Cultural Theory and Popular Culture

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Chapter 4 Marxisms
in general’ (1976a: 3). This claim is based on certain assumptions about the relationship
between ‘base’ and ‘superstructure’. It is on this relationship – between ‘base’
and ‘superstructure’ – that the Marxist account of culture rests.
The ‘base’ consists of a combination of the ‘forces of production’ and the ‘relations
of production’. The forces of production refer to the raw materials, the tools, the technology,
the workers and their skills, etc. The relations of production refer to the class
relations of those engaged in production. That is, each mode of production, besides
being different, say, in terms of its basis in agrarian or industrial production, is also different
in that it produces particular relations of production: the slave mode produces
master/slave relations; the feudal mode produces lord/peasant relations; the capitalist
mode produces bourgeois/proletariat relations. It is in this sense that one’s class position
is determined by one’s relationship to the mode of production.
The ‘superstructure’ (which develops in conjunction with a specific mode of
production) consists of institutions (political, legal, educational, cultural, etc.), and
‘definite forms of social consciousness’ (political, religious, ethical, philosophical, aesthetic,
cultural, etc.) generated by these institutions. The relationship between base and
superstructure is twofold. On the one hand, the superstructure both expresses and legitimates
the base. On the other, the base is said to ‘condition’ or ‘determine’ the content
and form of the superstructure. This relationship can be understood in a range of different
ways. It can be seen as a mechanical relationship (‘economic determinism’) of
cause and effect: what happens in the superstructure is a passive reflection of what is
happening in the base. This often results in a vulgar Marxist ‘reflection theory’ of culture,
in which the politics of a text or practice are read off from, or reduced to, the
economic conditions of its production. The relationship can also be seen as the setting
of limits, the providing of a specific framework in which some developments are probable
and others unlikely.
After Marx’s death in 1883, Frederick Engels, friend and collaborator, found
himself having to explain, through a series of letters, many of the subtleties of Marxism
to younger Marxists who, in their revolutionary enthusiasm, threatened to reduce
it to a form of economic determinism. Here is part of his famous letter to Joseph
Bloch:
According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element
in history is the production and reproduction of real life. Neither Marx nor I
have ever asserted more than this. Therefore if somebody twists this into saying
that the economic factor is the only determining one, he is transforming that
proposition into a meaningless, abstract, absurd phrase. The economic situation is
the basis, but the various components of the superstructure . . . also exercise their
influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases determine
their form. . . . We make our own history, but, first of all, under very definite
assumptions and conditions. Among these the economic ones are ultimately decisive.
But the political ones, etc., and indeed even the traditions which haunt
human minds also play a part, although not the decisive one (2009: 61).