Question regarding the base and superstructure

[BITW434]

First of all, apologies for the basic question, I'm relatively new to Marxism..
So I'm familiar with the concept of economic determinism, that the economic base of society shapes the social and political institutions in the superstructure. But, if this is the case, how come the superstructure of society has changed a fair bit in the last 40 years while the means of production have stayed the same? For instance, the nuclear family is sharply declining in western Europe while reconstituted families, single parent households etc are on the rise. Furthermore, religion in society is also undergoing a transformation, as people turn away from the traditional churches in favour of the New Age movements.
So essentially my question is, why has the superstructure of society changed while the base has stayed the same? If there something wrong with my interpretation of economic determinism?
Thanks in advance

[Blake's Baby]

Economic determinism is I think a misnomer. The superstructure is conditioned by the base; you can't have a free and egalitarian society if wealth is owned by a minority group - but it isn't a completely mechanistic process. You can't say 'private property will produce a society that is religious and a republic with a strong tendency to oppress homosexuals'. It might, that's certainly in the possible parameters, but it might be a relatively secular constitutional monarchy that is LGBT-tolerant.

However; I don't think the superstructure has 'changed' much in the last 40 years. The rich are still rich; they still own the factories and TV stations; the Curch still supports the status quo, most people are still overworked (or out of work) and still grumbling that life is crap at the same time as they accept it.

Why do you think that the changes you mention are significant? The change from established to 'New Age' religions (actually the biggest rises in religions membership here are in non-traditional Christian sects, such as the 'house-church' movement and African evangelical groups, and Catholics from Eastern Europe) is just a change of form not substance. Instead of the old Coke-or-Pepsi battle, it's Coke-or-Dr Pepper.

I'm not sure families haven't always been a myth. My partner is a social historian currently researching family structure in England in the 17th-19th century, and honestly, the 'nuclear family' (this sacred institution going back to the dawn of humankind or at least the bourgeois mode of production) seems to be a myth of the 1950s.

[Dave B]

I think first of all the changing ‘material’ economic base acts on the pre existent superstructural ideology which ‘has’ to change to accommodate it.

The point being, as Engels made clear I think, was that the whole system evolves and the ‘superstructural ideology’; ideas, value systems and the way we think about thing etc rarely undergoes a revolutionary change but adapts itself, in a reworking of existent ideas, to the changing economic situation.

So there isn’t a kind of complete re-invention of the wheel so to speak.

I mean you validly mentioned changing attitudes to the family unit etc.

I think that has run in tandem to modern capitalism increasingly needing to use female labour and perhaps educated skilled female labour as part of the workforce?

[Although I am inclined to agree with the previous poster as regards mythological status of the family unit ideology outside of the middle-classes.]

Taking up the baton and mixing another and I think perhaps current/ relevant example on this forum as regards superstructural ideology being changed by economic base.

Was the Judiac apocalyptic ideology in the first century.

The ‘Jews’ were supposed to be ‘exceptional’ people and under the patronage and care of one all powerful God etc.

Having been 'economically' or 'materially' oppressed by ‘imperialists’ for the previous 600 years; of which the Roman Empire was the last straw.

The idea that they were being punished for bad behaviour was wearing a bit thin.

Hence they came up with the idea that something had gone wrong and ‘god had relinquished all world power and wealth’ to an evil demiurge and the ruling class in general was satanic.

An attractive idea to the labouring dispossessed and oppressed in general; and, once mutated slightly and absorbed into early Christianity, with the camel like rich going through the eyes of needles etc, it obviously spread through the Roman empire like a ‘Bolshevik bacillus’.

For it only to be reworked back again into a more acceptable form for the ruling classes over the next 300 years or so.



Engels to J. Bloch In Königsberg London, September 21, 1890



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 force, 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.revleft.com/vb/../../1852/18th-brumaire/index.htm) is a most excellent example of its application. There are also many allusion to it in Capital (http://www.revleft.com/vb/../../1867-c1/index.htm). Then may I also direct you to my writings: Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science (http://www.revleft.com/vb/../../1877/anti-duhring/index.htm) and Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (http://www.revleft.com/vb/../../1886/ludwig-feuerbach/index.htm), in which I have given the most detailed account of historical material which, as far as I know, exists. [The German Ideology (http://www.revleft.com/vb/../../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-á-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....
[....]


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

[BITW434]

Okay, thanks for the response Blake's Baby, it appears that I perhaps overstated the changing nature of the superstructure, particularly in regards to religion.



I'm not sure families haven't always been a myth. My partner is a social historian currently researching family structure in England in the 17th-19th century, and honestly, the 'nuclear family' (this sacred institution going back to the dawn of humankind or at least the bourgeois mode of production) seems to be a myth of the 1950s.
Interesting. I'd always been under the impression that it was generally accepted that the nuclear family had been the dominant family type of early bourgeois society. Regardless of that though, the evidence that there have been some major changes in family patterns over the past 40 years is pretty conclusive.




Why do you think that the changes you mention are significant?
I don't think the changes I mentioned are that significant, I just made an observation that particular institutions which constitute the superstructure seemed to be changing form independent from any important changes to the economic base. However, upon further pondering it became apparent to me that one may argue that the change in family structures seen over the last century could be a result of the changing relations of women to the forces of production, thus reinforcing the notion that the base play a big role in shaping the superstructure.

[BITW434]

----
A very helpful and useful response. Cheers. :thumbup1:

[Sewer Socialist]

We Marxists should view the changing form of the family as a product of a continuous historical force. We have the tribe once representing the smallest family structure, and that being slowly and eventually superceded by the patriarchal extended family, with the growth of private wealth and the possibility of heirs to that wealth. This transformation becomes more accelerated with the industrial revolution; that extended family diminished in importance, with the nuclear family slowly becoming more prominent, and even that smaller family unit becoming further atomized today, where we see increased single-parent households, childless couples, and people simply remaining single for longer portions of their lives.

With more wealth than others, it may be true that the bourgeois families have experienced this change faster than others.

Friedrich Engels wrote a good book on this: Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State.

[Tim Cornelis]

The economic base has changed, however.

The methods of transportation have changed in the 1960s, as per larger containers, airplanes, and larger ships. This has enabled a larger mobility of capital, and thus more bargaining power. (globalisation in a word). This has increased the bargaining power of capital at the expense of labour, ushering in neo-liberalism.

Moreover, the methods of production have changed. This is commonly referred to as the transition from an industrial society to a post-industrial society (or, post-fordism more accurately). This transition is enabled the rise of animal rights movements, ecologism, and (second-wave) feminism.

As for the two specific points you raised.

Divorces fall when economic times are tougher, and presumably single parent households are on the rise because of more financial flexibility due to increased productivity.

The role of religion in Western societies has changed (secularisation) due to social welfare provisions. Social insecurity causes religiosity, research found, while social welfare provisions by the state weaken the relation to the Church.

Not directly related to economic base I suppose, but just to address those points.

[David Warner]

First of all, apologies for the basic question, I'm relatively new to Marxism..
So I'm familiar with the concept of economic determinism, that the economic base of society shapes the social and political institutions in the superstructure. But, if this is the case, how come the superstructure of society has changed a fair bit in the last 40 years while the means of production have stayed the same? For instance, the nuclear family is sharply declining in western Europe while reconstituted families, single parent households etc are on the rise. Furthermore, religion in society is also undergoing a transformation, as people turn away from the traditional churches in favour of the New Age movements.
So essentially my question is, why has the superstructure of society changed while the base has stayed the same? If there something wrong with my interpretation of economic determinism?
Thanks in advance

In fact the opposite is what happens -- it's the superstructure (the relations of production) that always lags behind the economic base (the level of development of the productive forces). Incidentally, that is what causes revolutions. As has already been mentioned above, the economic base clearly has changed. You seem to be confusing it with "means of production" -- which constitute only a part of the overall productive forces (and even they have changed radically in the past 40 or so years -- just compare the level of automation in the 1970s and now for one example).