[Marxism] Petty bourgeois - the consciousness yardstick ?

["Jurriaan Bendien" <andromeda246@xxxxxxxxx>]

Mark wrote:

Class rule in the US has always been firmly rooted in what we used to
call false consciousness, so the matter's really rather central to what
we're about.

It occurs to me that this viewpoint is idealist, and itself an instance of
"false consciousness" :-]

Class rule is founded on asset ownership and its enforcement by legal,
military or police agencies, as well as by command over labor, not on false
consciousness. Ideology only rationalises or justifies the (moral)
legitimacy of class rule, by presenting sectional interests as if they are
common interests etc.

The term "false consciousness" itself is suspect, because, philosophically
speaking, "consciousness" is not something to which the attributes of truth
and falsehood can be applied. The substantive philosophical point is that
one is either conscious of something, or not conscious of it, or else more
conscious of it or less conscious of it.

If one is conscious of something, this can be critised only by reference to
the nature or quality of that consciousness, which "from some point of view"
might be regarded as a misunderstanding or misapprehension of a certain
kind. But that does not make the consciousness or awareness itself "true" or
"false"; the terms true and false are properly applied to statements about
logic or matters of fact, such as expressed either through language, symbols
or human actions.

In German, the word "falsch" is used in a variety of contexts in which its
meaning is often equivalent in English to the prefix "mis-" and it might
mean anything like fake, improper, inappropriate, phony, incorrect,
nonfactual, pseudo, spurious etc., but the general meaning intended is
usually just "wrong" or "mistaken" (in some way).

So in German, you might say for example "Ich hatte dass falsch gelesen"
meaning "I had misread it" but literally what is being said is "I had
falsely read it". In English you can also say, for example, "a false
approach, interpretation or route" but what is really meant here is "a wrong
or mistaken approach, interpretation or route" (which refers to
value-criteria and appropriate context).

Frederick Engels once famously remarked, "Ideology is a process accomplished
by the so-called thinker consciously, indeed, but with a false
consciousness. The real motives impelling him remain unknown to him,
otherwise it would not be an ideological process at all. Hence, he imagines
false or apparent motives."

In other words, people do many things without being fully aware of the real
or deeper causes or reasons why they do them, or the true motives involved;
part of their behaviour is always unconscious.

This signifies that the "false consciousness" refers to an awareness of an
object of consciousness which is limited, because it contains a lack of
awareness of aspects essential to understand the "real" or "true" nature of
the object. But that does not make the awareness itself is literally "false"
or invalid, rather it means the awareness involves a mistaken, superficial
or wrongheaded approach, that it is distorted, one-sided, limited,
simplistic, etc.

In Engels's sense, a "false consciousness" could involve only perfectly true
statements or valid beliefs, which nevertheless misrepresent the object of
those statements, i.e. although they are true statements about the object of
consciousness, they omit other aspects which are essential to a genuinely
"correct" or ""authentic" representation.

To correct this false consciousness would therefore require reference to:

(1) the total context relevant to the object being misrepresented by the
"false consciousness" (but any judgement about whatever this "total context"
is taken to be, itself involves value-criteria; therefore, to dismiss a set
of statements as "false consciousness" is not convincing unless proof is
provided that those statements are in some way logically flawed,
inconsistent or counterfactual).
(2) the contradictions or hidden assumptions involved in, or referred to, by
the "false consciousness"

The substantive concept of "false consciousness" used by Marx and Engels
involves the idea that the mistaken awareness:

(1) follows a specific determinate pattern, which conforms to interests or
motives which remain obscured or hidden, and which can be revealed only by
critical inquiry into the presuppositions of this consciousness,
(2) functions to justify, defend or rationalise a position or situation.
(3) is a predictable effect of the specific contradictory nature of some
social situation.

Hence Alfred Sohn-Rethel sometimes referred to "necessary false
consciousness" in the sense of a mistaken consciousness which is necessarily
produced and perpetuated, because, aided by a set of convenient
categorisations, it performs the social function of practically justifying,
legitimising, validating, mediating, bridging or rationalising a position or
situation which is itself inescapably contradictory.

Jurriaan




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