uld justify themselves not engaging in backbreaking manual labour because of their ability to foresee flood patterns or design waterworks. But from the beginning the new exploiting group secures its control by means other than its role in production. It uses its new wealth to wage war, so further enhancing its wealth through booty and the taking of slaves. It establishes 'special bodies of armed men' to safeguard its old and its new wealth against internal and external enemies. It gains control of religious rites, ascribing the advance of the social productive force to its own 'supernatural powers '. It rewrites old codes of behaviour into new sets of legal rules that sanctify its position.
The new exploiting group, in short, creates a whole network of non-productive relations to safeguard the privileged position it has gained for itself. It seeks through these political, judicial and religious means to secure its own position. It creates a non-economic 'superstructure' to safeguard the source of its own privileges in the economic 'base'.
The very function of these 'non-economic' institutions means that they have enormous economic impact. They are concerned with controlling the base, with fixing existing relations of exploitation, and therefore in putting a limit on changes in the relations of production, even if this also involves stopping further development of the productive forces.
In ancient China, for example, a ruling class emerged on the basis of certain sorts of material production (agriculture involving the use of hydraulic installations) and exploitation. Its members then sought to preserve their position by creating political and ideological institutions. But in doing so they created instruments that could be used to crush any new social force that emerged out of changes in production (eg out of the growth of handicrafts or trade). On occasions that meant physically destroying the new productive means. p> So great is the reciprocal impact of the 'Superstructure' on the base, that many of the categories we commonly think of as 'Economic' are in fact constituted by both. So, for instance, 'property rights' are judicial (part of the superstructure) but regulate the way exploitation takes place (part of the base).
The way the political and judicial feed back into the economic is absolutely central to Marx's whole approach. It is this alone which enables him to talk of successive, distinct 'modes of production' - stages in history in which the organisation of production and exploitation is frozen in certain ways, each with its distinctive ruling class seeking to mould the whole of society to fit in with its requirements.
Far from ignoring the impact of the 'superstructure' on the 'base', as many ignorant critics have claimed for more than a century, Marx builds his whole account of human history around it.
Old relations of production act as fetters, impeding the growth of new productive forces. How? Because of the activity of the 'superstructure' in trying to stop new forms of production and exploitation that challenge the monopoly of wealth and power of the old ruling class. Its laws declare the new ways to be illegal. Its religious institutions denounce them as immoral. Its police use torture against them. Its armies sack towns where they are practised.
The massive political and ideological struggles that arise as a result, decide, for Marx, whether a rising class, based on new forces of production, displaces an old ruling class. And so it is an absolute travesty of his views to claim that he 'neglects' the political or ideological element.
But the growth of superstructural institutions not only freezes existing production relations, it can also have profound effects on the relations between the members of the ruling class themselves, and therefore on the way they react to the other classes in society.
Those who command the armies, the police and the priesthoods live off the surplus obtained by exploitation just as much as do the direct exploiters. But they also develop particular interests of their own: they want their share of the surplus to be as great as possible; they want certain sorts of material production to take place to suit the particular needs of their institutions; they want their sort of lifestyle to be valued more highly than that of those involved in direct production.
Their attempt to gain their own particular aims can lead to the building of ever more complex institutions, to elaborate rules about social behaviour, to endless battles for place and influence. The end result can be labyrinthine structures in which the source of wealth and privilege in material production is completely forgotten.
When this happens, the superstructure can go beyond simply free...
