MacIntyre's approach to the notorious base/superstructure metaphor in Marx from the 1859 Preface: it's discussed here (part 1) and here (part 2) in his wonderful essay "Notes from the Moral Wilderness". Usually, I am rather ambivalent about the metaphor, since it typically yields more confusion than anything else. It has been seized upon by both "vulgar Marxists" and Stalinists who aimed to ossify and distort Marx, as well as those entirely hostile to Marxism who have no other aim than to refute it (e.g. Popper).
MacIntyre clears the confusion out of the way and present a straight-forward reading of the metaphor that seems dead on:
"... Stalinism rested on a mechanical relation between base and superstructure. But as Marx depicts it the relation between basis and superstructure is fundamentally not only not mechanical, it is not even causal. What may be misleading here is Marx's Hegelian vocabulary. Marx certainly talks of the basis as "determining" the superstructure and of a "correspondence" between them.... What the economic basis, the mode of production, does is to provide a framework within which the superstructure arises, a set of relations around which the human relations can entwine themselves, a kernel of human relations from which all else grows. The economic basis of a society is not its tools, but the people co-operating using these particular tools in the manner necessary to their use, and the superstructure consists of the social consciousness molded by the shape of this co-operation."
Showing posts with label international socialism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label international socialism. Show all posts
Thursday, September 23, 2010
MacIntyre on Base/Superstructure
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Excellent Joel Geier piece on the Crisis
Excerpt:
The capitalist state, not the market, produced stabilization, the end of the free-fall, and the start of a recovery. However, the fundamentals of the capitalist economy are so weak that there is no confidence that if the state were to withdraw stimulus that recovery could be sustained. The fear is that if the “free market” was left to its own solutions, and government stimulus sharply curtailed, demand would collapse, renewing recession. All of this has to be subtly presented so that faith in “free enterprise” is not excessively undermined.Read it here.
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