Economism

Economism, sometimes spelled economicism, is a term in Marxist discourse. It was used by Vladimir Lenin in his attacks on a trend in the early Russian Social Democratic Labour Party around the newspaper Rabochaya Mysl.

Among the representatives of Russian economicism were, Nikolai Lochoff, Yekektarina Kuskova, Alexander Martynov, Sergei Prokopovich, K. M. Takhtarev and others.

The charge of economism is frequently brought against revisionists by anti-revisionists when economics, instead of politics, is placed in command of society; and when primacy of the development of the productive forces is held over concerns for the nature and relations surrounding those productive forces.

Other uses

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. 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. 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. Thus, critics of economism insist on political and other cultural dimensions in society.

Old Right social critic Albert Jay Nock used the term more broadly, denoting a moral and social philosophy "which interprets the whole sum of human life in terms of the production, acquisition, and distribution of wealth", adding: "I have sometimes thought that here may be the rock on which Western civilization will finally shatter itself. Economism can build a society which is rich, prosperous, powerful, even one which has a reasonably wide diffusion of material well-being. It can not build one which is lovely, one which has savor and depth, and which exercises the irresistible power of attraction that loveliness wields. Perhaps by the time economism has run its course the society it has built may be tired of itself, bored of its own hideousness, and may despairingly consent to annihilation, aware that it is too ugly to be let live any longer".

See also

• Economic determinism
• Gross national happiness

Bibliography

• John Ralston Saul (2005). The Collapse of Globalism.
• Richard Norgaard (2015). "The Church of Economism and Its Discontents." Great Transition Initiative.