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Karl Marx Ideological Superstructure

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Karl Marx saw human history as being a continuous class struggle. According to his materialistic interpretation of history, the class struggle was because the opposing classes in society were fighting over the material forces of production, the resources need to produce goods. As a result of this class struggle, Marx said social relations of production of arose, and out of the social productions came ideological superstructures. The first development caused by the class struggle, according to Marx, was the social relations of production. The social relations of production is a phrase that was used by Karl Marx to describe social divisions in labor. These social divisions that Marx spoke of were classifications such as managers, supervisors, and laborers. To Marx, every society in history had a social structure centered around production. In hunting societies, for …show more content…

According to Marx, the ideological superstructure is a metaphor for the ideas, beliefs, and values that legitimizes social arrangements based on production. Marx believed that this ideological superstructure was controlled by the bourgeoisie. By being the ones who influenced the ideological superstructure, they bourgeoisie are also able to keep the working class ignorant to how bad their conditions are. Because of this, Marx wanted to do away with political, theological, legal, and any other ideas that came from the ideological superstructure. In Marxian theory, there are two dominate ideas that explain the class struggle that has made up human history. The first is the social relations of production which describes the social divisions in labor. As a result of the social relations of production class struggles grow more complex. Yet, the bourgeoisie are able to keep the labor class unaware of this through ideological superstructures that provide them with a false

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