Economic reductionism yields easy certainty but no practical political efficacy.

Evidence

The sort of immediate infallibility which economic reductionism brings in its wake, Gramsci argues, “comes very cheap.” It not only has no theoretical significance—it also has only minimal political implications or practical efficacy. “In general, it produces nothing but moralistic sermons and interminable questions of personality” (PN, 166). It is a conception based on “the iron conviction that there exist objective laws of historical development similar in kind to natural law, together with a belief in a predetermined teleology like that of a religion.” There is no alternative to this collapse—which, Gramsci argues, has been incorrectly identified with historical materialism—except “the concrete posing of the problem of hegemony.” — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 92

Categorization

• XREF: Gramsci’s critique of economism is foundational for later cultural studies and postcolonial readings of ideology — connects to how Islamophobia scholarship avoids economic-reductionist explanations of racialized exclusion.