Historical Materialism: Marx on Base, Superstructure

Historical Materialism

Historical materialism. The starting point for Marx is the real human being and their effect on nature. Man is conceived as driven to satisfy needs and must work. This practice, which involves the development of certain skills and the organization of collective labor, determines all social, moral, political and cultural life.

Thus, for Marx the material, economic base is what determines ideology. We see here a clear contrast with Hegel: for Hegel political-ideological consciousness determines the economic, while Marx makes the material the essential element that gives rise to ideology.

Economic Base and Structure

Societies are defined by two elements: their economic infrastructure and their economic structure understood in the strict sense. Marx used the term economic structure both in a broad and in a narrow sense. The legal and political superstructure and the ideological superstructure correspond to the forms that arise from and rest on the economic base.

Forces of Production

The so-called forces of production include the productive capacity of a human group, encompassing the level of development achieved through knowledge, technology and organization in a given society. This includes:

• Tools and machinery — the technical means of production.
• Facilities and infrastructure — workshops, factories, and sites of production.
• Raw materials — the objects on which labor acts.
• Labor power — human energy, skills, training and scientific or technical know-how of workers.

These elements together determine the productive capacity of an economic structure.

Relations of Production

The narrow sense of the economic structure corresponds to the known relations of production, which concern how control over the forces of production is organized and how the distribution of produced goods is arranged: the property relations. In a society there is a determination of who rules, who owns the goods produced and the means of production, and how the distribution of wealth is organized.

What Constitutes Productive Forces

The means of production, labor power and the object of labor together constitute the productive forces. The object on which people work can be of two types:

• Raw material — material that has not yet undergone manufacture.
• Means of production — the instruments and resources by which workers transform the object of labor into a final product.

The labor force is the human energy applied in the work process. The product is the result of that process.

Relation Between Forces and Social Organization

According to Marx, each set of productive forces corresponds to a particular set of relations of production. The productive forces influence and help determine the social organization of a society.

Value: Use Value and Exchange Value

Marx distinguishes between use value and exchange value. Exchange value, associated with the commodity, is shaped by the dynamics of supply and demand and by the social relations that govern production and distribution.