Identifying Structures

Structuralism essentially holds that reality is structured. Although these structures are invisible, they are the underlying framework of society. The stages, if you like, on which events occur. However, the question arises of how one identifies these structures.

The combination of Marxism and structuralism answers this question - it comes from practice. From political and economic struggle we come up against the basic structures of society, and consequently your experiences of them. The problem arises - how do we transform this experience into knowledge of the structures? Althusser argues, rightly, that this transformation is a very important process and we have too little understanding of how it takes place.

On to Althusser's concept of the structure then. He argues from Marx's identification of an economic infrastructure and various elements forming a superstructure. The structure comprises various levels which are dialectically related. These briefly are outline in the diagram below.

Superstructure

• Theoretical
• Ideological
• Politico-juridical

Infrastructure Economic

These levels are related to each other through external contradictions. Thus something may be happening in the economic level, but our understanding of it will be affected by our ideology. Our actions to alter the economic will depend on this ideological understanding.

While the levels are thus dialectically related, the economic level is determined in the last instance. This means, not that everything in the superstructure is dependent on the economic, but that changes in the economic will affect the other levels. The distinction is primarily one of how the dialectic is used. In the simple mechanistic model, there is no room for dialectical relationships - there is a one-way effect. In the non-Marxist structuralist concept however there is no material base for the structures.

The Althusserian approach thus avoids both of these problems - by having a dialectical framework determined, in the last instance by the economic level.

Beyond the external contradiction outlined here, within each level there are internal contradictions. The dialectic work within the levels through contradiction between instances in each level. Thus in the economic level the contradiction between the forces of production and the relations of production (in capitalism, industry is increasingly social, but ownership is increasingly in one or two hands) will lead to developments independent of the influence of other levels.