Base/Superstructure

Abstract

The concept of base/superstructure, which first appears in Karl Marx's A Preface to The Critique of Political Economy (1859), models the relationship between economic and productive forces in society and legal, cultural, educational, religious, and political forces. Because individuals must meet their material needs before anything else, and because they accomplish this in association with other people, these relations form the foundation – or base – of society on which all other forms of life – the superstructure – are built. The base/superstructure model is a cornerstone of Marx and Engels's materialist philosophy, which claims that social relations determine consciousness, in contradistinction to Hegelian idealism, which privileges immaterial and transcendent concepts such as Thought and Spirit as the driving forces of human civilization. Despite tremendous variation and debate regarding what actually constitutes the categories base and superstructure and the nature of their interaction, most Marxist thinkers agree that cultural analysis must adhere to a historicist methodology, a necessity famously summed up by Fredric Jameson's imperative, in The Political Unconscious : “Always historicize!” (Jameson 1981: 9). The base/superstructure model is part of a method that rejects any purely formal critique. Instead, culture, as an element of the superstructure, must be understood in relation to the material conditions of its production, distribution, and consumption, as well as its engagement with the social relations of production.