Like Kurt, I'm pretty taken with Williams's argument that we can't disregard the superstructure as being less important than the base in terms of the proliferation of dominant modes of production. Maybe it's because of the fact that Williams is the first person we're reading in this section who explicitly identifies himself as concerned with literary and cultural criticism, but he's really struck a chord with me by pointing out that the superstructure is absolutely and necessarily central to cultural proliferation, and that if we "dismiss as superstructural, and in that sense as merely secondary" (35) everything but the basic modes of material production, we miss out on an important facet of the means by which dominant cultural forms and hegemonic structures reproduce. Like I said, I think this is where Williams's interest in literary and cultural criticism comes in and allows him to give us this interesting perspective...as he points out, Marx was focused on the means of material production; but ever since I began dabbling in this stuff I've been more interested (presumably like Williams, and like all of us in class too) in the means of cultural (re)production. So really, shouldn't the superstructure be where I'm looking?

Finally, I'd like to suggest another analogue to the piano example Williams discusses--because, like Kurt, I am a bit of a "course-issue whore," let's think about radio or television...who has a greater role in the reproduction of systems of cultural dominance, the guy who builds the radio (if it's even still a guy and not a machine; it's been some time since I've been in a radio factory ha ha ha) or Rush Limbaugh? The person(/machine) who installs the A/V jacks into the back of a TV, or a televangelist (or even the cast of "Friends")?