Both a Marxist and a Media & Information Theory, the Base-Superstructure Model is probably my favorite among the topics discussed for our Media and Information Literacy class. As an activist myself, an advocate for national democracy with a socialist perspective, and a follower of Marx-Lenin-Mao’s ideologies, this subject matter hits close to home — to my strongly held political views and beliefs.

Originating from Karl Marx’s ideas of class struggle, this model lays out the ground work for analyzing the two parts of society: the base and the superstructure. The base is composed of the modes of production: its forces and relations—property ownership and divisions of labor. These relationships shape and determine society’s existing superstructures —family, education, culture, state, religion, politics and media, and in return these social institutions maintain and influence the economic base.

To better understand this relationship, Marx, during the emergence of industrial capitalism, distinguishes between the two main social classes: (1) the bureaucrat-capitalists or the bourgeoisie who owns and controls the means of production, and (2) the working class or the proletariat who due to their lack of access to the means of production operates them.

Our history is a history of class struggle, a struggle to acquire more stuff whether power or economic wealth. Conflicts continue to arise between classes particularly because of their varying interests, for instance capitalists generally want to accumulate more and more wealth at the expense of exploiting their workers, and workers essentially want to reap the fruits of their labor. Throughout time, capitalists have employed a small number of slaves, factory workers, and contractual workers to maintain and multiply their fortune. This inequality has been, and always has been the status quo. According to Marx, workers will never prosper if they do not share in the wealth they create.

Capitalists need workers in their factories; without the workers to manage their businesses then their businesses would be obsolete, without workers the survival of the superstructure is on shaky ground. In the context of mass media in the words of Chandler (2014), media is a “means of production which in capitalist society are in the ownership of the ruling class.” Under capitalism, media is often manipulated to disseminate and indoctrinate the ideas of the ruling class, and suppress the alternative ones. It functions to serve the interests of the elite and deceive the working class.

According to Curran et. al (1982), media is “locked into the power structure, and consequently as acting largely in tandem with the dominant institutions in society. The media thus reproduced the viewpoints of dominant institutions not as one among a number of alternative perspectives, but as the central and “obvious” or “natural” perspective”.

“Workers of the World, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!”

— Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto (1848)

My biggest take away from this discussion is that media has this great influence over the economic base and superstructure of a society, that is often manipulated for the gain of the rich. This relationship between media and the base-superstructure model adheres to the characteristic of the media industry as mostly a business aimed for profit. The effectiveness of this economic model relies on the context and situation of a country under capitalism. In the Philippines, this model is ineffective due to our semi-colonial and semi-feudal state that hinders our economic growth. Whenever we perceive the ruling class and the foreigners that own our factories as God-like and untouchables, we are opening the doors towards exploitation. It is important to note that, the superstructure cannot exist without the base, but the base can and will continue to exist even without the superstructure that holds them by their necks. In the words of Karl Marx, “Workers of the World, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!”

References:

Bennett, T., Curran, J., Gurevitch, M., & Wollacott, J. (1982). Culture, society and the media. London: Routledge.

Chandler, D. (2014, July 03). Marxist Media Theory. Retrieved from http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/marxism/marxism03.html