e 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 '.
In fact he is not making a single distinction in the Critique between 'base' and 'superstructure'. Two distinctions are involved. There is the distinction between the 'forces of production' and the relations of production. And then there is the distinction between the relations of production and the remaining social relations.
The reason for the confusion is this. The 'Base' is the combination of forces and relations of production. But one of the elements in this combination is 'more basic' than the other. It is the 'forces of production 'that are dynamic, which go forward until they' come into conflict ' with the static 'relations of production'. Relations of production 'correspond' to forces of production, not the other way round.
Of course, there is a certain sense in which it is impossible to separate material production from the social relations it involves. If new ways of working do involve new social relations, then obviously they cannot come into existence until these new social relations do.
But, as we saw above, there are reasons for assigning priority to the forces of production. Human groups who succeed in changing the ways they work in order to develop the forces of production will be more successful than those that don't. Small, cumulative changes in the forces of production can take place, encouraging changes in the relations between people which are just as small but also just cumulative. People change their relations with each other because they want to produce the means of livelihood more easily: increasing the means of livelihood is the aim, changes in the social relations of production the unintended consequence. The forces of production rebel against the existing relations of production, not the other way round.
So, for instance, if hunter-gatherers decide to change their social relations with each other so as to engage in horticulture, this is not primarily a result of any belief that horticultural social relations are superior to hunter-gatherer social relations; it is rather that they want access to the increased material productivity of horticulture over hunting and gathering.
In the same way, it is not preference for one set of relations around the production process rather than another that leads the burghers to begin to challenge feudal society. It is rather that for this particular grouping of people within feudalism, the only way to increase their own control over the means of livelihood (to develop the forces of production under their control) is to establish new production relations.
Even when the way one society is organised changes, because of the pressure of another society on it (as when India was compelled to adopt a European style land tenure system in the 19th century, or when hunter-gatherers have been persuaded by colonial administrators and missionaries to accept a settled agricultural life), the reason the pressure exists is that the other society disposes of more advanced forces of production (which translate into more effective means of waging war). And the 'social relations of production' will not endure unless they are successful in organising material production - in finding a 'base' in material production - in the society that is pressurised into adopting them. Where they do not find such a 'base' (as with the I...
