Vulgar Marxism refers to a "belief that one can directly access the real conditions of history" and is sometimes referred to asreflection theory.[1] In 1998,Robert M. Young defined "economism or vulgarMarxism" as "the most orthodox [position in Marxism which] provides one-to-one correlations betweenthe socio-economic base and the intellectual superstructure".[a][2][3]
The expression "Vulgar Marxist" is used usually as a derogatory label, rather than a self-identification.
Walter Benjamin inTheses on the Philosophy of History described theGotha Programme's "defin[ition] [of] labor as 'the source of all wealth and all culture'" as a "vulgar-Marxist concept of what labor is, [which] does not bother to ask the question of how its products affect workers". The Gotha programme to Benjamin "wishes to perceive only the progression of the exploitation of nature, not the regression of society". Benjamin contrasted "technocratic" vulgar Marxism with Marx'sresponse to the Gotha programme. Benjamin wrote: "Suspecting the worst, Marx responded that human being, who owned no other property aside from his labor-power, 'must be the slave of other human beings'".[4]
Paul Mattick saw "incorporation of bourgeois economic ideas into the framework of Marxism" by "the proponents of 'Marxist economics'". To Mattick, this occurred when "classical economy degenerated into vulgar economy" and "marginal utility theory", which "could be regarded as a universal and therefore neutral principle" was "deemed the more desirable" than "Marx's derivation of prices from labor-time values". He saw the resultant Marxism which followed "'economic laws' that could be appreciated by friend and foe alike" as "vulgar Marxism".[5]
In contrast,McKenzie Wark inFour Cheers For Vulgar Marxism!!!! suggested that "as Marxism became a creature of the academy" the accusation of vulgar Marxism arose to "cordon off respectable approaches to knowledge", which were outside academia. Wark detected the deployment of "the insult 'vulgar Marxist" as an allegation byGeorge Lukacs andKarl Korsch againstRussian Machism, and byLouis Althusser, and byE. P. Thompson against Althusser. Wark wrote that the allegation entailed a dismissal of "too much attention to specialized knowledge such as the sciences" and a disdain for the "lack a sense of the central role of philosophy". WarkpraisedDonna Haraway who "knows her biological science first-hand" as a vulgar Marxist, and notedAlexander Bogdanov who saw "the nexus of labor-techne-nature to be primary", to be "vulgar in a ... different sense to the cartoon of economistic,deterministic,reductionist vulgar Marxism".[6]
John Phillips states thatJulia Kristeva understands "vulgar Marxism" as synonymous with "vulgar sociologism", a view that "characterises ideology in terms of a superstructure determined by an economic/historical base (base and superstructure)".[7]Richard Lewontin explains vulgar Marxism as a form of economic reductionism, in which human expression and knowledge is determined by the form of economic production put upon the group.[8] In other words, that rather than having innate properties, humans are almost exclusively shaped by societal circumstance: "Disease, illness, depression, and the pain of day-to-day living are no more than the inevitable consequence of a capitalist and patriarchal social order."[9]
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