Base and superstructure
The pair of terms base and superstructure serves in Marxism to distinguish the economic basis of existence from the state building on it and the retroactive state on the one hand and the prevailing ideas of a society on the other.
Used by Marx and Engels
Karl Marx says in the foreword on the criticism of political economy of 1859:
“In the social production of their life, people enter into certain necessary relations independent of their will, production relations which correspond to a certain stage of development of their material productive forces. The totality of these relations of production forms the economic structure of society, the real basis on which a legal and political superstructure rises and to which certain forms of social consciousness correspond. "
While the term “economic basis” is clearly defined here as “the totality of these relations of production” (that is, it includes the level of development of the productive forces, the mode of production and the relations of production and traffic), it is still unclear in this quote what exactly the “superstructure” means “Is to be understood. In agreement with this passage, however, he says in Volume I of his theories on surplus value (1862/63):
“The specific form of material production gives rise to a specific structure of society - No. 1, secondly, a specific relationship between people and nature. Their political system and their intellectual outlook are determined by both. So also the type of their intellectual production. "
The term “superstructure” thus describes the state apparatus and includes the legal and political institutions of the state, while the political, religious , philosophical and other ways of thinking of people form the “forms of consciousness” of a society. See Friedrich Engels 1878 in the introduction to Anti-Dühring :
"[It turned out] that the economic structure of society in each case forms the real basis from which the entire superstructure of the legal and political institutions as well as the religious, philosophical and other modes of representation of each historical period can be explained in the last instance."
The superstructure and the forms of consciousness are therefore separate phenomena, but they lie on one level and both are based on the historically determined manner of the material production of society. Marx and Engels had already formulated these views in 1845 in the work Die deutsche Ideologie , which was not fully published until 1932 :
“The ideas that these individuals have are ideas either about their relationship to nature or about their relationship to one another, or about their own quality. It is evident that in all of these cases these ideas are the - real or illusory - conscious expression of their real relationships and activities, their production, their interactions, their social and political organization. "
“The fog formations in the human brain are also necessary sublimate of their material, empirically ascertainable and material life process. Morality, religion, metaphysics and other ideology and the forms of consciousness corresponding to them no longer retain the appearance of independence. They have no history, they have no development, but the people who develop their material production and intercourse change their thinking and the products of their thinking with this reality of theirs. It is not consciousness that determines life, but life that determines consciousness. "
Different interpretations of the relationship between base and superstructure
There are different interpretations of this within Marxist theory. In one fundamental view, the real economic basis of a society ultimately determines and determines its superstructure (not: "intellectual superstructure", because the "superstructure" always denotes something "spiritual"). Although the superstructure has a direct impact on the base, for example through inventions, technical developments, legislation, etc., in the last instance this always necessarily asserts itself and thus ultimately creates the superstructure of a society.
The Marxism-Leninism of the real socialist countries was of the opinion that in antagonistic societies first the basis of a new society develops in the lap of the old and then the superstructure is overturned ( revolution ), while in the transition to communism a new superstructure must first be created, before a new basis can develop. At this point an internal Marxist dispute is ignited today, in which this peculiarity of social development is viewed by many as wrong.
The British Marxist Chris Harman noted that there was some confusion about the pair of terms "base" and "superstructure" owing to some of the formulations of Marx himself.
"Since then, Marxists have argued about this utterance. What is the 'base'? What is the economy? The productive forces? Technology? The relations of production? What is the superstructure? Obviously the state. But what about ideology (and revolutionary theory)? the family? With the state, if it owns the industry? "
In contrast to Marxism-Lenism as well as Althusser's school and Kautskyanism, Harman formulates:
"The distinction between base and superstructure not between a set facilities and another, which on the one hand, economic institutions and on the other political, legal, ideological and so on are located. It is a distinction between directly associated with the production conditions on the one hand and those who are not directly connected with production. Many special facilities belong neither to one nor the other side. "
But:
"[...] some elements of the social structure [can], once they have arisen, inhibit the development of others. The old contradicts the new. The old organizational form of the state develops, for example, from the requirements of exploitation at some point in history and has an ongoing impact on production. But it contradicts the new relationships that keep emerging as production evolves. "
The base revolutionizes the superstructure
In the quotation from On the Critique of Political Economy, cited at the beginning, Marx also uses the pair of terms “productive power - production relations” in addition to “base - superstructure”. At the place indicated, he says a little later about the importance of this relationship for the process of upheaval in the social order:
“At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come into contradiction with the existing relations of production or, which is only a legal expression for this, with the property relations within which they had previously moved. From the forms of development of the productive forces, these relationships turn into fetters. Then comes an epoch of social revolution . With the change in the economic basis, the whole enormous superstructure is turning more slowly or more quickly. "
According to the above quotation from the theories of surplus value in general, the productive forces are to be understood as the relationship between man and nature. Although nature itself also objectively belongs to the material productive forces and a contradiction between nature and the relations of production can be ascertained at a certain stage of development of the social productive forces (the effects of which can be seen, for example, in the developing climate catastrophe ), it is doubtful whether Marx is here Nature also counts among the “material productive forces”. The only thing that is certain is that he uses it to describe people and technology . In the same place, the relations of production encompass the structure of society. This division, i.e. the social structure, is represented by the state , which gives the necessities of production an organizational ( political ) and legal framework. See Marx and Engels in Die deutsche Ideologie (1845/46):
“The social structure and the state constantly emerge from the life process of certain individuals ; but of these individuals ... as they really are, d. H. how they work, produce materially, that is, how they operate under certain material barriers, prerequisites and conditions that are independent of their arbitrariness. "
So if the development of technology or man encounters an obstacle that is based on the existing social order, this is first shown in a rejection of this order, which is ultimately overcome in a revolutionary way . With regard to the bourgeois revolution , Marx and Engels described this law in the Communist Manifesto (1848) as follows:
“The means of production and transport on the basis of which the bourgeoisie was formed were created in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and means of transport, the conditions in which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organization of agriculture and manufacture , in a word, the feudal property relations, no longer corresponded to the already developed productive forces. They inhibited production instead of promoting it. They turned into as many shackles. They had to be blown up, they were blown up. "
In the same place, however, they also developed the extent to which the emerging bourgeois society itself produces a contradiction between productive forces and production relations, which is to be resolved in the social revolution and thereby overturn the superstructure (both the state itself and the legal relations, especially the property relations):
“The modern worker, on the other hand, instead of rising with the advancement of industry , sinks deeper and deeper under the conditions of his own class. The worker becomes a pauper , and pauperism develops even faster than population and wealth. It is herewith openly evident that the bourgeoisie is incapable of remaining the ruling class of society any longer and of imposing the living conditions of its class on society as a regulating law. It is unable to rule because it is unable to secure the existence of its slave even within his slavery, because it is forced to let him sink into a position where she has to feed him instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under it, i. In other words, their life is no longer compatible with society. "
And as early as 1844 Marx wrote in his economic-philosophical manuscripts about capitalist private property, which is to be abolished in the social revolution in order to free the development of the human productive power from its fetters:
“This material , directly sensual private property is the material, sensual expression of alienated human life. ... The positive abolition of private property , as the appropriation of human life, is therefore the positive abolition of all alienation, that is, the return of man from religion , family , state etc. to his human , i.e. H. social existence. ... It is understood that the movement among different peoples their first takes the start on whether the true recognized life of the people more in the consciousness goes or in the outside world in front of him, the more ideal or real life. "
Summing up and warning against a schematic and dogmatic use of the basic superstructure model , Friedrich Engels wrote in his letter to Joseph Bloch (1890):
“According to the materialistic conception of history, the ultimate determining moment in history is the production and reproduction of real life. Neither Marx nor I ever claimed more. If somebody twists this into the view that the economic moment is the only determining factor, then he transforms that sentence into a meaningless, abstract , absurd phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but the various moments of the superstructure - political forms of the class struggle and its results - constitutions , established by the victorious class after a battle has been won, etc. - legal forms, and now even the reflexes of all these real struggles in the brains of those involved , political, legal, philosophical theories , religious views and their further development into dogma systems, also exert their influence on the course of historical struggles and in many cases primarily determined their form .
It is an interaction of all these moments, in which finally through all of the infinite amount of contingencies (i.e. of things and events whose inner connection to one another is so distant or so undetectable that we can regard it as non-existent, we can neglect the necessary) the economic Movement prevails. [...]
We make our own story, but first of all under very specific prerequisites and conditions. [...] Secondly, however, the story is such that the end result always emerges from the conflicts of many individual pieces of knowledge, each of which is made what it is through a number of special living conditions; So there are innumerable forces crossing one another, an infinite group of parallelograms of forces , from which a resultant - the historical result - emerges, which itself can be seen as the product of a power that as a whole acts unconsciously and willlessly. "
Monocausality
The sociologists Hans van der Loo and Willem van Reijen reject the thesis that, in the course of modernization, the material relations of production would dominate or determine the cultural meaningfulness as monocausal . The reverse hypothesis, according to which a new way of thinking leads to a change in material forms of existence, is also erroneous. Rather, the various processes that made up modernization took place interdependently , and no global ranking could be identified in these processes. The historian Reinhart Koselleck calls the Marxist thesis that the superstructure is dependent on the base, also monocausal, but nevertheless represents a legitimate hypothesis. Koselleck criticizes both Marxist and many bourgeois historians for using the category of monocausality in a naive way . He also accuses Marxist historians of making claims on the basis of party political ties and not questioning them critically.
See also
literature
- Friedrich Engels : Letter from Engels to Walter Borgius . January 25, 1894, MEW 39, p. 206. ( online )
- Friedrich Engels: Letter from Engels to Joseph Bloch. 21./22. September 1890, MEW 37, p. 463. ( online )
- Chris Harman : Base and superstructure. From the English. 1986. ( online )
- Karl Marx : Foreword to “On the Critique of Political Economy”. 1859, MEW 13, pp. 7-11. ( online )
- Dieter Nohlen , Rainer-Olaf Schultze (ed.): Lexicon of political science. Theories, methods, terms. Volume 1. 2005, pp. 62f.
- Friedrich Tomberg : Base and superstructure in historical materialism. In: Friedrich Tomberg: Base and superstructure. Social Philosophical Studies. Neuwied, Berlin 1969, pp. 7–81.
Remarks
- ↑ Karl Marx: On the Critique of Political Economy (1859), Foreword, MEW Vol. 13, p. 8
- ↑ Karl Marx: Theories about the surplus value. Volume I. MEW 26.1, p. 257.
- ↑ Compare to Karl Marx: The Civil War in France. MEW 17, p. 336.
- ↑ Engels: Anti-Dühring. Introduction. 1878. MEW Volume 20, p. 25
- ↑ In the foreword to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx comments on the non-publication of the German Ideology : "We left the manuscript to the gnawing criticism of the mice all the more willingly because we had achieved our main purpose - self-understanding." MEW Vol. 13, p. 10
- ^ Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels: The German Ideology . MEW Volume 3, p. 25 Although this text has been deleted from the manuscript, the content was partly formulated differently and partly presented with the same content in other contexts.
- ^ Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels: The German Ideology . MEW Volume 3, p. 26
- ↑ Harman, Chris: Base and Superstructure . In: International Socialism . No. 2:32 . Bookmarks, London 1986 ( marxists.org ).
- ↑ Karl Marx: On the Critique of Political Economy (1859), Foreword, MEW Vol. 13, p. 9
- ↑ Technology also has a non-material side, the division of labor and cooperation , in short: the organization of work, which is not included here. The science , however, is not a material productive force, but a spiritual one.
- ^ Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels: The German Ideology. MEW 3, p. 25, emphasis in the original.
- ↑ Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels: Manifesto of the Communist Party. MEW 4, p. 467.
- ↑ Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels: Manifesto of the Communist Party. MEW 4, p. 473
- ↑ before that he mentions law, morality , science, art etc.
- ↑ Karl Marx: Economic-philosophical manuscripts. MEW 40, p. 537, italics from Marx.
- ^ Friedrich Engels: Letter to Joseph Bloch. from 21. – 22. September 1890. MEW 37, p. 462.
- ^ Hans van der Loo and Willem van Reijen: Modernization. Project and paradox . Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 1997, p. 25 f.
- ^ Reinhart Koselleck: The Practice of Conceptual History. Timing History, Spacing Concepts . Stanford University Press, Stanford 2002, p. 13 f.