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false consciousness

 
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n.

In Marxist theory, a failure to recognize the instruments of one's oppression or exploitation as one's own creation, as when members of an oppressed class unwittingly adopt views of the oppressor class.


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Political Dictionary: false consciousness
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In its crudest form, false consciousness implies a misperception of reality, or of one's relationship to the world of which one is part. On this reading, Plato's myth of the cave (Republic, bk. 7) might be said to be an account of false consciousness, as might Rousseau's infamous claim (in The Social Contract) that those who oppose the general will might be ‘forced to be free’.

Although he did not use it himself, the term is usually associated with Marx, and subsequently with Marxism, especially of the Frankfurt School variety. In Marx, the focus tends to be on the relationship of consciousness to reality as it is mediated through the prevailing mode of production (i.e. capitalism). It follows from this that false consciousness can be overcome only by addressing its economic source. But how is it possible to have knowledge of a consciousness which is false?

The danger with the concept of false consciousness lies in the possibility it affords to those willing and able to take it, to impose a ‘correct’ perception on the falsely conscious. This danger can be avoided only if it is the case that ‘truth’ and ‘falsity’ are self-evident. This in part explains Marxism's need to present itself as scientific, although the extent to which scientific analyses are themselves free from ideological dressing has itself been questioned, notably by Thomas Kuhn. See also falsifiability.

— Alan Apperley

 
Philosophy Dictionary: false consciousness
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An inability to see things, especially social relations and relations of exploitation, as they really are. The term occurs in late work of Engels, although the phenomenon is implied in Feuerbach's account of the religious impulse. The state of false consciousness may be the inevitable result of a way of living, and characterizes the generic and chronic kind of servitude that cannot even perceive its own situation. It may therefore coexist with a kind of illusory contentment. The cure is ‘consciousness-raising’. In the later writings of Marx the concept to some extent supersedes that of alienation.

 
Wikipedia: False consciousness
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For the existentialist treatment of the same concept, see bad faith (existentialism).

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False consciousness is the Marxist thesis that material and institutional processes in capitalist society are misleading to the proletariat, and to other classes. These processes betray the true relations of forces between those classes, and the real state of affairs regarding the development of pre-socialist society (relative to the secular development of human society in general).

This is essentially a result of ideological control which the proletariat either do not know they are under or disregard with a view to their own POUM (probability/possibility of upward mobility)[1]. POUM (not to be confused with the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification, POUM) or something like it is required in economics with its presumption of rational agency; otherwise wage laborers would be the conscious supporters of social relations antithetical to their own interests, violating that presumption[2].

Theory

The concept flows from the theory of commodity fetishism — that people experience social relationships as value relations between things, e.g., between the cash in their wage packet and the shirts they want. The cash and the shirt appear to conduct social relations independently of the humans involved, determining who gets what by their inherent values. This leaves the person who earned the cash and the people who made the shirt ignorant of and alienated from their social relationship with each other. So the individual "resolves" the experiences of alienation and oppression through a false understanding of the natural need to compete with others for limited goods.

In Marxist terms, not only is there no such objective need separate from the formulation of the general problem of production in society, moreover, Marx said each against all competition is antithetical to the very concept of society and therefore sets up a contradiction or historical dynamic which over time is resolved in favour of the class with the greatest ability to act in its own rational self interest. Ruling elites, traditional or otherwise, suffer from false consciousness to the extent that they see the social orders they command as predetermined or inevitable.

Engels

Although Marx frequently denounced ideology in general, there is no evidence that he ever actually used the phrase "false consciousness." It appears to have been used — at least in print — only by Friedrich Engels [3]

Engels wrote [4] :

“ Ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker. Consciously, it is true, but with a false consciousness. The real motive forces impelling him remain unknown to him; otherwise it simply would not be an ideological process. Hence he imagines false or apparent motives. ...

It is above all this appearance of an independent history of state constitutions, of systems of law, of ideological conceptions in every separate domain, which dazzles most people. If Luther and Calvin “overcome” the official Catholic religion, or Hegel “overcomes” Fichte and Kant, or if the constitutional Montesquieu is indirectly “overcome” by Rousseau with his “Social Contract,” each of these events remains within the sphere of theology, philosophy or political science, represents a stage in the history of these particular spheres of thought and never passes outside the sphere of thought. And since the bourgeois illusion of the eternity and the finality of capitalist production has been added as well, even the victory of the physiocrats and Adam Smith over the mercantilists is accounted as a sheer victory of thought; not as the reflection in thought of changed economic facts but as the finally achieved correct understanding of actual conditions subsisting always and everywhere ...		 ”

Here Engels expresses semantic baggage associated with the term Ideology, i.e. that it implies a lack of objectivity, which the term had at the time of its introduction from German ( due in no small part to a reaction to Hegelianism). This has somewhat substantially been lost over the nearly two centuries since then as Ideology has come to be equivocated with World View or Philosophy. False consciousness is theoretically linked with the concepts of the dominant ideology and cultural hegemony. The idea of false consciousness has also been used by Marxist feminists and radical feminists in regard to womens studies.

Interpretations

The notion of false consciousness has been a focus for some critics of Marxism, since in this instance simplistic interpretations of Marxist theory can appear to be implicated in the worst cases of states such as the DPRK or former Soviet Union. Within the USSR, the state deployed the concept of false consciousness to justify authoritarian measures against the working class.[citation needed] Marxist critics of Stalinism, such as Trotsky and his followers, provide an account by which the theory is excused, on the basis that a corrupt regime is capable of perverting any theory.

The concept of ideology as false consciousness, even where it is accepted that Marx did not use the term, has tended to dominate interpretations of Marx's statements on ideology, although arguably this in fact involves a misunderstanding of Marx (see, for example, Joseph McCarney's essay "Ideology and False Consciousness").

In his book Liberal Fascism, Jonah Goldberg refers to Thomas Frank's thesis presented in his book What's the Matter With Kansas? as "the old Marxist doctrine of false consciousness." [5]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Marshall I. Pomer (1984-11). "Upward Mobility of Low-Paid Workers: A Multivariate Model for Occupational Changers". Sociological Perspectives 27 (4): 427–442. http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0731-1214(198410)27%3A4%3C427%3AUMOLWA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-W. 
  2. ^ This phenomenon is most accentuated in the United States, and has given rise to what European Marxists refer to as "class transference"[1].
  3. ^ Eagleton, Terry (1991). Ideology: An Introduction. London: Verso. pp. 89. 
  4. ^ "Letter to Mehring". 1893. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1893/letters/93_07_14.htm. 
  5. ^ Goldberg, Jonah. Liberal Fascism. Doubleday 2007: New York, 58-9.

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Copyrights:

Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Political Dictionary. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics. Copyright © 1996, 2003 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.  Read more
Philosophy Dictionary. The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Copyright © 1994, 1996, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "False consciousness".  Read more

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