urgh! essay

...What makes the ideal of commodity fetishism persist and encourage its growth is mass culture. Elites rule the society through the means of leadership and persuasion and not force and bold power as these might bring about resistance. This control over society is commonly referred to as hegemony. The social elites of the capitalist society, namely the capitalists themselves and industrialists, impose and promote ideals that play towards the capitalist movement. These ideals control the thinking of the society and lower classes and influence them. They are usually nothing more than just ideals brought up by the dominant class and are usually ideals of material expression. So that these ideals stick to the society, they represent a common universal interest to all members to the society. They are also represented as the only valid and rational ones. Thus, the people are controlled because they buy into these ideals and have come to take them for granted. As such, they do not question them.

An example of hegemony is employment. While people can primitively live off the land - hunting, gathering and living only on necessities such as food, shelter and water, this is not the case. People work for quite a number of erstwhile luxuries that have been taken for necessities. The idea of employment is hegemonistic because not only do people fail to question it, they actively seek it out. This plays into the hands of the capitalists, who want a source of willing labour. Therefore, mass culture is the culture of the dominant ideals set by the elites of the society for commercial purposes...