Later Marx saw superstructures as relatively autonomous rather than mechanically determined

Evidence

Thus, in this period, Marx’s “clarification” turns our attention in a new direction. He is concerned, now, with the necessary complexity of the social formations of advancing capitalism and of the relations between its different levels. He is concerned with the “unevenness,” the non-immediate correspondences, between these levels which remain, nevertheless, connected. He is concerned with the functions which, specifically, the superstructures “perform” in relation either to the maintenance and reproduction, or to the retardation of the development, of capitalist social relations: and with the fact that these functions not only appear in ever-more complex forms, but that, at a certain stage of their development, may actually require the non-immediacy—the “relative autonomy”—they exhibit. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 509

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Marx’s concept of the ‘relative autonomy’ of superstructures and how it departs from the earlier mechanical base-superstructure model.