Marxism seeks to explain social phenomena within any given society by analyzing the material conditions and economic activities required to fulfill human material needs. It assumes that the form of economic organization, or mode of production, influences all other social phenomena including wider social relations, political institutions, legal systems, cultural systems, aesthetics and ideologies.
These social relations, together with the economic system, form a base and superstructure. As forces of production (i.e. technology) improve, existing forms of organizing production become obsolete and hinder further progress. Karl Marx wrote: “At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or—this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms—with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto.
