Base and Superstructure

Marx uses the image of a Base-Superstructure contrast to explain how Economic relations determine Political ones.  On that analysis, for example, institutional conditions in the U. S., such as the impunity of illegal activity of the financial sector, and the codifications of a corporation as a "person", and spending money as "free speech", reflect the inequalities at the Base.  More concisely, the thesis disputes, for two reasons, the popular identification of Capitalism and Democracy.  First, since the former is an Economic system, and the latter is a Political one, they are distinguished as Base and Superstructure.  Second, and more important, since the latter, unlike the former, entails Equality, they do not even correspond as Base and Superstructure.  Rather, the Political system that is the Superstructure of Capitalism is Oligarchy, or, more precisely, Plutocracy, while the Base of Democracy can be only the system which entails Economic Equality, namely Socialism.