ABSTRACT
The failure of the working class in the developed countries to rise up against the capitalist system has given the idea of false consciousness new currency. The New Left, in particular, has argued that the ruling classes maintain themselves in power as a result of what the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci had called their “cultural hegemony,” especially through control of the system of education and the media of communication. In this way the rulers gain the “consent and acquiescence” 1 of the subordinate groups; they remain dominant by creating in the latter false consciousness. The elites of capitalist society, writes the political scientist Michael Parenti, win the empowering responses of the many through a variety of socializing techniques, by keeping tight control over society’s values, symbols, and the flow of information. Culture thus becomes “a vital instrument of class power.” 2
