GeekinthePink

Since we read Walter Benjamin before Karl Marx, I am reminded strongly of Benjamin as I'm reading Marx. But one of the fascinating things is that Marx doesn't sound evil or extreme; he sounds like he is genuinely trying to improve the class of society. Ideology, he says, makes up the central backbone of society. "The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas: i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society is at the same time its ruling intellectual force." (Engels, Marx, 39) Of course, as long as the "ruling class" remains in place, hegemony cannot be avoided; and even within the class of passivity and receptiveness, the rift that develops between those who are passive and those who lean toward the side of opposition, these vanish with the appearance of the popular ideals, because the ruling class' power is so dominant over the power of this minute, insignificant subgroup of ideas.
I like his general principle--it is not to make everyone the same, but to decimate the dominating power of the universal idea accepted by the masses (which is put in place by the dominating, ruling class but does not represent all of its constituents).
However, he does go wrong with his methods. In his ideology, he empowers the differing class to rise to the position of the ruling class. “Its victory, therefore, benefits also many individuals of other classes which are not winning a dominant position, but only insofar as it now enables these individuals to raise themselves into the ruling class.” (Marx, 40) Now, this advantage puts everyone at a disadvantage; now, we still have one dominant class with mass reproduced ideas and a universal ideology. True, there is not more than one class of people, but neither is there power for the dominant class. The dominant class must be dumbed down for both the original dominating class and the “new ruling class.” Marx argues that as soon as class and distinctions no longer exist, and essentially capitalism is no longer in place, that general interest need not be represented as “ruling,” then the ruling of the class can be disintegrated. I would imagine he would support Lyotard, in theory, with his ideas of metanarratives, and decentralicized society, but in practicality, he is not postmodern; post-modern exists in difference and history and in the fact that there should be plenty of roles in one hand. Although Marx talks a good game about letting everyone possess consciousness and the “doctrine of the separation of powers,” what he really describes is getting rid of the individual stories and force-feeding law down people’s throats—at gun point.