User:Menno Harder/Cultural Hegemony

Synopsis Marx *RULING CLASS and RULING IDEAS*
The ruling intellectual force of any society is simultaneously also the class that controls material production. This means that whoever is intellectually stronger over the other will have more power. They rule as thinkers, and are the ones producing ideas and giving structure to society itself by these ruling ideas. They are the dominant force.
The division of labour can be divided into mental and material labour: mental labour is driven by active, concept ideologists, creating ideas and illusions about this class. while the material labour is accepting these ideas and illusions passively and receptively. Hostility between these two classes may occur, but if the whole class itself is endangered this comes to an end.
Examples are given of ruling dominant ideas: during the time of aristocracy the concept of honour and loyalty were dominant, during bourgeoisie the concepts of freedom and equality. These ideas have to have a form of universality in order to survive and also represent them as the only rational, universally valid ones. The class making a revolution represents the whole of society confronting the one ruling class, because it has not yet developed as the particular interest of a particular class.

Synopsis Gramsci *HISTORY of the SUBALTERN CLASSES*
The history of the ruling classes is also the history of the State and groups of States. This historical unity is created out of the relationship between State (political society) and the civil society. The subaltern classes are not unified, therefore their history is intertwined with civil society and thereby with the history of State. The historian must carefully note all these classes, from their very primitive beginnings. The social group is dominating the antagonistic group, it leads allied groups. It must exercise winning power, when it hold this power, it must continue to lead.
The ideological structure of a dominant class is organised by maintaining, defending and developing the theoretical or ideological front. Gramsci names the publishing houses, political newspapers, periodicals of every kind (scientific, literary, philological, popular). The press is the most dynamic part of this ideological structure of the ruling class. But not the only one, as are libraries, schools, clubs or anything else that influences or can influence public opinion.

Gramsci like Marx talks about the ruling class and it's social class, however, Gramsci states it is not only a base and superstructure. The ruling class as such, in Gramsci's believe, must be investigated and recognised as artificial social constructs ruling the social-class. Gramsci's reasoning behind cultural hegemony comes from within each of these classes themselves, wherein each class has it's own societal purpose and is co-existing within the whole of society.

Cultural hegemony is the social hierarchy on which a society is based. Different classes co-exist and work together within one superstructure and may or may not overlap. Each of these classes has a status quo, or, "the way things are", therefore the sense of feeling part of a bigger structure often lacks, making it impossible to either escape or change society on it's whole. In a way the occupy movement is an example of countering cultural hegemony as it surpasses class or socio-economic ideas within one individual given class. It tries to represent more, or most of them (the 99%). However, to work, it still needs to be picked up by the media and keep refreshing, and growing on it's own (a class itself), and is therefore very fragile to keep existing: when either the media, or it's own believes stop spreading because it is not news-worthy anymore, the movement itself also fails to work.

Cultural hegemony, how we are dominated by the ruling class in most layers of our life and perceive them as the way things are, we are OK with our situation, mindlessly floating in the status quo. Occasionally there is a rupture, a cultural outbreak that happens within an existing social structure. Classes shift or cease existing, former small classes become grand and vice versa. The Beat Generation and their ideas, sense of freedom and hedonistic lifestyle sparked and ultimately led to a worldwide counter culture: the Hippie culture. The Summer of Love in San Francisco, 1967 being the climax of this period. However with time this 'counter' became the standard and what seemed to be an all-changing moment in life itself was soon consumed by pop culture. The sincere ideas and basis of this counter culture was massively taken over.
A counterculture can be found in present day life, although it is using different symbols as a smiley face, feathers and beads or a tie dye shirt. Creative commons, the many culture jamming artists and free_culture books are just a few examples of this. You can argue if these are complete lifestyle changes but they certainly are opposing the ruling class in present day culture.
Who are the human beings creating a rupture in society right now, and, just as much as they are rethinking and reshaping thoughts about our culture, opposing the dominant class. The society we live in today is as much shaped by former counter-cultures as it is by our present socio-political system. 'more >>> CtoC