One concept that really interested me in Marx and Engels' The German Ideology was the discussion on the division of labor in past societies and how the division of mental and material labor created different parts within a class. I think that this is still true today. The rulers within a class act as the thinkers and the workers are "more passive and receptive" (39).
The main idea presented about the passivity of the workers is that they are "the active members of this class... [and] have less time to make up illusions and ideas about themselves" (39). Therefore, the ruling part of the class has the ability to force their own preferred ideology on them. This idea is scary to me because, in my opinion, it is generally true. I feel this way especially after considering the material I am watching and reading in my "Class Inequality" sociology class. The working poor, such as those people who are minimum wage workers for large corporations like Walmart or fast food chains, are working long hours every week at exhausting work that gives them few breaks.
These humans have many desires and needs, yet they are not in an accurate position of power to get any of their ideas heard. Therefore, they let others make up the illusions and ideas about themselves that will predominate a huge amount of people's thinking in the culture. This is how ideology works. It is when people in power makeup illusions that cater to their needs (only—for the most part) and then everyone else starts to believe them too—such as the societal belief that minimum wage workers are lazy or incompetent.
Marx and Engels stated this issue so clearly when they wrote, “The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, consequently, also controls the means of mental production, so that the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are on the whole subject to it” (39). Corporations have all of the means to material production, and therefore the means of mental production. Their workers become subject to their mental production, such as having a low value of their employees and only paying them minimum wage, which is not even a living wage in most states. This becomes the reality for these workers, and it is ideology (pervasive idea of the ruling class) that prevents them from getting fair wages.
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