"Rosen would still demand, no doubt, an explanation of why the ruling class is so good at identifying and promoting its interests, while the majority is not. But, again, there is an obvious answer: for isn’t it generally quite easy to identify your short-term interests when the status quo is to your benefit? In such circumstances, you favor the status quo! In other words, if the status quo provides tangible benefits to the few—lots of money, prestige, and power—is it any surprise that the few are well-disposed to the status quo, and are particularly good at thinking of ways to tinker with the status quo to increase their money, prestige, and power? By contrast, it is far trickier for the many to assess what is in their interest, precisely because it requires a counterfactual thought experiment, in addition to evaluating complex questions of socio-economic causation. More precisely, the many have to ascertain that the status quo—the whole complex socio-economic order in which they find themselves--is not in their interests ; there are alternatives to the status quo which would be more in their interest; and it is worth the costs to make the transition to the alternatives—to give up on the bad situation one knows in order to make the leap in to a better unknown. Obstacles to the already difficult task of making determinations and —let alone —will be especially plentiful, precisely because the few are strongly, and effectively , committed to the denial of and ."

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“Just as Darwinian adaptationists assume that every biological phenomenon must be explained in terms of natural selection , so too Nietzsche assumes that whatever explains “life” must also explain these particular instances of life which appear hostile to it. "'Life against life,'" Nietzsche says is a "self-contradiction" that "can only be apparent; it has to be a sort of provisional expression, an explanation, formula, adjustment, a psychological misunderstanding of something, the real nature of which was far from being understood" . … The crux of Nietzsche’s explanation turns on three claims:”

“Rosen suggests that the rule of the few might simply be the result of coordination problems confronting the many in overthrowing the few. … The coordination problem explanation of why the few rule the many is that the many can’t coordinate their behavior to overthrow the few, but the actual phenomenon the Marxist theory explains is that the many don’t even see the need to overthrow the few, indeed, don’t even see that the few rule the many!”

“The Marxian theory of ideology predicts that the ruling ideas in any well functioning society will be ideas that promote the interests of the ruling class in that society, i.e., the class that is economically dominant. By the “ruling ideas” we should understand Marx to mean the central moral, political and economic ideas that dominate discussion in the mass media and in the corridors of power in that society. The theory is not peculiar to Marx, since the “classical realists” of antiquity like the Sophists and Thucydides advanced essentially the same theory: the powerful clothe their pursuit of self-interest in the garb of morality and justice. When Marx says that, “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas” and that, “Law, morality, religion are to so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests” , he is simply translating in to Marxian terms the Sophistic view “that the more powerful will always take advantage of the weaker, and will give the name of law and justice to whatever they lay down in their own interests.” , p. 60).”

“On Marx’s view an individual is flourishing when … he labors freely, meaning that work is an end-in-itself, and not merely a means to “earn a living.”