The Base and Superstructure

The Base and Superstructure The base comprises the forces and relations of production (e.g. employer-employee work conditions, the technical division of labour, and property relations) into which people enter to produce the necessities and amenities of life. The base determines society's other relationships and ideas to comprise its superstructure, including its culture, institutions, political power structures, roles, rituals, and state. While the relation of the two parts is not strictly unidirectional, as the superstructure often affects the base, the influence of the base is predominant. Marx and Engels warned against such economic determinism. Marx postulated the essentials of the base-superstructure concept in his preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859): "In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely [the] relations of production appropriate to a given sta…