Where “Vulgar Marxists” Are Wrong

Mickey Kaus outlines his beliefs as a “Vulgar Marxist” in a post that’s nominally about Barack Obama’s alleged condescension:

Actually this isn’t simply Marxism–it’s what, when I was in college at least, was called Vulgar Marxism. More sophisticated Marxists hypothesized various ways the cultural “superstructure” could interact with the economy or take on a life of its own. Less supple Marxists (Engels, if I remember) hew to the crude base/superstructure idea–with feudalism you get feudal beliefs, which give way to bourgeois beliefs once capitalism takes over.

I’ve sniped at Obama for the condescension implicit in his argument that Pennsylvanians will stop their ‘clinging’ once Democrats like him start delivering jobs from Washington. But this condescension is inherent in any Vulgar Marxist explanation, isn’t it? European peasants thought they were loyal to divine monarchs in a well-ordered hierarchical universe. Comes the industrial revolution and they look like fools. “All that is sacred …

The problem for me is that I’m a Vulgar Marxist too. I’ve always believed that people need to eat, and want to get ahead and prosper. If you give them an avenue that lets them do that, they aren’t going to let their religion, their music, their sexual habits, their families or their educational system stand in their way for long. The two most obvious contemporary applications of this economic determinism are 1) China (when the Chinese have a capitalist economy they won’t be able to have a Communist government, Vulgar Marxists would say) and 2) the Muslim world (if Islam needs a Reformation in order to prosper in a global market, then Islam will eventually get a Reformation). I agree with both of those propositions.

Hat tip: Glenn Reynolds

IMO the problem with this view is that it’s demonstrably incorrect at least if you have enough patience to hang around. The error is pretty easy to understand if you think about it. People aren’t amoeba. They have histories and customs and complicated agenda that may rely on things their grandmothers told them and all of these things affect their preferences and economic behavior is about preferences. In the real world different people have different preferences and people from one culture may predominantly have different preferences from those of another and that influences outcomes. I’m descended from Switzers and I love cheese. Thais hate cheese (or so I’ve been told).

Behavior isn’t dependent solely on economic conditions but on economic conditions and starting conditions. The state you’re in now is dependent on the state you used to be in as well as your economic conditions.

Economic determinists have some difficult things to explain as for example why the American Colonials made one set of decisions while the present-day Chinese make another when the American Colonials of more than two hundred years ago were actually poorer than many of the present-day Chinese in inflation-adjusted dollars. The answer is that their culture and institutions were different and that lead them to have different preferences and make different choices.

China liberalized its economy almost 30 years ago. We’re still waiting for the political reform. I think we’ll continue to have a long wait.

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