2. Means of Production
• Labor as well as the technical, technological and
economical means at a society's disposal
• The relations of production according to Marx
include property and the division of produce and
profits within society
3. Economic Base
• What differentiates humans from animals is that
man is the only species that manufactures in order
to survive; this is his basic function while every
other aspect of human life is derived from this one
central feature
• Every society in history organized its production
according to its available means of production that
determine relations of production (i.e.
feudalism, capitalism, communism…) and its own
concept of property
4. Superstructure
• On top of the economic base Marx poses the
"superstructure", all cultural structures that are the
result of the economic base
• An important part of the Superstructure is Ideology
5. Ideology
• Represents the production of ideas of conceptions
of consciousness, all that men say, imagine,
conceive, and include such things as politics,
laws, morality, religion, metaphysics, etc.
• Functions as the Superstructure of a civilization
– the conventions and culture that make up the
dominant ideas of a society
6. False Consciousness
• Ideology is a veil pulled over the economic base in
order to prevent people from seeing its inherit injustice
(that is, until communism comes)
• Ideology convinces people that the current state of
production is justified, warranted, "natural" or anything
else which gets them to comply to it.
• Ideology has been famously referred to by Marx as
"false consciousness”
• Revolutions come about when the fallacy of this
consciousness is recognized
9. Key Ideas
• Material conditions shape consciousness
• History is a class struggle
• Society built on base – superstructure arrangement
10. Material Conditions Shape
Consciousness
Economic and Philosophic Manuscript of 1844
• Humans are meant to be productive
• Workers alienated from means of production
• Externally & internally (emptied)
• Production becomes commodification
• Capitalism results in two classes: owners and workers
(slaves)
11. • Dialectical materialism
• from Hegel’s dialectic of thesis, antithesis, synthesis
• Consciousness doesn’t originate in ideas or religion;
“consciousness does not determine life; life determines
consciousness”
• Look for meaning in life not in religion but in daily social and
economic interactions; what we believe & value grow out of
these
The German Ideology (1845)
12. History As Class Struggle
The Communist Manifesto (1848)
• From Hegel’s dialectic takes idea that history is cyclic,
ending in freedom of proletariat through revolution
• Historical shift from feudalism to capitalism
• Commodification manufactures desire
• Announces Communism as a political force
13. Base-Superstructure
Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy (1859)
• The superstructure is built on the base:
• Base = economic means of production
• Superstructure = human beliefs & institutions
• Material conditions are real;
• It is the consciousness of men that determines
14. Idealism vs. Materialism
Idealism belief that ideas create or are
behind reality (Plato)
Materialism belief that struggle for means
to life determine reality (Marx)
