Parallels can be drawn between the ideologies of Noam Chomsky and Karl Marx comparing the societal rung that Chomsky denotes as the “upper 20% of society” and that Marx refers to as the bourgeoisie. Despite the different interests of each man and his correlating criticisms, Chomsky’s of the media, and Marx’s of free enterprise, congruencies in the bourgeoisie/propaganda models both men propose are quite stark.
To begin, both men describe political power as belonging to a very small portion of an entire society, and that these agenda setters or bourgeoisie are the people whose interests are primarily served. Both men describe the agenda-setting class in society as the leading force behind any societal change, and this is almost always to the detriment of the proletarian class or, in Chomsky’s description, the American masses.
The means by which the upper echelon of society chooses to control the masses is the same according to each philosophy. Not through any sort of direct political dominion is power attributed, but rather by underlying manipulative forces: in Chomsky’s case, the media, whose techniques for omission of relevant facts, issue framing, misinformation, etc, are the main vessel for control of the masses; and in Marx’s, the free market, whose participants willingly subscribe to the capitalist ideology that enslaves them to the greater agenda of massive corporations. Both men also address the need for change, and it is clear by the parallels in their rhetoric that they believe the bourgeoisie/mass media must be overturned in order to truly democratize society.
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