But none of these developments take place without massive political and ideological struggles. It is these which determine whether one set of social activities (those of the superstructure) cramp a different set of social activities (those involved in maintaining and developing the material base). It is these which decide, for Marx, whether the existing ruling class maintains its power until it ruins society, or whether a rising class, based on new forms of production, displaces it.
`The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle', wrote Marx and Engels at the beginning of The Communist Manifesto. But the class struggle is precisely the struggle between those who use the political and ideological institutions of the superstructure to maintain their power over the productive `base' and exploitation, and those who put up resistance to them.
The superstructure exists to defend exploitation and its fruits. Any real fight against the existing structures of exploitation becomes a fight against the superstructure, a political fight. As Lenin put it, `Politics is concentrated economics.'
Marxism does not see political struggle as simply an automatic, passive reflection of the development of the forces production. It is economic development that produces the class forces that struggle for control of society. But how that struggle goes depends upon the political mobilisation that takes place within each class.
The key role of changes in production
We are now in a position to reassess Engels' statement that' various elements of the superstructure… also exercise their influence on the course of historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their forms'. Quоtеd еаrlіеr.
Under any form of class rule a range of structures are built to reinforce and institutionalise exploitation. Those in control these institutions have interests of their own, which influence everything else which happens in society - including the nature of material production itself.
However, that cannot be the end of the matter, as the `voluntarist' rendering of Engels' remarks implies. There is still I question of where the superstructural institutions themselves come from. And there is the all-important question of what happens if the superstructure develops in such ways as to impede the reproduction of its own material base.
Marx insists that simply to assert that everything in society influences everything - the superstructure the base as well as vice versa - leads nowhere. He takes the point up in The Poverty Philosophy, his polemic against Proudhon, written soon after The German Ideology:
`The production relations of society form a whole. M Proudhon considers economic relations as so many social phases engendering one another, resulting one from the other… The only drawback to this method is that when he comes to examine a single one of these phases, M Proudhon cannot explain it without having recourse to all the other relations of society; which relations he has not yet made his dialectical movement engender.' Thе Pоvеrty оf Phіlоsоphy, оp. cіt., p. 166.
In his writings Marx points to three different consequences of such a view of society as an undifferentiated whole, with everything influencing everything else.
Firstly, it can lead to a view in which the existing form of society is seen as eternal and unchanging (the view which Marx ascribed to bourgeois economists, seeing social relations as governed by `eternal laws which must always govern society. Thus there has been history, but there is no longer any'; it is the view that underlies the barrenness of the modern pseudo-science of society, sociology).
Secondly, it can lead to viewing the dynamic of society as lying in some mystical force that lies outside society (Hegel's `world spirit' or Weber's `rationalisation').
Thirdly, it can lead to the view that what exists today can only be grasped in its own terms, through its own language and ideas, without any reference to anything else (the position of those idealist philosophers who followed Hegel in 19th century Germany, and of more recent thinkers like Collingwood, Winch and the ex-Althusserians).
Marx's way out of this impasse is to locate the one element in the social whole that has a tendency to cumulative development of its own. This is the action of humans in working on their environment to get a living for themselves. Past labour provides the means for increasing the output of present labour: both material means (tools, machines, access to raw materials) and new knowledge. But in adopting the new ways of working, humans also adopt new ways of relating to each other.
These changes will often be so small as to be barely perceptible (a changed relationship between two people here, an additional person engaged in a particular labour process somewhere else). But if they continue, they will bring about systematic molecular change in the whole social structure. The succession of quantitative changes then has a qualitative impact.
Marx does not deny the possibility of changes in other aspects of social life. A ruler may die and be succeeded by another with a quite different personality. People may tire of one game and start playing another. The accident of birth or upbringing may produce a gifted musician or painter. But all such changes are accidents. There is no reason why they should lead to cumulative social change of any sort. They can produce random change in society, but not a dynamic which moves society in any specific direction.
Material production, on the other hand, does have a tendency to move in one direction rather than another. Its output is wealth, the resources that allow lives to be free from material deprivation.
And these resources can be piled up in ever greater quantities.
This does not mean that forces of production always develop as Kautsky, Plekhanov and, more recently, G A Cohen have claimed. As we have seen, the clash between new ways of producing and old social relations is a central feature in history.
Marx noted in The Communist Manifesto that `conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form was the first condition of existence of all earlier industrial classes'. Thе Cоmmunіst Mаnіfеstо іn Mаrx, Еngеls, Lеnіn, Thе Еssеntіаl Lеft, Lоndоn, 1960, p. 7. The outcome of the clash between the new and the old did not have to be the defeat of the old. It could be the stifling of the new. There could be the `mutual destruction of the contending classes'. іbіd., p. 15.
`Regression' (from more advanced forms of production to more backward) is far from being exceptional historically. Civilisation after civilisation has collapsed back into `barbarism' (i.e. agricultural production without towns) - witness the dead `cities in the jungle' to be found in Latin America, south east Asia or central Africa; there are several instances of hunter-gatherer peoples who show signs of once having been horticulturalists (eg some tribes of the Amazon). Fоr аn еxcеllеnt аccоunt оf hоw succеssіvе Brоnzе Аgе cіvіlіsаtіоns cоllаpsеd іntо `dаrk аgеs', sее V. Gоrdоn Chіldе, Whаt Hаppеnеd іn Hіstоry, Hаrmоndswоrth, 1948, pp. l34, 135-136, 165. Fоr `rеgrеssіоn' іn thе Аmаzоn, sее C. Lеvі Strаuss, “Thе Cоncеpt оf Аrchаіsm іn Аnthrоpоlоgy” іn Structurаl Аnthrоpоlоgy, Hаrmоndswоrth, 1968, pp. l07-112. It depends upon the particular, historically developed features of any society whether the new forces of production can develop and the classes associated with them break through. At one extreme, one can imagine societies which have become so sclerotic that no innovation in production is possible (with, for instance, closely circumscribed religious rites determining how every act of production is performed). At the other extreme, there is modem capitalist society where the be all and end all of life is meant to be increasing the productivity of labour.
In fact, most human societies have been somewhere in between. Because human life is harsh, people have wanted to increase the livelihood they can get for a certain amount of labour, even though certain activities have been sanctified and others tabooed. Generally speaking, there has been a very slow development of the forces of production until the point has been reached where a new class begins to challenge the old. What has happened then has depended on the balance of class forces on the one hand, and the leadership and understanding available to the rival classes on the other.
However, even if the development of the forces of production is the exception, not the norm, it does not invalidate Marx's argument. For those societies where the forces of production break through will thrive and, eventually, reach the point of being able to dominate those societies where the forces of production have been stifled. Very few societies moved on from the stage of barbarism to that of civilisation; but many of those that did not were enslaved by those that did. Again feudal barons and oriental despotic gentry were usually able to beat back the challenge of urban tradesmen and merchants; but this did not stop them all being overwhelmed by the wave of capitalism that spread out from the western fringe of Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries.
It did not matter, at the end of the day, how grandiose or elaborate the superstructure of any society was. It rested on a `base' in material production. If it prevented this base from developing, then the superstructure itself was eventually doomed. In this sense Engels was right to say that the `economic element finally asserts itself as dominant'.
As a matter of historical fact, the forces of production did succeed in breaking down and transforming the totality of social relations in which they grew up.
Base, superstructure and social change
Much of the confusion which has arisen among Marxists over the interpretation of Marx's Preface to A Critique of Political Economy lies in the definition of the `base' on which `the legal and political superstructure' rises.
For some people the `base' has, in effect, been the material interaction of human beings and nature - the forces of production. For others it has been the social relations within which this interaction occurs, the social relations of production.
You can justify any one of these positions if you take particular quotations from the Preface in isolation from the rest of the passage and from Marx's other writings. For at one point he talks of the `sum total of these relations of production' as `the real basis on which arises a political and legal superstructure'. But he says earlier that `relations of production… correspond to a definite form of development of their material productive forces', and he goes on to contrast `the material transformation of the material conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science' and `legal, political, religious, aesthetic, or philosophical forms'. It is the `material productive forces' which come into conflict with `the existing relations of production'.
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