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ProleWiki:Principles/Signed

2021-01-30T18:25:39Z

Theredserpent: /* Sign below */

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Base and superstructure

2020-12-02T12:42:41Z

Theredserpent: Created page with "The base/superstructure metaphor is one of the most easily misunderstood marxist ideas. I will first show the way marx defines the base and then further explain its meaning to..."

The base/superstructure metaphor is one of the most easily misunderstood marxist ideas. I will first show the way marx defines the base and then further explain its meaning to avoid some possible misconceptions. In the Preface of A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx wrote

"In the social production which men carry on they enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material powers of production. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society – the real foundation, on which rise legal and political superstructures and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness."

So simply put, the base consists of the sum total of production relations whereas the superstructure contains other social relations that are not directly related to production. Why does production hold such an important position for Marx? In the German ideology Marx and Engels wrote

"Since we are dealing with the Germans, who are devoid of premises, we must begin by stating the first premise of all human existence and, therefore, of all history, the premise, namely, that men must be in a position to live in order to be able to “make history.” But life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things. The first historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy these needs, the production of material life itself. And indeed this is an historical act, a fundamental condition of all history, which today, as thousands of years ago, must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in order to sustain human life"

The base/superstructure metaphor is meant to convey the basic idea of the paragraph cited above. In all human communities, no matter what form they may take, the necessity to produce has always existed because without production human and social life is impossible. It is a simple law of nature that any community must one way or another produce the necessaries of life. In his letter to Kugelmann in 1868, Marx writes

"Every child knows a nation which ceased to work, I will not say for a year, but even for a few weeks, would perish. Every child knows, too, that the masses of products corresponding to the different needs required different and quantitatively determined masses of the total labor of society. [. . .] No natural laws can be done away with. What can change in historically different circumstances is only the form in which these laws assert themselves."

So the only thing that changes from one society to another can be the form in which the natural necessity to produce is expressed.

The primacy of production from the point of historical materialism means that all social formations must be shaped primarily by their process and relations of production. Some critics have accused marxism of reductionism for its emphasis on production but this is a false criticism because the marxist emphasis on production does not mean relations that are not situated within the process of production have no impact on social life but only that relative to production relations, they must have much less influence on social life and social change. Engels in his 1890 letter to Bloch's similar accusations wrote

"According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. More than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure: political forms of the class struggle and its results, to wit: constitutions established by the victorious class after a successful battle, etc., juridical forms, and then even the reflexes of all these actual struggles in the brains of the participants, political, juristic, philosophical theories, religious views and their further development into systems of dogmas, also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form. There is an interaction of all these elements in which, amid all the endless host of accidents ... the economic movement finally asserts itself as necessary."

To sum it up, the reason marxists emphasise the importance of the base, that is, the sum total of production relations is not because they believe production is the only determining factor of social life. It is rather because in view of the primacy of the need to produce the necessaries of life in any form of community, production relations compared to other relations exert considerably more influence on social life.

Feudalism

2020-11-29T14:41:41Z

Theredserpent:

'''Feudalism''' was the dominant [[mode of production]] in Europe between the 9th and 15th century. The feudal mode of production is characterised by the dominance of agrarian production by the peasants whose surplus labour was exploited by the feudal lords in the form of rents,labour duties, taxes and so on. The feudal production relations constituted what Perry Anderson calls "an organic unity of economy and polity" in the form of parcellised sovereignties, meaning that the feudal lords as private owners enjoyed their own land and other means of production as well as their own armies, courts, and laws [see, Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London: Verso, 1974), p. 19, quoted in Ellen Meiksins Wood, The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View (London: Verso, 2017), p. 44.]

In England, however, starting from the 16th century, a process began to emerge which marx examines in capital volume one under the name of primitive accumulation. The exact reasons are still disputed among marxist historians (see the Dobb-Sweezy debate and the Brenner debate), but eventually the feudal production relations in the English countryside gave way to capitalist production relations by the gradual expropriation of the peasants from land, which in turn transformed the English towns by the inflow of the expropriated peasants who were now the proletarians compelled to sell their labour power as a commodity on a large scale. This two-fold transformation of the production relations in the countryside and the towns gave rise to capitalism.

== Marxist analysis ==

=== Material conditions ===

=== Economic policies ===

=== Class struggle ===
Two major classes existed in feudal society: the nobility and the serfs. Nobles became part of their class by birth, and were able to amass generational wealth by exploiting the surplus labour of the serfs. Nobles were granted land by the monarch and in exchange agreed to participate in their wars and obey their orders. The people that lived on this land would also become the lord's property.

In exchange for letting them use the lord's land, serfs would have to surrender part of their harvest or provide free labour to the lord.

Feudalism

2020-11-29T14:39:59Z

Theredserpent:

'''Feudalism''' was the dominant [[mode of production]] in Europe between the 9th and 15th century. The feudal mode of production is characterised by the dominance of agrarian production by the peasants whose surplus labour was exploited by the feudal lords in the form of rents,labour duties, taxes and so on. The feudal production relations constituted what Perry Anderson calls "an organic unity of economy and polity" in the form of parcellised sovereignties, meaning that the feudal lords as private owners enjoyed their own land and other means of production as well as their own armies, courts, and laws [see, Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London: Verso, 1974), p. 19, quoted in Ellen Meiksins Wood, The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View (London: Verso, 2017), p. 44.]

In England, however, starting from the 16th century, a process began to emerge which marx examines in capital volume one under the name of primitive accumulation. The exact reasons are still disputed among marxist historians (see Brenner debate), but eventually the feudal production relations in the English countryside gave way to capitalist production relations by the gradual expropriation of the peasants from land, which in turn transformed the English towns by the inflow of the expropriated peasants who were now the proletarians compelled to sell their labour power as a commodity on a large scale. This two-fold transformation of the production relations in the countryside and the towns gave rise to capitalism.

== Marxist analysis ==

=== Material conditions ===

=== Economic policies ===

=== Class struggle ===
Two major classes existed in feudal society: the nobility and the serfs. Nobles became part of their class by birth, and were able to amass generational wealth by exploiting the surplus labour of the serfs. Nobles were granted land by the monarch and in exchange agreed to participate in their wars and obey their orders. The people that lived on this land would also become the lord's property.

In exchange for letting them use the lord's land, serfs would have to surrender part of their harvest or provide free labour to the lord.

Feudalism

2020-11-29T14:37:02Z

Theredserpent:

'''Feudalism''' was the dominant [[mode of production]] in Europe between the 9th and 15th century. The feudal mode of production is characterised by the dominance of agrarian production by the peasants whose surplus labour was exploited by the feudal lords in the form of rents,labour duties, taxes and so on. The feudal production relations constituted what Perry Anserson calls "an organic unity of economy and polity" in the form of parcellised sovereignties, meaning that the feudal lords as private owners enjoyed their own land and other means of production as well as their own armies, courts, and laws [see, Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London: Verso, 1974), p. 19, quoted in Ellen Meiksins Wood, The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View (London: Verso, 2017), p. 44.]

In England, however, starting from the 16th century, a process began to emerge which marx examines in capital volume one under the name of primitive accumulation. The exact reasons are still disputed among marxist historians (see Brenner debate), but eventually the feudal production relations in the English countryside gave way to capitalist production relations by the gradual expropriation of the peasants from land, which in turn transformed the English towns by the inflow of the expropriated peasants who were now the proletarians compelled to sell their labour power as a commodity on a large scale. This two-fold transformation of the production relations in the countryside and the towns gave rise to capitalism.

== Marxist analysis ==

=== Material conditions ===

=== Economic policies ===

=== Class struggle ===
Two major classes existed in feudal society: the nobility and the serfs. Nobles became part of their class by birth, and were able to amass generational wealth by exploiting the surplus labour of the serfs. Nobles were granted land by the monarch and in exchange agreed to participate in their wars and obey their orders. The people that lived on this land would also become the lord's property.

In exchange for letting them use the lord's land, serfs would have to surrender part of their harvest or provide free labour to the lord.

Feudalism

2020-11-29T14:33:22Z

Theredserpent:

'''Feudalism''' was the dominant [[mode of production]] in Europe between the 9th and 15th century. The feudal mode of production is characterised by the dominance of agrarian production by the peasants whose surplus labour was exploited by the feudal lords in the form of rents,labour duties, taxes and so on. The feudal production relations constituted what Perry Anserson calls "an organic unity of economy and polity" in the form of parcellised sovereignties, meaning that the feudal lords as private owners enjoyed their own land and other means of production as well as their own armies, courts, and laws [see, Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London: Verso, 1974), p. 19, quoted in Ellen Meiksins Wood, The Origih of Capitalism: A Longer View (London: Verso, 2017), p. 44.]

In England, however, starting from the 16th century, a process began to emerge which marx examines in capital volume one under the name of primitive accumulation. The exact reasons are still disputed among marxist historians (see Brenner debate), but eventually the feudal production relations in the English countryside gave way to capitalist production relations by the gradual expropriation of the peasants from land, which in turn transformed the English towns by the inflow of the expropriated peasants who were now the proletarians compelled to sell their labour power as a commodity on a large scale. This two-fold transformation of the production relations in the countryside and the towns gave rise to capitalism.

== Marxist analysis ==

=== Material conditions ===

=== Economic policies ===

=== Class struggle ===
Two major classes existed in feudal society: the nobility and the serfs. Nobles became part of their class by birth, and were able to amass generational wealth by exploiting the surplus labour of the serfs. Nobles were granted land by the monarch and in exchange agreed to participate in their wars and obey their orders. The people that lived on this land would also become the lord's property.

In exchange for letting them use the lord's land, serfs would have to surrender part of their harvest or provide free labour to the lord.

Primitive accumulation of capital

2020-11-24T01:37:50Z

Theredserpent:

In Marxian economics, the phenomenon of '''primitive accumulation''' (also called '''previous accumulation''', '''original accumulation''') of capital concerns the origin of capital, and therefore of how class distinctions between possessors and non-possessors came to be.

[[Adam Smith]]'s account of primitive-original accumulation depicted a peaceful process, in which some workers laboured more diligently than others and gradually built up wealth, eventually leaving the less diligent workers to accept living wages for their labour. [[Marx|Karl Marx]] rejected this explanation as "childishness", instead stating that, in the words of David Harvey, primitive accumulation "entailed taking land, say, enclosing it, and expelling a resident population to create a landless proletariat, and then releasing the land into the privatised mainstream of capital accumulation". This would be accomplished through violence, war, enslavement, and colonialism.

The crucial distinction that lies between marx's account of the pritimitive accumulation and that of political economists is this: whereas for political economists like Smith economy has transhistorical laws of motion—in his words, man has a natural "propensity to truck, barter, and exchange" and this is why we end up with capitalism, for Marx every economic epoch has its own historically specific laws of motion. Capitalism is for Marx by no means the result of human nature but that of a historical process.

In Capital Marx writes :"The essential difference between the various economic forms of society, between, for instance, a society based on slave-labour, and one based on wage-labour, lies only in the mode in which this surplus-labour is in each case extracted from the actual producer, the labourer."

So what distinguishes one epoch from another is the mode in which the surplus labour, that is, the total product of labour minus the amount consumed for the producers' own reproduction, is extracted. As capitalism rests on the commodification of labour power, it presupposes the appropriate production relations that make this possible. The concept of primitive accumulation for Marx refers exactly to the genesis of such production relations. In his account of the primitive accumulation in Capital, Marx traces primitive accumulation to the process of the expropriation of the peasants from their means of production in the English countryside. As peasants came to lose their access to the means of production which had been secured under feudalism in the form of customary tenures, they were increasingly forced to sell the only thing they were left to sell: their labour power.