Practice question · Sort into groups
Sort each element by whether Marx places it in the economic base or in the superstructure that rises on it.
Groups: Base · Superstructure
- The wage relation between employer and worker
- Who owns the machinery and the land
- The law of property and inheritance
- The technical level of the productive forces
- Religious doctrine about obedience and reward
- The form of the state and its constitution
Hints
- One column contains arrangements for producing things and the other arrangements for justifying and enforcing them.
- Ownership and the wage relation are relations of production; courts and creeds are not.
Show the answer
Base: Who owns the machinery and the land, The technical level of the productive forces, The wage relation between employer and worker
Superstructure: The law of property and inheritance, Religious doctrine about obedience and reward, The form of the state and its constitution
Why
The distinction is analytical, not a description of two separate places. Property law is superstructure and also constitutes ownership, which is base, a circularity critics have pressed hard. The most defensible version of the claim is about explanatory priority over the long run, not about which institution sits on top of which.
Practise Comte and Marx
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