2. Economic Determinism The favourite definition of Marxism among school teachers and professors is that Marx was an 'economic determinist'. They claim that he explained everything in the world by saying that it is caused by one thing -the economy. In fact, Marx's theories had nothing to do with such a notion. But the distortion of Marx's views by bourgeois writers retains credibility because many people who call themselves Marxists do put forward economic determinist' theories.
Such pseudo-marxist theories have two main features: firstly, the economy is regarded as a self-regulating, automatic machine, operating completely independently from social and political life; secondly, history the unfolding of the class struggle - is seen as a fatalistic process in which the consciousness and activity of different groups changes only at the prompting of changes in the workings of the economic machine". This mechanical distortion of Marxism was the hallmark of the Second International and of its leading theorist, Karl Kautsky against whom Lenin polemicised. But we can still find plenty of examples of economic determinism' on the British left today. In his widely known book, Russia Marxist analysis, Tony Cliff views the Stalinist reaction in the 1920s as inevitable, due to the backwardness and isolation of the Soviet economy. If this was the case the programme of the Left Opposition led by Trotsky, for economic development without the famines, the ruthless suppression of workers' democracy, and the purges, would have been an unobtainable Utopia. Again, in his book, Mao's China (written in the late 1950s) Cliff declares that the reaction in that country would be much more brutal than the purges in Russia, because China was incomparably more backward. In fact, of COLESCH Cliff's prediction, based on an "economic determinist' explanation, has been shown to be wrong.
NON-MARXIST Underlying this approach is a vulgar and non-marxist notion of 'the economy. For Marx production under capitalism could be understood only by grasping that it involved social relationships between classes. Production means not just the turning out of goods but the production of ideas and the reproduction of the social relationships between the classes.
To forget this and try to rigidly separate economics, sociology and politics is a distinctive feature of bourgeois social SOCICE Marx's Capital is not a work of pure economics. It is an attempt to see social life under capitalism as a whole and in its most essential features, in order to understand how it develops and changes. Marx never studied the 'economy' as a distinct entity; Capital unites politics, sociology, economics and philosophy as an inseparable whole.
Only in this way is it possible to understand how the political ideas of the working class influence the action of workers in their struggles in the factory. In rejecting economic determinism' we reject the notion that revolutionary consciousness develops spontaneously or automatically in response to changes in economic conditions: we are not robots controlled by some economic machine. Ideas, conceptions of the world and what needs to be changed are part of society and part of the 'economy". To be a Marxist is not to forget that ideas play a determining role in history. ing details of everyone in the house, including their religion and persecuting those who retuse to co-operate. They constantly raid every pub in the area taking out all the customers and forcing them to stand in front of saracens while hidden informers identify them. Every night some 30 or 40 men are arrested and taken to army posts for "screening"-a process which may involve savage beatings and always includes intensive questioning about personal details and political views.
About half the male population of Andersonstown have been arrested, questioned or had their house raided by the British Army in the past 3 years and there is hardly a family which hasn't been affected. Over one third of the men interned in Long Kesh are from the Greater Andersonstown area. In 1972 alone, at least 5 unarmed men have been murdered by British troops in the area.
When people in Andersonstown talk about the British Army of Occupation it is no idle slogan, it is the literal truth. Andersonstown today is as brutally and effectively occupied as Warsaw was during the 2nd World War. But the people have not been cowed. Andersonstown has staged some of the biggest protest demonstrations against British imperialism that have been seen in N. Ireland. During one meeting young people turned on an armoured saracen at une very gates of Casement Park Army post. Andersonstown today still provides the hard core of resistance to British rule. We will keep it up until we've built a Socialist Republic.
Stalinist training of the Vietnamese CP leaders