Manifestooooon

In his “Communist Manifesto,” Karl Marx describes a society dominated by the bourgeoisie and where the proletariat unknowingly suffers. Similarly, the society that Noam Chomsky describes in “Manufacturing Consent” is made up of a working class of consumers, controlled by the mass media. The mass media industry is owned by just a handful of private companies, so the information released is very narrow and centralized. This is echoed by Marx, who talks about a centralized means of production in society and concentrated property in just a few hands. Chomsky argues that the mass media acts as propaganda for the government, in part because the mass media is profit motivated and thus can’t criticize the capitalist system they are a part of. In the case of the East Timor genocide, Chomsky argued that the mass media hid what was happening in the interests of the government and keeping the masses in the dark, believing their government is just. Marx talks about this political power in his “Communist Manifesto,” as an organized power of one class to oppress another. Marx talks about an entire class, the bourgeoisie, suppressing the working class, but one could argue it’s linked to Chomsky, where the same power is used by politicians and the media to suppress the masses.

Marx says the bourgeois society is “like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.” The bourgeois suffers from overproduction, Marx says. They do too much and lose control, and one of the only ways society can fix that problem is by hunting down new markets and then exploiting their old markets to the maximum. This idea is reminiscent in the Chomsky’s propaganda model, as the mass media is driven by profit. Thus, the mass media tries to exploit old markets as much as they can – advertise as much as they can – and then find new mediums, or markets, of which to spread their messages. The mass media will exploit radio, print newspapers, print magazines, and television news programs, and meanwhile they are hunting for any new medium they can find. When Twitter emerged as a popular social networking tool, the mass media immediately jumped in and submersed themselves in Twitter. Features were written about the website’s novelty, science and business stories were conjured up, pop culture pieces telling readers which celebrities were tweeting and who they should follow came into play. All of this, to promote a new medium that the mass media was going to use themselves and try to exploit in any way they can.