Let me first quote a key passage from "Preface of A Contribution to
the Critique of Political Economy" and then add my interpretation.
The full text can be found at:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface-abs.pdf
<snip>
"In the social production of their life, men enter into definite
relations that are indispensable and independent of their will,
relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of
development of their material productive forces. The sum total of
these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of
society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political
superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social
consciousness.
The mode of production of material life conditions the social,
political and
intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of
men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social
being that determines their consciousness.
At a certain stage of their development, the material productive
forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of
production, or — what is but a legal expression for the same thing —
with the property relations within which they have been at work
hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these
relations turn into their fetters."
<snip>
What defines society, and what does society do? At its most basic
level society is people coming together to decide how to manage
resources. Think of the most primitive hunter-gatherer society. They
roam over territory, they cooperate to hunt and gather and defend
themselves against common threats, and they have to make decisions
about how to distribute what they produce.
There are therefore definite relations of production, rules or norms
or property relations that govern who controls what and when, who gets
what share of the hunt, etc.
Those relations of production "correspond to a definite stage of
development of their material productive forces" because they have
adapted to the available physical technology. For example, while
technology remains primitive, society might be organized around family
clans and strongmen.
How do you get the members of society to agree to live under these
relations of production, to this type of organization? Some might get
a very large share of the resources while others get little at all. At
one level it is maintained through the threat of violence, but it is
easier to try to have members of society come to believe that it is in
their interests, or dictated by say some superior power. So societies
might invent animism and religious beliefs to 'make sense' of and
justify 'the order' and your place within it. More advanced socities
use 'religion' and 'morality' and 'culture' and 'law' to dictate and
proscribe behaviors.
In Marx's view this is all 'superstructure' --apparatus built to
help maintain and enforce the existing system of property relations.
How are relations of production transformed over time? In Marx's
view technological progress (i.e. the transformation of the material
forces of production) meant that new opportunities for transforming
the relations of production would come about.
Think back to our hunter gatherers. Over time knowledge improved
and humans learned the basics to allow sedentary agriculture to became
possible. Some humans started to see that they didn't need to roam
about so much, they could stay and fortify an area, and more easily
accumulate and store surpluses. At that point it made sense for
people in those societies to see how new relations of production might
benefit them. Indeed the existing relations of production based on
family clans might have started to make less sense (they became
fetters -- their old ways held back the further development of
technology and stood in the way of developments that would benefit the
rising class).
For example, perhaps one more powerful clans might have tried to
extend its authority over other clans and new forms of government and
tribute payment were established. Such a transition was most likely
not a tidy affair -- it was achieved via social revolution (i.e. the
existing order with all its existing sacrosanct property relations had
to be overthrown). A new set of rules about the division of labor, who
controled what, and who owed tribute to whom was set up. And with it a
new superstructure to help maintain the order (e.g. animism was
replaced by more organized forms of religion, hiearchies and new
authorities were created, etc).
It's no different in a modern industrial society. There is a clear
set of relations of production governing how resources are managed and
distributed. In modern societies we've built up a complex state legal
apparatus and a complex system of norms and beliefs to legitimate and
maintain those relations.
This is not to deny the existence and semi-independent character of
the elements of the superstructure. Ideas and culture do to some
extent have a life of their own and influence the direction in which
societies evolve (only the most vulgar of marxists would deny that).
Marx's dialectical materialism is dialectical precisely because he
allowed for the way in which the realm of ideas and culture might in
turn shape the further development of material forces and relations of
production.
But his critique of the existing political economists and
philosophers was that they had failed to understand that ideas and
culture and all those other elements of the superstructure do change
and are at a very fundamental level arbitrary, human creations. |
