Lenin defined economism as confining workers to economic struggle without politics.

Evidence

Economism was defined in various ways by Lenin, especially in What is to be Done?, e.g. “the fundamental political tendency of Economism—let the workers carry on the economic struggle (it would be more correct to say the trade-unionist struggle, because the latter also embraces specifically working-class politics) and let the Marxist intelligentsia merge with the liberals for the political ‘struggle’.” Lenin opposed to economism the theory of a vanguard party which would unite intellectuals and workers, and bring socialist theory “from outside” to the proletariat—which in the course of its own, spontaneous activity can only develop “trade-union consciousness”. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2156

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines economism and the Leninist vanguard-party response — core vocabulary Gramsci engages throughout the Prison Notebooks, and the trade-union-versus-political-consciousness distinction is a scaffolding concept for later readings on ideological struggle.
• XREF: Echoes Marx on class-in-itself versus class-for-itself; also connects to Gramsci’s own critique of economism in his analysis of how class consciousness forms.

Related

• Lenin held that the proletariat spontaneously develops only trade-union, not revolutionary, consciousness (similarity 0.84)