Base & Superstructure

[Valkyrie]

Do you believe that the base (economy) forms the superstructure (consciousess of society?) Can they not be seperate and individual things? Or do you think the main bases of societies conscious is derived from it's economy?

[peaccenicked]

Uncharacteristically I will begin with a quote.
"Base and superstructure

As Raymond Williams has so aptly noted, the terms "structure" (or "base") and "superstructure" are richly evocative when viewed as metaphor or analogy. When applied in a rigidly literal manner, though, the concept of a determining base and a determined superstructure does little to account for the subtleties of artistic production or culture (1983, 282). Yet a rigid, literal interpretation of the categories was in evidence amongst prominent Marxists in the 1940s, as Joseph Stalin's definition of the terms demonstrates:

The base is the economic structure of society at a given stage of its development. The superstructure consists of the political, legal, religious, artistic, and philosophical views of society and the political, legal, and other institutions corresponding to them. . . . If the base changes or is eliminated, then following this its superstructure changes or is eliminated; if a new base arises, then following this a superstructure arises corresponding to it. (1951, 9)

Lindsay took exception to the view that culture, as part of the superstructure, was something superficial or extraneous. In doing so, he added his voice to a controversy that was particularly pronounced in the 1940s and 1950s in Great Britain. The controversy is clearly seen in Maurice Cornforth's "corrective" attack on the ideas of Christopher Caudwell, whose "worst mistakes are hailed as original contributions to Marxism. That is why it is absolutely necessary to expose those mistakes" (1950/1951, 33-34). Cornforth's attack gave rise to a series of

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responses that The Modern Quarterly labeled "The Caudwell Discussion," but which E. P. Thompson would refer to in later years as "The Caudwell Controversy." Thompson notes that "the argument was initiated . . . on the grounds of whether Caudwell was or was not a proper and orthodox Marxist, according to an orthodoxy increasingly petrified by Stalinist doctrine" (1977, 233). This emphasis on orthodoxy was the same pressure that effectively suppressed Lindsay's discussion paper.

The orthodox Stalinist reading of the metaphor of "base and superstructure" seemed to Lindsay excessively rigid in its relegation of cultural activity to the realm of the superstructure, and as such entirely under the influence of the economic structures of the base. Lindsay's explanation, in his discussion document, of the relationship of base and superstructure prefigures Raymond Williams's explanation of the concept (1983, 75-82) by noting the dialectically inseparable nature of economic and cultural forms of production, with base and superstructure exerting influence upon each other:

It is clear then that as soon as social energy reaches the dialectical point where it is transformed into the new quality, Culture, it has done something that cannot be undone. Something that is essential to all further social and personal development. Culture or the superstructure is not something just added as a kind of extra, a luxury to the substructure, the direct productive levels. It is something on which the substructure entirely depends, just as it depends in turn on the substructure: the two make up a dialectical unity. And man can no more get on with his productive task without an ideology, without a release and satisfaction on cultural levels, than he can develop airy structures of the mind without the sustaining productive levels. For humanity, culture is just as essential as production. Every advance in production is in dialectical unity with an advance in culture. (1981, 124)

Lindsay might have expected that Marxist listeners in 1945 would not take kindly to this seeming confusion of the neat

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categories of "base" and "superstructure." Interestingly, although these ideas are also implied in After the 'Thirties (1956), Lindsay did not further develop them until he resurrected the discussion document for inclusion in The Crisis in Marxism in 1981. ''
I wonder how useful these categories are scientifically and are perhaps there best use is metaphorical.
The base and superstructue are too amorphous to be narrowly defined.

[peaccenicked]

I should have added and moreso the relationship between them.

[El Che]

The belief that culture is strickly determined by the economic base is such a tremendous stupidity and I quite frankly do not wish to be associated with it.

[Valkyrie]

was that from Williams' "Marxism and Literature?" Yes, do add more, please. I find this theory completely fascinating, though not all together true.

[peaccenicked]

It is from an essay on Lindsay.
http://home.thirdage.com/education/ralphda...d/lindsay1.html (http://home.thirdage.com/education/ralphdavid/lindsay1.html)
powerful stuff

[Supermodel]

Paris quote: Do you believe that the base (economy) forms the superstructure (consciousess of society?) Can they not be seperate and individual things? Or do you think the main bases of societies conscious is derived from it's economy?


Didn't you just say the same thing twice?

Anyway let me try:

The economy, let's make this simple, might be agricultural or industrial

The society might be any form of collectiveness on either basis.

I find that Che made this distinction in Guerrilla warfare when he argued that the path to revolution is very different in the rural areas compared to the cities and that he thought the rural peasant had far more of a connection to the need for socialism (I'm not quoting here, just remembering).

However, he went straight for industrialization immediately after the revolution had won power.

I believe that any form of organization can exist, theoretically, no matter what the base.

[Ian]

I have just completed a chapter in the book 'Marxism: A Living Science' by Kenneth Neill Cameron, he says that the phrase Superstructure and base does not really have much of a basis in Marxism ie. It is no Surplus Value or Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
Rather, it is a phrase used once or twice that was adopted by Stalin in some of his writings to support his actions etc... It is good to see many people see it as absurd because Cameron said Marx and Engels felt it was opposed to the Class struggle (Cameron felt so too)
I did not fully understand it though because it is quite complex.

[Valkyrie]

I agree. I don't think the theory has holds much ground in that culture advances or recedes and is determined by economic propesperity and modes of production; as certain periods of art, invention and discovery flourished, i.e. the Renaissance, whereas things such as production and even social customs was still in the "dark ages." so to speak.

I will try to write more later about it.



Base and superstructure is used as a metaphor and was refered to in "The German Ideology", the preface to "The Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy" and the "18th Brumaire III."


(Edited by Paris at 4:19 pm on June 15, 2002)