Mouloud Mammeri University of Tizi Ouzou

Faculty of Letters and Languages

Department of English

1st year Master degree

Title of the presentation:

Marxism, base and superstructure

Presented by:

Lydia TITOUCHE

Academic year: 2013 / 2014

 Table of contents

I. Introduction

II. Biography of Karl Marx

III. The Origins of Marxism

IV. Principles of Marxism

V. Marx's Base and Superstructure model

VI. Modes of Production

VII. Conclusion
 I. Introduction:

Marxism is the movement developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich

Engels in the mid-19th century. It originally consisted of three related ideas:
a philosophical anthropology, a theory of history, and an economic and
political program. Marxism shares with other progressive social movements an
uncompromising hostility to all forms of domination such as sexism, racism, and
so on, but what marks Marxism from the other progressive movements is that it
fights for the self-emancipation of the working class. It stands for the destruction
of capitalism; which Marx called the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, for it is
run by the wealthy classes for their own benefit; and he predicted that, like
previous socioeconomic systems, capitalism produced internal tensions which
would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by a new system: socialism.

II. Biography:

Karl Heinrich Marx (5 May 1818 14 March 1883) was a Prussian-German

journalist, philosopher and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the
establishment of the social sciences and the development of the socialist movement economic
thought. He published numerous books during his lifetime; the most notable ones are The
Communist Manifesto (1848) and Capital (18671894).

Marx was born in a wealthy middle-class family in Trier in the Prussian Rhineland. He
studied at the university of Bonn and the university of Berlin, where he got his interests of the
philosophy of the Young Hegelians. After he finished his studies, Marx wrote for a radical
newspaper in Cologne, meanwhile, he started working on his theory dialectical materialism.
In 1843, he moved to Paris, where he started writing for other radical newspapers, and met his
lifelong friend and collaborator Frederick Engels. In 1849, he was exiled and moved to
London where he continued writing his theories about social and economic activity (known as
Marxism), which hold that human societies progress through class struggle. He actively
fought for the former's implementation, arguing that social theorists and underprivileged
people alike should carry out organized revolutionary action to topple capitalism and bring
about socio-economic change.
 . Marx is typically cited, with mile Durkheim and Max Weber, as one of the three
principal architects of modern social science. Marx has been described as one of the most
influential figures in human history.

A philosophical approach to the social sciences, which focuses on the role of society
in determining human behavior ,based on concept of dialectical materialism

III. The Origins of Marxism:

In terms of practical political struggle, Marxism arose in the mid-nineteenth

century in opposition to three main opposing tendencies in the workers
movement: Anarchism, Utopian or Doctrinaire socialism, and overtly bourgeois
tendencies. In terms of its theoretical roots, to use Lenins famous words, the three
sources of Marxism are: British political economy, French Socialism and German
idealist philosophy

At the very beginnings of Marxism there were only some charismatic

individuals who shared a particular vision of a future society and a doctrine of perpetual
revolution, so they collected a number of followings around them, however the
movement lacked a scientific base and was not yet established to be the self-
emancipation of the working class.

Scholars divide Marxs work into early and late Marx. In his early period he was
more philosophical and offered a more complex and humanist view of human kind;
while in his late period he focused on economics and has a deterministic view of the
human nature.

IV. Principles of Marxism:

There are fifteen of Marxs major concepts:

Our human nature is that we are laboring/ creating beings.

Society consists of two fundamental components: the base and superstructure.
The forces and relations of production determine the nature of economy and
thus the base and thus the society.
People, groups, etc have conflicting self interests.
 There are contradictions in society: Contradictions are social relations that cause
conflict, which may or may not be seen as unjust or simply as "the way things
are"
There is class conflict in society.
Conflict is the energy of social change and historical development
Social evolution is the historical development of material life: Marx sees all
history as the history of class struggle.
Society is in a state of continual change and struggle: Equilibrium does not exist
for Marx and conflict is natural, normal & useful to society.
Conflict does not always mean violence.
Capitalism is destructive of humanity.
Capitalism is alienating, means it causes separation of individuals and social
groups.
The upper class controls the economy.
Culture is shaped by the economic base: By controlling the base, the upper class
controls the superstructure & thus we have conflicting values & ideologies
We have either class or false consciousness.
V. Marx's Base and Superstructure model:

The metaphor of "base" and "superstructure," is used by Marx in his argument

that the economic relations of production in a society determine the forms of the state
and social consciousness. The second International theorists Georgi
Plekhanov and Karl Kautsky traditional Marxists interpreted "base" to mean "material
reality" and "superstructure" to mean something like "social and intellectual
phenomena" and interpreted Marx's argument to mean that there is a relationship of
straightforward mechanical causality between the base and superstructure. According to
Marx, the society works based on three elements: relation production, force production,
and the super structure as mentioned in the following charts:
Figure 2: base and superstructure

VI. Modes of Production:

A mode of production is everything that goes into the production of the necessities of
life, such as labor, instruments and raw materials. For Marx and Engels, a mode of
production, for individuals, is "a definite form of expressing their life, a definite mode of life
on their part. As individuals express their life, so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides
with their production, both with what they produce and how they produce"

VII. Conclusion:

All I know is that I am not a Marxist, this is what Marx declared, however he was also
very sure about his love to the labour class, and how they lived an abject life within
capitalism. What drove him to defend and try to save them from what he called the
dictatorship of bourgeoisie.

References:
- Encyclopedia Britannica, 2010.

- Augustine Ansah Akrofi, Karl Marx theory of the mode of Production as a cyclical

process more, 2012.

- The Marxist Philosophy of History: Libcom, Jul 25/2005.

- Cultural Materialism, Sunday, August 02.

- Hardt, M & Negri, A. (2000) The Sociology of Immaterial Labor in Empire (2000)

at: http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/it/negri.htm

- Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.