Bubbles- 10/25

In class on Thursday we spent most of our time discussing ideology and the ruling class. We spoke about Marx statement “the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas: the class which is ruling material force of society is at the same time its ruling intellectual force,” but what we have most trouble in is defining the ruling class. What is the ruling class, the class with the most money, or the majority of the people? In class we were shown different images and different words and we were to vote which image or which word represented the ruling class. For instance, an image of champagne versus an image of a bottle of Budweiser, the class was basically divided in which image represented the ruling class. Some thought the champagne because it represents wealth and class, and other chose the bottle of Budweiser because it is a brand that everyone knows and everyone drinks. We were also shown words such as fast versus slow, new versus old, or many versus few, and we had to decide which term meant “better.” Again, the class was divided. So, who does rule? Which one is better? Another thing I found interesting was that if there is a ruling class which defines our ideologies, then why was the class divided into two when shown the images an words? Shouldn’t we all have had the same ideas about them if there was a defined ideology that the “ruling class” set? I do believe that there I some higher force, which may or may not be “the ruling class” that gives us direction, such as Althusser’s ISA’s and RSA’s but I think it would be interesting to further investigate our discussion of who is the ruling class and if there truly is one.