The Base and Superstructure Debate in the Hollywood Communist Party

摘要

The base and superstructure concept developed by Marx and Engels has attracted many interpreters over the years. Most of these have focused on what it reveals about the state. But there is also a stream of writers, from Plekhanov to Eagleton, who have been fascinated with its aesthetic dimensions. Only a handful have tried to apply it to creative workers in cultural industries. The most notable attempt was made by a small group of blacklisted Hollywood screenwriters, in the early 1950s. Their debate capped a century of discourse regarding the cultural ramifications of the base-superstructure concept, from its inception by Marx and Engels, through its transmutation by the Russian Marxists, to its use by Marxists and Communists in the United States.