The paper probes the relationship between the institutional and the material dimensions of the ‘material constitution’.The analysis centres on two readings of that relationship that are offered first by structuralist and then by Hegelian strands of Marxist theory; thereafter it transfers Luhmann’s discussion of ‘semantics and structures’ to constitutional semantics and the ‘underlying’ material structures in order to offer an account of how the improbable dynamic between materiality and constitutionality might be rendered. The ‘materialist turn’ thereby re-orients constitutional thought to the material practices of the political economy and constitutional formation attaches to changing dynamics in the material relations of production and social reproduction.