Editing Antonio Gramsci (section)

===Critique of economism===
In a pre-prison article titled "The Revolution against {{italics correction|''[[Das Kapital]]''}}", Gramsci wrote that the [[October Revolution]] in Russia had invalidated the idea that socialist revolution had to await the full development of capitalist forces of production.{{sfn|Sassoon|1991a|p=221}} This reflected his view that Marxism was not a [[determinist]] philosophy. The principle of the causal primacy of the forces of production was a misconception of Marxism. Both economic changes and cultural changes are expressions of a basic historical process, and it is difficult to say which sphere has primacy over the other.

The belief from the earliest years of the [[workers' movement]] that it would inevitably triumph due to historical laws was a product of the historical circumstances of an oppressed class restricted mainly to defensive action. This [[fatalistic]] doctrine must be abandoned as a hindrance once the working class becomes able to take the initiative. Because Marxism is a philosophy of praxis, it cannot rely on unseen historical laws as the agents of social change. History is defined by human praxis and therefore includes human will. Nonetheless, willpower cannot achieve anything it likes in any given situation: when the consciousness of the working class reaches the stage of development necessary for action, it will encounter historical circumstances that cannot be arbitrarily altered. It is not predetermined by historical inevitability as to which of several possible developments will take place as a result.

His critique of [[economic determinism]] extended to that practised by the syndicalists of the Italian trade unions. He believed that many trade unionists had settled for a reformist, gradualist approach in that they had refused to struggle on the political front in addition to the economic front. For Gramsci, much as the ruling class can look beyond its own immediate economic interests to reorganise the forms of its own hegemony, so must the working class present its own interests as congruous with the universal advancement of society. While Gramsci envisioned the trade unions as one organ of a counter-hegemonic force in a capitalist society, the trade union leaders simply saw these organizations as a means to improve conditions within the existing structure. Gramsci referred to the views of these trade unionists as vulgar economism, which he equated to covert reformism and [[liberalism]].