Base/Superstructure | Marxism | Keyword
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- čas přidán 27. 09. 2023
- In this episode, I explain the Marxist idea of the base/superstructure.
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It's a good day whenever David posts!
You seem a lot happier than usual, David! Glad to see your new professorship doing wonders for your life :)
You’re wonderful. Thank you for your labor.
thank you for the countless hours of valuable insights you have created though your exploded labor.
Would love to hear you talk about Frédéric Lordon's short book called "Willing Slaves of Capital: Spinoza and Marx on Desire". Combines some interesting elements that I think you will appreciate!
Althusser's overdetermination described better how these two are working.
Although he has been discredited by Marxist orthodoxy as a man having allergy to dialectics.
For Althusser there is a structure in which contradictions emerge, although as in Maoism, one contradiction is always the defining one.
Also in order to understand his view we should take the following steps.
1. Classes and class struggle in Althusser's theory are one and the same. The one is the prerequisite of the other.
2. Class struggle being the factor that moves history forward is tied to the material means of society's reproduction. (In final analysis all depends on economy. "Letter to Bloch")
3. If economy is the basis of superstructure then between Productive Forces and Productive Relations there is an interplay taking place, however since "in final analysis economy rules everything" and since class struggle is the factor that creates history, between Prod.Forces and Prod.Relations the latter is the definitive.
4. Productive Relations are not only linked to Productive Forces (labour, means of production etc) but are being their very prerequisite so for them to exist.
However these relations are being formed through oppression.
In traditional ML this happens mainly through State apparatuses but in Althusserianism this is also maintained ideologicaly via the ideological State apparatuses.
In other words you are being taught to be a worker before joining production.
You are being taught to submit, before joining the system in which class struggle is developed.
This how class struggle is being somehow "overdetermined" and why Althusser was accused of presenting a system in which class is seen as a Subject that can never achieve a revolution.
This is wrong of course, because all that Althusser is saying is that besides class struggle in the economy there is another one you should take care of.
The ideological/theoretical class struggle against the ruling classes' ideals being implemented through the ideological State apparatuses.
He admits that economy is the basis of all, but he doesn't underestimates the ideological overdetermination of suppressed classes and since classes and class struggle is one and the same thing, he concludes that class struggle is also happening in theory/ideology. Thus he thinks philosophy is a weapon in class struggle.
(I hope i made sense, i am not a native speaker)
Wow! For someone with English as an additional language, you did a better job than most native speakers I know of explaining that!
@@MrsMcD63 Thanks. It means a lot.
You were so damn cute in this episode David! Love to see it ❤️ your videos are saving my butt right now, I'm behind on an honours dissertation and your overviews of Sara Ahmed's work have offered me a life line... Thank you for everything ❤️ and as far as I responding to this topic, I'm pretty involved with picking up Mark Fisher's mantel in so far as post capitalist desire goes, looking for the next Kool aid etc... so as far as labour is currently organised, the role desire plays in coordinating the libidinal impulses of crowds, for me, problematises the Marxist account of labor - what effect this has on the account of base/super structure I'll leave to someone more qualified
2000% better than Philosophy Tube, if I dare say. Keep up the hard work! I just found your channel because I was reading Benedict Anderson the other day watching some related videos, but now I am subscribed.
Love your videos ! good to hear you are happy! I would like to know more about frankfurt school and cultural industry. thanks!
Extremely necessary channel, thank you so much✊
hi david, i'm writing article using Stuart Hall representation theory. Hopefully you can help me with your explanation on how to use that theory especially if I am not in media studies, so I dont analyze news article. thank you David.
For something contemporary that grapples with the causal relationship between base and superstructure, one might check out Vivek Chibber’s The Class Matrix, which argues for a social theory originating in classical Marxism.
Ideology, culture, and religion are the products of productive forces, Chibber argues; this is what classical marxists since Marx himself have argued. But the failure of early to mid 20tj century revolutions to overthrow capitalism encouraged some, such as Gramsci, to challenge the classical Marxist premise, and look to ideology as its own causal mechanism in the maintenance of capitalism. Chibber, while countering these arguments, then reassigns the role of ideology and culture as destabilizing capitalism (rather than reinforcing, as Gramsci argued in his concept of hegemony, the system).
As a result, Chibber makes the case that ideology and culture were *not* the reasons capitalism was not toppled. It was, in fact, the very mechanisms within capitalism that undermined workers’ ability to organize against their exploiters that spelt doom for revolution.
Hey David, I like your philosophy generally and your ideas on "conspiracy theories" I think are interesting. You've described dialectics before in a way that extends it from antiquity to modernity but I'd like to see that more discussed. How do you see state of modern society? What are your thoughts on warfare?
This helps me so much! 😅 thank you 🙏
Are you in LA yet? Eagle Rock is near my old neighborhood. That ironic mustache is gonna be hit.
Where does technology/consumerism fit into this base and superstructure. I asked a PhD economist to explain how an automobile engine worked. He couldn't even start. He drove a white SUV.
I used to repair stereo equipment before I switched to computers. Most people hardly know what they are buying and economists ignore Demand Side Depreciation.
THANK YOU
I think it’s simply impossible to predict what the future would look like under future conditions. I also think it’s kind of not even the point. It’s a silly exercise that Marxists get hung up on because Marx insisted, admirably IMO, that now that we understand how history works, we could take advantage of that knowledge and deliberately craft our future. That may turn out to be true, but I’m not sure his theory of revolution is the right one. It leads you to doing silly things like predicting what a socialist or communist society will actually look like. We won’t know until it happens.
🤠💜
For Baudrillard this difference between Base and Superstructure makes no sense... and I think he is right... I'm really interested in Baudrillard's critique to Marx and I really enjoy your videos about it! Thank you!
Could you elaborate on that?
@@theviking8997 Haven't read them, but I wonder if they'd say the superstructure items are just as influential and are also part of that base?
@@theviking8997 oh! guess my guess wasn't too far off... look up the Wikipedia article for "The Mirror of Production" and it gives brief summary of Baudrillard's book critiquing Marxism.
@@Heyu7her3 i read parts of that book but you're thinking maybe of Luxembourg, gramsci and althusser. Baudrilliard in that book more so makes a more radical value-critical argument of epistemology than Marx does, but I dont remember much at all about superstructures in there.
he is so fucking cute, I am sorry but he is like a cute hot nerd (I like nerds so not in an insulting manner, I am a nerd myself)
Indian?!
This guy is possibly a real marxist
I KNEW IT I FUCKING KNEW IT EVERY TIME