In General, groups either classified as classes, parties, status groups of any sort have always
attempted to assert their control over other sectors of society. The control of opinions and the
dissemination of certain moral values and economical and political agendas have been
necessary, not only to gain control but also maintain it within a society by specific interest
groups. The strongest and most significant attempts to influence public opinion have come from
the elite corporate world and governments. Outlined by Davis (2002), in general, 50% of work
conducted by corporate and government PR companies were involved in preventing media
attention. The control of information and knowledge that is given to the public has become so
widespread within the general media sphere that it is now second nature with all involved.
			
	Elitists, and for that matter subsequently, capitalist hegemonic ideologies are now 
widespread, if not totally pervasive in all facets of society. This has been instigated by a singular
all encompassing outcome that is constantly being pushed for by corporate interests.
The theory that;

Profit should be achieved at all costs necessary 

Is a cornerstone to a capitalist economy. This ideology is so far reaching that capitalism, which
should be wholeheartedly stressed is exclusively an economic theory, has been usurped
erroneously by all facets of society now as a political, and moral ideology. With this shift in
society’s consciousness, and the creation of what could be outlined as a Marxian
"False Consciousness" within the population, the creation of a capitalist hegemonic ideology
has been finally acheived. Society in general has accepted the attainment of capitalist ideologies
over humanistic social ideologies due to the strength, pervasiveness, and inundating amount
of elitist hegemonic ideologies being pushed within the media, and other facets of society.
			
	So what is capitalist Hegemony, and how is it achieved? For this essay a Weberian view on
class will be used in most cases. It will also be assumed that capitalist hegemony is therefore
also elitist hegemony. Elitist hegemony is achieved in various ways, as outlined by McKay
(1991), Hegemonic ideologies are evident in all facets of society, “sport, religion, education,
science, medicine, law, the media, the family, politics and economics” it should also be noted
that elitist hegemony isn’t a unwritten conspiracy theory amongst the powerful but an
unwritten understanding that within a capitalist system, for the burgeoning middle class
and upper management class to maintain certain standards of living concessions, both
moral, ethical and professional have to be made as McKay states, “…both within and among
rulers and the    ruled”. It is with this in mind that we can begin to understand how such an all
encompassing form of control can be so easily maintained. This essay will mainly focus on
the role the Media plays, with reference to Herman and Chomsky (1988) propaganda model
as supporting evidence, the intertwining relation between government and corporation
(elite) interests, and the use of psychological theories from Muzafer Sherif, (1961) and
Leon Festinger, (1957) and how an individual forms and maintains opinions, and how this
effects the general population.

Racism and Social division
The destruction of what Marx calls “class consciousness” is an integral part to the success
of a capitalist Hegemony. Groups and subgroups, have been developed over the years through
the development of status, class, and parties. These have been subdivided into divisions
of nationality, religion, wealth, education, ethnicity and race. Racism, which itself has been
propagated by policymakers and subsequently the media (Tampa incident, terror threat from
immigrants, fear of Islam etc), has allowed further control to be attained. This has been outlined
by Sargent, Nilan and Winter (1997, Chp 9). The working class, which should in all intensive
purposes be united, has been fragmented along the above mentioned lines. The
individualisation of the Australian workforce has been of enormous benefit to the elite, and can
be understood by analysing psychological group dynamics findings by Sherif (1961) which
showed that people, when divided into subgroups and made to compete increased hatred
and competitive attitudes shown towards the opposing group and ceased contact with the
opposing group. 

	Hegemonic ideologies are evident in current I.R reforms. The Individual,
and the benefits of I.R reforms for the individual, has been constantly emphasised by the
coalition and within the media. Even though it is logical that younger and lesser educated
employees would suffer within a “bargaining environment workplace” the promise of
possible increases in pay and rewards for some individuals was sufficient to push through
reforms, and shows that the individualisation of Australian society is necessary in the
effectiveness of elite hegemonic ideology. This major reform was only possible through
the coalition’s major connections with Australian business, and the ties that have been
created over the past 10 years. Unity amongst the population has been destroyed, which
has lead to    fragmented groups and lowered communication between different stratifications
within society. This division has then been played on by the government to further their time
in power (see Sherif 1961, for applicability of this theory to society). It has to be noted that
the coalition’s stranglehold though has only been possible through creating ties with
business, and the Media, all three of which hold as cornerstones capitalist ideologies,
and subsequently push a capitalist hegemonic ideology. Again, this connection between
Business, Media and the government is again evident in the coalitions softening of cross
media ownership laws in recent free trade agreements.

The media as a conglomerate, and the conglomerate as a media
Capitalism knows no boundaries, and this is evident in the growth and creation of super
conglomerates that don’t see state and nation boarders as limits to expansion. Two
examples of international conglomerates are GE (General Electric, and Group W
(Westinghouse). Both are American based companies with ownership of various worldwide
media outlets such as CNN, Time Magazine, etc. GE also produces nuclear weapons and
armaments, as well as providing a personal loan business in the Australian market. GE has
contributed to the funding of the American Enterprise Institute, a right-wing think tank that
supports intellectuals who will get the business message across to the media.

	The expansion of Rupert Murdoch’s owned media sphere in Britian, Australia, the USA,
and in the future, possibly China is also an example of how the Media itself has become business,
and subsequently lost impartiality, critical analysis and has adopted elitist hegemonic ideologies.
This pervasive spread of capitalist ideologies is evident even in Lord Mayor, clover Moore’s
installation of a city law requiring street corner newspaper sales to purchase permits to sell
papers on the streets. Such laws greatly effect small publications such as The Green Left
weekly which are in most cases one of only the few media outlets that are not influenced by
elitist hegemonic ideologies. They also solely rely on volunteers selling papers on the streets
and cannot afford the huge costs of permits. This law was initiated after the Murdoch owned
freely distributed newspaper “MX” was being rolled out throughout the Sydney CBD and
pushed for such laws to be installed by the Sydney mayor. MX, is a publication created to
sell advertising, its content highly filtered, provides no critical analysis of news, and
consisted predominantly of entertainment news. 

	With the growth of Media as a business, comes the eventual destruction of any form of
analysis and critique by the media of both business, and the government. Ironically there is a
reliance from journalists for news sources from government sources. The media itself is becoming
a corporate sect and this ultimately undermines the impartiality of the information they report,
creating a “staged” collection of news. This is outlined by propaganda model,
(Herman and Chomsky, 1988). The Media itself is a major tool in the dissemination of Hegemonic
ideologies, and relies on 4 “filter” factors (Herman et al 1988). 3 of these being 1) ownership, 2)
Funding, 3) Resourcing, Put simply, ownership is in most cases centralised by a few main
conglomerates with vast interests in multiple businesses. The directors of these businesses
in most cases cross over to the banking and business sector. Also evident is the crossover of
ex- politicians into the business sector, most recently ex-premier Bob Carr onto the board of
Macquarie Bank, one of the largest infrastructure fund managers in the world. It is this intertwining
relationship between directors, owners, politicians and their access and connection to
the media that allows for Elitist hegemonic ideologies to be pushed through all facets of
society with the use of various media outlets that gives the impression of capitalism being
an effortless and natural ideology.

	Funding and Resourcing is intertwined, as Journalists require information from official
government sources to develop news pieces. Their relation with government and business
PR agencies is paramount as “leaks” and “leads” will only be given to journalists that write and
publish articles which are positive to the elite’s hegemonic ideologies (Davis 2002). Funding at
the same time comes from businesses through advertising. Critical and or investigative articles
that show the dark side of business relations ultimately lead to withdrawn advertising bookings
from clients, which lead to lowered profits. It is this “Pavlov’s dog” type journalism that leads to
self censorship and uncritical analysis by journalists which leads to an eventual hegemonic
ideology being disseminated. Barker (2005) outlined this as “Coalition Journalism”; 

“Journalists and editors shape policy agendas by actively filtering issues, so that reporting
conforms to their dominant news values - selecting what issues are covered and which
sources are used (Sahr, 1993, p. 155). This tends to confine policy debate to the strict
boundaries of current ‘accepted wisdoms’ set by the major political parties or institutional
policymakers”.

Elite Hegemony and the role of the individual viewed from a psychological
perspective
The issue of the Absolutism of hegemonic ideologies propagated in the media cannot
 be viewed solely as an issue contained within the boundaries of nations.  Due to the growth
of multinationals, and of media purchasing agencies such as OMD worldwide,
($23b profit in 2005) and Starcom worldwide ($22b profit in 2005), Capitalist hegemony is a
worldwide evasive force.
	
An innumerable amount of businesses have a stake within the capitalist economic system.
For this reason, these businesses must adopt the ideologies that capitalism fosters
(Creation of profit at all costs), due to this, weather the businesses and it’s employees are aware
of it or not, not only do they have to adopt this ideology but are subconsciously pushing it each
day through the undertaking of the actions required to seek profits.

	Capitalist hegemony and elite interests are maintained due to the fact that the general
population is involved and intertwined in the process. Journalists, accountants, media buyers,
politicians etc all undertake in jobs which have either a direct, or indirect result in promoting
capitalist ideologies. If we adopt a Marxian view of this situation, it could be assumed that a
false consciousness is created by allowing certain sectors of society to “control” certain
elements of profit creation. Again a conflict theory of pluralism can be adopted. A false sense
of “democratic” participation in the creation of profit is developed. This subsequently
disguises the real basis of power, and protects the powerful.
	
	This leads to a repression and manipulation of the general population by the elite,
but at the same time creates guilt through association within the individuals and groups
(these being all classes, parties, status groups below the elite class) in society which are involved.
This guilt that is created in the individual, due to actions they have taken which goes against
possible basic moral, ethical and social ideals they may have. The feelings of guilt, and
compromised moral and ethical standards are then repressed within the individual through
cognitive dissonance, (Festinger, 1957).
 A cycle is then created of guilt hidden behind dissonance, and the false
belief by the individual that capitalist hegemonic ideologies are “correct” are then maintained
through a process of confusion (which is propagated and maintained through the media)
and a self imposed cognitive dissonance which is maintained by the individual. Capitalism’s
aspirations, (accumulation of wealth, property and material possessions etc) are then used
as a ultimate goal that must be achieved by all individuals. This goal is used to replace other
possibly socially desirable values such as equality, education, standardised healthcare etc.

	Capitalist hegemony views these desirable values (education, health etc) as profitable, it is
for these reasons that these humanistic beliefs are not promoted as being universal, because
essentially in the elitists view, why should a profitable commodity (education, health) be
provided free universally within a society? This ideology is evident in Australian society with
the coalitions push in the last 10 years to dismantle Medicare, promoting private health
insurance (and now selling off sectors of it), the lowering of funding for public schools
(and rewarding “successful individuals” by increasing private school funding), and the
lowering of funding successively, for the last 10 years, to universities.


Conclusion
Many issues have not been raised and some sociological theories (ie; J Habermas) omitted
in this essay due to space constraints. A complete analysis of how Hegemony functions and
continues to function hasn’t been addressed. Essentially when viewing hegemony it
shouldn’t be viewed as some sort of all answering theory to capitalist society, or else we
fall into the trap that sociologists fell into in the past with the overextension of the Marxian
term “false consciousness”. Although no mistake should be made on its importance. 
Capitalist Hegemony is a huge factor for the success of a capitalist society, but a more
likely scenario is that its degree of influence varies considerably, being issue based in
nature (Hawthorne, 1993). to understand why hegemony works, sociologists should also
look at the individual, and how capitalist ideologies appeal to the individual perse. Analysis
of the media and the effect that Market forces have on weaker competitors, and the
subsequent diminishment of competing and opposing views should also be analysed to
see the true effect that elitist hegemony has on society as a whole.

Written for "introduction to sociology" unit, UWS.
Tomas Buratovich, 2006. Please quote this name and source if citing

Davis, A. (2002) Public relations democracy: public relations, politics and the mass media in Britain. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Festinger, L (1957) A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance Evanston, Ill.; Row Peterson

Hawthorne, M. R. (1993) The media, economic development, and agenda-setting. In R. J. Spitzer (Ed.), Media and public policy. Westport: Praeger.

Herman, E. S. & N. Chomsky (1988) Manufacturing consent: the political economy of the mass media. New York: Pantheon Books.

M Barker (2005) Manufacturing policies: the media’s role in the policy making process Australian School of Environmental Studies
Griffith University

McKay, J. (1991) Sport, ideology and hegemony: a case study of the Americas Cup' in McKay, No Pain, No Gain: Sport and Australian Culture. Prentice Hall, Sydney.

M Sherif, O J Harvey., B J White, Hood W, R., Sherif C, W (1961)

O'Neill, R. (1990) what is Hegemony? Unpublished paper

Sargent, M., Nilan, P. and Winter G. (1997) The New Sociology for Australians. 4th edition, Longman, Melbourne.

Van Krieken, R., Smith, P. Habibis, D, McDonald, K., Haralambos, M. & Holborn, M. (2006) Sociology: Themes and Perspectives, 3rd edition. Longman, Melbourne.

http://www.mind-advertising.com/agencies_index_media.htm accessed 2nd 05 2006

http://www.smh.com.au/news/editorial/mr-carrs-new-job/2005/10/13/1128796648827.html
accessed 2nd 05 2006