BubbaNub : Marx and Althusser

Even though our reading of Marx and Althusser takes us back to examine the ideological structures of other civilizations, to me, the Ideology and concept of hegemony has never been more apparent than in our own American Dream. The American Dream, as Marx puts it, promotes a "false consciousness" that heavily relies on carefully structured ideology to illicit a publics "conscious acquiescence" (35). The American Dream says that we are all entitled to the rights of freedom, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Great principles, except for the fact that our pursuits rarely end in happiness, unless you have the predisposed wealth and educational background of what is approximately the top 10% of America.

So this golden American Dream merely serves the purpose of offering our society an excuse for why our nation runs the way it does, why we need our ditch diggers and dumpster divers. They have created a framework where their subjects are "subjected beings, who submit themselves to a higher authority, and are therefore stripped of all freedom except that of freely accepting his submission" (49). That in itself is our nations "false consciousness" one where the only freedom we had, we chose to give up a long time ago. As Habermas points out, "what we customarily characterize as "public opinion" emerged for the first time in early capitalism as a specific sphere between state and society. One of the primary goals of this bourgeois public sphere was to make political and administrative decisions transparent," something the American Dream and the media that perpetuates it have done all to well.