ABSTRACT
Marx’s account of society is about its structure and its development, and also about our ideas of these things. This is not simply an account of the social ‘superstructure’, as distinct from the economic ‘base’. Consciousness is not something ‘superstructural’ in a straightforward way: to say that would be to make the absurd claim that the activity of production is an unconscious one. In fact, human labour involves more than an awareness of one’s immediate activity and environment: it implies ideas about the general relations within which these exist. Conversely the ‘superstructure’ of society is not just a mental phenomenon: it too consists in activities, patterns of behaviour and whole forms of life. Education is an instance which brings out this fact very clearly. So, in considering the further implications of historical materialism, we need to explore the concept of ‘ideology’ and see how it is linked with one of the important elements of the social superstructure: education.
