Wikipedia
Economic determinism is a theory that economic relationships (such as being an owner or capitalist, or being a worker or proletarian) are the foundation on which all other social and political arrangements are built.
In the Marxist version associated with Karl Marx, the emphasis is on the proletariat, who are predicted to revolt and overthrow capitalism. Marxist thinkers have dismissed plain and unilateral economic determinism as a form of "vulgar Marxism", or " economism", nowhere included in Marx's works.
In the writing of American history the term is associated with historian Charles A. Beard (1874-1948), who was not a Marxist but who emphasized the long-term political contest between bankers and business interest on the one hand, and agrarian interests on the other.
Usage examples of "economic determinism".
The economic determinism of Marx is an exploded bugaboo, and the American people are the masters, not the slaves, of their economic system.
But people wouldn't wait for the laws of economic determinism to operate upon us.
Eventually, the United States became the larder, arsenal, and bank of the Allies and acquired a direct interest in Allied victory that was to bemuse the postwar apostles of economic determinism for a long time.
When we are born we do not choose whether we are to be born capitalists or proletarians, but if the latter we are among the elect, and if the former we are not Without any choice on our own parts, by the working of economic determinism, we are fated to be on the right side in the one case, and on the wrong side in the other.