#base and superstructure

[tsolarprincess]

[tenspontaneite]

One of my iterator OCs, Chiral Dalliance. She wears the hat always, (almost) no exceptions.

[no7er]

Igloo Station Digital artwork by me, 2024

[mesetacadre]

happy bday cas, hope you have a good one!

thank you Tal!!

[yugotrash]

hello! I got your heartburn post on my dash bc a mutual had liked it - sending my sympathies, I once went to hospital bc I thought I was dying, got triaged as if I *was* dying, only to be diagnosed as having heartburn 🥲 my totally unsolicited input: I find drinking bicarbonate of soda (baking soda / sodium bicarbonate) dissolved in a glass of water rlly helps with active heartburn and also to prevent it; it is alkaline and therefore helps neutralise your stomach acid a bit

oh my god, can't believe this still hasn't happened to me. we shall add your advice to the compendium, thank you for participating in the gastroenterological council's proceedings.

[anonymous-ivplay]

Inktober Day 29: Massive

I remember when I first looked at the Inktober list back when it came out, I saw this prompt and knew I had to do an iterator superstructure. Don't think I was confident enough in my coloring abilities at the start of the month to make what I made today, though!

[whats-in-a-sentence]

To Marx and Engels, the process seemed crystal clear: Western industrialization was driving social development up faster than ever before but was also kicking the paradox of development into warp speed.*

*Marx and Engels of course used a different terminology, that the shift from a feudal to a capitalist mode of production increased the extraction of surplus labor but heightened the contradictions between base and superstructure.

"Why the West Rules – For Now: The patterns of history and what they reveal about the future" - Ian Morris

[hidarisblog]

The reason why so many young leftists become infatuated with Japan during the early stages of their political development is that it represents the closest thing we have to an alternate modernity that still falls within the comfort zone of capitalist assumptions.

People bringing up anime like it’s not a superstructural expression of precisely the thing I’m describing

In sum, anime and Japanese pop culture in general has such a different national, political-economic context from America and Europe that it’s precisely going to produce an alternative modernity that people will be more compelled to engage with. Hence more weebs than Germany fans.

— Orikron 🇨🇳 (@orikron) June 3, 2022

[txttletale]

what are your thoughts on the idea that the trump administration is deliberately trying to cause a financial crash so that the wealthiest members of the bourgeoisie can buy up a bunch of assets during the dip and then become even more powerful afterwards? like what happened in 2008 but on purpose. one of my friends believes in this really strongly but i'm not convinced it's not just the ruling class buying into their own propaganda truss-style again

i think that this is yknow, kind of conspiratorial thinking that's not really corroborrated by any analysis of the actual facts -- there is not a master plan here, there is a very real and powerful element here of the superstructure outpacing the base. that said i do think that a generally useful lens through which to understand what is happening in the US right now is the decline of the bourgeois state to the point where it is no longer able to act effectively as a manager of capitalism on behalf of the entire bourgeoisie, and so has now become the staging ground for a vicious intrabourgeoisie power struggle which is deeply destructive to the empire as a whole

[miraclemaya]

in 50 years the Civilization series will have been replaced by Base and Superstructure: A Historical Materialist Game by the revolutionary State Committee for Visual Novels (also in charge of similar, less notable mediums like video games)

you dream of a beautiful future anon.

[mesetacadre]

✒️ if it's not too late? Sorry I feel obnoxious just asking this

I really like this ask game, as far as I'm concerned you could all keep sending these

[total-trash-tenno]

this is what I get for having the dune artbook soundtrack on in the background while drawing drifter lore

...and then playing rain world again and seeing the 5 murals in the superstructure(s)...so of course I needed to make 5 more for each emotion

I feel like there'd be a mural somewhere of her as a wyrm, with zero bias leaning toward how she feels about the event :')

flat versions are under the cut

unfortunately there's no "flat" version of the wyrm mural because half the shading is in the base layer and I don't feel like redoing it

[apas-95]

A lot of people here take an incredibly mechanistic, economist approach to their understanding of historical materialism. To a certain degree this is promising, since it is a position characteristic of new marxists, and implies good growth and development; but more straightforwardly it is an error.

Yes, in the base-superstructure relationship, the base is the dominant and deciding factor, however the superstructure does exert a real and material force on society - and the flat denial of the role of the superstructure in favour of a purely economic understanding of society is plainly incomplete, and leads to gross rightist errors, by minimising the harmfulness of reactionary superstructure. Sexual violence against women in society ultimately has its basis in the material dispossession and oppression of women, but superstructural elements - 'rape culture' - are as much the proximate cause of any definite act of sexual violence in society as economics, and certainly exist as a powerful force to oppose and undermine progressive and revolutionary approaches to the liberation of women.

Marx said:

The weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism by weapons, material force must be overthrown by material force; but theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses.

[psychotrenny]

While the material Base is the most important part of any broad level social analysis, the Superstructure should not be neglected especially when considering smaller scale phenomena. The Base sets the context and limits for action, but it does not pre-determine it entirely. Individuals and even institutions do not always act rationally in accordance with their class interests; sometimes this is because the interests of their specific strata or even personal interests don't align with that of their broader classes. But other times it's because they aren't rationally pursuing their material interests at all; they're actions are based on incorrect information or premises which are often a result of their ideology.

This doesn't mean that they should be written off entirely as dum dum idiots acting on totally random caprice; even false ideas ultimately came from somewhere and it can be worth trying to understand where these mistakes came from as well as the sort of systems that allow this ideology to be put into practice. But you can't explain every single process as cleanly conforming to a set of purely material interests. The relations between Base and Superstructure, as as between the Individual and Broader Society, are dialectical. The latter is the product of the former, but in turn can influence and change the forces that created it which in turn produce new forms of creation. To base your worldview of the Material and Social does not mean rejecting the influence of the Ideal and Individual altogether; your Materialism mustn't be Vulgar

[transmutationisms]

Hey, I've been delving into anti psychiatry readings but one thing always stands out to me: if there is no underlying disease behind a depressive state, for example, how does that new paradigm not end up placing the blame on the patient? I ask in good faith as I still don't have a clear answer on that regard, and would like to have better conversations about this topic that don't end when people tell me of a close relative with depression who has seemingly had a life free of traumas that could otherwise present as depression.

-materialist (marxist) anti psychiatry identifies the root 'cause' or basis of psychological experiences in the economic and material conditions of existence. depression or other forms of distress, just like other affective states, derive fundamentally from the world we live in, our political situation, the material alienation of estranged labour that underlies 'alienation' the psychological state. this doesn't mean that resolving the contradictions of capitalism (that is, workers' revolution) will magically eliminate all sources of distress, depression, or other currently pathologised experiences. however, it would certainly resolve / eliminate some distress for some people; additionally, it is the only way to overcome the capitalist paradigm that values people by their adherence to a normative standard of ability, which is what renders depressed people (for example) economically marginalised 'failed citizens'

-keeping the above in mind, i would question whether there is really such thing as a person who 'has no trauma' ie, has no material basis for alienation, depression, or distress. capitalism is an estranging system, including for the owner class (though of course this occurs in a different way to the labouring class, and i am not suggesting that the bourgeoisie are the 'victims' of capitalism or some such)

-none of the above is mutually exclusive with the role that an individual's neurobiology plays in their subjective or psychological state. like any base/superstructure phenomenon, the relationship is dialectical, with the material base generally dominating, but both acting on and being affected by superstructural phenomena. economic and material conditions lead to subjective experiences such as depressions; these experiences are also instantiated in, reacting to, and reacted upon by the physiological processes in the brain/body. however, when we say that depression (for example) is not a disease we mean that there is no biological entity---no infectious pathogen, no 'chemical imbalance', no organic lesion, no anatomical defect or physiological malfunction---that is identifiable as a single cause or correlate of depressed states, nor will there ever be; the psychiatric label is a heuristic catch-all applied to a constellation of experiences (symptoms) that are varying degrees of disagreeable to individuals (patients) as well as to medical and state authorities

-i think it's overly credulous to the psychiatric profession to assert that calling something a disease means that no one can 'blame the patient' for it. in fact i would say it would be difficult to name a disease that doctors, state authorities, and society at large does NOT blame on patients

-i also think it's overly credulous to the psychiatric profession to assert that there is a dichotomy between neurobiological diseases and things that are individual faults or failings. in fact i would posit that most subjective experiences, including of distress, are neither

[qqueenofhades]

The 2025 project seems to reflect that the Republican Party is becoming more and more fascism, but it actually reflects the growing number of extreme nationalists, misogynists, and racists among ordinary Americans. US is a democracy, and politicians rely on votes to stay in power. The fact that the Republicans dare to draft such a project shows that they are confident it will gain significant public support. Politicians aren’t fools; they wouldn’t pursue something that only a small group agrees with while the majority opposes it. The global rightward shift is evident, and though I’m not American, my country is also deteriorating in many ways. Why is this happening? Because the economic base determines the superstructure?and in recent years, the global economy has been in decline?

Mmmm, I'm gonna have to challenge you here.

First of all, it's just flatly not true that there's a "growing number of extreme nationalists, misogynists, and racists among ordinary Americans." That movement has become more vocal and visible in post-2016 America, but there's absolutely no evidence -- and indeed, a lot of evidence to the contrary -- that their numbers are growing instead of shrinking. The Republicans got lucky with Trump's win in 2016 thanks to a combination of decades of anti-Hillary smears, extensive Russian interference/psyops, the anti-democratic Electoral College, and general misplaced complacence that he was never going to win and people didn't need to bother voting for two disliked candidates. They've flatly lost every competitive nationwide election since then -- 2018, 2020, 2022, and very probably 2024. In between, their hand-picked Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade (guaranteeing the right to an abortion in all 50 states) and set off a titanic tidal wave of voter support for abortion rights, even in very dark red states like Kansas and Kentucky (which are not liberal by any stretch of the word). In fact, the Republicans' (flatly false) excuse that they just wanted to "return [abortion rights to the states]" has been unveiled as another lie due to their desperate attempts in this election cycle to ratfuck voter-approved abortion questions off the ballot in Arkansas, Missouri, Florida, and elsewhere. This is a badly losing issue for them, even in deep red states, and they don't want people to vote on it, because they hate democracy. We'll get to that.

Likewise, polls of "culture war" issues like LGBTQ+ rights, abortion rights, immigrants' rights, etc., consistently get much more support among ordinary Americans than not. The ordinary public is becoming more liberal, not less, even in the face of constant aggressive and reactionary attempts to undo the sum total of social and civil rights movements from the 20th century. Republicans' views are getting less popular, not more, and this is also driven by the ongoing demographic change in America. Within a generation or two, whites may be in the statistical minority, and that deeply terrifies people whose entire political and social identity is built on ethnostate white supremacism. The reason Republicans are getting so extreme and antidemocratic now is because the electorate is getting younger and younger, more diverse, more accepting, and less tolerant of their age-old bullshit. As such, there is a very visible window of time outside which the Republicans will not be able to win competitive nationwide elections, even despite all the advantages they're building into the system and have always had. That terrifies them. It is also why they have decided to destroy democracy.

Which leads us into your next assertion that "US is a democracy, and politicians rely on votes to stay in power. The fact that the Republicans dare to draft such a project shows that they are confident it will gain significant public support. Politicians aren’t fools; they wouldn’t pursue something that only a small group agrees with while the majority opposes it." Yes, maybe, in some exceedingly generic logic that doesn't take any account of the actual situation in the US and the fact that the Republicans have made their hatred for democratic free and fair elections very, very clear. This is why Trump pushed the "election fraud" Big Lie in 2020 and sent a mob to attack the Capitol in an attempt to prevent the certification of Biden's win. This is why states controlled by Republicans have frantically enacted as many voter suppression and voter-removal laws as possible and conducted constant purges to get voters (especially the mysteriously missing 1 million Democrats in Florida) off the rolls. This is why they talk approvingly about Trump being "a dictator on day one." This is why they have pursued a decades-long strategy to capture the federal judiciary (by installing extreme right-wing hacks to the bench and then funneling extreme-right legislation into their courts to get a favorable ruling and/or send it to the extreme-right Supreme Court). And on, and on, and on. The Republicans are explicitly aware that their ideas cannot win in a free and fair election, because their ideas are terrible, and as such have been taking massive, ongoing, and coordinated efforts to disenfranchise American voters, expose them to lakes of sordid Russian propaganda/psyops in favor of Trump, double down on the xenophobia and white nationalism to stoke Fear Of The Other, and everything else they possibly can to prevent voters from voting for their opponents. They hate democracy and they are not counting on democratic methods to implement Project 2025. They intend to do it by secretive oligarch methods funded by right-wing billionaire dark money and their Russian friends. That's the whole point.

Indeed, you can see that in the fact that as soon as Project 2025 became widely known and therefore widely hated, the Republicans were thrown into a panicked fluster of disavowing it and insisting that Trump didn't actually know about it (which is a lie, but that's all the day). Because it is electoral kryptonite, they are trying every single method they can to lie to voters long enough to get into power and do it anyway. Authoritarians can often come to power through democratic elections, but once there, they do their utmost to degrade, erode, or otherwise destroy the institutional safeguards that prevent them from keeping power forever. Trump is a literally textbook example of this and he has made his intentions very clear. He flat-out told a group of Republicans at an event earlier this year that "we'll fix it so you won't have to vote again." He already tried a coup and somehow the Republicans nominated him again, because of the deep corruption of the party on every level, but the Republicans are not doing Project 2025 because they think it will organically generate popular support (and they know it doesn't.) It's a blueprint for a tiny group of extreme right-wing theocrats and fascists to get their way regardless of what the broader public says about it, and represents the culmination of decades of far-right power-play strategies related to exploiting economic, racial, social, and cultural grievances. They're doing this now in order to lock in their power before long-term demographic changes make it impossible for them to win another democratic American election. So their solution is to get rid of democratic American elections, the end. This is explicitly a project for permanent minority rule. They know that and that's what's driving their strategic choices here.

As such, essentially saying that the Republicans aren't really fascist, and/or the real problem and/or are just giving an increasingly fascist American population what they want, removes any moral responsibility for their deliberate choices and legitimizes the populist claim to be acting "for the people" instead of a corrupt institutional system. Everyone knows the many, MANY problems with American politics and government; we don't need to go through them again. But even if they were "just giving the people what they want," which as noted above they're not, it still wouldn't make it okay or defensible. To use the obvious example, just because Hitler was popular and democratically elected in 1933 doesn't make what he did right, and the social forces that propelled him to power weren't just a passive "reflection" of The People's Will but were shaped by the larger fascist-curious interwar 1930s. In fact, America also had a burgeoning fascist movement in the 1930s, driven by WWI and Great Depression fallout, but Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal explicitly created extensive government mechanisms to support society, provide new jobs and welfare, and other integrative and restorative economic methods. This crucial difference in approaches -- the New Deal vs. the Nazis -- is why America remained democratic despite the challenges and Germany fell into autocratic genocidal fascism.

This is because populism and dissatisfaction with democracy rises when people feel that the government is not listening to them, is not responsive to their needs, is ignoring them, or otherwise not doing what they want. It is driven by multiple factors, primarily but not only economic, and it is stoked by powerful interest groups who have a vested interest in using the fissures to discredit democratic governments and movements. It is also by no means limited to America, as you note at the end. Think of the decades-long campaign by the British media against the EU, driven by British isolationism and exceptionalism and a sense that the petty bureaucrats in Brussels had no right to be telling the almighty British Empire what to do. This created and stoked existing social grievances which were often domestically caused (since as Margaret Thatcher destroying the British social-welfare state in the 1980s) and turned that grievance against an external opponent who was easier to blame. As such, as we know, it led to the country voting for Brexit in 2016 despite what a whopping, overwhelming, incredible own goal that was and continues to be for the UK, especially economically and socially. It was obviously dependent on many contextual factors from British history, politics, and culture, and there were certainly many people who actually thought it was the right thing to do (and not just about racism, which uh, hmmm), but it's very difficult to think that this organically or naturally came about without a direct and extensive popular-pressure campaign designed to do just that.

People often vote against their own interests because they have been convinced that democracy is corrupt or ineffective or "just as bad" as authoritarianism, which allows illiberal populists to rise to power. These populists often use racial, religious, or cultural grievances, especially against perceived "outsiders," to artificially stoke existing prejudice and justify crackdowns and/or consolidations of their own personal power and destruction of institutional systems and safeguards meant to stop them from doing that. That's how we got Erdogan in Turkey, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Orban in Hungary, and Trump in the US. Other authoritarian movements around the world are also driven implicitly or explicitly by the massive autocratic and antidemocratic global influence disinformation machine headed by Putin in Russia. As such, it's not accurate to insist that this just represents a simple passive "rightward shift" among the global population overall. It is happening because it has been designed and manipulated and pressed into happening. It can still be electorally resisted, which is also the most effective strategy for removing authoritarians, but if we fail to vote out Trump once and for all in 2024, it will be MUCH harder and much more deadly.

Overall, to simplistically claim that the Republican party is just giving the increasingly fascist Americans what they want and expect it to derive broad popular support is, as I have demonstrated above, a diametrically backward conception of the problem. The Republicans are deliberately and increasingly fascist because they realize that very soon, if allowed to continue operating in its accustomed fashion, the American democratic system and American public opinion is going to make them obsolete. They're racing the clock to cement permanent super-minority rule, and to change the rules overall, before America's shifting demographic composition and ideological mindset locks them out. That is why they are throwing so much misinformation, fearmongering, lies, Russian propaganda, and everything else that they can think of at this election, to get Trump and loyal Project 2025 footsoldier Vance into the door before the door slams shut for a long time. That is why this election is so fucking existentially important and why it is so crucial to accurately conceptualize and describe the problem, what it is, and how to respond to it. As such, while I otherwise don't do this much anymore because I no longer have the desire to argue with the people who are likewise brainwashed in the opposite direction and insist it's a Pure Leftist Moral Duty not to vote against fascist authoritarianism (as, uh, also happened with the fragmented and infighting German left-wing opposition in 1932 and good thing nothing bad happened next):

The end.