What Is Karl Marx Ruling Class

In the Karl Marx essay “Ruling Class and Ruling Ideas” from The German Ideoogy, Marx argues that the ruling class, through their cultural and media control, have the ability to shape the ideology of the common man. Marx’s thoughts on the ruling class’s control over public opinion still hold true more than a century after his writing. In 2009, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) fell victim to a smear campaign by Fox News, Brietbart, and other conservative media outlets using highly-edited sting video clips to stop ACORN from mobilizing low-income and minority voters. The public’s blind and unquestioning acceptance of these outlets’ ultimately false allegations as fact proves Marx’s idea that the ruling class has
the power to craft public opinion. This paper will provide background on the ACORN “scandal”, a discussion on media coverage, and evidence of popular misinformation.
Background
ACORN, which described themselves as “a non-profit, non-partisan social justice organization,” was an early form of today’s social organizing movement (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, Inc.).
Founded in 1970, ACORN was a nationwide network of organizations focused on eliminating poverty; it received federal funds from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for portions of its operations (Farrell). Organizations like ACORN seek to increase the influence of lower social class Americans by organizing their involvement in government and encouraging the use of public services. Despite ACORN’s non-partisan, non-profit status, they still engaged in electoral politics by operating voter registration drives, initiating ballot measures, and lobbying in support of their progressive policy
agenda. ACORN had long been viewed with ire by conservatives. ACORN spent a great deal of time encouraging and assisting low-income families to take advantage of social welfare programs, specifically tax assistance and public housing programs. ACORN coordinated with the labor movement to increase the minimum wage via ballot initiative in multiple states (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, Inc.). These sort of programs and policies often drew criticism from conservatives for redistributing wealth and exposing the class divide. Most opposition to ACORN surrounds its involvement in the 2008 Presidential Election; ACORN worked aggressively to register and turnout voters. ACORN’s core audience often consisted of left-leaning, low-income voters that likely turned out in support of President Barack Obama; conservatives questioned this activity as ACORN received federal funds for its public assistance programs. Most glaringly offensive to conservatives is President Obama’s previous legal representation of a Chicago ACORN affiliate. Amid allegations of voter-fraud from John McCain’s failed presidential campaign, ACORN had become the prime target for conservatives (Fears and Leonnig). Conservative activists Hanna Giles and James O’Keefe, enraged by ACORN’s activities assisting those in-need and potentially playing a role in President Obama’s election, embarked on a project to expose corruption in the organization. Claiming to be a prostitute and pimp, Giles and O’Keefe visited some ACORN offices in an attempt to catch workers engaging in illicit activities. While filming, Giles and O’Keefe enlisted the support of ACORN staff to hide their intent to purchase a house for use as a brothel (Fears and Leonnig). The two went on to publish their videos on the conservative Breitbart network’s website BigGovernment.com; these videos were heavily edited to show ACORN workers attempting to assist criminals setup a child trafficking operation (Farrell).
The raw, unedited videos were turned over to the California Department of Justice for investigation. In a report released by California Attorney General Jerry Brown, it was revealed that the videos severely misrepresented the actions of ACORN workers. In varying scenarios, ACORN workers had reported suspicious activity to the authorities, or O’Keefe had portrayed a far different character in the raw footage than in the released videos. Despite the questionable nature of the video evidence, Attorney General Brown’s investigation revealed some unrelated cases of potential non-criminal violations by ACORN workers (Office of the Attorney General).
Media Coverage Conservative pundits argued that the ACORN scandal wasn’t adequately covered and that the ruling media elites showed a positive bias towards ACORN. Joshua Rhett Miller wrote a piece for Fox News that attempted to highlight several instances of the so-called “mainstream media” deprioritizing the story and relying on press wire reporting; in his piece, he provides examples of other supposed “scandals” that ravaged the conservative media but received minimal coverage from supposedly better-performing competitors. Miller conveniently forgets that Fox News has become part of the mainstream media. During the height of the ACORN scandal in 2009, Fox News was the unquestionable ratings leader with a primetime viewership of 2.25 million, more than supposedly liberal counterparts CNN and MSNBC combined. The since-cancelled Glenn Beck Program, which dedicated much of its time to ACORN, was holding 2.4 million viewers each night (Shea).
The criticism of other media outlets by Fox News and associated pundits is further invalidated by the filmmakers’ efforts to keep the story exclusive to friendly outlets. Andrew Breitbart, creator of BigGovernment.com, revealed in The Washington Times that he had advised the filmmakers on a release strategy that would not only portray ACORN in the worst possible light, but also force NBC, ABC, and CBS to report their message as crafted. Breitbart boasts about how they cooperated with Fox News to interview the filmmakers and release the story as truth before any ethics-bound journalist had the opportunity to investigate and verify the story.
The actions of Fox News, Breitbart, and the filmmakers in the ACORN scandal provide an example of Marx’s ruling class. These parties controlled the video source of the ACORN scandal and were able to selectively edit and present these videos in a way that shaped a story conforming to their agenda. In their crusade to destroy ACORN, these parties colluded to not only expose the story without meeting public expectations for ethical journalism, they decided to blast the scandal with wide coverage before sharing information with other outlets. With their power over the source and the television sets of many Americans, these select few were able to decide what messaging made its way to the public’s eyes. Fox News and affiliates managed to sell the story to the people before real journalists and investigators had the ability to review the long-secret raw footage and come to the conclusion that the story had been highly manipulated and many allegations were false. Perhaps ACORN would still be in operation today if California Attorney General Brown had access to the film earlier in the media crusade.
Misinformation
Simply making sense of the ACORN scandal in 2014 is a difficult task, because so many sources are tainted with the widespread misconceptions about ACORN. The negative tone used by the ruling class against ACORN managed to persuade representatives in Congress into blind belief of misdoing by the organization. Representative Michele Bachmann made a popularly recited false claim that ACORN and its supposedly fraudulent voter registration efforts could be the recipient of $8.5 billion in federal economic stimulus funds; as it turns out, this was the maximum grantable amount that some ACORN affiliates could have applied for with the sole purpose of creating or renovating affordable housing units (Farley, Bachmann claims ACORN has access to $8.5 billion in federal money). Most news outlets claimed that filmmakers Giles and O’Keefe had entered ACORN offices dressed in opulent costumes displayed at the beginning of the videos; in reality, the two had presented themselves in professional attire and O’Keefe didn’t describe himself as a “pimp” to the ACORN workers (Office of the Attorney General). A great deal of the ACORN misinformation came from Fox News’s Glenn Beck Program, where Beck made several false allegations about ACORN collusion with the United States Census Bureau, White House staffers, and President Obama (Farley, Glenn Beck's Greatest Hits (and Misses)). The ruling class’s efforts to defame ACORN had a noticeable effect on popular opinion. The United States Census Bureau, which had enlisted the support of ACORN for the 2010 Census, cut ties with ACORN. Ian Urbina of The New York Times reported that funding sources for ACORN were drying up on all fronts and poised to force the organization into bankruptcy; affiliate organizations starting forking off under new names in an attempt to stop the funding bleed. Republicans in the house led an effort to bar ACORN from receiving federal grants; their efforts passed by a staggering 345 to 75 votes during the pre-investigation days of the scandal in September 2009 (Fears and Leonnig). The national ACORN organization filed to liquidate its four-decade long operation in November 2010 (Memoli), following the destruction of the brand and near complete defunding. Despite being totally defunct just a year after the scandal and being subject to heavy investigation, public misunderstanding of ACORN’s activities and funding remained rampant. Public Policy Polling, a survey research firm that mostly works with Democratic candidates, usually conducts a series of interest-based post-election polls. These polls dishearteningly prove some of the ideas offered by Marx in his “Ruling Class and Ruling Ideas” essay; the ruling class was responsible for creating the ACORN scandal and the now-popular idea that ACORN was some sort of quasi-governmental organization tasked with falsifying elections, despite having no factual basis. The public hasn’t adequately questioned the ruling class and simply co-opted their ruling ideas. When asked the question “Do you think that Barack Obama legitimately won the Presidential election this year, or do you think that ACORN stole it for him?,” fifty percent of respondents who voted for the Republican presidential candidate believed that ACORN stole the election for President Obama. These results wouldn’t be surprising if the poll was asked after President Obama’s first election while ACORN was still operating and in the height of controversy, but this poll was asked in 2012 (Public Policy Polling) after Mitt Romney had lost and ACORN had been defunct for two whole years.
Conclusion
Marx’s essay “Ruling Class and Ruling Ideas” describes the way that a powerful few can shape propaganda into a readily consumable package to shift public ideology in favor of the ruling class.
The conservative media block—Fox News, Breitbart, and associates—had a clear goal in the ACORN scandal. They firmly believed that ACORN was a front using federal funds to influence elections for liberal candidates; the organization’s supposedly fraudulent activities were reason alone to warrant its death. These elites believed that the traditional path of journalism and investigative discovery was tainted by the bias that made ACORN possible. Therefore, it was their responsibility as the ruling class to convince the American public that ACORN is bad by whatever means necessary. Through their campaigning, they were able to create the ruling ideology that ultimately led to the defunding and liquidation of ACORN and marred the reputation of community organizing efforts. Unfortunately for them, the side effect of this action exposed the true nature of their “news” organizations and can be used as evidence against their journalistic integrity. Unfortunately for the public, the ACORN scandal is a worrying comment on public opinion and democracy; if this example proves to be a widely-applicable principle, then the will of the common man is not free but rather the creation of a ruling
elite.