The relationship between base and superstructure

[Questionable]

The relationship between base and superstructure seems to be disputed among the Left. It seems that among the camp that are more focused on social oppression, such as Marxist-Feminists and Maoists, they perceive a completely dialectical relationship between the two, wherein concepts like racism become "real" and in fact influence material reality the way material reality influences them.

On the other hand, there are those who say that the base dictates the superstructure entirely. I believe Orthodox Marxists and others fall into this category. I've seen the former camp criticize these individuals for having a "mechanistic" view of society, but the way I understood it was that although the superstructure takes on many different forms, these forms are ultimately the expression of objective class relations, and cannot exist without them.

But I'm undecided, and I want to hear what people think about the issue.

[Ostrinski]

I think it's a fundamental subconcept of historical materialism. That all social phenomena, all ideology, all non material expressions such as morality, ideals, principles, and values are reflections of the existing social order which is defined by its mode of production.

I don't think Marxist feminists are non-materialist at all, and in fact I think they are the most capable of all the strands of the feminist movement of defining the social basis of patriarchy and the oppression of the female gender because they use the most sociologically sound methods of analyzing those relationships.

[Questionable]

I don't think Marxist feminists are non-materialist at all, and in fact I think they are the most capable of all the strands of the feminist movement of defining the social basis of patriarchy and the oppression of the female gender because they use the most sociologically sound methods of analyzing those relationships.

I never said anybody was a non-materialist. If they're right, they're right. I only know that there are differing opinions and I wnat to hear what people from both sides have to say.

[svenne]

Yeah, people's been fighting over it for the last hundred of years or so.

When talking about base and superstructure, people usually begin with quoting this, from the preface of the Contribution to Critique of Political Economy: (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/index.htm)



In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.Which is followed by this lovely part:



In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic – in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production.
So, we can at least conclude that we live our lives as ideological beings in the superstructure. This really doesn't answer your question, however. But, Engels is kinda being a dick in 1890 and writes this (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_09_21.htm):




[....]
According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. Other than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure — political forms of the class struggle and its results, to wit: constitutions established by the victorious class after a successful battle, etc., juridical forms, and even the reflexes of all these actual struggles in the brains of the participants, political, juristic, philosophical theories, religious views and their further development into systems of dogmas — also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form. There is an interaction of all these elements in which, amid all the endless host of accidents (that is, of things and events whose inner interconnection is so remote or so impossible of proof that we can regard it as non-existent, as negligible), the economic movement finally asserts itself as necessary. Otherwise the application of the theory to any period of history would be easier than the solution of a simple equation of the first degree.
We make our history ourselves, but, in the first place, under very definite assumptions and conditions. Among these the economic ones are ultimately decisive. But the political ones, etc., and indeed even the traditions which haunt human minds also play a part, although not the decisive one. The Prussian state also arose and developed from historical, ultimately economic, causes. But it could scarcely be maintained without pedantry that among the many small states of North Germany, Brandenburg was specifically determined by economic necessity to become the great power embodying the economic, linguistic and, after the Reformation, also the religious difference between North and South, and not by other elements as well (above all by its entanglement with Poland, owing to the possession of Prussia, and hence with international political relations — which were indeed also decisive in the formation of the Austrian dynastic power). Without making oneself ridiculous it would be a difficult thing to explain in terms of economics the existence of every small state in Germany, past and present, or the origin of the High German consonant permutations, which widened the geographic partition wall formed by the mountains from the Sudetic range to the Taunus to form a regular fissure across all Germany.
In the second place, however, history is made in such a way that the final result always arises from conflicts between many individual wills, of which each in turn has been made what it is by a host of particular conditions of life. Thus there are innumerable intersecting forces, an infinite series of parallelograms of forces which give rise to one resultant — the historical event. This may again itself be viewed as the product of a power which works as a whole unconsciously and without volition. For what each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed. Thus history has proceeded hitherto in the manner of a natural process and is essentially subject to the same laws of motion. But from the fact that the wills of individuals — each of whom desires what he is impelled to by his physical constitution and external, in the last resort economic, circumstances (either his own personal circumstances or those of society in general) — do not attain what they want, but are merged into an aggregate mean, a common resultant, it must not be concluded that they are equal to zero. On the contrary, each contributes to the resultant and is to this extent included in it.
I would furthermore ask you to study this theory from its original sources and not at second-hand; it is really much easier. Marx hardly wrote anything in which it did not play a part. But especially The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/index.htm) is a most excellent example of its application. There are also many allusions to it in Capital (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/index.htm). Then may I also direct you to my writings: Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/index.htm) and Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/ludwig-feuerbach/index.htm), in which I have given the most detailed account of historical materialism which, as far as I know, exists. [The German Ideology (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/index.htm) was not published in Marx or Engels lifetime]
Marx and I are ourselves partly to blame for the fact that the younger people sometimes lay more stress on the economic side than is due to it. We had to emphasise the main principle vis-à-vis our adversaries, who denied it, and we had not always the time, the place or the opportunity to give their due to the other elements involved in the interaction. But when it came to presenting a section of history, that is, to making a practical application, it was a different matter and there no error was permissible. Unfortunately, however, it happens only too often that people think they have fully understood a new theory and can apply it without more ado from the moment they have assimilated its main principles, and even those not always correctly. And I cannot exempt many of the more recent "Marxists" from this reproach, for the most amazing rubbish has been produced in this quarter, too....
[....]This post maybe has a bit too much of quoting, but it's a pretty good start. It's also pretty obvious that the Engels quote makes a whole lot more sense than the first Marx quote (for itself, at least).

[Lucretia]

One of the most misunderstood theoretical concepts in Marxian social thought. And frustratingly so. In broad terms base/superstructure refers to ontological presupposition. Or to put it in plainer English, "What has to exist in order for X to exist? Before X can exist?" Water, for instance, ontologically preupposes Hydrogen molecules. But two phenomena that ontologically presuppose each other need not be empirically distinct phenomena. So the "superstructure" of water, as an example, actually contains the "base" of hydrogen molecules. What this means is that base/superstructure does not map onto the binary of material/ideal (e.g., scientific knowledge is very much a "basic" force of production), nor does it refer to a mechanisms for grouping distinct institutions. Per the example above, is water a part of the "superstructure"? Or part of the "base"? Or both? You can see that once the concept of base/superstructure is really grasped, the question doesn't make much sense. The state, in one sense, is superstructural -- in that it results from and in turns shores up power that is derived from the "base" (control of productive resources) -- but in another sense, especially as the state takes on more of a role in capital accumulation with the rise of monopoly capitalism, very much performs "basic" functions.

The oft-quoted remark from the 1859 Preface quoted above happens to be making the point that I allude to above about the origins of political power lying in control over productive resources.