"The simplest Marxist model of society sees it as constituted by a base( the material means of production, distribution and exchange) and a superstructure, which is the "cultural" world of ideas, art, religion, law and so on.
The essential Marxist view is that the latter things are not 'innocent; but are 'determined'(or shaped) by the nature of the economic base. (Beginning Theory, Peter Barry)
Karl Marx's " A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy" in which he states that-"...The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.
In "German Ideology" we'll see Marx to say- "The production of ideas, concepts and consciousness is first of all directly interwoven with the material intercourse of man, the language of real life. Concerning, thinking, the spiritual intercourse of men, appear here as the direct efflux of men's material behaviour. ... Consciousness does not determine life: life determines consciousness.
In his "A contribution to the Critique of Political Economy" he says- "With the change of economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed."
There is at least one earlier use, by Marx, of the term 'superstructure'. It is in the "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon(1851-52)- "Upon the several forms of property, upon the social conditions of existence, a whole superstructure is reared of various and peculiarly shaped feelings, illusions, habits of thought and conceptions of life."
Terry Eagleton precisely says- "The social relations between men, in other words, are bound up with the way they produce their material life."
He(Mr. Eagleton) in his "Marxism and Literary Criticism" says-
After feudalism,-"the development of new modes of productive organization is based on a changed set of social relations-this time between the capitalist class who owns those means of production, and the proletarian class whose labour-power the capitalist buys for profit. Taken together, these 'forces' and 'relations' of production form what Marx calls 'the economic structure of society; what is more commonly known by Marxism as the economic 'base' or 'infrastructure' From this economic 'base', in every period emerges a 'superstructure'-certain forms of law and politics, a certain kind of state, whose essential function is to legitimate the power of the social class which owns the means of economic production. But the superstructure contains more than this; it also consists of certain 'definite forms of social consciousness' (Political, religious, ethical, aesthetic and so on), which is what Marxism designates as ideology. The function of ideology, also, is to legitimate the power of the ruling class in society; the dominant ideas of a society are the ideas of its ruling class.
Art, then, is for Marxism part of the 'superstructure' of society. ... To understand literature, then, means understanding the total social process of which it is part.
Georgy Plekhanov- "The social mentality of an age is conditioned by that age's social relations."
Literary works are not mysteriously inspired or explicable simply in terms of their author's psychology. They are forms of perception, particular ways of seeing the world... Which is the 'social mentality' or ideology of an age.
Raymond Williams finds three senses of superstructure emerging:
(a) legal and political forms which express existing real relations of production
(b) forms of consciousness which express a particular class view of the world
(c) a process in which, over a whole range of activities, men become conscious of a fundamental economic conflict and fight it out.
These three senses would direct our attention respectively, to (a) institutions, (b) forms of consciousness (c) political and cultural practices..
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