BASE and superstructure refer to the reciprocal relationship and interaction between the ever-changing ways that humans collectively get their living (“the forces and relations of production”) and the way they think and behave (ideology, culture, social institutions and the state).

Speaking at Marx’s grave in Highgate Cemetery just three days after his death in March 1883, Engels asserted what is probably Marx’s most profound yet at the same time simple theoretical contribution to human knowledge:

“Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that humans must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before they can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc; that therefore the production of the immediate material means, and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch, form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of which they must, therefore, be explained, instead of vice versa, as had hitherto been the case.”