Treating technical instruments as the base generates absurd structure-superstructure category confusions

Evidence

If one starts from this baroque way of thinking a whole series of baroque questions are thrown up. For example, are libraries structure or superstructure? Or the specialised laboratories of scientists? If it can be maintained that an art or a science is developed through the developments of its technical instruments, why could one not maintain quite the contrary or argue that certain instrumental forms are structure and superstructure at the same time? Thus it could be said that certain superstructures have a particular structure of their own while remaining superstructures. The art of typography would be the material structure of a whole series of ideologies, indeed of all ideologies, and the existence of the printing industry would be sufficient to provide a materialistic justification of the whole of history. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1636

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• DEFINE: Clarifies the structure/superstructure distinction by showing its misuse produces absurd categorizations like whether libraries count as base or superstructure.