hereditary nature of castes is decreed as a social law '. [36] And' in the estate ... a nobleman always remains a nobleman, a commoner a commoner, apart from his other relations, a quality inseparable from his individuality '. [37]
There is a sense in which it is true to say that only in bourgeois society do there exist 'pure' classes - social groupings whose membership depends entirely upon relations to exploitation in the productive process, as opposed to privileges embodied in judicial or religious codes. [38] Of course, these codes had their origin in material exploitation, but centuries of frozen social development have obscured that fact.
The situation with the capitalist family is somewhat similar to that of the medieval church or the modem state. It grew up to preserve and reproduce already existing relations of production. But it cannot do this without playing a very important economic role (in the case of the working class family, organising the vast amount of domestic labour that goes into the physical reproduction of labour power, in the case of the capitalist family defining the way in which property is passed from one generation to the next). [39]
This has led to attempts to assign it to the 'base' because of its economic role. [40] But the distinction between base and superstructure is a distinction between social relations which are subject to immediate changes with changes in the productive forces, and those which are relatively static and resistant to change. The capitalist family belongs to the latter rather than the former category, even in its 'economic' function of reproducing the labour force.
Changes in the way reproduction is organised in general follow changes in the way production takes place. The simple fact is that the 'forces of reproduction' do not have the tendency to cumulative change that the forces of production do. The possible ways of restricting the number of births hardly changed from the hunter-gatherer societies of 30,000 years ago until the 20th century - whether these means were used depended not on the sphere of reproduction at all, but on the sphere of production. (For instance, while a hunter-gatherer society is forced to restrict the number of births, many agricultural societies have an interest in as many births as possible.) The material conditions under which children are reared do change - but as a by-product of material changes taking place elsewhere in society. [41]
Finally, these considerations also enable us to dispose of another argument that is sometimes raised - the claim that all social relations are 'relations of production'. [42]
All parts of any social structure owe their ultimate genesis to the realm of production. But what Marx quite rightly emphasised by talk of the 'superstructure' was that, once generated, some parts of the social structure have the effect of constraining the development of others. The old stand in contradiction to the new. The old form of organisation of the state, for instance, rose out of the needs of exploitation at a certain point in history and has continuing effects on production. But it stands in contradiction to the new relationships that are continually being thrown up by further developments of production. To say that all social relations are 'relations of production' is to paint a picture of social development which ignores this important element of contradiction. [43]
Base and superstructure under capitalism
So far this article has been about the relationship of base and superstructure in general. But there are certain peculiarities about their relation under capitalism that deserve a brief mention.
First is the peculiar effect of relations of production on the forces of production. Marx stresses that, for pre-capitalist societies, the established relations of production tend to retard the forces of production. Under capitalism, by contrast, the survival of each individual capital depends upon expanding the forces of production at its disposal more rapidly than its rivals:
'The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production and thereby the relations of production and with them the whole relations of society ... Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. '[44]
Marx holds that the contradiction between the forces of production and the relations of production still comes to the fore eventually, but in a quite specific way.
The growth of the social productive forces of humanity - increased productivity - involves combining ever greater amounts of past labour to each unit of present labour. Under capitalism this takes the form o...
