What's the difference between 'ideology' and 'superstructure' (if there is one)?

[Trystan]

So I get it that the base determines social phenomena like ideology. But isn't superstructure basically ideology? If they are two seperate things, what are they and how do they relate?

Thanks in advance. I am a wee bit confused about it all.

[BobKKKindle$]

Whether ideology is part of the superstructure is a matter of debate amongst Marxist theorists, but there is not a single theorist who believes that the superstructure is only ideology. The superstructure contains legal and political institutions first and foremost (otherwise their status would be entirely ambiguous) and Cohen argues that the character of these institutions at a given point in time is explained in functional terms, that is, by their tendency to support the prevailing relations of production, which are, in turn, dependent on the condition of the forces of production.* You will find that Marxists attribute different levels of independence to ideology (for example, Althusser's metaphor of a three-storey house regards ideology as basically being independent) and may or may not view it as part of the superstructure, the same being true of culture, but what Marxists can agree on is that ideology is important in all class societies, because the ruling class cannot rely on force alone in order to maintain its position, but must also have a way of convincing the population that its rule is somehow legitimate, possibly by denying that there is such a thing as class rule at all.

My personal view is that the character of the ruling ideas are constrained by the requirements of the relations of production, but are free to vary within those constraints.

I would also be wary of using words like "determine" when describing the relationship between base and superstructure. Marx's term in the Preface was "condition", which suggests something more flexible than "determine".

*Functional explanation in general means explaining the existence of a given phenomenon in terms of its tendency to product certain effects. It is deployed most famously in biology as part of the theory of natural selection but its usage in Marxism by Cohen and others has come under attack from people like Elster who argue that functional explanation is not adequate because it does not specify the mechanism by which the base gives rise to a corresponding superstructure, and leads Marxists to argue that all aspects of capitalist societies exist only because they support capitalism, even when the arguments that have been put forward as to why this is the case are not convincing.

[Dave B]

There is the following which is short and sweet and to the point I think;

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_09_21.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_09_21.htm)


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[ZeroNowhere]

^Not quite, given that Marx had talked about both the state and family having ideal superstructures. Colletti brought out some of the flaws in Engels' 'self-criticism' in his essay on the 2nd International, which can be found online. Anyways, I don't think the original question can be answered much better than Derek Sayer's chapter on it in 'The Violence of Abstraction'. It seems that the MIA only has two chapters, not including that one, so I suppose I'll ask about why, and if it's not due to copyright issues or some such, it should hopefully be available sometime soon.

[Post-Something]

So I get it that the base determines social phenomena like ideology. But isn't superstructure basically ideology? If they are two seperate things, what are they and how do they relate?

Thanks in advance. I am a wee bit confused about it all.

To be perfectly honest, modern day cultural theorists have taken these concepts so far, it's probably for the best if you don't think in terms of base superstructure for anything more than historical reference.

Ideology on the other hand is thought of as the sum total of values, ideas, justifications, desires, motives etc behind social action. Basically, in rudimentary terms, the social psychology of everyday transactions.