Structure and superstructure connect only through historically specific mechanisms, not automatic correspondence.

Evidence

This, then, depends, not on a presumed, necessary, or a priori correspondence between (economic) structure and (political and ideological) superstructures but precisely on those historically specific mechanisms—and the concrete analysis of those historical “moments”—through which such a normative relationship between structure and superstructures comes to be forged. For Gramsci, the object of analysis is always the specificity of this “structure-superstructure” complex—though as a historically concrete articulation. … This is a rigorously non-reductionist conception: “How then could the whole system of superstructures be understood as distinctions within politics, and the introduction of the concept of distinction into a philosophy of praxis hence be justified? — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 626

Categorization

• DEFINE: Pins down the non-reductionist core of Gramsci’s structure-superstructure complex — that there is no a priori economic correspondence.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that structure-superstructure relations are ‘historically concrete articulations’ rather than necessary correspondences is a paradigm-shifting method for analyzing any political formation, not merely a definition.
• XREF: connects to: Structure is a historical stage of group self-making, not a timeless property. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 532