Pre class Marx and Althusser

When Marx says “ The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas” or “The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, consequently also controls the means of mental production, so that the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are on the whole subject to it”. To my mind this means that the loudest voice becomes the right one, the powerful one. We accept ideas put in front of us as a consensus. It becomes the status quo and because everyone else believes it, so do we, with out questioning where it came from or how reliable these ideas are. Those who have more time on their hands, as Marx would say, are able to think and produce ideas. They also have most of the time a strong power of speech and language in order to convince an audience but who says their ideas are the right ones? These ideas are concepts, which are not palpable. Althusser would call this “illusions”, “allusions to reality”. And this is what forms an ideology, which we cannot escape and are no matter what a part of. So I think this is what I understand when Althusser speaks of the differences between RSA an ISA. The Ideological state apparatus, functions by ideology primarily but also by repression secondarily. I think that not being able to get out ideology, having difficulties questioning because we are so ingrained into it is a form of repression. This is a vicious circle and I don’t think we could ever resolve this but the importance is to be aware of it and not be passive subjects.