The Ruling Class

In every epoch, the ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas. The class with the ruling material force is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.

The class which controls material production also has control of mental production at the same time.

• The ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to the ruling ideas.

The ruling ideas are nothing more than the idea-based expression of the dominant material relationships*.

Superphysics Note

In our Supersociology, the ruling ideas are based on the 4 Cycles, one manifestation of which is material relationship.

Hence the ruling class is the ruling class because of its ideas of dominance in the relationships.

The individuals composing the ruling class have consciousness among other things, and therefore think. They:

• rule as thinkers
• rule as producers of ideas
• regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age.

Thus, their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch.

They determine the extent and compass of an epoch in its whole range.

For instance, in an age when royal power, aristocracy, and bourgeoisie are sharing the mastery, the doctrine of the separation of powers becomes the dominant idea, and is expressed as an “eternal law.”

The division of labour is one of the chief forces of history up till now. It manifests also in the ruling class as the division of mental and material labour.

Inside this class, one part appears as the thinkers.

• They are the active, conceptive ideologists, who make the perfecting of the illusion of the class about itself their chief source of livelihood.

The other part is made up of those who have less time to make up illusions and ideas about themselves.

• This cleavage can even develop into a certain opposition and hostility between the two parts.
• This hostility endangers this class which automatically comes to nothing.

The existence of revolutionary ideas in a particular period presupposes the existence of a revolutionary class*.

Superphysics Note

In social cycles model, this class is commonly either the worker or warrior class.

In the course of history, the ruling class imposes the dominant ideas.

• When the aristocracy was dominant, the concepts honour, loyalty, etc. were dominant
• When the bourgeoisie was dominant, the concepts freedom, equality, etc. were dominant

That is why, in my analysis of history, I detach the ideas of the ruling class. I thus ignore the individuals and world conditions which are the source of the ideas.

This conception of history is common to all historians, particularly since the 18th century.

Each new ruling class is compelled to represent its interest as the common interest of all of society, so that achieve its goals. It has to:

• give its ideas the form of universality, and
• represent them as the only rational, universally valid ones.

The class making a revolution appears to represent all of society only because it is opposed to the old ruling class. It appears as the whole mass of society confronting the one ruling class.

The class doing the revolution can do this because its interest really is more connected with the common interest of all other non-ruling classes.

Therefore, its victory benefits also many individuals of the other classes that do not have a dominant position, by allowing them to raise themselves into the ruling class.

• When the French bourgeoisie overthrew the aristocracy, it allowed many proletarians who became bourgeois to raise themselves above the proletariat

Every new class, therefore, achieves its hegemony only on a broader basis than that of the previous ruling class. Whereas, the opposition non-ruling class develops all the more sharply and profoundly against the new ruling class.

Both these things mean that the class that struggles against this new ruling class should have a more decided and radical negation of the previous social conditions than all previous opposition classes.

The idea that the rule of a certain class is only the rule of certain ideas naturally ends as soon as class rule ceases. This end happens when it is no longer necessary to represent a particular interest as the “general interest”.

In this way, the ruling ideas are separated from the ruling individuals, and nost importantly, from the relationships of the mode of production.

• This leads to the conclusion that history is always under the sway of ideas.
• This makes it easy to abstract away from these various ideas the actual idea or notion behind it.

• This makes it easy to understand that all these separate ideas are “forms of self-determination”.

It follows that all the relationships of men can be derived from the concept of man.

This has been done by the speculative philosophers. Hegel confesses at the end of the Geschichtsphilosophie that he “has considered the progress of the concept only” and has represented in history the “true theodicy.” (p.446.)

One can go back again to the producers of the “concept” to the theorists, ideologists and philosophers. He will realize that they have at all times been dominant in history. This was Hegel’s conclusion.

The whole trick of proving the hegemony of the spirit in history (hierarchy Stirner calls it) is thus confined to the following 3 efforts.

1. One must separate the ideas of those ruling for empirical reasons, under empirical conditions and as empirical individuals, from these actual rulers, and thus recognise the rule of ideas or illusions in history.

2. One must bring an order into this rule of ideas, prove a mystical connection among the successive ruling ideas, which is managed by understanding them as “acts of self-determination on the part of the concept”

(this is possible because by virtue of their empirical basis these ideas are really connected with one another and because, conceived as mere ideas, they become self-distinctions, distinctions made by thought).

3. One must remove the mystical appearance of this “self-determining concept” and change it into a person – “Self-Consciousness”

To be thoroughly materialistic he must convert it into a series of persons who represent the “concept” in history:

• the “thinkers”
• the “philosophers”
• the ideologists (the manufacturers of history)
• the “council of guardians” as the rulers.

Thus the whole body of materialistic elements has been removed from history and now full rein can be given to the speculative steed.

Whilst in ordinary life every shopkeeper is very well able to distinguish between what somebody professes to be and what he really is, our historians have not yet won even this trivial insight. They take every epoch at its word and believe that everything it says and imagines about itself is true.

This historical method reigned in Germany because of its connection with the illusion of ideologists in general.

Example are:

• the illusions of the jurist
• the illusions of politicians from the dogmatic dreamings and distortions of these fellows

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In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations.

• These are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production.

The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society.

• It is the real foundation of the legal and political superstructure
• Definite forms of social consciousness correspond to this economic structure.

The mode of production of material life sets the conditions for the general process of social, political and intellectual life.

It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.

At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production.

• This creates the property relations within the framework.
• From forms of development of the productive forces, these relations turn into their fetters.

Social Revolution

Then begins an era of social revolution.

The changes in the economic foundation sooner or later transforms the whole immense superstructure.

In studying such transformations, we must always distinguish between:

• the material transformation of the economic conditions of production
  • This can be determined with the precision of natural science
• the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic conditions

In short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.

Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of production and the relations of production." [Marx (1968b), pp.181-82. Bold emphasis added.]