Ideological control persists even in a classless society

Evidence

If, as Marx said, history is a perpetual transformation of men’s conditions of existence, and if this is equally true of socialist society, then men must be ceaselessly transformed so as to adapt them to these conditions: if this ‘adaptation’ cannot be left to spontaneity but must be constantly assumed, dominated and controlled, it is in ideology that this demand is expressed … … In other words, there is no end to domination and control, even in a classless society; human beings simply cannot be left to spontaneity’, nor can they live the relations of knowledge (which come only through theoretical practice and are not, in any case, lived). This entrapment of humankind in ideology, now and for ever, is eerily close to Foucault’s notion of the power of discourse. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 639

Categorization

• XREF: This haunting convergence of Althusser’s ideology and Foucault’s discourse power echoes Zamyatin’s We, where a supposedly perfect egalitarian society still demands ceaseless control of spontaneity. — connects to: Bourgeois ideology conceals that domination persists beneath the rhetoric of productive work. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 130; Under monopoly capitalism classes persist objectively while becoming socially invisible. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 680; Class struggle has been neutralized in both liberal and communist societies — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on…, 155 (+2 more)