Marx: the consciousness and the social existence that determines consciousness

[ish mailian]

In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into
definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely
relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the
development of their material forces of production. The totality of
these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of
society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political
superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social
consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the
general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not
the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their
social existence that determines their consciousness. 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.
>From forms of development of the productive forces these relations
turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The
changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the
transformation of the whole immense superstructure.

In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish
between the material transformation of the economic conditions of
production, which can be determined with the precision of natural
science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic
– in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this
conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by
what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of
transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this
consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material
life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of
production and the relations of production. No social order is ever
destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient
have been developed, and new superior relations of production never
replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence
have matured within the framework of the old society.

Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to
solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem
itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are
already present or at least in the course of formation.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm
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