Marx Was Not An Economic Determinist

[Richard Modiano]

In Dharmavidya's book The New Buddhism he wrongly chraacterizes Marx as an economic determist, possibly because he's only familiar with secondary sources or read Marx through the distorting lens of Lenin or Kautsky.

Marx's philosophical framework was one of dialectical totality, in which things were composed of interpenetrating and co-determining facets. Marx criticized the materialists for asserting that matter was the "cause" of all actions. and likewise attacked the idealists for claiming that ideas produced all human actions. While social reality was influenced by the ideas of humanity, Marx pointed out, those ideas were themselves the products of social reality. As Engels writes, "Reciprocal action is the true causa finalis of things. We cannot go back further than to knowledge of this reciprocal action, for the very reason that there is nothing behind to know. "

The descriptions and definitions which Marx gives for this interpenetrating process are, however, difficult to understand in a social framework which views the relationships of things linearly, in a one-to-one causal relationship. Therefore, after Marx's death, those socialists who were unable to grasp the Marxian concept of dialectical totality took it upon themselves to modify, simplify and re-define Marxism. This new conception has been called "dialectical materialism", "historical materialism" or "economic determinism"; all terms which Marx himself never used.

According to this "economic determinist" view, human development is brought about by the action of economics, and this motion is determined by regular and predictable natural laws which humans are powerless to avoid or escape. The economic base directly determines and controls the social superstructure which is built upon it.

The Marxian conception of history is based on the dialectical interpenetration of human social constructions with their natural surroundings. Human beings, according to this conception, must organize into certain social relationships in order to extract their necessaries of life from their surroundings. In doing so, however, human social structures have a profound impact on those surroundings. When the actions of human social practice alter this relationship beyond a certain point, the existing pattern of social organization is no longer suitable for dealing with these circumstances, and new social relationships become necessary. In this manner, Marx asserted, the dialectical interpenetration of humans with their surroundings produces the series of social changes we know of as history.

In a social system such as capitalism, which tends to view natural surroundings as an entity to be conquered and utilized for the production of profit, and which views economic activities as being governed by impersonal natural laws, a relational and interconnecting view of totality, such as Marxian dialectics, is difficult to grasp and understand. It is not surprising, then, that after Marx's death his outlook was simplified and modified by those who claimed to be his followers.

By the time of the Second International, Marxism had been, in practice, reduced to the simple formula, "Material conditions determine consciousness." Human society, these "dialectical materialists" asserted, developed according to laws which were regular and predictable, and which could be studied with the precision of a natural science. Leninist theory is most often presented in the form of the "base-superstructure" framework. According to this view, the economic relationships of human society are the "base" upon which society is founded, and all other social relationships (sexual, familial, racial, national) are merely a "superstructure" which is built upon this economic base. Prevailing economic conditions, these "economic determinists" assert, directly determine the form of religious, familial, legal, ethical and other social relationships, and these non-economic structures can only be altered through changes in the underlying economic base. As Stalin put it, "Every base has a superstructure corresponding to it. . . If the base changes or is eliminated, then following this its superstructure changes or is eliminated; if a new base arises, then following this a superstructure arises corresponding to it."

In reality, however, no human society can exist unless it reproduces, alongside its physical needs, the whole array of ideas, attitudes and social relationships which allow it to exist. All social modes of production must determine, not only how the physical necessities of life are produced and distributed (economics), but also how the different members of that society relate to each other (nationality, race, gender, sexuality, religion) and how these social structures are maintained, enforced and indoctrinated (law, education, the state).

Thus, a mode of production is not merely economic in nature. It must also include the various ways in which any human society interacts with itself and with its surroundings, and how it is able to maintain and reproduce the conditions for its existence. Marx never made the mistake of asserting that economic relationships were the determining factor in capitalist society. Rather, he realized that it is not enough for the capitalist to have a social structure that allows profits to be maximized; the social system must also continually reproduce the conditions under which profits can be made at all. The economic and non-economic spheres, Marx pointed out, exist in a dialectical relationship, with each influencing and reproducing the other. "Productive forces and social relations," he wrote, "[are] different sides of the development of the social individual."

Engels wrote, "According to the materialist conception of history, the determining moment in history is ultimately the production and reproduction of real life. More than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. If therefore somebody twists this into the statement that the economic moment is the only determining one, he transforms it into a meaningless, abstract and absurd phrase."

[Andrew Cooper]

A friend of mine used to refer to an economic-determinist reading of Marx as "vulger Marxism", meaning that it failed to recognize that dialectical processes are dynamic and reciprocal. In this regard, I think you make an extremely important point, and make it very well. But I also think that there is the matter of where the weight falls most heavily, and here I think Marx did indeed put emphasis on the material side. And I think this was, and still is, a good thing. There is a strong tendency, an ideological move, that views developments in knowledge or technology or politics or finance as being somehow self-contained and operative entirely within their own logic, and I think we need Marx to cast suspicion on such one-dimensional views. lest we accept uncritically the narratives cooked up by those who profit from our complacency.