False consciousness

[PikSmeet]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consciousness

It says in the wiki article that Marx never used this term or even believed in it.
Is this the case and although it says Engels used the term, he never uses the term either, but may have said something similar in this quote.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_...ousness#Engels

So does the idea originate with Engles and if so is the Marxist version of original sin, to explain why the workers reject socialism for capitalism.

I'm confused, of course I understand that if a worker votes for a capitalist party, they know what they are doing and what they want but at the same time their vote is wasted as you cannot have capitalism without the problems created by capitalism. I don't believe they have sinned or in a sense made a mistake as they know what they want. They just haven't reached a level of understanding of socialism & capitalism.

[Tim Cornelis]

False consciousness is simply used as a description. You often see that phrases expressions of Marx and Engels are promoted to formalised concepts. False consciousness was simply a way to describe ideology. Pure and simple. There's far too much weight on this particular use of words, as if it describes an entirely distinct concept.

You see the same with Marx's use of "a higher phase", it's all of a sudden turned into "the Second Phase of communist society", as a very definite epoch distinct from the first. These phrases take a life of their own, when they're undeserving. It's annoying.

It's like if someone were to take phrases I say out of context, and start using 'Distinct Concept', inferring some deeper conceptual meaning behind it, and start thinking of some insightful conceptual idea I must have had when I wrote 'distinct concept' just now (in the first paragraph). And then it becomes a concept associated with me.

It's not an idea, it's not a concept, it's simply a phrase mentioned in passing that describes, or at least describes an aspect of, ideology (which is a concept in Marxism).

Why not do the same with some other phrases used? "bourgeois illusion" (same text on the wikipedia page). We could write a wikipedia page about that, pretend it's an important concept in Marxist thought.

"Bourgeois illusion is a term coined by Friedrich Engels to describe..." And then it takes a life of their own.

[RedMaterialist]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consciousness

It says in the wiki article that Marx never used this term or even believed in it.
Is this the case and although it says Engels used the term, he never uses the term either, but may have said something similar in this quote.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_...ousness#Engels

So does the idea originate with Engles and if so is the Marxist version of original sin, to explain why the workers reject socialism for capitalism.

I'm confused, of course I understand that if a worker votes for a capitalist party, they know what they are doing and what they want but at the same time their vote is wasted as you cannot have capitalism without the problems created by capitalism. I don't believe they have sinned or in a sense made a mistake as they know what they want. They just haven't reached a level of understanding of socialism & capitalism.

It's not that the worker makes a falsely conscious (lies when he votes) decision to vote for capitalism, but that the worker lives and works in a system in which the ruling ideology is controlled by the capitalist class. It's like asking a fish to vote for a non-water society. Workers can't understand the society until they can learn how it operates. I'm still waiting for Bernie Sanders to explain how surplus value and profit work, as in, "You know all those trillions of dollars of wealth the wealth-creators claim to have created? Guess what. They didn't create a penny of it. The working class created all of it. You know all that money they gave to Clinton? Guess what. You created every dollar of it."

According to Engels, the capitalist ideologue is not aware of the real forces behind his thinking, therefore they have to invent "false" motives, i.e. a false consciousness, to explain, in this case, capitalism. One of their favorite false motives (pointed out by Marx) is the idea that capitalism is the best of all possible worlds, that it has existed forever and will continue to exist as long as the government doesn't interfere with the magical working of the free market.

Another one of their favorite lies is that the universities are teeming with communist professors who indoctrinate the American college student with Marxist heresy.

The use of the word "false" by Engels seems to imply, not a deliberate lie, but something imagined or apparent. Maybe fictitious, unreal, subjective consciousness would be a better description.

I think the phrase is still useful. The falsity is not in the thinking of the working class, but in the thinking of the bourgeois apologists (another useful phrase.)

[Rafiq]

False consciousnesses as a term is simply misused often times.

It doesn't simply refer to why workers 'reject socialism'. False consciousness should be understood in terms of the distinct ways in which working people express kinds of 'anti-capitalism' - which means, nationalism, fascism, anti-semitism, and so on. The point isn't like the Matrix - that workers are 'brainwashed" or whatever.

The term false consciousness refers specifically to the active ways in which workers develop an opposition to the existing order outside of scientific consciousness. It refers to the ways in which workers articulate their predicament in ideological, rather than scientific ways.

The best example is anti-semitism, which is precisely a displaced anti-capitalism. What makes the conspicuousness "false" is simply that it is an articulation of a discontent which falsely identifies the basis of the discontent, falsely identifies that which they are opposing, which is mystified ideologically.

The social antagonism pre-exists any socialism. Proletarians are by default always dissatisfied with their existing predicament. So false cosnciousens simply refers to the ways in which they articulate this dissatisfaction.

The error of philistine ideologues in attacking 'false consciousnesses' is the assumption that workers are complacent and that we Marxists accuse them of being brainwashed into being satisfied. But this is untrue - they are never satisfied, by merit of their social being they are always in opposition to their conditions of life.

[RedMaterialist]

The error of philistine ideologues in attacking 'false consciousnesses' is the assumption that workers are complacent and that we Marxists accuse them of being brainwashed into being satisfied. But this is untrue - they are never satisfied, by merit of their social being they are always in opposition to their conditions of life.

Then why don't the workers revolt?

[Rafiq]

Then why don't the workers revolt?

Because this dissatisfaction is expressed in numerous different ways. Sometimes in totally apolitical ways - lower class violence (including racial violence, etc.), drug abuse, and so on.

The dissatisfaction is expressed in political ways too - every nationalism, every successful fascism demonstrates this. I don't think one can properly explain the Trump phenomena here in the states without understanding this.

Being discontented with their existing predicament doesn't entail that they know why they are discontented, or the actual nature of their predicament. It simply means: they aren't satisfied, they are bitter, miserable, and angry. That isn't inherently socialist - but it is a precondition for the dissemination of socialism among them. They are pissed off and have nothing to lose. That's it. That's the only reason workers are the potential agents of social consciousness. It is their suffering which is universal - even to the point where the spiritual suffering among all people, including the ruling class, at a personal level, relates to this same social antagonism in a certain way at its deepest core. They simply can suppress, ignore, be unaffected by this suffering by merit of their social being, as the successful acolytes of the existing order. That is not to say they are worth any sympathy - on the contrary, it simply means that the true universal subject in capitalism is the proletarian - that everyone is a proletarian when they are stripped of their property. It is the least common denominator of existing as a subject within capitalism.

[RedMaterialist]

Being discontented with their existing predicament doesn't entail that they know why they are discontented, or the actual nature of their predicament. It simply means: they aren't satisfied, they are bitter, miserable, and angry. That isn't inherently socialist - but it is a precondition for the dissemination of socialism among them.

The proletariat and its discontents. It just doesn't sound like a real basis for revolution. The dissemination of socialism implies a gradual expansion of socialist ideas.

on the contrary, it simply means that the true universal subject in capitalism is the proletarian - that everyone is a proletarian when they are stripped of their property. It is the least common denominator of existing as a subject within capitalism.

The "true" subject...not the "false" subject of the false consciousness of bourgeois ideology which maintains the universality of private property, the market, the commodity, etc.

false consciousness = mass psychosis. it's not that the proletariat is brainwashed, but that everybody is.

[BIXX]

Idk, I think that in this case the criticisms of consciousness from nihcom are actually pretty relevant.

[RedMaterialist]

The workers at the United Technologies company in Indiana appear to be more than discontented. Maybe there are some socialists who would appear before the union and .... i don't know, maybe make a speech about socialism.

[Rafiq]

The proletariat and its discontents. It just doesn't sound like a real basis for revolution.

A revolution isn't guaranteed by anything. It's only made possible because of this vague opposition. Nothing makes it inevitable.

The "true" subject...not the "false" subject of the false consciousness of bourgeois ideology which maintains the universality of private property, the market, the commodity, etc.

No, there's nothing false about it. It is very real as a subject. Private property, the market and commodities are for all intensive purposes universal in the constitution of our existing order and are very real things.

false consciousness = mass psychosis.

Which is silly only because you can only be in a position to... Diagnose society as one of 'mass psychosis' if you make a pretense to the 'real' reality. But that is the reality of things. there is no 'real reality' of socialism underlying it that everyone is ignoring. False consciousness is not mass psychosis, because ideology is a real thing and exists in congruence with the social order - not IN SPITE of the reality of our social order, but on the contrary BECAUSE of it - it reproduces it and reproduces the mode of human activity within it.

[RedMaterialist]

No, there's nothing false about it. It is very real as a subject. Private property, the market and commodities are for all intensive purposes universal in the constitution of our existing order and are very real things.

Bourgeois ideology is a "false" consciousness which certainly produces real results. But the ideology itself is false, imaginary, not based in reality. For instance, the bourgeois believes and enforces the ideology that profit is produced in the market rather than in the process of production; that private property is essential for human freedom; that commodity production has always existed; and that the consumption of commodities is essential for human happiness.

These things are not "universal" in the sense that they have always existed. That belief is the false consciousness.

All ideologies based on class domination are necessarily false. Patriarchy, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, fascism. Even Stalinism, the nominal class domination of the proletariat, produced its own false consciousness, as degraded and degenerated as it was.

This has to be why there will be no false consciousness or ideology of any kind after the state has collapsed.

[RedMaterialist]

because ideology is a real thing and exists in congruence with the social order - not IN SPITE of the reality of our social order, but on the contrary BECAUSE of it - it reproduces it and reproduces the mode of human activity within it.

Ideology exists because of the reality of the social order...

But the reality of the social order is exploitation, the fetishizing of commodity consumption, imperialism, prisons, military domination of the world, planetary climate destruction, etc., etc.

Bourgeois ideology is the absolute denial of these aspects of the social order, surely?

[Tim Cornelis]

Ideology does emerge from reality (in this sense, it is based in reality), and it reflects reality back in a distorted way. They're real illusions.

"The illusion that value comes from the commodity itself and not from the social relations behind it is a “fetish”. A capitalist society is full of such illusions. Money appears to have god-like qualities, yet this is only so because it is an object which is used to express the value of all other commodities. Profit appears to spring out of exchange itself, yet Marx worked hard to explain how profit actually originates in production through the unequal relations between capital and labor in the workplace. Rent appears to grow out of the soil, yet Marx was adamant that rent actually comes from the appropriation of value created by labor. We see these fetishistic ideas in modern day mainstream economic theory in the idea that value comes from the subjective experience between a consumer and a commodity, and that capital creates value by itself.

Yet the theory of commodity fetishism isn’t just a theory of illusion. It’s not that the entire world is an illusion, reality existing somewhere far below the surface, always out of sight. The illusion is real. Commodities really do have value. Money really does have social power. Individual people really are powerless and material structures really do have social power. There is not a real world of production existing below the surface in which the relations between producers are direct. Relations between producers are only indirect, only coordinated through the mystifying world of commodities."

https://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/...odities-draft/

What does this mean: "fetishizing of commodity consumption"?

Also the state doesn't collapse, it dies out. This is pretty basic stuff to be honest. After years this basic thing about the state still hasn't clicked, amazingly.

[RedMaterialist]

Ideology does emerge from reality (in this sense, it is based in reality), and it reflects reality back in a distorted way. They're real illusions.

Real illusions? Isn't that saying false consciousness is a true consciousness?

Yet the theory of commodity fetishism isn’t just a theory of illusion. It’s not that the entire world is an illusion

The world is not false or an illusion, but the ideology, the justification of the world is what is supposed to be false.

Also the state doesn't collapse, it dies out. This is pretty basic stuff to be honest. After years this basic thing about the state still hasn't clicked, amazingly.

It's just a metaphor. A tree can wither, rot and die from the inside and then collapse on itself. It hasn't clicked because no state has ever died out (at least until recently.)

[blake 3:17]

I tend to think of bourgeois ideology as a story with an ugly story teller -- Success is its own reward! Faster! Moving on! More? More! Why weren't you faster?

[Tim Cornelis]

There's never been the overthrow of capitalism, so obviously lacking the objective conditions that cause a state to die out (again, not collapse -- this tells me you don't understand what the DOTP is, which you've confirmed elsewhere). RedMaterialist, maybe you should ask more questions like you did recently, because your understanding of Marxism remains frustratingly appalling.

[Luís Henrique]

Real illusions? Isn't that saying false consciousness is a true consciousness?

Real illusions, in the sence that if you go to the bakery and buy a scone, it is an illusion that the scone "is worth" $ 1.00, it is an illusion that the paper note you give in exchange for it "represents" the amount of $ 1.00, etc; but those are "real illusions" because if you spend the $ 1.00 you will be given a scone, and if you don't spend that $ 1.00 you won't have the scone (or if you try you might "legitimately" face the State power enforcing the illusions).

The world is not false or an illusion, but the ideology, the justification of the world is what is supposed to be false.

The ideology, however, is part of the world, and helps shaping the world. That we are going to war against this or that country because they are barbarians and we need to freed them from their barbarism is lie, but if it is a lie that is going to make us wear our uniforms and kill people, the it is a lie that is as powerful, or more, than most truths. In this sence, it is very real, even if it is false.

And that means that the real world, to the extent that the real world includes the war against that country, is at least partially based on something false, on an illusion.

Luís Henrique