Politics is not a mechanical reflection of economic structure

Evidence

The claim, presented as an essential postulate of historical materialism, that every fluctuation of politics and ideology can be presented and expounded as an immediate expression of the structure, must be contested in theory as primitive infantilism, and combated in practice with the authentic testimony of Marx, the author of concrete political and historical works. Particularly important from this point of view are The 18th Brumaire and the writings on the Eastern Question, but also other writings (Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany, The Civil War in France and lesser works). An analysis of these works allows one to establish better the Marxist historical methodology, integrating, illuminating and interpreting the theoretical affirmations scattered throughout his works. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1447

Categorization

• DEFINE: Corrects a common reductionist reading of historical materialism: immediate structure-ideology correspondence is denounced as ‘primitive infantilism’.
• XREF: This disavowal of economism is the methodological groundwork later Islamophobia scholarship needs before reading ideology as autonomously constructed rather than merely economic epiphenomenon. — connects to: Subjection is overdetermined, neither purely political nor purely economic. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1712; Globalization was a political move by capital, not a technological fate — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 525