You know, anatomically modern human beings have existed for over 200,000 years, while
private property and class society have existed for less than 5% of that time.
And that’s generously including slave-society and feudalism.
Capitalism’s only been around for a few hundred years.
And yet, the power of our society is such that it can completely brainwash us into believing
that something that we’ve been doing for less than 0.5% of humanity’s existence – capitalism,
this system that’s literally destroying our planet – is “human nature”.
Now, just think about that for a second: this system that we’re engaged in - which has
been completely alien to us for over 99.5% of humanity’s existence - is… “human
nature”?
How in the holy feck have we managed to accept such a ridiculous notion as simply being common
sense?
This is where the Marxist analysis comes in and shines a light on society’s Base and
its Superstructure.
So, what’s the Base?
What’s the Superstructure?
How do they relate to one another?
And what does this all mean for the struggle towards stateless, classless, moneyless society
moving forward?
Well, sit tight, and we’re going to find out!
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Now, it’s rare that Marx ever clearly lays out the specific aspects of his theoretical
work – we’re usually just left with fragments here and there that we have to patch together
and work out for ourselves.
But in the footnotes of the first chapter of Capital Volume 1, Marx surprisingly provides
a brief overview of the concept of Base and Superstructure.
He writes that “the economic structure of society, is the real basis on which the juridical
and political superstructure is raised and to which definite social forms of thought
correspond; that the mode of production determines the character of the social, political, and
intellectual life generally” Now, there’s a lot to unpack in that statement,
so let’s take this piece by piece: first looking at the economic structure, the Base,
then the superstructure that it gives rise to.
Then we’ll dive into how they interact with one another and how Marxists can proceed towards
communism with this knowledge.
Now, the Base of society is comprised of the Mode of Production - this might be Slave Society’s
slave-owning mode of production; feudalism’s feudal mode of production; capitalism’s
capitalist mode of production; or communism’s communist mode of production.
The Mode of Production within society is comprised of two key aspects; (1) the Productive Forces,
and (2) the Relations of Production.
“Productive Forces” refer to Labour and the Means of Production.
“Labour” here refers to both the individual act of engaging in work, as well as the collective
labour force.
Under the capitalist mode of production, workers sell their “labour power” – their ability
or capacity to do work for a given period of time – to capitalists.
“Means of Production” refers to everything that’s required to produce, including instruments
of production (like the tools, machinery and buildings in which we carry out our work)
as well as subjects of production (which includes natural materials like iron ore, and also
materials that have been filtered through previous labour, like that iron ore in its
extracted form, which we call “raw materials”).
So those are the productive forces.
The other equally important aspect of society’s Base is the “Relations of Production”.
As the name implies, this refers to how people relate to the process of production.
Under capitalism, this would generally be as a worker or as a capitalist.
A member of the proletariat or a member of the bourgeoisie.
In other words, the Relations of Production refer to the systems of “class”, or “social
class” that exist within the given mode of production.
Now, from this economic Base emerges a societal Superstructure which in turn helps to maintain
that Base.
This includes repressive State apparatuses like the military and police, which the ruling
class use to secure and maintain their class domination and the current economic order
through physical force.
This is legitimised ideologically through the system of law that’s created to reinforce
the relations of production (for example, the bourgeoisie creating laws that protect
the right to freely purchase private property and means of production).
And also, the political system that it has in place:
Now, the bourgeoisie can generally work quite effectively through liberal democracy.
But when private property is challenged by organised labour and the threat of socialist
revolution looms, they may resort to implementing fascist measures, or even dissolve liberal
democracy completely into a full-on totalitarian, corporativist, fascist regime in order to
maintain the capitalist economic Base.
Aside from open and explicit politics, Religion is another important ideological apparatus
of the superstructure as we saw, for example, how Christianity was effective in helping
to maintain monarchy historically – think “divine right of kings” doctrine – in
order to maintain particular relations of production.
Perhaps most importantly, the superstructure contains the very Ideology which maintains
the economic base - the ideology of capitalism being liberalism (that is, liberalism in the
classical sense of the term).
And this Ideology is reflected in the Superstructure’s Art, Culture, and Media (especially that which
is disseminated to the masses by the powers that be).
The educational system, too, is hugely important in reinforcing ruling-class ideology.
And it also serves to prepare people to fulfil the roles required of them in order to maintain
the mode of production.
And this is all made possible, of course, by the family – that is, the patriarchal
monogamous family unit that facilitates inheritance and the accumulation of private property across
generations, as well as the reproduction of labour.
In sum, the Superstructure refers to all parts of society that are not directly part of the
productive process.
And we can see how, in the Superstructure’s totality - through a million different ways
comprising both directly repressive state force and ideological control - it creates
these societal norms that make the economic Base appear to simply be “common sense”
or “the natural order of things”.
In essence, it works to manufacture the consent of the masses in order to maintain the particular
mode of production.
This, is the power of the Superstructure.
Okay, so now we know that the Base refers to the mode of production (including the Productive
Forces and the Relations of Production) and the Superstructure refers all other aspects
of society that aren’t directly part of the production process (such as repressive
and ideological state apparatuses; the law, religion, the family, the media, art, culture,
etc.).
We now need to look at the relationship between these two aspects of society.
While it is the case that the economic base determines the superstructure in the final
instance, it should not be assumed that this is generally just a one-way system.
Rather, the Base gives rise to the Superstructure, which then reinforces the Base, which in turn
reinforces the Superstructure, and so on, and so forth in a reciprocal, circular pattern.
Engels himself pushed back against the notion of an economically deterministic one-way linear
relationship from the Base and to the Superstructure: Writing in 1890, Engels stated that “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 […] also
exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases
preponderate in determining their form.”
Unfortunately, there are mechanical materialists who don’t understand this and erroneously
believe that simply transforming the economic Base is enough to solve all of society’s
ills – that there’s no need for struggle at the Superstructural level because everything
flows in one direction from Base to Superstructure.
The real-world consequence of this is that many of the daily struggles faced by the oppressed
that don’t directly pertain to the Base and its relations of production (the struggle
between proletarian and bourgeois) may be ignored.
For example, state forces disproportionately enacting violence against nationally oppressed
groups may get written off as unimportant because the State, Culture, and Identity are
all aspects of society’s Superstructure which will presumably automatically get fixed
by a socialist revolution’s transformation of the Base’s relations of production.
In opposition to dialectical materialist analysis, this erroneous mechanical materialist position
views the Base as the most important, principal and decisive force at all times.
However, as Mao stated in 1937, “When the superstructure (politics, culture, etc.) obstructs
the development of the economic base, political and cultural changes become principal and
decisive.”
And of course, this theory was proven in practice during the Chinese Revolution when it was
shown that transforming the economic Base alone was not enough, but that there in fact
had to be an active struggle at the Superstructural level, too – which was put into practice
most prominently during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
So, learning from proletarian revolutionary history, we now know that the struggle for
stateless, classless, moneyless society must be waged at the levels of both Base and Superstructure.
This means that it’s our duty as part of the revolutionary struggle to abolish class
society to not only combat the exploitation of labour under the capitalist mode of production
at the Base, but to also combat modes of oppression like White Supremacy and Patriarchy which
dominate the Superstructure.
Today we’ve taken a look at the Marxist analysis of society’s division into Base
and Superstructure.
We first looked at the economic Base – the mode of production, comprised of the productive
forces and the relations of production.
We then proceeded to look at the Superstructure, which refers to all aspects of society that
aren’t directly part of the production process.
We then proceeded to look at the dialectical relationship between Base and Superstructure,
highlighting that it is not a one-way relationship, but rather that both influence each other
in a reciprocal manner.
From this, we were able to see that in order for the proletariat to successfully transition
to stateless, classless, moneyless society, it’s necessary to not only transform the
economic Base through socialist revolution, but also to engage in struggle at the Superstructural
level with ongoing cultural revolution.
One last thing to note: while today we’ve spoken primarily about capitalism, there are
generally elements of prior modes of production within all societies.
This continues into the socialist transition period where all remnants of class society
are completely swept away, bit by bit, until fully classless, communist society is achieved.
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