No Stupid Questions

I recommend not attempting civil discourse with tankie scum. They always use every opportunity to speak to muddy the waters and sow chaos.

Luna oi is a Vietnamese YouTuber who does a good job at explaining these definitions. This video is about dialectical and historical materialism, but she explains the base and superstructure pretty well. https://youtu.be/HAEgTPK-oiU

The base is the mode of production and the relations to it, and the superstructure arises from it and reinforces it. This doesn't mean the superstructure doesn't exist, or that you can have a base without a superstructure, what it means is that the superstructure is secondary to the base and comes from it.

As an example, feudalism as the base, and monarchist divine right to rule as superstructure, as well as the church. Agrarian production with large lords to be paid rent to was the form of the base, while the superstructure arose from that base and formed kingdoms and justifications for said base. They could not exist without each other, but the base was the driving factor.

As another, we can see capitalism and liberalism. The ideas of private property rights, bootstraps mentality, and the idea that everyone has an equal chance at success are the ways the system justifies itself, even though that isn't how it works in practice.

This is a very old concept, not one I invented. There's even a page on Wikipedia for it.

I don't quite get your question, but It's not bullshit, I believe that the terms were first coined by Marx (if memory serves). The base superstucture model is just a model by which to view the world, in that it explains (to some degree) how sociocultural/economic and other phenomenon arise from the means and relations of production, which is definitely true to some extent. But no model is perfect and it's not the only model. The world is pretty complex and people can and do take actions that defy this model.

Source, I tagged along with an anthropology course where this was covered. So I definitely don't know everything there is to know.

It's not bullshit, but neither is it the only accurate way to look at the situation. I think it makes sense and is a worthy framework for discussion, but if you're facing someone who doesn't, you'll either need to sell them on the framework first or understand their framework and use that for discussion instead. More work for you, but that's how the world goes round.

How could we look at social dynamics? One way is Dave Snowden’s Cynefin. From that perspective, complex systems have actors, constructors, and constraints. The three of them are called ACTANTS. How do ACTANTS relate to base and superstructure? Well, each ACTANT of the system could be classified as base or superstructure.

Why am I saying that each ACTANT could be classified as base or superstructure? Because we should be open to the possibility that there are different ways of looking at the same thing in the world. We can look at a mountain from the north, from the south, from the base, or from the peak. Similarly, we can look at social relations as base and superstructure or as complex Cynefin systems (or other points of view!).

How do you know whether to classify ACTANTS into base and superstructure or not? Context. Use the pragmatic criterion: Is it helpful to classify the ACTANTS into base and superstructure in this particular context?

I posted a longer response but I think it didn’t get through or something.

Basically, I look at this from the point of view of Cynefin, and Estuarine Mapping. If you look at base and superstructure elements, you can look at them as ACTANTS of the system.

Whether you choose base-superstructure or Cynefin just shows that sometimes we can describe the same phenomena in different ways. And I take this idea from both Mary Midgley and Donna Haraway’s positioned knowledge.

It kinda is.

There exist a hierarchy of needs, it's a subjective one but all people share a large part of it. There also exists a very objective and measurable hierarchy of production.

Interpreting that as "low-herarchy factors are X" is useless and dishonest unless X means "things we need to prioritize in a crisis". And saying any of that comes from Marxism or any kind of communist theory is just bullshit.

just block the instance lemmy.ml