False consciousness

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False consciousness is, within Marxist theory, an attempt to explain why all workers do not do what Marxist theory says they are supposed to do, viz., support a communist revolution.

It is the Marxist version of the Christian idea that "people only reject Christianity because they want to sin."

Contents

[edit] Original notion

The argument goes like this.

  • Premise 1. The struggle between various social classes is the be-all-end-all of world affairs.
  • Premise 2. In this struggle, members of each social class tend to look out for their own class interests.
  • Premise 3. Fulfillment of the communist political program is an advance in the interests of the working class, and by extension each worker.
  • Conclusion: All workers should be communists.

The question then becomes, why are all workers not communists? Since it would be too much to suggest that any one of the premises (particularly Premise 3) is a pile of bunk, it must be that workers are just deluded, having been duped by the ruling classes into thinking that they are anything else besides workers, in an attempt to "divide and conquer" the worldwide proletariat. The ridiculous notion that the worker is actually an individual person is heavily frowned upon, as it tends to make him think he is somehow different from some other worker in Timbuktu, with different interests, thus ruining the abstraction (and also the worker's usefulness to the Party).

False consciousness is this notion that the worker is not first and primarily a worker.

[edit] Application

When communists are not in power, the term sees use as an ad hominem attack of sorts against non-communists; often to prevent communists from listening to the arguments of such horrid reactionaries.

When communists do get into power, it can be used a little more. In the Soviet Union, the idea that opponents of communism were in massive denial, or otherwise not quite right in the head, was taken one step further, and political opponents were clapped up in booby hatches, diagnosed with such "diseases" as "Sluggishly Progressing Schizophrenia."[1]

[edit] Modifications

The theory of false consciousness has undergone modifications through the years.

Previously, communists had claimed that they were not in power because workers were being excluded from the political process. The lie was put to these claims when communists started losing free elections; in response, the Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci came up with the notion of "cultural hegemony." This was the idea that the ruling class uses cultural rather than political means to keep workers in false consciousness. Offshoots of this idea include Cultural Marxism and neoconservatism.

Later, with the advent of identity politics, in which various other identity groups took the place of the proletariat in the abstractions, the idea has become much more widely applied. The so-called "Uncle Toms," for example, who place their own interests above that of their perceived race, are seen as having false consciousness. Radical feminists are also particularly fond of the idea, which they borrowed directly from Marxism; they came up with the entire concept of "consciousness raising" in an attempt to dispel false consciousness among women.

[edit] Right-wing spin

Some hard-right activists and libertarians of a conspiracy theorist bent have developed their own version of false consciousness, in which they claim that people only vote left-wing because they've been duped by the liberal media, public education system, and other institutions. Deep down these "left-wing" (which just means anything left of firmly right-wing) voters supposedly believe in right-wing values, they just don't know it. When taken to an even greater extreme they may say liberals are just right-wingers in denial, or are vying for attention. A more mainstream version of this was pushed by Fox News and the GOP after the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election, where they tried to say that people didn't vote for Mitt Romney because of "messaging problems" as opposed to their platform itself being too extreme for the public.[2]

Another right-wing version of this pops up every now and then to explain why minorities don't vote Republican. The answer is that they've been fooled by the Democratic Party, who repress them through food stamps and welfare into not taking personal responsibility, never mind that the suggestion that minorities are too stupid to know what's good for them is an argument that will help turn off minority voters.

The libertarian version of this is to refer to people who didn't vote for Ron Paul as "sheeple" on YouTube.

The fact that both the radical right and radical left like the theory goes to show it may just appeal to ideologues who need to explain away why most people don't support their perfect ideology.

[edit] See also

[edit] Footnotes

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