>writes that while socialism may extend to politics, education, and military life. It does not extend to the social and religious aspects of life. The shaping

>writes that while socialism may extend to politics, education, and military life. It does not extend to the social and religious aspects of life. The shaping of cultural life via the relations to the means of production refers to the shaping of the superstructure by the base, Marx claims. Although Bookchin has his own ideas (that the superstructure is not entirely shaped by the base, as evidenced by societies involving shamanism, something which he claims does not arise out of the economic base) most Marxists believe that every aspect of society is given rise to by material conditions, i.e the relationship of people to their means of sustenance. For the proletariat under capiatalism, this means their culture and way of life is shaped by working in return for wage-labour. However I feel as though Il-Sung may have been hinting at something we already recognise in our own societies; the "American Dream" may be such a substitute for a deity figure which encourages blind faith in the capitalist system, in which "anyone can be anything with enough hard work". So the question is: does Socialism require such a system of belief, or can it as Marx claims go without due to the normalisation of the Socialist mode of production? This dilemma is a common theme of debate within Socialism, with one camp of Orthodox Marxists saying that everything can be explained in terms of the economic base, while communalists and "identity politicians" claim that changing the relationship to the MoP does little to eradicate the cause of non-economic power structures, including shamanism, racism, sexism etc.