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Contemporary Marxist interpretations such as those of [[critical theory]] reject this interpretation of the base–superstructure interaction and examine how each affects and conditions the other. [[Raymond Williams]], for example, argues against loose, "popular" usage of base and superstructure as discrete entities which, he explains, is not the intention of Marx and Engels:
{{blockquote|So, we have to say that when we talk of 'the base', we are talking of a process, and not a state .... We have to revalue 'superstructure' towards a related range of cultural practices, and away from a reflected, reproduced, or specifically-dependent content. And, crucially, we have to revalue 'the base' away from [the] notion[s] of [either] a fixed economic or [a] technological abstraction, and towards the specific activities of men in real, social and economic relationships, containing fundamental contradictions and variations, and, therefore, always in a state of dynamic process.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Williams |author-first=Raymond |author-link=Raymond Williams |title=Base and superstructure in Marxist cultural theory |journal=[[New Left Review]] |volume=I |issue=82 |date=November–December 1973 |url=https://newleftreview.org/I/82/raymond-williams-base-and-superstructure-in-marxist-cultural-theory }}</ref>}}
===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. In Deleuze's own words:
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|text=One puts the infrastructure on one side– the economic, the serious– and on the other, the superstructure, of which ideology is a part, thus rejecting the phenomena of desire in ideology. It’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’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>Guattari, Félix. ''Chaosophy: Texts and Interviews 1972-1977'', edited by Sylvère Lotringer, Semiotext(e), Los Angeles, 2009, p. 38.</ref>
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===Can the base be separated from the superstructure?===
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