Economism: Difference between revisions

{{Shortshort description|Marxist political concept}}

'''Economism''', sometimes spelled '''economicism''',<ref>{{Cite web|last=Garber|first=Megan|date=2014-06-30|title=Why 'Efficiency' Is Inhumane|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/06/economicism-n-the-language-of-economics-infiltrating-the-language-of-everything-else/373722/|access-date=2020-12-20|website=The Atlantic|language=en-US}}</ref> is<!-- aBelow termtext referringSimilar to the[[Vulgar distractionMarxism]]. ofhttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vulgar_Marxism&oldid=1162183285--> workingis class"the politicalmost activismorthodox from[position ain global[[Marxism]] politicalwhich] projectprovides one-to-one purelycorrelations economicbetween demands.[[Base Theand conceptsuperstructure|the encompassessocio-economic rewardingbase workersand inthe socialismintellectual withsuperstructure]]".<ref>Policy moneyFutures incentivesin Education, ratherVolume than3, incentivizingNumber workers1, through2005. revolutionary politics''[https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2304/pfie.2005.3.1.12 TheTransmodernism, termMarxism isand originallySocial associatedChange: withsome [[Vladimirimplications Lenin]for teacher education]'s critique of trade unionism.'

In his criticism of economism, Lenin's view was that the political figure of the worker could not necessarily be inferred from the worker's social position.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book |last=Russo |first=Alessandro |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1156439609 |title=Cultural Revolution and revolutionary culture |date=2020 |publisher=[[Duke University Press]] |isbn=978-1-4780-1218-84 |location=Durham |pages=180 |oclc=1156439609}}</ref> Under capitalism, the worker's labor power is [[Commodification|commodified]] and sold in exchange for wages.<ref name=":1" /> While negotiating the sale of labor power is necessary for survival under capitalism, Lenin argued that participating in that negotiation did not guarantee a worker's political existence and in fact obscured the underlying political stakes.<ref name=":1" />

Lenin used the term in his attacks on a trend in the early [[Russian Social Democratic Labour Party]] around the newspaper [[Rabochaya Mysl]].<ref>{{CitationCite web |last=Lenin |first=Vladimir needed|date=October1902 2022|title=What Is To Be Done? |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/ |access-date=2023-10-05 |website=www.marxists.org}}</ref> Among the representatives of Russian economicism were [[Nicolas Lokhoff|Nikolai Lochoff]], [[Yekaterina Kuskova|YekektarinaYekaterina Kuskova]], [[Aleksandr Martynov (Russian politician)|Alexander Martynov]], [[Sergei Prokopovich]], [[Konstantin Takhtarev|K. M. Takhtarev]] and others.<ref>{{Cite web |title=ЭКОНОМИСТЫ • Большая российская энциклопедия - электронная версия |url=https://bigenc.ru/text/4927064 |access-date=2021-04-14 |website=bigenc.ru }}{{Dead link|date=August 2024 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref>

Economism became a familiar term in Chinese political discourse only during the [[Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution]] (GPCR).<ref name=":0" /> [[Mao Zedong]] criticized the material incentives of economism, arguing that production must be led by revolutionary politics and to reward productivity with money promoted the wrong values and was inconsistent with making factories a bastion of proletarian politics.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Karl |first=Rebecca E. |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/503828045 |title=Mao Zedong and China in the twentieth-century world : a concise history |date=2010 |publisher=[[Duke University Press]] |isbn=978-0-8223-4780-4 |location=Durham [NC] |pages=137 |oclc=503828045}}</ref>

In particular, economism became the most important issue during the [[Shanghai People's Commune|Shanghai People's commune]].<ref name=":0" /> Although many historical narratives of the GPCRCultural Revolution have described economism as an effort on the part of the [[Chinese Communist Party of China]] leadership to bribe workers into political passivity, more recent scholarship argues that those narratives are only "partially correct, at best."<ref name=":2">{{Cite book |last=Wu |first=Yiching |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/881183403 |title=The cultural revolution at the margins : Chinese socialism in crisis |date=2014 |publisher=[[Harvard University Press]] |isbn=978-0-674-41985-8 |location=Cambridge, Mass. |pages=98-9998–99 |oclc=881183403}}</ref> ProfessorAcademic Yiching Wu argues, for example, that although local bureaucrats were in fact willing to make economistic concessions to workers, they had no control over the eruption of worker grievances and demands.<ref>{{Cite book |lastname=Wu |first=Yiching |url=https"://www.worldcat.org/oclc/8811834032" |title=The cultural revolution at the margins : Chinese socialism in crisis |date=2014 |publisher=[[Harvard University Press]] |isbn=978-0-674-41985-8 |location=Cambridge, Mass. |pages=99 |oclc=881183403}}</ref> Instead, economistic demands during this period were rooted in worker's actual conditions and driven by factors including the deterioration of work conditions during the state-driven economic accumulation of the late 1950s, the weakness of Chinese trade unions, and the collapse of the economy during the [[Great Leap Forward]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Wu |first=Yiching |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/881183403 |title=The cultural revolution at the margins : Chinese socialism in crisis |date=2014 |publisher=[[Harvard University Press]] |isbn=978-0-674-41985-8 |location=Cambridge, Mass. |pages=99-10199–101 |oclc=881183403}}</ref>

The term is often used to criticize economics as an [[ideology]] in which [[supply and demand]] are the only important factors in decisions and outstrip or permit ignoring all other factors.{{Citation<ref needed|datename=October"&newbks=1&newb">
U.C. 2022Mandal, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=Hs0xJORVIHwC&dq=are+the+only+important+factors+in+decisions+and+outstrip+or+permit+ignoring+all+other+factors&pg=PA149 Dictionary Of Public Administration]'' (2007), p. 149, {{ISBN|9788176257848}}, Sarup & Sons publishing</ref> It is believed to be a side effect of [[neoclassical economics]] and blind faith in an "[[invisible hand]]" or ''[[laissez-faire]]'' means of making decisions, extended far beyond controlled and regulated markets and used to make political and military decisions.{{Citation<ref needed|datename=October 2022}}"&newbks=1&newb"/> Conventional [[ethics]] would play no role in decisions under pure economism, except insofar as supply would be withheld, demand curtailed, by moral choices of individuals.{{Citation<ref needed|datename=October 2022}}"&newbks=1&newb"/> Thus, critics of economism insist on [[Politics|political]] and other [[Culture|cultural]] dimensions in [[society]].{{Citation<ref needed|datename=October 2022}} "&newbks=1&newb"/>

[[Category:Political slurspejoratives]]

[[Category:SocialPolitical theoriesideologies]]