In economism, the economic base of society is seen as determining everything else in the superstructure, including social, political and intellectual consciousness. Theories positing economic relations as the basic cause of social phenomena are also called materialist theories, and Marx's version is also known as ' historical materialism '. Economism is related to technological determinism . Mass media research in this fundamentalist tradition interprets the 'culture industries' in terms of their economic determination.
Critics regard economism as reductionist, failing to account for diversity.