1 See Roemer, John, ed., Analytical Marxism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1986), 1-2Google Scholar, part of the series ‘Studies in Marxism and Social Theory’ that Roemer edits with G. A. Cohen and Jon Elster. Although Roemer’s definition is broad, he and his fellow editors can claim the right, if anyone can, to say what counts as analytical Marxism. On the other hand, the fact that there are more analysts than Marxists in the most recent addition to their series raises an interesting question about what sort of intellectual current, if any, the label ‘analytical Marxism’ is supposed to identify. See Taylor, Michael, ed., Rationality and Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1988)Google Scholar.

2 Elster, Jon, Making Sense of Marx (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1985), 473Google Scholar

3 Ibid.

4 Abstractly considered, the subordinate classes might acquiesce in the status quo anyway out of fear, laziness, habit, or want of faith in the feasibility of reform or of an alternative socioeconomic order. They might perceive the costs of changing existing arrangements to be too high, or the free-rider problem might thwart collective action. Although important enough in their own right, in the complete absence of belief in the legitimacy of the prevailing order none of these considerations would guarantee much in the way of long-term stability.

5 I should add that although I use Elster to help focus my discussion, it is Elster’s problem, rather than Elster, that is my subject. In fact, in seeking to answer Elster’s question, I have been helped by his rich and suggestive book, and I suspect that he would not disagree with everything that I have to say.

6 If, however, the mechanisms in different societies were totally heterogeneous, then the historical materialist theorem that the ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas would lose its claim to lawfulness. It would still be a truth that, in each of the types of socioeconomic system that have marked human history, the ruling ideas have been those of the ruling class. And it could also be the case that, with regard to each of these types, social-scientific laws of a historically delimited sort guarantee that the ideas of its ruling class are the dominant ones. But if the mechanisms making the ruling class’s ideas the ruling ones were radically different in each type of society, then while it would be a true trans-historical generalization that ruling-class ideas prevail, this would not be a lawlike statement capable of supporting counterfactuals.

Thus, while the mechanisms may differ in different societies, historical materialism anticipates that at a certain level of abstraction there will be similarities and parallels between them. The particular processes at work in a given type of system might thus be seen as species of genera that also characterize other socioeconomic systems. At the generic level, then, historical materialism would identify various mechanisms as underwriting the hegemony of ruling-class ideas, but it could allow the relative explanatory balance of these mechanisms, as well as the specific forms they take, to be a function of the particular mode of production in question. This balance and these forms might also vary further in light of the historically specific features of the actual social formation in which that mode of production operates. And even if a historically unique process was involved in explaining why in a given society ruling-class ideas prevail, that is, a process unrelated to those in any other type of society, trans-historical lawfulness could still be preserved if the sorts of mechanism at work in other societies would have accounted for the dominance of ruling-class ideas in that society, had those mechanisms not been preempted (in the same direction, as it were) by the process unique to that particular society.

7 Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick, Collected Works, Vol. 11 (New York: International Publishers 1979), 128Google Scholar

8 Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick, Collected Works, Vol. 5 (New York: International Publishers 1976), 59Google Scholar

9 In the United States, for instance, a small number of enormously large corporations owns the mass media and the organs of popular culture. For some figures, see Parenti, Michael, Democracy for the Few, 5th ed. (New York: St. Martin’s 1988), 156-8Google Scholar, and Herman, Edward S. and Chomsky, Noam, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon 1988), 4-14.Google Scholar

10 Marxists typically see this as a result of various popular struggles, but it may also reflect the interest of the wealthy and privileged in defending certain personal freedoms from state encroachment.

11 The privileged position of business and the myriad ways in which its interests and expectations shape public politics and circumscribe state policy are staples of non-Marxist political science. See, for instance, Lindblom, Charles E., Politics and Markets (New York: Basic Books 1977)Google Scholar.

12 See Herman and Chomsky, Ch. 1.

13 Contrast Ralph Miliband’s statement that ‘whatever else the immense output of the mass media is intended to achieve, it is also intended to help prevent the development of class-consciousness in the working-class’ (Marxism and Politics [Oxford: Oxford University Press 1977], 50; emphasis altered).

14 Consider, for example, Veyne’s discussion of the ancient Romans’ belief in the divinity of their rulers. Veyne, Paul, Le Pain et le Cirque (Paris: Le Seuil 1976), 310ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar; Elster, 505.

15 Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick, Collected Works, Vol. 3 (New York: International Publishers 1975), 175Google Scholar

16 Ibid.

17 Marx and Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 5, 59

18 Marx, Karl, Capital, Vol. 1, Fowkes, Ben, trans. (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1976), 899Google Scholar

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid., 719

21 Marx, Karl, Capital, Vol. 3 (Moscow: Progress Publisher 1971), 792Google Scholar

22 This essay is indebted to the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of West Germany for its financial support and to Carolyn M. Clark, G. A. Cohen, and Robert X. Ware for their helpful comments.