Economy and ideology. 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.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Gramsci argues that reducing all political and ideological shifts directly to economic structures is an oversimplification. He emphasizes that concrete political works show a more complex relationship.
- In plain terms
- Politics and ideas aren't just direct results of economics.
- What can you take from it?
- Avoid simplistic economic determinism in political analysis.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- How much do economic structures really determine ideology?
- What evidence contradicts simple economic determinism?
Another view
Some structural constraints may still limit political choices significantly.
More from Antonio Gramsci
The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.
Permalink to quote #3 History is at once freedom and necessity.
Permalink to quote #5 All men are intellectuals: but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals.
Permalink to quote #2
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