1. The distinction that the reading makes between owners and employees is that “Owners” is the extremely wealthy, where they gain so much wealth they can instead live off their investments rather then doing labor for their income. “Employees” are the ones who work for the “Owners” in order to be able to make a living. They essentially don’t own any business and need to provide labor in order to live because their income is not large enough to live off of investments. An example of an owner would be a wealthy CEO. They gain their income and wealth from investments, stocks, and high paying salary. An Employee would be an office desk worker working in the company. They need to work in order to live.
2. I understand the quote from Adam Smith as saying that labor is the determining factor that gives items for sale its value. The amount of effort and labor we put into an item for sale is what give its value not its sticker price or the arbitrary number we sell it for.
3. My thoughts on the main argument of class not being an identity is that I agree and both disagree, It seems to me that class is a special kind of marker we can give to people. It can work like race or gender in which these social categories are distinctions that we can group people in, like upper class, lower class, ect. but it also has the major difference of class being dependent on one another. The worker needs the capitalist in order to get a job. a persons race is not dependent on other races like class is. So it seems to me that class is a hybrid category.
4. How I understand the argument Reading 4.4. makes when stating that “class structures are built around a close form of dependency” is that class identity like the worker are dependent on the capitalist and vice versa and with that holds some power to people in that positions. For example the worker is dependent on the capitalist in order to get and keep their job and with that dependency the capitalist holds power over workers with the ability to take away the job if they don’t comply and easily exploit the workers for their own gain. In vice versa the capitalist is dependent on the worker and the worker has the power to force the capitalist to comply in order to maintain being a capitalist since you can’t be a capitalist if you don’t have workers working for you.

1.     Ideology to me is a person or a group of people’s values or a set of beliefs based on the knowledge they gathered, and they can collectively agree on. They can come together and collectively agree on certain boundaries, it can be anyone from race, gender, religion and ethnicity, these being social groups. Ideology can be described as a political position or economic class it can be neither good or bad and it’s up to the person choice to choose these set of ideological values and or beliefs.

         The example I’m going to choose as ideological values are political oppositions, there are multiple political ideologies that exists, just like a spectrum. The political ideologies are typically leftist, right and centrist. First, I’m going to identify the left ideologies that fall under that term, the groups that fall under left are progressives, socialist, Marxists, communist, liberals, some people that lean left believe there needs to be improve for public services. They will settle for a social democracy like Sweden for example, people who lean left would want a dramatic change and replace the corporate capitalist system that the untied states is currently is.

         The way I understand Ideology is I would compare to gangs, religious groups, or social class, and political class, there are a set of ideas and boundaries for each group. There are different sides with different ideas, one group can believe that killing is wrong while another group believes that killing can be honorable. I understand people will say they don’t have ideological values or believe they don’t belong to a certain group but even so than there are groups who believe exactly that. Another way I understand Ideology is how people present themselves with certain beliefs and values and how they align themselves politically or ideology, as of more recent this has been more showing in today’s age with technology and social media taking over.

2.        The way I understand the difference between a conservative and liberal ideology in US politics is the set of values and beliefs they believe in and its very noticeable from the two ideologies. To start off with conservative, they don’t believe in government intervention, less taxes being taken away from taxpayer and a small government, they have very strong religious beliefs and believe we should have a strong military. Now the liberal ideology is completely different where they do believe in government intervention where the government must be the helping hand for the people and should expand the government so that way we have a strong benefit such as social security and nutritional aid for needy children. For example, in the reading for the excerpt liberals believe in improving public services and support minimum wage laws and unemployment insurance. This proves that liberals believe in government intervention.

3.     The way I understand Althusser’s definition of ideology is like making or being in a political position. He uses fear to explain how people can choose political ideology an example of that he uses the bible for people to “stay in line” and “follow your lord.” This makes people subconsciously follow an ideology without knowing that they are doing so. He also explains in detail that an ideology is like being in a sports team or being a greaser, you get a community out of it.  Another way I understand ideology by Althusser’s is discipline and authority, like schools and church they are teaching an ideological value and a set of beliefs to be learned and this shapes the persons thinking as they get older and carry those values.