Base and superstructure: Difference between revisions

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{{Short description|Model of society in Marxist theory}}

[[File:Base-superstructure Dialectic.pngsvg|thumb|300px|Diagram explaining the relationship between the base and the superstructure in Marxist theory]]

{{Sociology}}

{{marxism}}

In [[Marxism|Marxist theory]], [[society|societies]] consistsconsist of two parts: the '''base''' (or '''substructure''') and '''superstructure'''. The base refers to the [[mode of production]] which includes the [[Forces of production|forces]] and [[relations of production]] (e.g. employer–employee work conditions, the technical [[division of labour]], and property relations) into which people enter to produce the necessities and amenities of life. The '''superstructure''' refers to society's other relationships and ideas not directly relating to [[production (economics)|production]] including its [[culture]], [[institution]]s, [[role]]s, [[ritual]]s, [[religion]], [[media (communication)|media]], and [[State (polity)|state]]. The relation of the two parts is not strictly unidirectional. The superstructure can affect the base. However, the influence of the base is predominant.<ref>[https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_09_21.htm Engels's letter to J. Bloch]; from London to

Königsberg, written on September 21, 1890. ''Historical Materialism'' (Marx, Engels, Lenin), p. 294 - 296. Published by Progress Publishers, 1972; first published by [[Der sozialistische Akademiker]], Berlin, October 1, 1895. Translated from German. Online version: marxists.org 1999. Transcription/Markup: Brian Baggins. Retrieved December 16, 2017.</ref>

==Model and qualification==

In developing [[Alexis de Tocqueville]]'s observations,{{clarify|reason=What observations, precisely? Alexis de Tocqueville isn't even mentioned in the lead. This is the first mention. "Oh darn, maybe it was a bad idea to skip yesterday's lecture because now I don't know where this lecture is jumping off" is not a feeling I enjoy on Wikipedia.|date=December 2024}} Marx identified [[Civil society#Modern history|civil society]] as the economic base and [[political society]] as the political superstructure.<ref>{{cite journal|author-first=Pawel |author-last=Zaleski |title=Tocqueville on Civilian Society. A Romantic Vision of the Dichotomic Structure of Social Reality |journal=Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte |publisher=Felix Meiner Verlag |volume=50 |date=2008}}</ref> Marx postulated the essentials of the base–superstructure concept in his preface to ''[[A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy]]'' (1859):

{{blockquote|In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely [the] 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. 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.<ref>{{cite book|author-last=Marx |author-first=Karl |author-link=Karl Marx |date=1977 |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm |title=A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy |___location=Moscow |publisher=Progress Publishers}} Notes by R. Rojas</ref>}}

Marx's "base determines superstructure" axiom, however, requires qualification:

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==Applications and revisions ==

Marx's theory of base and superstructure can be found in the disciplines of [[political science]], [[sociology]], [[anthropology]], and [[psychology]] as utilized by Marxist scholars. Across these disciplines the base-superstructure relationship, and the contents of each, may take different forms.

Among Marxists, the very concept of 'base and superstructure' is contentious. The historian [[E. P. Thompson]] argues that:<blockquote>Meanwhile in serious intellectual circles the argument about basis/superstructure goes ''on and on and on''... A whole continent of discourse is being developed, with its metropolitan centres & its villas in the mountains, which rests, not upon the solid globe of historical evidence, but on the precarious point of a strained metaphor.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Thompson |first=E.P. |title=The Poverty of Theory & Other Essays |publisher=Merlin |year=1978 |___location=London |pages=330}}</ref></blockquote>[[Ellen Meiksins Wood]] says: 'The base/superstructure metaphor has always been more trouble than it is worth',<ref>Wood, E.M. (1990: 126). 'Falling through the cracks: E.P. Thompson and the debate on base and superstructure.' In Kaye and McClelland (1990: 124-152).</ref> while [[Terry Eagleton]] describes base and superstructure as 'this now universally reviled paradigm'.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Eagleton |first=Terry |date=2000 |title=Base and superstructure revisited |journal=New Literary History |volume=31 |issue=2 |pages=231–40|doi=10.1353/nlh.2000.0018 }}</ref><br>

However, other Marxists continue to insist on the paradigm's importance. For example, in Paul Thomas' words: "Without Marx's juxtaposition of base to superstructure we would probably not be speaking of social contradictions at all but would instead be discussing science, technology, production, labor, the economy, & the state along lines very different from those that are commonplace today".<ref>Thomas, P. (1991). 'Critical reception: Marx then and now.' In Carver (1991: 23-54), ''The Cambridge Companion To Marx''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.</ref> Similarly, from [[Chris Harman]]: "Far from ignoring the impact of the 'superstructure' on the 'base', as many ignorant critics have claimed for more than a century, Marx builds his whole account of human history around it".<ref>Harman, C. (1998). ''Marxism and History. Two Essays''. London: Bookmarks.</ref> [[Stuart Hall (cultural theorist)|Stuart Hall]] argued, "of the many problems which perforce Marx left in an 'undeveloped' state, none is more crucial than that of 'base & superstructure'.<ref name="ReferenceA">Hall, S. (2019: 143). ''Essential Essays. Volume 1''. Morley, D. (ed.). London: Duke University Press.</ref>

Hall traces the development of the schema from ''[[The German Ideology]]'' and Preface to the ''Critique of Political Economy'', in which - according to Hall - Marx and Engels show relations of production form "the base" from which "legal and political superstructures" arise, to its application in both ''[[Das Kapital]]'' and ''[[The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte]]''.<ref name="ReferenceA"/> The latter work, Hall argues, offered a more sophisticated picture of the interaction between base and superstructure and showed Marx was concerned with the "''necessary complexity'' of the social formations of advancing capitalism and of the relations between its different levels".<ref name="ReferenceA"/>

===Max Weber===

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=== Walter Rodney ===

[[Walter Rodney]], the Guyanese political activist and African historian, in the 1970s discussed the role of [[Karl Marx|Marx's]] superstructure in the context of development cycles and colonialism. Rodney states that while most countries follow a developmental structure that evolves from feudalism to capitalism, China is an exception to this rule and skipped the capitalism step:<ref>{{cite journal|author-last=Campbell |author-first=Trevor A. |date=1981 |title=The Making of an Organic Intellectual: Walter Rodney (1942-1980) |journal=Latin American Perspectives |volume=8 |issue=1 |pages=49–63 |doi=10.1177/0094582X8100800105 |jstor=2633130 |s2cid=145790333}}</ref> <blockquote>The explanation is very complex, but in general terms the main differences between feudal Europe and feudal China lay in the superstructure – i.e. in the body of beliefs, motivations and sociopolitical institutions which derived from the material base but in turn affected it. In China, religious, educational and bureaucratic qualifications were of utmost importance, and government was in the hands of state officials rather than being run by the landlords on their own feudal estates.<ref name="auto">{{cite book|title=How Europe underdeveloped Africa |author-last=Walter |author-first=Rodney |others=Strickland, William, 1937-, Hill, Robert A., 1943-, Harding, Vincent,, Babu, Abdul Rahman Mohamed |year=2011 |isbn=9781574780482 |edition=Revised paperback |___location=Baltimore, Maryland |oclc=773301411}}</ref> </blockquote>By extension this means that the Marxist development cycle is malleable due to cultural superstructures, and is not an inevitable path. Rather the role of the superstructure allows for adaptation of the development cycle, especially in a colonial context.<ref>{{cite book|titlename=How Europe underdeveloped Africa |author-last=Walter |author-first=Rodney |others=Strickland, William, 1937-, Hill, Robert A., 1943-, Harding, Vincent,, Babu, Abdul Rahman Mohamed |year=2011 |isbn=9781574780482 |edition=Revised paperback |___location=Baltimore, Maryland |oclc=773301411}}<"auto"/ref>

Rodney died in 1980, however, and did not have time to witness the effects of the [[Chinese economic reform]] of the 1980s ("socialist market economy") that arguably had made China the greatest capitalist country of the world by 2016.{{Citation needed|date=July 2025}}

===Freudo-Marxism and sex-economy===

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===Gilles Deleuze===

[[Gilles Deleuze]] takes a skeptical stance toward Marx's categorization of ideology as a part of the superstructure. Deleuze argues that this categorization minimizes the role that [[Philosophy of desire#Deleuze and Guattari|desire]] plays in forming such systems. He prefers to view ideology as an illusion altogether. In Deleuze's own words:

{{Blockquote

|text=One puts the infrastructure on one side–side – the economic, the serious–serious – and on the other, the superstructure, of which ideology is a part, thus rejecting the phenomena of desire in ideology. It’sIt's a perfect way to ignore how desire works within the infrastructure, how it invests in it, how it takes part in it, how, in this respect, it organizes power and the repressive system. We do not say: ideology is a [[trompe l’oeil]] (or a concept that refers to certain illusions) We say: there is no ideology, it is an illusion. That’sThat's why it suits orthodox Marxism and the Communist Party so well. Marxism has put so much emphasis on the theme of ideology to better conceal what was happening in the USSR: a new organization of repressive power. There is no ideology, there are only organizations of power once it is admitted that the organization of power is the unity of desire and the economic infrastructure.<ref>Deleuze qtd. in Guattari, Félix. ''Chaosophy: Texts and Interviews 1972-1977'', edited by Sylvère Lotringer, Semiotext(e), Los Angeles, 2009, p. 38.</ref>

}}

=== R.J. Robinson ===

Robinson argues that Engels' original argument that superstructures are 'relatively autonomous' of their base is correct but that the detail of the argument (which is based mainly on assertion) is unconvincing. Phrases such as 'in the last instance' or 'reflection' are equally undefined.

Developing the argument that superstructures exist to deal with contradictions in the base already put forward by [[Antonio Gramsci]], [[Terry Eagleton]] and others, Robinson argues that it is this contradictoriness that forces superstructures to exist ''outside'' the base. However, because they exist to solve problems ''in'' the base, they are able to affect the base. But at the same time, superstructures exist to deal with contradictions in the base, so changes in the base (and therefore in these contradictions) continue to predominate over that base's superstructures. Hence the 'relative' element of 'relative autonomy'.

At the same time, the fact that superstructures must solve problems that their own base evidently cannot solve for itself means that they must produce effects and results the base cannot. For example, an industrial base requires masses of educated workers, but capitalism has never developed a way to create a mass of workers profitably. So it is necessary to create a public education system, outside the base, to do this.

In addition, if superstructures are required to do things the base cannot, there must be at least some aspects of the forces and relations of production superstructures use that are different from those used by the base. Therefore, a superstructure's 'system of production' must be in some sense different from the underlying mode of production/base. For example, legal systems are controlled by appointed authorities (judges), and not by property owners. Hence the 'autonomous' element of 'relative autonomy'.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Robinson |first=R.J. |title=Base and Superstructure. Understanding Marxism's Second Biggest Idea |publisher=Putney:2 |year=2023 |isbn=9781838193843 |edition=2nd |___location=Alton |pages=Chs 3–5}}</ref>

===Can the base be separated from the superstructure?===

[[John Plamenatz]] makes two counterclaims regarding the clear-cut separation of the base and superstructure. The first is that economic structure is independent from production in many cases, with relations of production or property also having a strong effect on production.<ref>{{cite book|author-last=Lukes |author-first=Steven |title=The Nature of Political Theory |editor-first1=David |editor-last1=Miller |editor-first2=Larry |editor-last2=Siedentop |___location=Oxford, Oxfordshire |publisher=[[Clarendon Press]] |date=1983 |pages=104}}</ref>

The second claim is that relations of production can only be defined with normative terms—this implies that social life and humanity's morality cannot be truly separated as both are defined in a normative sense.<ref>{{cite book|author-last=Lukes |author-first=Steven |title=The Nature of Political Theory |editor-first1=David |editor-last1=Miller |editor-first2=Larry |editor-last2=Siedentop |___location=Oxford, Oxfordshire |publisher=[[Clarendon Press]] |date=1983 |pages=105}}</ref> Robinson observes that all economic activity (and perhaps all human activity) is normative - for example, 'it is unlikely that many enter employment without a sense, unspoken or otherwise, that it is a legitimate or proper thing to do'.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Robinson |first=R.J. |title=Base and Superstructure. Understanding Marxism's Second Biggest Idea |publisher=Putney:2 |year=2023 |isbn=9781838193843 |edition=2nd |___location=Alton |pages=194, n.2}}</ref>

===The legality question===

A criticism{{weasel inline|date=October 2012}}critique of the base and superstructure theory is that [[relations of production|property relations]] (supposedly part of the base and the driving force of history) are actuallymore definedproperly bysituated in legal relations, an element of the superstructure. This suggests that the distinction between base and superstructure is incoherent, and undermines the theory as a whole. Defenders of the theory claim that Marx believed in property relations and social relations of production as two separate entities.<ref>{{cite journal|author-last=Cahan |author-first=Jean Axelrad |title= The Concept of Property in Marx's Theory of History: A Defense of the Autonomy of the Socioeconomic Base |journal=[[Science & Society]] |volume=58 |number=4 |date=Winter 1994–1995 |pages=394–395 |jstor=40403448 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40403448 }}</ref> [[G.A. Cohen]] offers a detailed textual analysis to argue this was based on a false interpretation of Marx's position.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Cohen |first=G.A. |date=1970 |title=Symposium: On some criticisms of historical materialism. |journal=Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes |volume=44 |pages=121–156|doi=10.1093/aristoteliansupp/44.1.121 }}</ref>

Robinson argues that legality does not make exploitation possible, but only defines the rules through which it is managed socially when it becomes problematic. Legal definitions of wage labour were only articulated when those workers began to show their strength. Long before that, wage labour and a working class had existed without any notion of a formal contract between legal equals. Law regarding slavery likewise concerned mainly rules for relations between slave-holders (buying and selling, warranties, etc.), and have never been required for slavery to exist. Conversely, in modern societies, domestic labour is barely addressed by law; plainly this is not because it is not prevalent, but because it is not sufficiently contentious to become a matter of significant political dispute, and therefore to require a legal form.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Robinson |first=R.J. |title=Base and Superstructure. Understanding Marxism's Second Biggest Idea |publisher=Putney:2 |year=2023 |isbn=9781838193843 |edition=2nd |___location=Alton |pages=190–3}}</ref>

===Neoliberalism and the state===

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* [[György Lukács|Lukács, Georg]]. ''History and Class Consciousness''. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1972.

* [[Postone, Moishe]]. ''Time, Labour, and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx's Critical Theory.'' Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

* R.J. Robinson. ''Base and Superstructure. Understanding Marxism's Second Biggest Idea.'' Alton: Putney2, 2023.

* [[Raymond Williams|Williams, Raymond]]. ''Marxism and Literature''. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.