Marxism #12 Base Structure and Super Structure

[Caesercel]

These ideas are rooted in materialism. (Illustrations below)

You can think of Base Structure as the ground reality/material/physical aspect of human life. The physical sensations that a person goes through on a day to day basis. The actual material reality of day to day labour, a programmer sitting on his chair for 8 hours staring at a screen, a tribesman hiding in the bushes to catch his prey, a farmer breaking his back ploughing the field. All these constitute the Base Structure.

The Base Structure contains within itself the mode of production of a particular society through which that society achieves it's productive human life. The mode of production has two aspects to it:

>Forces of production
>Relations of production

Forces of production are the material means of economic production involved in labour. For an African hunter gatherer it's his hunting gear and weapons. For a medieval european farmer it's the land he works on and his farming tools.

Relations of Production are the economic relationships that exist between people in a particular society. The brotherhood between two hunter tribesmen, the hierarchy between a white master and his black slave in American south, the modern employer and the employee or even the domestic relationship between husband and wife. All of these inform a certain division of labour that is specific to the mode of production of that society.

The core idea here is that this Base Structure causes the rise of the Super Structure. This is the higher realm of mental constructs (ideological). This includes:

>Government/politics
>Laws
>Religion
>Moral/ethical values
>Education
>Culture
>Media (movies/music/video games)

Now after the Super Structure is established like an OS in the brain, it keeps people engaged in the ongoing labour and labour relations thus maintaining the Base Structure that created it. Therefore, the Base Structure and Super Structure feed into each other in an infinite loop.

As history progresses and material conditions of production change, they bring with them a new Super Structure. As an example, the mode of production of feudal europe with its relations and forces gave rise to a super structure of nobility, religious worldview, loyalty to your Liege lord/King etc. But as the industrial age came about, the new material conditions gave rise to liberalism and democracies and civil rights. Both these super structures do the job of keeping people engaged in the existing labour relations of that time.

 

[Caesercel]

A reason why I am so susceptible to these ideas is that I had come to similar conclusions regarding inceldom before I knew about any of this Marx stuff.

You see, inceldom is directly caused by the sexual revolution and breakdown of monogamy. Also by having women in the workforce and allowing them the right to hold money and property instead of their natural role as a mother and wife.

As someone who grew up in an environment where sex itself was taboo and doing it outside of marriage, even before marriage was a big no no. I saw things change before my very eyes. What caused this cultural shift? Was it some top level concerted effort to change people's views and promote sexual degeneracy? Did people within a generation gap magically decided that sleeping around is now ok? No. It's all about the material forces at play. Sexual revolution is a direct result of industrial process allowing for wide avalaibility of birth control. Women in workforce is a result of the logic of capitalism requiring every ounce of labour value to be sucked in the most effeceint manner.

 

[Hoodpreet]

This is word soup. Moral systems (the majority anyway) are by and large post-hoc rationalizations of human instinct. Feminism being one for women’s robust IGP and distrust of men, nationalism being one for people’s inherent bias in favor of those who look and act like them, Abrahamic/universalist morality being a maladaptive scaling of in-group prosocial behavior to the global body of faith or world at large (or in some cases adherence to it is driven by status-seeking behavior in urban or academic circles), etc. Not everything boils down to economic exploitation or symbiosis

 

[Caesercel]

human instinct.

And what are these instincts if not the result of forces mentioned in this thread?

Not everything boils down to economic exploitation or symbiosis

It doesn't necessarily have to be exploitative. By "economy" I mean the very fundamental productive aspect of human life. The materials we are programmed to interact with and the relations we form with other humans. The latter part can be exploitative or co-operative or something else.

It explains why a medieval rural agrigarian society would keep it's women engaged in the household while an urban industrial society would create something like feminism.