The Socio-Economic Superstructure (Secondary Relations of Production)
Tony Andréani & Sarah Erden
What the paper says
This chapter focuses on the “political” and the “ideological” in the economic sphere, which are omitted or neglected in standard Marxism. And yet, far from ignoring them, Marx provides numerous indications in this direction. Through various examples, Marx demonstrates that the processes of production and reproduction entail the existence of new functions within each unit of production (secondary relations of production, in a way), which can be found in every society and which can be summarised as (1) the articulation of rules that regulate the relations of production and the existence of a system of judgement and sanctions to enforce them, and (2) the necessity for a discourse of justification. However, these functions take on special characteristics in class societies: they also serve to establish domination and legitimise exploitation. The chapter’s second objective is to show that these functions existed prior to the emergence of the state, which codifies them for the social formation as a whole and for which they serve as a sub-base.
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
| M · momentum | 0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.