in feudalism the superstructure was like kings and nobles and the church and shit and now it’s news media and billionaires and hillary clinton and shit
That's where Debord becomes interesting. Historical materialism works as far back as you can reasonably deduce some division of labour. The economic structures generating the social ones have been around since the first time one person needed to manipulate another into accepting less for more. When you understand base and superstructure as spectacle, the mechanics of that seduction and its parasitic attachment to our needs and its substitution of them for imagery representing them, it feels as holistic to me as ecology.
That's where Debord becomes interesting. Historical materialism works as far back as you can reasonably deduce some division of labour. The economic structures generating the social ones have been around since the first time one person needed to manipulate another into accepting less for more. When you understand base and superstructure as spectacle, the mechanics of that seduction and its parasitic attachment to our needs and its substitution of them for imagery representing them, it feels as holistic to me as ecology.