Economism reduces all social relations to direct economic determination

Evidence

I mean, rather, a specific theoretical approach which tends to read the economic foundations of society as the only determining structure. This approach tends to see all other dimensions of the social formation as simply mirroring “the economic” on another level of articulation, and as having no other determining or structuring force in their own right. The approach, to put it simply, reduces everything in a social formation to the economic level and conceptualizes all other types of social relations as directly and immediately “corresponding” to the economic. This collapses Marx’s somewhat problematic formulation—the economic as “determining in the last instance”—to the reductionist principle that the economic determines, in an immediate way, in the first, middle, and last instances. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 90

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clearly distinguishes economism as a reductionist theoretical approach from Marx’s actual complex notion of ‘determining in the last instance.’
• XREF: This is core scaffolding for the reader’s Islamophobia toolkit — the field’s race/gender/nationality analyses all depend on rejecting economism so these axes have independent determining power. Connects forward to cultural studies critiques of orthodox Marxism. — connects to: The economy has become synonymous with all social life including self-relations — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 937