I don’t quite get your question, but It’s not bullshit, I believe that the terms were first coined by Marx (if memory serves). The base superstucture model is just a model by which to view the world, in that it explains (to some degree) how sociocultural/economic and other phenomenon arise from the means and relations of production, which is definitely true to some extent. But no model is perfect and it’s not the only model. The world is pretty complex and people can and do take actions that defy this model.
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Submitted 6 months ago by 1141kizzie@thelemmy.club to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Comments
Goodman@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
Nemo@slrpnk.net 6 months ago
It’s not bullshit, but neither is it the only accurate way to look at the situation. I think it makes sense and is a worthy framework for discussion, but if you’re facing someone who doesn’t, you’ll either need to sell them on the framework first or understand their framework and use that for discussion instead. More work for you, but that’s how the world goes round.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
The base is the mode of production and the relations to it, and the superstructure arises from it and reinforces it. This doesn’t mean the superstructure doesn’t exist, or that you can have a base without a superstructure, what it means is that the superstructure is secondary to the base and comes from it.
As an example, feudalism as the base, and monarchist divine right to rule as superstructure, as well as the church. Agrarian production with large lords to be paid rent to was the form of the base, while the superstructure arose from that base and formed kingdoms and justifications for said base. They could not exist without each other, but the base was the driving factor.
As another, we can see capitalism and liberalism. The ideas of private property rights, bootstraps mentality, and the idea that everyone has an equal chance at success are the ways the system justifies itself, even though that isn’t how it works in practice.
This is a very old concept, not one I invented. There’s even a page on Wikipedia for it.
lystopad@mbin.twink.men 6 months ago
just block the instance lemmy.ml
youguyz@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
OMG I want my feed free from you guys HoLy WaR against tankies. NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOUR BULLSHIT
RedSeries@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
WOAH, your feed must be awful then. Your account is like, an hour old. Try utilizing word filtering and blocking? Also, to quote you, “NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOUR BULLSHIT”. Maybe you can consider leaving while you’re at it?
youguyz@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Maybe consider sucking my cock you genocide supporting pos
1141kizzie@thelemmy.club 6 months ago
I posted here because of doubt, not because of i hate commies.
Rather than polluting post, you should have just ignored it
and you troll, you created account 1 hr ago.
youguyz@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
I don’t want to have an account retard I just want to read the fucking news
ragingHungryPanda@piefed.keyboardvagabond.com 6 months ago
Luna oi is a Vietnamese YouTuber who does a good job at explaining these definitions. This video is about dialectical and historical materialism, but she explains the base and superstructure pretty well.
https://youtu.be/HAEgTPK-oiU1141kizzie@thelemmy.club 6 months ago
So it is hijack of word base. More fitting word would be “power” than base. Or master and slave. But whole idea is not bullshit. It seems like it is another version of “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past”
seems like this theory is good for attacking capitalism by communists to promote idea that “communist ideas are suppressed”, while living in non fascist society.
snek_boi@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
I posted a longer response but I think it didn’t get through or something.
Basically, I look at this from the point of view of Cynefin, and Estuarine Mapping. If you look at base and superstructure elements, you can look at them as ACTANTS of the system.
Whether you choose base-superstructure or Cynefin just shows that sometimes we can describe the same phenomena in different ways. And I take this idea from both Mary Midgley and Donna Haraway’s positioned knowledge.
marcos@lemmy.world 6 months ago
It kinda is.
There exist a hierarchy of needs, it’s a subjective one but all people share a large part of it. There also exists a very objective and measurable hierarchy of production.
Interpreting that as “low-herarchy factors are X” is useless and dishonest unless X means “things we need to prioritize in a crisis”. And saying any of that comes from Marxism or any kind of communist theory is just bullshit.
zxqwas@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The difference between Nazis and communists is that one of them lost a world war. You should not give them the time of day.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
No, this is just Double Genocide Theory, and is a form of Holocaust trivialization. The Nazis brutally oppressed the working class and created a system of industrialized mass murder, the communists oppressed the capitalists and doubled life expectancies, tripled literacy rates, provided free and high quality eduaction and healthcare, and far more.
The idea that the Soviets were anywhere close to as evil as the Nazis requires erasing the Holocaust, and equating the suffering of the small portion of society as the capitalists and Tsarists to the large working class in Germany, both groups were victims in their respective countries but clearly the brutality of the Tsarists and capitalists against the working class is what earned the revolution in the first place.
I recommend reading Blackshirts and Reds.
Paragone@lemmy.world 5 months ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1930%E2%80%931933
6-7 million lives exterminated seems significant, to me.
Holodomor was a significant part of that, targetting Ukraine.
The same Ukraine that Putin’s trying to genocide to “de-nazify”.
Evil’s evil, & tends to have the same kind of intent, recurringly.
uranibaba@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The Nazis brutally oppressed the working class
Can you please elaborate on this? I thought the Nazi party was great for the German economy, taking the country out of a great recession. Nothing I learned hinted at the german population having it bad, the “only” problem was killing on an industrial scale.
zxqwas@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Famines due to incompetence or mismanagement.
Taalnazi@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Unlike Nazis, communists do have free groups such as anarchocommunists and so on, that are not authoritarian.
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
Yeah chief I don’t agree with your witticism here.
Call me crazy, but I think people who want to improve the world somewhat based on an economic and sociopolitical analysis of a pretty smart dude who’s work still shapes our economic understanding even in the most pro-capitalist reaganist fringes today do in fact have a few more differences with people who built an ideology based on using a merged government-corporate state apparatus to exterminate jews, queers, slavs etc. to create more living space for their specific ethnicity.
I also think you don’t actually have to pretend like Nazis and communists are equal or even close just to be able to criticize the imperialism and many mistakes and general dysfunction of the USSR, tankies and general bad faith argumentation like in OP probably done by a random putlerist fascist russian shill/bot or like a 14 year old who skimmed a wikipedia info box on dialectics once.
Communists are why we have unions, minimum wage, universal healthcare, welfare, safety nets, 5-day work week etc. Fascists are why we have the Holocaust, and I guess now also no jimmy Kimmel.
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
Just to clarify, are you calling me a fascist/14 yo/etc? I’m a communist, I organize in real life, I’ve read more than wikipedia, and I’m a working adult. None of what I said that OP is quoting is particularly out of the norm for the Marxist understanding of base and superstructure, and it was all in good faith that I responded, I even clarified more over here. OP seems to be anti-union, anti-safety net, etc and came into a months old comment chain, and I still gave them a clear and coherent overview without copying and pasting dozens of Marx and Engels quotes to make my point.
1141kizzie@thelemmy.club 6 months ago
Communists are why we have unions, minimum wage, universal healthcare, welfare, safety nets, 5-day work week
You are saying this like it is very good thing, without any defects. When Society is too used to these safety laws. What do you can do in emergency? You will say it is our birth right, as consequence you will suffer decrease in performance, which may can result in defeat in war. By which your whole society including these benefits will collapse.
Just my guess, because of minimum wage, your country probably is importing immigrants & immigrants students in order to make them work illegally, as cheap labor, natives are not willing to work for cheap, your businesses are going to foreign countries for cheap labor. The whole thing could have been prevented if there would not been strong minimum wage laws. As result work conditions would have suffered but as group you could have increased performance. but probably, in your country, you have no trust in leaders, political parties and organizations. Who would rather get torture than to betray their people. Probably there are not many, Which is result of inferior culture. That’s why you think you always need all these restrains & you assume powerful always take advantage. Or maybe your view of complete lack of hurt is blinding you the damage of all this.
1141kizzie@thelemmy.club 6 months ago
Fascists are why we have the Holocaust
That was surely done by Nazis, if not what is difference between Nazi & fascist? You are criticizing him for comparing unrealistically then you are doing it yourself
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Communists are why we have unions, minimum wage, universal healthcare, welfare, safety nets, 5-day work week etc.
If by “communist” you mean leftists in the west, then yes.
But if by “communist” you mean those who supported USSR and PRC, Lol no, their shit end up failing and USSR’s successor state is now an oligarchy and modern PRC is an authoritarian state-capitalist regime, with most of the negatives of America, but worse. Seriously, I know the US’s labor rights are atrocious, but PRC is a whole another level; no unions, no workplace safety, no overtime bonus, long hours, minimal breaks, most places have zero paid vacation days, and its a stuggle to even get an unpaid sick day. I mean there is a lunar new year bonus (symbolicly representing the boss giving you a Red Envelope), but that doesn’t mean shit when pay is already low, so the its just posturing. And healthcare in mainland China isn’t free, its basically equivalent to the US for the most part, but you also need the money ready for ER, many hospitals make you pay first before getting treatment, not the “bill you later” that the US does.
zxqwas@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I don’t care so much what the underlying thought is. Millions died when either got into power. Learning from history neither should get another opportunity.
snek_boi@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
How could we look at social dynamics? One way is Dave Snowden’s Cynefin. From that perspective, complex systems have actors, constructors, and constraints. The three of them are called ACTANTS. How do ACTANTS relate to base and superstructure? Well, each ACTANT of the system could be classified as base or superstructure.
Why am I saying that each ACTANT could be classified as base or superstructure? Because we should be open to the possibility that there are different ways of looking at the same thing in the world. We can look at a mountain from the north, from the south, from the base, or from the peak. Similarly, we can look at social relations as base and superstructure or as complex Cynefin systems (or other points of view!).
How do you know whether to classify ACTANTS into base and superstructure or not? Context. Use the pragmatic criterion: Is it helpful to classify the ACTANTS into base and superstructure in this particular context?
mimic_kry@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
I recommend not attempting civil discourse with tankie scum. They always use every opportunity to speak to muddy the waters and sow chaos.
Taalnazi@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Ditto with fascist scum. Best to just wnjoy Kropotkin’s works.
mimic_kry@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Anarchy and solidarity forever
Paragone@lemmy.world 5 months ago
that “superstructure” XOR “base” paradigm is insane.
Do any people always think like that??
Marx made a fundamental error, in all of his thinking: he presumed that communism’s meaning would be everybody-owning-everything, in universal fraternity.
ACTUAL communism expressed its essence in Brutalism: nobody owning anything, & authority-over-others being the “gold” that everybody was grubbing-after & fighting-over.
( there is a fundamental law in human behavior: the treatment a resource, or tool, gets, is the lowest-common-denominator of the ones who own it.
So, if 5 people own a tool or resource, & 1 couldn’t care less if it is butchered/broken, then the other-4’s care for that tool/resource don’t matter, the one who mistreats it because they don’t value it, defines the level-of-care that that tool/resource gets.
When EVERYBODY doesn’t care, because nobody is allowed to own their own things, then Brutalism becomes the result.
In architecture, in tractors, in aircraft, in everything.
For fine-cherishing to happen, the owners of the something have to have fine-cherishing for that something.
That, itself, falsifies communism.
The fact that YOUR own life is something that YOU alone can value sufficiently, YOU are the only someone who’s going to lose it, when death-process shatters your unconscious-mind … that itself means that you have to have necessary & sufficient experience with personal/private property while living, in order to have proper boundaries when dying, so you can concentrate on your dying-process, instead of just being a patsy who’s being distracted for social-process’s sake, e.g… )
Anyways, language can program perception.
Culture can program perception.
Western more-self-centered cultures are less likely to perceive background, in photos or videos, than are more communally-centered cultures ( Asian, was the studies that I’d read about ).
So, linguistic-programming ( I’m not necessarily talking about NLP, don’t even know what scope they claim ) can define one’s awareness, one’s culture, etc…
Therefore, it’d have to be basis, wouldn’t it?
So would ideology/axioms/presumptions/beliefs.
dividing things only into 2 categories, though…
No: it’s oversimplification.
Marx’s mistake is profound, & that mistake was because he ( probably unconsciously ) wouldn’t accept that communism could be anything opposite to his utopian-assumption.
Therefore, his utopian-assumption would have to be basis, & all the rigamarole he prescribed would have to be, in that scheme, “superstructure”, … from that 2-level view, wouldn’t it?
LMAO…
THERE’S A FEEDBACK-LOOP IN CULTURES, so labelling things “basis” & “superstructure” is already systematically ignoring the self-amplification or self-quenching of different aggregates-of-culture, among different individuals!
& then you also have the amplifying-different-harmonics among extraverts vs introverts…
among the different-kinds-of-motivations…
etc.
Interesting, though: I wonder if such fundamental-oversimplifications are characteristic of all such ideologies?
_ /\ _
Cowbee@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
Don’t know what you mean by the concept of base and superstructure being “insane.” It’s a general observation that the way we produce shapes our culture, which reinforces the way we produce.
You’re also fundamentally entirely wrong about communism. Communism isn’t when you have a bunch of tools in a pile and everyone can walk up to it and use it, then throw it back into the pile, or anything, it’s a fully collectively owned and planned industrial economy. The tragedy of the commons doesn’t apply to, say, the post office, as an example.