (german: Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei), is a political pamphlet written by German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Commissioned by the Comm ...

'': "Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your

jurisprudence Jurisprudence, or legal theory, is the theoretical study of the propriety of law. Scholars of jurisprudence seek to explain the nature of law in its most general form and they also seek to achieve a deeper understanding of legal reasoning ...

is but the will of your class, made into law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of the existence of your class." Marx also believed that the same ideas could not grow out of just any economic system:"

Don Quixote is a Spanish epic novel by Miguel de Cervantes. Originally published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615, its full title is ''The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha'' or, in Spanish, (changing in Part 2 to ). A founding work of Wester ...

long ago paid the penalty for wrongly imagining that knight-errantry was compatible with all economical forms of society."

Criticism

Other Marxists and Marx-scholars—including

Eduard Bernstein Eduard Bernstein (; 6 January 1850 – 18 December 1932) was a German Social democracy, social democratic Marxist theorist and politician. A member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), Bernstein had held close association to Karl ...

Gerald Hubmann Gerald is a male Germanic given name meaning "rule of the spear" from the prefix ''ger-'' ("spear") and suffix ''-wald'' ("rule"). Variants include the English given name Jerrold, the feminine nickname Jeri and the Welsh language Gerallt and ...

György Lukács György Lukács (born György Bernát Löwinger; hu, szegedi Lukács György Bernát; german: Georg Bernard Baron Lukács von Szegedin; 13 April 1885 – 4 June 1971) was a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, literary historian, critic, and aest ...

, Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Maurice Godelier,

Franz Jakubowski Franz Jakubowski (10 June 1912, Posen, Province of Posen, Prussia, Germany, now Poznan, Poland1970, U.S.) was a philosopher and Western Marxist theorist. Life Born in Prussia, he grew up in what was then the Free City of Danzig. His father was a do ...

Edward P. Thompson Edward Palmer Thompson (3 February 1924 – 28 August 1993) was an English historian, writer, socialist and peace campaigner. He is best known today for his historical work on the radical movements in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in ...

and Michael Löwy—completely reject the interpretation of Marx and Engels as "economic determinists". They claim this idea is based on a poor and selective reading of Marx and Engels' work. They argue that this interpretation originated in the early years of the

Second International The Second International (1889–1916) was an organisation of Labour movement, socialist and labour parties, formed on 14 July 1889 at two simultaneous Paris meetings in which delegations from twenty countries participated. The Second Internatio ...

and was popularised by Paul Lafargue and

Nikolai Bukharin Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin (russian: Никола́й Ива́нович Буха́рин) ( – 15 March 1938) was a Bolshevik revolutionary, Soviet politician, Marxist philosopher and economist and prolific author on revolutionary theory. ...

, among others. They refer to the disclaimers by Engels (see historical materialism) to the effect that while Marx and himself had focused a lot on the economic aspects, they were very aware that this did ''not'' in fact constitute the totality of society or of social life. In '' Socialism: Utopian and Scientific'', Engels notes how the same material conditions and class situation led to different political situations in Britain as that society tried to adapt to the results of the French Revolution and other external events. Richard Wolff also notes that Marx studied things he thought under appreciated by mainstream academia, but did not proclaim or think their theories to be irrelevant.Archived a
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Notable economic determinists

American geostrategist

Thomas P. M. Barnett Thomas P.M. Barnett (born 1962) is an American military geostrategist and former chief analyst at Wikistrat. He developed a geopolitical theory that divided the world into "the Functioning Core" and the "Non-Integrating Gap" that made him parti ...

describes himself as an economic determinist in his book '' The Pentagon's New Map''.

Citations

References

*Helmut Fleischer, ''Marxism and History''. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1973. *Friedrich Engels, ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific''. London: Mondial, 2006.

External links