Althusser formalized the core problem as economic determination coexisting with superstructural autonomy.

Evidence

But we cannot depart far from Althusser’s judgment on this correspondence, in the lucid “Appendix” to his “Contradiction and Overdetermination” essay in For Marx , which suggests that, despite their many strengths, Engels’s attempts to find a theoretical solution in his correspondence principally have the result of declaring that a solution is not yet to hand, and of reminding us how difficult it is to find. The problem, Althusser suggests, is: how to think the specific relations between the relations of production and the political, juridical, and ideological forms in such a way as to grasp, simultaneously, the “determination by the economic in the last instance” and the “relative autonomy” or effectivity of the superstructures. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 501

Categorization

• DEFINE: Precisely defines the paired concepts ‘determination by the economic in the last instance’ and ‘relative autonomy of the superstructures’ that anchor Hall’s whole analysis.
• XREF: Connects to the Frankfurt School debates over base/superstructure and the autonomy of culture treated in earlier curated selections.