Means of Mental Production
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Means of Mental Production
Means of Mental Production is Karl Marx's term for the mechanisms by which the Accumulating Class control the thought and behaviour of the Working Class. The term is syncretic with the LP term Mechanisms of Compliance.
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Key Terms
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Syncretic Terms
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Non-LP Related Terms
Marxism Terms
Marxism . Conceptive Ideologist, Means of Mental Production, Mode of Production
Notes
Marx introduces the concept in The German Ideology: "The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the Means of Mental Production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the Means of Mental Production are subject to it."[1] Control of the factories, in other words, brings control of the churches, universities, presses, and journals — the institutions in which a society's ideas are manufactured and distributed — and those who own the means of material production thereby rule "also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age."[2]
In the LP framework, the Means of Mental Production are a component of the Means of Reproduction, alongside the Mechanisms of Reproduction and the Relations of Reproduction, within the Mode of Reproduction of the Regime of Accumulation. Where the other components of reproduction renew the labour force and its material conditions across generations, the Means of Mental Production renew consciousness itself, worldview, aspiration, and compliance.
The operators of the Means of Mental Production are the Conceptive Ideologists — the theologians, scholars, textbook writers, publishers, and curriculum designers who draw the boundaries and package them as neutral description. In the Rocket Scientists' Guide to Religion, control of the Means of Mental Production is the mechanism by which authentic, grass-roots spiritual systems are colonized by elites: Tanser, high priest to the autocrat Ardashir, selecting a single Zoroastrian tradition and declaring the emperor "the final arbiter of the Zoroastrian doctrine";[3] Constantine's bishops determining the Christian canon and editing it in the interests of patriarchy;[4] and the modern academic study of religion itself, with its world religions syllabi, its scholarly journals, and its Boundary Fetish.[5] The pattern is constant across centuries: the means change — from hand-copied scripture to the printing press to the algorithmic feed — but the relation does not. Those who own the means of mental production decide which ideas are orthodox, which are heresy, and which never get produced at all.
Quotes
The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the Means of Mental Production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the Means of Mental Production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch. For instance, in an age and in a country where royal power, aristocracy, and bourgeoisie are contending for mastery and where, therefore, mastery is shared, the doctrine of the separation of powers proves to be the dominant idea and is expressed as an “eternal law.”[6]
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Footnotes
- ↑ Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The German Ideology (1845–46; repr., New York: Norton, 1978), https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htm.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Mike Sosteric, Rocket Scientists' Guide to Religion, draft v.095, introductory unit for Athabasca University Sociology 231: The Sociology of Religion (manuscript in preparation; E.T.A. 2027), 50–51. Page references herein are to the draft PDF. Hereafter cited as Sosteric, RSGR draft.
- ↑ Ibid., 52–55, citing Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (New York: HarperOne, 2007).
- ↑ Ibid., 11–14.
- ↑ Karl Marx, The German Ideology (New York: Norton, 1978), https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htm