Base and superstructure: Difference between revisions

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[[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 name="auto"/>

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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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, yetsuperstructures exist to deal with contradictions in the base, so changes in the base (and therefore in these contradictions) stillcontinue driveto 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.