What is cultural hegemony?

The best definition I have heard of cultural hegemony is
that it is the art of getting people to "participate in their own oppression."  Marxists
argue that the ruling class achieves cultural hegemony by getting the other classes to
do this.

According to Marxist thinking, the dominant class
puts forward a set of ideals that it portrays as beneficial to all people.  An example
of this would be the American ideal of individual responsibility and hard work.  The
classes that are not dominant come to believe in this idea.  We can see this quite
clearly in the US -- even people of the working class believe that Americans can get
ahead if they try hard enough.

Marxists say that these
ideals actually only help the dominant class.  For example, they would argue that the
ideal of personal responsibility helps the dominant class by making the other classes
think that they really can get ahead with hard work.  It makes the other classes look at
poor people and blame them for their own poverty rather than blaming the dominant class
that keeps them in poverty.

In this way, Marxists say, the
dominant class gets the others to participate in their own oppression -- it gets them to
believe that poverty is the fault of the poor and encourages them to accept the system
that exploits them.