1. Parenti differentiates between owners and workers on the basis of income. Owners (capitalist class) live on investments: stocks, bonds, rent, and other income that comes from other people’s labor. On the other hand, employees make their living through wages and salaries by doing work.

2. Labor, not money, is the real currency of value, says Smith. Money is only a symbol (a “nominal” price), but the true value of any good is the human effort that has been expended in creating it. A tree has no value until it is cut, formed and carried away by the workers. Smith is basically stating that human labour is the source of all economic values, and Parenti aims to demonstrate how this is important because workers only get a fraction of economic value for their work.

3. This is a compelling argument to me. The reading explicitly argues that class is not the same as identities such as race or gender because class is not merely a social identity, it is a structural relationship. It’s not just being a working class person, it’s being materially dependent on an employer for your survival. It is not a cultural but an economic dependency.
What resonates most is Erik Olin Wright’s point: “what you have determines what you have to do to get what you get.” The structural position of a nurse and a farm worker may appear very different, but both must sell their labor to survive, and they are culturally different. We’re all in the same boat, which is more compelling than identity.

4. According to Heideman, workers and capitalists are interdependent, but not equally so. Workers rely on the capitalists for employment and earnings. Capitalists rely on the workers for profit production. Both classes must go together, but there is an unequal exchange.
This is not the same as, for example, race, where maintaining a specific ongoing relationship with a person of color does not require a white person’s racial position. However, a worker cannot live without an employer and a capitalist without workers to exploit.
Amazon is a company that depends on Amazon workers for its payroll. Amazon, however, also relies on them to pack and ship orders, and without them Amazon would have no profits. That is the power of strikes, they make the capitalist worker’s reliance an instrument of resistance against the capitalist.

My nearest station is City Hall on the 4/5/6 line in Lower Manhattan. The social class of my neighborhood is split — the surrounding neighborhoods, such as Chinatown and the Lower East Side, have historically been the homes of working-class immigrants, while Tribeca just a short distance away is home to some of the wealthiest New Yorkers. I would not have been surprised if there were something that stark, given how they live in New York City, but I’m not surprised overall. It’s accurate in some ways because so many of my neighbours work in a restaurant, small business or service industry, which is a typical economic reality for the working class. But many working class people still feel they’re middle class, as the Gallup article explains, which is a disconnect between what they think and what is actually true when it comes to social class. The City Hall area eventually shows how inequality can be normalized, or invisible, when it so deeply becomes part of your everyday environment.

1. A Receptive State Apparatus is any institution that the government employs to keep people under control by coercion or the threat of coercion. Althusser describes it as “repressive” since it is based on coercion; that is, it relies on punishment, not persuasion, to make people do what it says.
   These include the police, the military, prisons and the courts. When you break the law, the RSA will take steps to consequences: arrest, imprisonment, and physical intervention. The term “repressive” describes the direct suppression of opposition and the imposition of the ruling class’s power by means of these institutions. For example, if there are protests that are responded to by riot police and mass arrests, it is the RSA in action.

2. ISAs are institutions that do not use force to maintain social order, but rather to influence the way people think. They do so by conveying values, beliefs and norms, so as to normalise the power structure that already exists, and so that people do not need to rebel first.
   This includes the school, churches, family, media and political parties. ISA’s work primarily in the private realm and have a more nuanced effect than the RSA. You are not being controlled but you’re taking in some ideas of what is normal, right, or inevitable.
   School curriculum, for example, that passes on the idea that working hard will lead to success, passively perpetuates capitalist values without anybody having to take any oath.

3. The RSA operates from the outside in, it is the consequences that run your behavior. ISA operates from within — it changes your way of thinking so you take it on willingly. Althusser believed that the ISAs were ultimately more powerful, for a society that must be constantly policed is unstable, but a society that does believe in the system holds together.

4. A Nike commercial of a disadvantaged youth from a rough neighborhood who becomes a professional athlete with the tag line “Just Do It.” An example of an Ideological State Apparatus in media/advertising. It fosters the idea that success is based only on the efforts of the individual and thereby strengthens capitalist ideology. It takes people’s focus away from the barriers they face in the system, such as poverty, racism, or access and the existing social order appears fair.

The formula M-C-M’ is the basic logic of capitalism and the maintenance of the capitalist class’s wealth. It starts with the capitalist’s money, or capital, that he already has. The capitalist begins with money and purposefully uses it to make more money (C-M-C); a worker or peasant begins with something else and must sell it to acquire what he needs. The capitalist uses this first money to acquire commodities of production, including buildings, machines, raw materials, and most importantly, labor power. The labor power is the singular commodity that makes the whole system work, one that can produce more value than the cost of maintaining it, as opposed to a machine. The capitalist places the laborer in contact with the machinery and tools of production, and the workers produce value, which is greater than the value of the tools and machinery they brought to the scene. The product is M’, that is, the original money plus surplus value, the surplus value being the unpaid part of the worker’s work that becomes profit in the capitalist’s hands. This surplus value does not stem from the capitalist working more intensely; it is simply the difference between the value that the capitalist’s work generates and the value that is paid to the capitalist. The formula can be reproduced continuously by the capitalists, who can always rebuy M’ and reinvest it into the cycle again, buy more labor power and means of production, go around again, and so on, so that wealth accumulates, and the capitalist class remains rich and richer, without ever “laboring” themselves.

1. Ideology is a collection of fundamental beliefs and values that influences a person’s concept of the function of government, society, and individual rights. it filters people’s interpretation of political issues and shapes their policy preferences.
   For instance, one could be very pro-freeedom and anti-government healthcare, or very pro-equality and pro-government healthcare. The same issue and different conclusion due to different ideologies.
   On another level, ideology is not merely the personal opinion of the individual. It may be influenced by our surroundings, our culture, our education, and our social status. This is why whole group of individuals often have similar political perspectives, though they do not always make this decision on a conscious level.

2.

The concepts of liberty versus equality are the key dividing concepts Conservatives value individual liberty, which is the concept that people should be free from government intervention to make their own decisions and keep the fruits of their labor. To them, a smaller government translates to greater freedom.
Liberals value equality that is a belief that government should minimize inequalities between rich and poor and provide equal access to opportunities. This makes them more inclined to approve measures such as increased taxes on the rich and social spending.
Healthcare is a good example as conservatives want to rely on the market, liberals are proponents of government intervention to cover people of all income levels.

3. 
   Althusser maintained that ideology is not merely the product of people’s consciousness, but is rather a system which makes people accept the social order as natural and normal, even if it does not serve their interest. It works in institutions such as schools, churches, media (Ideological State Apparatuses).
   A real world illustration: when working class people reject policies which would advance their economic interests, they have internalised values being taught by the dominant institutions – ideology at work for Althusser. It is not telling lies on people, it’s moulding what is “common sense”.