Base and superstructure

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In Marxist theory, base and superstructure are concepts that explain the relationship between a society's economic foundation and its other social forms. The base consists of the social relations of production—the economic structure of society—that people enter into to produce the necessities of life. The superstructure refers to the legal, political, and cultural realms, including institutions, ideologies, and forms of social consciousness, which arise on this base. The core proposition is that the economic base determines or conditions the overall character of the superstructure; while this relationship is not seen as a simple one-way causality, as the superstructure can also influence the base, the economic factor is considered determinant in the long run. A central controversy in the scholarly interpretation of the concepts revolves around the distinction between Karl Marx's original, specific formulation and the later, expanded, all-inclusive version. Marx's primary formulation, most...

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