culture. The dominant class controls the process of production and through this the prevalent ideas of the period. In every epoch, the ideas that rule are the ideas of the ruling class. Just as the members of this class rule as a class, so do they also rule as thinkers and as producers of ideas. The dominant class is in fact the only class in society that has the opportunity to assume control over the social, political, ethical, and aesthetic spheres of human behavior. This class is wealthy and free from the necessity to work. It alone can thus afford activities unrelated to the struggle for subsistence.
Within the ruling class there is a group of intellectuals who earn their livelihood by promoting class ideology. These purveyors of class ideas can sometimes come into conflict with the "active" members of the class, or with those who control and manage the production process. While Marx and Engels find that the ruling class controls the intellectual forces and thus controls ideology, it is just as true to say that ideology controls the ruling class. There is a circularity about the process as described by Marx and Engels, and just as they criticize ideology in the riling class, so do they create an ideology of their own by means of that criticism.
#2 The Declaration of Independence was adopted in 1776 as a statement of the Second Continental Congress of the independence of the American colonies from British rule. Thomas Jefferson wrote the first draft, and ideas were then incorporated from John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. The document was adopted on July 4, and along with success in the American Revolution, the Declaration ushered in a new political age. The ideas embodied in the Declaration of Independence today infuse the way we think about government, politics, and justice because those ideas were adapted to the Constitution and to the government formed by the Founding Fathers.
The idea of the social con...