Misplaced Pages

Part of a series on
Marxism
Theoretical works Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 The Condition of the Working Class in England The German Ideology The Communist Manifesto The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte Grundrisse Capital Critique of the Gotha Programme Dialectics of Nature The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State What Is to Be Done? The Accumulation of Capital Philosophical Notebooks Terrorism and Communism The State and Revolution Essays on Marx's Theory of Value History and Class Consciousness Prison Notebooks The Black Jacobins On Practice Theses on the Philosophy of History Dialectic of Enlightenment A Critique of Soviet Economics The Long Revolution Guerrilla Warfare The Wretched of the Earth Reading Capital The Society of the Spectacle Pedagogy of the Oppressed Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses Ways of Seeing How Europe Underdeveloped Africa Social Justice and the City Women, Race and Class Marxism and the Oppression of Women Imagined Communities Hegemony and Socialist Strategy The Sublime Object of Ideology Time, Labor and Social Domination The Age of Extremes The Origin of Capitalism Empire Late Victorian Holocausts Change the World Without Taking Power Caliban and the Witch An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital Capitalist Realism Capital in the Anthropocene Towards Socialism or Capitalism? The Revolution Betrayed Literature and Revolution The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany Their Morals and Ours: The class foundations of moral practice
Philosophy Alienation Dialectical materialism Ideology Philosophy of nature Philosophy in the Soviet Union Reification Marxist ethics
Critique of political economy Capital (accumulation) Crisis theory Commodity Concrete and abstract labor Factors of production Falling profit-rate tendency Means of production Mode of production Capitalist Socialist Productive forces Scientific socialism Surplus product Socially necessary labour time Value-form Wage labour
Sociology Base and superstructure Bourgeoisie Class Class consciousness Classless society Commodity fetishism Communist society Critical theory Cultural hegemony Democracy Dictatorship of the proletariat Soviet Radical Democratic centralism Exploitation False consciousness Human nature Immiseration Imperialism Lumpenproletariat Metabolic rift Proletariat Private property Relations of production State theory Working class
History Class struggle Historical determinism Primitive accumulation Proletarian revolution World revolution Theory of historical trajectory
Aspects Aesthetics Archaeology Criminology Cultural analysis Cultural Studies Ethics Film theory Geography Historiography Literary criticism Marxism and religion Sociology Philosophy
Common variants Structural Autonomist Marxism–Leninism Guevarism Maoism Titoism Trotskyism Neo-Gramscianism Regulation school Third-worldist Hegelian Budapest School Frankfurt School Humanist Neue Marx-Lektüre Open Political Praxis School Both Black Classical Communization Feminist Leninism Neo Post Western
Other variants Analytical Austromarxism Centrist Council communism Eurocommunism Instrumental Marxism–Leninism–Maoism Nkrumaism Orthodox Revisionist Situationist Socialism with Chinese characteristics Wertkritik
People Marx Engels Morris Lafargue Rubin Kautsky Plekhanov Du Bois Connolly Lenin Luxemburg Liebknecht Kollontai Bogdanov Stalin Trotsky Grossman Zinoviev Bloch Lukács Korsch Bukharin Ho Serge Gramsci Galiev Pashukanis Bordiga Benjamin Mao Basu Mariátegui Horkheimer Dutt Brecht Marcuse Kalecki Fromm Cox Lefebvre James Adorno Padmore Sartre Deutscher Hoxha Beauvoir Sombart Nkrumah Sweezy Emmanuel Hill Bettelheim Draper Jones Hobsbawm Althusser Hinton Williams Freire Mandel Sivanandan Miliband Cabral Thompson Bauman Fanon Kosik Berger Castro Guevara Liebman Heller Guattari Mészáros O'Connor Wallerstein Mies Tronti Debord Amin Hall Nairn Parenti Negri Jameson Gonzalo Dussel Harvey Laclau Bahro Poulantzas Vattimo Badiou Harnecker Altvater Anderson Löwy Vogel Sison Easthope Rancière Berman Przeworski Cohen Therborn Losurdo Ture Postone Rodney Bannerji Spivak Newton Sakai Wood Federici Wolff Balibar Eagleton Kurz Hartsock Rowbotham Mouffe Geras Brenner Davis Massey Cleaver Bishop Haraway Panitch Clarke Jessop Davis Wright Fraser Burawoy Holloway Rose Screpanti Tamás Hampton Cano Žižek Berardi Sankara Hennessy McDonnell Douzinas Roediger Foster West Ghandy Marcos Heinrich Prashad Kelley Dean Lordon Linera Fisher Li Coulthard Malm Seymour Toscano Bhattacharya Moufawad-Paul Srnicek Horvat Hamza Saito
Journals Antipode Capital & Class Capitalism Nature Socialism Constellations Critique: Journal of Socialist Theory Historical Materialism Mediations Monthly Review New Left Review Race & Class Rethinking Marxism Science & Society Socialist Register
Related topics 21st-century communist theorists Anarchism Creative destruction Conflict theory Criticism of Marxism Communism Communalism Economic determinism History of communism Left-wing politics Marxian economics New Left Old Left Municipalism Political ecology Socialism Authoritarian Democratic Market Reformist Revolutionary Social Utopian Left-wing populism Universal class Vulgar Marxism Economism Worker cooperative Workers' council
Outline Communism portal Philosophy portal Socialism portal
v t e

In Marxist theory, false consciousness is a term describing the ways in which material, ideological, and institutional processes are said to mislead members of the proletariat and other class actors within capitalist societies, concealing the exploitation and inequality intrinsic to the social relations between classes. As such, it legitimizes and normalizes the existence of different social classes.

According to Marxists, false consciousness is consciousness which is misaligned from reality. Thus, it is a serious impediment to human progress and correcting it is a major focus of dialectical materialism.

Origin of terminology

Although Marx never used the term "false consciousness" in his writings, he made references to workers having misguided or harmful ideas, and he suggested how those ideas get reinforced by powerful elites. For example, in an 1870 letter to Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt, Marx discussed the antagonism between English proletarians and Irish proletarians that was rampant in his day:

The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish worker he regards himself as a member of the ruling nation and consequently he becomes a tool of the English aristocrats and capitalists against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination over himself. He cherishes religious, social, and national prejudices against the Irish worker... This antagonism is artificially kept alive and intensified by the press, the pulpit, the comic papers, in short, by all the means at the disposal of the ruling classes."

Marx considered this type of manipulated animosity among workers to be, in Ashley Crossman's words, "the opposite of class consciousness. Individualistic rather than collective in nature, it produces a view of oneself as a single entity engaged in competition with others of one's social and economic standing, rather than as part of a group with unified experiences, struggles, and interests."

The coinage of "false consciousness" is commonly traced to an 1893 letter from Friedrich Engels to Franz Mehring. It was ten years after Marx's death. Engels was seeking to explain how ideological notions come about, as he and Marx had understood it:

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.

Joseph McCarney notes in "Ideology and False Consciousness" that Engels was referring to "a quite specific kind of cognitive failure on the part of an individual, a failure of self-awareness, a lack of insight into the 'motive forces' of their own thinking." Engels was not using the term in its full modern sense, i.e., as the mindset of a subordinate class which wittingly or unwittingly adopts the ideology of the ruling class. As it turns out, Engels only made this one reference to false consciousness. He died two years later and never had an opportunity to expound on its meaning and significance.

Later development

It wasn't until the 1923 book History and Class Consciousness by Hungarian philosopher György Lukács that the concept of false consciousness was explored in depth. Ron Eyerman writes that Lukács defined false consciousness as "the distorted perception and beliefs an individual or a social class acquires through their life activities in capitalist society." Lukács didn't regard false consciousness as a static condition but rather as a dialectical stage in the movement toward a true class consciousness.

In the 1930s, the Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci emphasized how false consciousness is a tool of ideological control. In his Prison Notebooks, he introduced the notion of cultural hegemony, the process under capitalism whereby the ruling classes create particular norms, values, and stigmas, amounting to a culture in which their continued dominance is considered both commonsensical and beneficial. In Eyerman's assessment, Gramsci "sought to explain the hold bourgeois ideologies had over the working class" and that " movement for progressive social change under such conditions must work to re-educate and transform the false consciousness that makes hegemonic rule possible."

The false consciousness concept was further developed by Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse and the early Frankfurt School of critical theory, as well as by French philosopher Henri Lefebvre. In the latter part of the 20th century, "false consciousness" began to be used in a non-Marxian context, specifically in relation to oppression based on sexual orientation, gender, race and ethnicity.

Structuralist interpretation

During the late 1960s and 1970s, structuralism gained popularity among academics and public intellectuals. In his 1970 essay "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Towards an Investigation)", Louis Althusser offered a structuralist interpretation of ideology. He asserted that the "ideological apparatus" of the capitalist state⁠—particularly that of the education system⁠—inculcated a false consciousness which favored obedience and conformity.

Other explanations

In recent decades, numerous scholars and political analysts have proposed explanations for why false consciousness arises and proliferates. In a 1984 paper, the economist Marshall I. Pomer argued that members of the proletariat disregard the true nature of class relations because of their faith in the possibility, and even likelihood, of upward mobility. Such faith is necessary according to economics theory with its presumption of rational agency; otherwise wage laborers would not support social relations antithetical to their self-interest.

Some political analysts focus on where people's understanding of their interests originates. In an essay entitled "False Consciousness", Michael Parenti challenges the assumption that working-class Americans freely define their interests but then choose, for various reasons, to think and act against those interests. Instead he writes that "the development of one's own interests and political consciousness in general may be stunted or distorted by misinformation, disinformation, and a narrow but highly visible mainstream political agenda that rules out feasible alternatives." Parenti's contention is that ideological confusion is being propagated in the nation's politics and mass media and thereby causes people to misjudge what their real interests are.

Jon Wiener makes a similar point in his Dissent article "Working-Class Republicans and 'False Consciousness'". He says that Thomas Frank's influential 2004 book What's the Matter with Kansas? was to a large extent an examination of how false consciousness had spread across the poorest counties of the Great Plains states: "He shows how the Republicans and their media voices⁠—Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and so on⁠—appeal to ordinary people with a class-conscious anger at 'the elite.' This elite is not the capitalist class; it is the liberals, who are held responsible for the 'decline' in 'values' that voters are called on to reverse."

See also

• Capitalist realism
• Character mask
• Class consciousness
• Cognitive dissonance
• Consciousness raising
• Cultural hegemony
• Culture industry
• Dominant ideology
• "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses"
• Introspection illusion
• Karl Marx's theory of alienation
• Political consciousness
• Propaganda model
• Spectacle
• System justification
• Turkeys voting for Christmas
• Hermeneutics of suspicion

References

1. ^ Ministry of Education and Training (Vietnam) (2023). Curriculum of the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism. Vol. 1. Translated by Nguyen, Luna. Banyan House Publishing. p. 231. ISBN 9798987931608.
2. ^ "False consciousness". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 2023-07-28.
3. Marx, Karl (April 9, 1870). "Marx letter to Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt" – via Marx/Engels Archive.
4. Crossman, Ashley (July 25, 2019). "Understanding Karl Marx's Class Consciousness and False Consciousness". ThoughtCo.
5. Engels, Friedrich (July 14, 1893). "Engels to Franz Mehring" – via Marx Engels Internet Archive.
6. McCarney, Joseph (2005). "Ideology and False Consciousness" – via Joe McCarney Archive.
7. Peter Hossler (2020). "False Consciousness". Encyclopedia of Critical Whiteness Studies in Education. Brill. ISBN 9789004444836.
8. ^ Eyerman, Ron (1981). "False Consciousness and Ideology in Marxist Theory". Acta Sociologica. 24 (1/2): 43–56. JSTOR 4194332. S2CID 154909272.
9. Lukács, György (1967). History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics. London: Merlin Press. ISBN 9780850361971.
10. Gramsci, Antonio (2003). Selections from the Prison Notebooks. International Publishers. p. 258.
11. Merrifield, Andy (March 1, 2020). "Mystified Consciousness". Monthly Review.
12. Althusser, Louis (1970). "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation)" – via Louis Althusser Archive.
13. Marshall I. Pomer (October 1984). "Upward Mobility of Low-Paid Workers: A Multivariate Model for Occupational Changers". Sociological Perspectives. 27 (4): 427–442. doi:10.2307/1389035. ISSN 0731-1214. JSTOR 1389035. S2CID 147390452.
14. Parenti, Michael (1996). "False Consciousness". Dirty Truths. City Lights Books. pp. 209–214. ISBN 9780872863170.
15. Wiener, Jon (Spring 2024). "Working-Class Republicans and 'False Consciousness'". Dissent.

• Marxist theory
• Error