Editing Base and superstructure

The base/superstructure metaphor is one of the most easily misunderstood marxist ideas. I will first show the way marx defines the base and then further explain its meaning to avoid some possible misconceptions. In the Preface  of  A Contribution to  the  Critique of  Political  Economy, Marx wrote

"In the social  production  which  men carry  on  they  enter  into  definite  relations  that  are indispensable  and independent of  their  will;  these relations of production  correspond to  a definite stage  of development of their material  powers  of production.  The sum total  of  these relations of  production  constitutes  the  economic  structure of  society  – the real  foundation, on  which  rise legal and  political superstructures  and to  which correspond  definite forms of social  consciousness."

So simply put, the base consists of the sum total of production relations whereas the superstructure contains other social relations that are not directly related to production. Why does production hold such an important position for Marx? In the German ideology Marx and Engels wrote

"Since we are dealing with the Germans, who are devoid of premises, we must begin by stating the first premise of all human existence and, therefore, of all history, the premise, namely, that men must be in a position to live in order to be able to “make history.” But life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things. The first historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy these needs, the production of material life itself. And indeed this is an historical act, a fundamental condition of all history, which today, as thousands of years ago, must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in order to sustain human life"

The base/superstructure metaphor is meant to convey the basic idea of the paragraph cited above. In all human communities, no matter what form they may take, the necessity to produce has always existed because without production human and social life is impossible. It is a simple law of nature that any community must one way or another produce the necessaries of life. In his letter to Kugelmann in 1868, Marx writes

"Every child knows a nation which ceased to work, I will not say for a year, but even for a few weeks, would perish. Every child knows, too, that the masses of products corresponding to the different needs required different and quantitatively determined masses of the total labor of society. [. . .] No natural laws can be done away with. What can change in historically different circumstances is only the form in which these laws assert themselves."

So the only thing that changes from one society to another can be the form in which the natural necessity to produce is expressed.

The primacy of production from the point of historical materialism means that all social formations must be shaped primarily by their process and relations of production. Some critics have accused marxism of reductionism for its emphasis on production but this is a false criticism because the marxist emphasis on production does not mean relations that are not situated within the process of production have no impact on social life but only that relative to production relations, they must have much less influence on social life and social change. Engels in his 1890 letter to Bloch's similar accusations wrote

"According  to the materialist conception  of history, the ultimately  determining element  in history is the production  and reproduction  of  real  life.  More 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: political forms of the class  struggle and  its results, to  wit:  constitutions established  by  the victorious class after a successful  battle, etc., juridical  forms,  and then even  the  reflexes  of  all  these actual  struggles  in  the  brains  of  the  participants,  political, juristic,  philosophical  theories,  religious views  and  their  further development into  systems of dogmas,  also  exercise  their  influence  upon  the course  of the historical  struggles  and  in  many cases  preponderate in  determining their  form.  There  is  an  interaction  of  all  these  elements in which,  amid all  the  endless host of accidents  ... the economic movement  finally  asserts itself as  necessary."

To sum it up, the reason marxists emphasise the importance of the base, that is, the sum total of production relations is not because they believe production is the only determining factor of social life. It is rather because in view of the primacy of the need to produce the necessaries of life in any form of community, production relations compared to other relations exert considerably more influence on social life.