What is social self-consciousness?

[Riot]

Perhaps it has been addressed before, but I didn't see a thread directly related to it on the first few pages of my search. But if you've got some past threads for me to read on this, that'd be great too.


So:

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What is social self-consciousness?

I've also read it referred to social self-awareness and historical self-consciousness.


This seems to be a very important concept.


Anyone care to lay it out for me, other/future new users, and whomever else might need a refresher?

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If I were to take a stab at it, based on the context I've been seeing it in, it seems to be when a subject who is rudimentarily aware of the class antagonism as it exists NOW and/or some basic tenets of dialectical materialism ACTS in accordance with their critical understanding.

Riot

[Rafiq]

Funny that you should mention it, having just joined the forum. A happy coincidence, no doubt.

If you are interested in social self-consciousness, you should keep an eye on a forthcoming post I am making on my blog which will cover the topic in its entirety. You can find it here:

https://jrachblog.wordpress.com/

I have covered the topic extensively in 'Our Materialism', but it is in the new post where it will get a further elaboration in consideration of certain confusions. I apologize for not giving a more straightforward answer, but I worry that such an answer will only incur more questions. All will be addressed in a forthcoming post I am making.

To give you a more broad and general idea, which unfortunately I cannot elaborate on here (I am caught up in that post which will elaborate in far better ways than I can here) social self-consciousness is another term for scientific socialism and historical materialism, but it is in a way different from how these terms are used by leftists. The difference of course is that 'scientific socialism' and 'historical materialism' in their discursive contexts neglect the active side, that is, how their articulation actually relates to individuals, to classes, in their actuality. Think of it this way: It is one thing to know others, but it is another thing for others to know themselves by those same devices. The real question leftists avoid is: Very well, we may accept historical materialism in the domain of abstract thought, but what are the implications of the mass dissemination of historical materialist itself to the broad masses? That' the real question that this term answers.

Social/historical self-consciousness is necessary to emphasize because it is a mode of practice, not just an idea or some doctrine. It is meant to emphasize the partisan aspect: It is one thing to say that "I, as a neutral observer, agree or disagree with scientific socialism". It is another thing to articulate scientific socialism as already a constitutive partisan position which situates the individual into a real mode of practice.

Of course, with social self-consciousness, it isn't to mean a new kind of permanent state of harmony. In order to be socially self-conscious, not only must this be reproduced, but there must be an actual, continual propelling reason that forces one to continually be self-conscious, if this 'self' was never changing, there would be no point in social self-consciousness. An animal doesn't have to be self-conscious because it can simply exist. The assertion of historical self-consciousness doesn't mean a static mode of human activity, but on the contrary one that is ever-changing even more than in capitalism. It is not just "I know myself, who knows himself" and that is it. The excess that this produces is the actual external empirical world whose incessant conformity to this same consciousness, reproduces social self-consciousness itself in a processual way.

Whatever confusions or problems with this one may have, will be addressed in the forthcoming post. I promise it.

[Riot]

I shall withhold any judgement, then, until after I read your article.


Glad to have you coincidentally already on the trail.