(iii) Basis and Superstructure

When people enter into a particular set of production relations, they do so through the entire range of social institutions which function to regulate, justify and protect these particular relations. Just as the forces of production cannot exist in the real world without the people who cooperate in a definite way to work them, so the relations of production only develop because men are also members of a family, are guided by a morality and sometimes a religion, accept certain cultural values, and in class-divided societies, have their lives ultimately regulated by the coercive machinery of the state. And just as productive forces determine the relations of production, so for their part, the production relations constitute what we call the economic basis of society which determines all the social institutions and ideas which make these production relations possible — the decisive force which moulds “the general process of social, political and intellectual life."[1]

Marx describes this economic basis as “the real foundation” of society upon which, as he puts it, there

arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness.[2]

Marx uses the term “superstructure” to describe society's institutions and ideas because he argues that these aspects of our life do not simply dwell in a self-contained world of their own but have their origin in the way we relate to one another in the realm of material production. They are a “superstructure” because they can only be understood, in the last analysis, in terms of a society's economic “basis."

Thus, for example, it is not simply a “coincidence” that in South Africa you have the vicious exploitation of the black people in the factories, mines and farms existing “alongside” a political system which denies them any say in the government of the country existing “alongside” social and religious prejudices which claim that inequality is “natural” and that “races” should be kept apart. Nor is it enough to simply note that all these facts of apartheid “hang together” and are related. The fact is that it is not the ideas of a few eccentric professors from Potchefstrom or Pretoria which have brought about the nightmarish policies of “separate development” — it is the demand for cheap black labour by the industrialists, mine owners and the big farmers. In so far as economic realities come into conflict with pet schemes of this or that apartheid ideologue, it is the ideas and not the realities which suffer! It is the basis which ultimately determines the superstructure. It is not, as Marx says,

the consciousness of men, that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.[3]

The secret of every society is to be found neither in its politics nor in its ideas but in the precise character of its production relations and it is only by studying these that we can ultimately explain why a society has the kind of culture, family structure, political system and “spiritual life” that it does. This is because it is the role of the superstructure in a class divided society to justify and protect, to entrench and institutionalise a privileged and oppressive way of life so that the owners of the means of production — the ruling class — try to fossilise the kind of production relations which favour their interests and prevent these relations from smoothly adapting to the ever-changing forces of production. This is why an oppressed people in fighting for their freedom cannot merely transform obsolete relations of production without at the same time radically altering the entire political and ideological superstructure which is rooted in and serves to perpetuate economic exploitation.

It is sometimes thought (usually by the critics of Marxism) that concepts like “productive force” and “productive relation," economic “basis” and ideological “super structure” refer to easily separable slices of reality so that one can actually point to a “basis” in one part of society and a “superstructure” in another. This in fact is not so. In the real world, technology and social relationships, economic, cultural and political institutions all inextricably interpenetrate and the concepts which historical materialism employs have been separated out in the form of an analysis in order to produce a scientific theory of change.

Indeed, the very need for a scientific theory of change arises from the fact that what really happens when societies develop or revolutions occur should never be confused with what the people taking part in the events may think or imagine is going on. The distinction between the “basis” and “superstructure” makes it possible for us to distinguish the real roots of a revolution — the conflict between society's relations and forces of production — and the events of the superstructure: the arena of politics and ideology in which, as Marx says, “men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out."[4]

This does not mean that the superstructure can be ignored for the political and ideological factors of the struggle help us to understand why events take the particular form they do. Thus, for example, in analyzing the rebellion in Soweto, we need to examine the political events very carefully, taking note of what the young revolutionaries are saying and thinking, what the reactionary police chiefs and white politicians imagine is going on, how the Bantustan 'leaders' view the events, what the reaction of business opinion is, at home and abroad, to the new mood of protest and defiance, etc. All these aspects of the “superstructure” require our attention, but if we wish to penetrate to the heart of the situation we must follow Marx's advice and

distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of a natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic—in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.[5]

From the superstructure we learn how the particular ideas and personalities, parties and politicians shape the event so that it turns out the way it does: from the basis we find why the event really occurred in terms of the underlying, deeply rooted causes which exist “beneath the surface," as it were. In the case of Soweto, the political and ideological aspects of the situation explain the role of the protests against Afrikaans Bantu education and the whole system of white domination; but for the basic cause of the explosion we must look to the vicious economic exploitation upon which the apartheid system rests — the unbearable poverty, insecurity, joblessness and inflation, sanctioned by racial discrimination and protected by the machine guns and barbed wire of a ruthless dictatorship. The superstructure expresses the struggle as people battle in the streets, refuse to go to work and join the ranks of the liberation movement: the basis actually explains it as the uprising of the African, Coloured and Indian people who are robbed by a racist white minority of the wealth which they collectively produce. While millions work in the mines, factories and on the farms, a clique of monopoly capitalists privately own South Africa's immense riches—this is the root of the conflict, and of the protest, struggle and movement towards revolution, for it is here, in the economic basis of society that the relations and forces of production collide with a raw and searing intensity. It is here that the events have their real source.

The fact that the economic basis of a society provides us with the ultimate cause of its development does not and cannot mean that it is the only cause of social development, for this would imply, for example trying to study capitalism in South Africa without taking account of the way in which the army, police, courts, judges, administration, propaganda are used by the ruling class to keep them in power. A basis and superstructure must always be examined together, for the superstructure not only arises out of a given basis but reacts back upon economic developments and decisively influences them. Is it not clear that the battery of racist laws in South Africa — a political factor — gives economic exploitation its peculiarly vicious form? No account of development is possible unless all the political, ideological and cultural factors are carefully considered, for the economic causes cannot be meaningfully understood “on their own."

The colonial character of South African society, the influence of Calvinism and Cape liberalism, the heritage of popular struggle against conquest and enslavement, the awakening of a national African consciousness — all these aspects of the super structure help to explain why capitalism and the fight against it has developed as it has in the South African context. To simply ignore these aspects on the grounds that only economic factors “count"—that historical materialism is some kind of one-sided “economic determinism” — would lead to a grotesquely distorted understanding of reality.

What the Marxist theory of history argues is this: all factors are important and all need to be taken into account but while the aspects of the superstructure — where people express their consciousness of what is going on — determine the form of the development, the economic basis is ultimately decisive for it is only here that we can understand why in the last analysis society develops at all.

It follows of course that the more clearly we understand the dynamics of history in terms of the relationship between basis and superstructure, the conflict between the forces and relations of production, the more consciously we can control the course of events through the strategies and tactics we adopt for revolutionary change.