Ruling Class and Ruling Ideas

        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. The class which has the means of material
        production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of
        mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those
        who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas
        are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material
        relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence
        of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the
        ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class
        possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar,
        therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of
        an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence
        among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and
        regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their
        ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch. For instance, in an age and in a
        country where royal power, aristocracy, and bourgeoisie are contending for
        mastery and where, therefore, mastery is shared, the doctrine of the
        separation of powers proves to be the dominant idea and is expressed as
        an "eternal law".

        The division of labour, which we already saw above as one of the chief
        forces of history up till now, manifests itself also in the ruling class as the
        division of mental and material labour, so that inside this class one part
        appears as the thinkers of the class (its active, conceptive ideologists, who
        make the perfecting of the illusion of the class about itself their chief source
        of livelihood), while the others' attitude to these ideas and illusions is more
        passive and receptive, because they are in reality the active members of
        this class and have less time to make up illusions and ideas about
        themselves. Within this class this cleavage can even develop into a certain
        opposition and hostility between the two parts, which, however, in the case
        of a practical collision, in which the class itself is endangered,
        automatically comes to nothing, in which case there also vanishes the
        semblance that the ruling ideas were not the ideas of the ruling class and
        had a power distinct from the power of this class. The existence of
        revolutionary ideas in a particular period presupposes the existence of a
        revolutionary class; about the premises for the latter sufficient has already
        been said above.

        If now in considering the course of history we detach the ideas of the ruling
        class from the ruling class itself and attribute to them an independent
        existence, if we confine ourselves to saying that these or those ideas were
        dominant at a given time, without bothering ourselves about the conditions
        of production and the producers of these ideas, if we thus ignore the
        individuals and world conditions which are the source of the ideas, we can
        say, for instance, that during the time that the aristocracy was dominant,
        the concepts honour, loyalty, etc. were dominant, during the dominance of
        the bourgeoisie the concepts freedom, equality, etc. The ruling class itself
        on the whole Imagines this to be so. This conception of history, which is
        common to all historians, particularly since the eighteenth century, will
        necessarily come up against the phenomenon that increasingly abstract
        ideas hold sway, i.e. ideas which increasingly take on the form of
        universality. For each new class which puts itself in the place of one ruling
        before it, is compelled, merely in order to carry through its aim, to
        represent its interest as the common interest of all the members of society,
        that is, expressed in ideal form: 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 from the very start, if only because
        it is opposed to a class, not as a class but as the representative of the
        whole of society; it appears as the whole mass of society confronting the
        one ruling class. [2] It can do this because, to start with, its interest really is
        more connected with the common interest of all other non-ruling classes,
        because under the pressure of hitherto existing conditions its interest has
        not yet been able to develop as the particular interest of a particular class.
        Its victory, therefore, benefits also many individuals of the other classes
        which are not winning a dominant position, but only insofar as it now puts
        these individuals in a position to raise themselves into the ruling class.
        When the French bourgeoisie overthrew the power of the aristocracy, it
        thereby made it possible for many proletarians to raise themselves above
        the proletariat, but only insofar as they become bourgeois. Every new
        class, therefore, achieves its hegemony only on a broader basis than that
        of the class ruling previously, whereas the opposition of the non-ruling
        class against the new ruling class later develops all the more sharply and
        profoundly. Both these things determine the fact that the struggle to be
        waged against this new ruling class, in its turn, aims at a more decided
        and radical negation of the previous conditions of society than could all
        previous classes which sought to rule.

        This whole semblance, that the rule of a certain class is only the rule of
        certain ideas, comes to a natural end, of course, as soon as class rule in
        general ceases to be the form in which society is organised, that is to say,
        as soon as it is no longer necessary to represent a particular interest as
        general or the "general interest" as ruling.

        Once the ruling ideas have been separated from the ruling individuals and,
        above all, from the relationships which result from a given stage of the
        mode of production, and in this way the conclusion has been reached that
        history is always under the sway of ideas, it is very easy to abstract from
        these various ideas "the idea", the notion, etc. as the dominant force in
        history, and thus to understand all these separate ideas and concepts as
        "forms of self-determination" on the part of the concept developing in
        history. It follows then naturally, too, that all the relationships of men can be
        derived from the concept of man, man as conceived, the essence of man,
        Man. This has been done by the speculative philosophers. Hegel himself
        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.) Now one can go back again to the producers of the
        "concept", to the theorists, ideologists and philosophers, and one comes
        then to the conclusion that the philosophers, the thinkers as such, have at
        all times been dominant in history: a conclusion, as we see, already
        expressed by Hegel. The whole trick of proving the hegemony of the spirit
        in history (hierarchy Stirner calls it) is thus confirmed to the following three
        efforts.

        No. 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.

        No. 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).

        No. 3. To remove the mystical appearance of this "self-determining
        concept" it is changed into a person -- "Self-Consciousness" -- or, to
        appear thoroughly materialistic, into a series of persons, who represent the
        "concept" in history, into the "thinkers", the "philosophers", the ideologists,
        who again are understood as the manufacturers of history, as 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 which reigned in Germany, and especially the
        reason why, must be understood from its connection with the illusion of
        ideologists in general, e.g. the illusions of the jurist, politicians (of the
        practical statesmen among them, too), from the dogmatic dreamings and
        distortions of these fellows; this is explained perfectly easily from their
        practical position in life, their job, and the division of labour.