The dominant ideas of an age tend to be those of its dominant class, because those who control material production also control the production of ideas.
Marx and Engels set it out in The German Ideology, written in 1845 and 1846 and not published until 1932: the class that is the ruling material force of a society is also its ruling intellectual force. Their examples included divine right under monarchy and free contract under capitalism, each presented as universal truth by the class it served.
In practice
- A country's most widely read newspapers belong to a handful of wealthy proprietors, and their editorial lines seldom favour higher taxes on wealth.
- A workplace's sense of what counts as a reasonable workload is set by the people who assign the work rather than the people who do it.
- Possible explanations
- One explanation is ownership: those with resources fund universities, publishers and media, so ideas that suit them find sponsors more easily. Another is that ideas justifying an existing order are repeated by the people it rewards. A third is familiarity, which makes existing arrangements seem natural.
- In its favour
- Helps explain why beliefs about fairness often line up with the interests of those who benefit, and anticipates later research on media ownership and elite influence. A standard starting point in the sociology of knowledge.
- Against it
- Hard to test and easy to apply to any belief one dislikes. Dominant ideas are repeatedly challenged from below, Marxism among them, and many members of wealthy classes hold views against their material interest.
- Standing
- Debated between those who treat it as a founding insight of the sociology of knowledge and those who find it unfalsifiable. Compare cultural hegemony and base and superstructure.
- Subject
- Sociology & Culture
- Essay
- How societies hold together, sort people, and change