Class consciousness 816949 224465759 2008-07-08T23:27:09Z JForget 1064243 rm tag {{Marxist theory}} '''Class consciousness''', literally, is consciousness of one's [[social class]]. From the perspective of Marxist theory, it refers to the self-awareness or lack thereof, of a particular class, its capacity to act in its own rational interests, or a measure or assessment of the extent to which an individual or class is conscious of the historical tasks implicit (given the precepts of [[Marxism]]) for them. {| align="right" | __TOC__ |} == Georg Lukács' ''History and Class Consciousness'' (1920) == Class [[consciousness]], as described by [[Georg Lukács]]'s famous ''History and Class Consciousness'' (1920), is opposed to any [[psychology|psychological]] conception of consciousness, which forms the basis of individual or mass psychology (see [[Freud]] or, before him, [[Gustave Le Bon]]). According to Lukács, each social class has a determined class consciousness which it can achieve. In effect, as opposed to the [[liberalism|liberal]] conception of consciousness as the basis of [[individualism|individual freedom]] and of the [[social contract]], Marxist class consciousness is not an origin, but an achievement (i.e. it must be "earned" or won). Hence, it is never assured: the [[proletariat]]'s class consciousness is the result of a permanent struggle to understand the "[[concrete (philosophy)|concrete]] [[totality]]" of the [[philosophy of history|historical process]]. According to Lukács, the proletariat was the first class in history that may achieve true class consciousness, because of its specific position highlighted in the ''[[Communist Manifesto]]'' as the "living negation" of [[capitalism]]. All others classes, including the [[bourgeoisie]], are limited to a "[[false consciousness]]" which impedes them from understanding the totality of history: instead of understanding each specific moment as a phase of the historical process, they [[universality (philosophy)|universalize]] it, claiming it is eternal. Hence, capitalism is not thought as a specific phase of history, but is naturalized and thought of as an eternal stage. This "false consciousness", which forms [[ideology]] itself, is not a simple [[error]] as in classical philosophy, but an [[illusion]] which can't be dispelled. [[Marx]] described it in his theory of [[commodity fetishism]], which Lukács completed with his concept of [[reification (Marxism)|reification]]: [[Marx's theory of alienation|alienation]] is what follows the worker's estrangement to the world following the new life acquired by the product of his work. The [[ideology|dominant bourgeois ideology]] thus leads the individual to see the achievement of his [[labour (economics)|labour]] take a life of its own. Furthermore, [[specialization]] is also seen as a characteristic of the ideology of modern [[rationalism]], which creates specific and independent domains (art, politics, science, etc.). Only a global perspective can point out how all these different domains interact, argues Lukács. He also points out how [[Kant]] brought to its limit the classical opposition between the abstract [[form]] and the concrete, historical content, which is abstractly conceived as irrational and [[contingent]]. Thus, with Kant's rational system, history becomes totally contingent and is thus ignored. Only with [[Hegel]]'s [[dialectic]] can a mediation be found between the abstract form and the abstract notion of a concrete content.<ref>[http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/lukacs3.htm Georg Lukács, ''History and Class Consciousness'' Complete Text.]</ref> Even if the bourgeois loses his [[ideology|individual point of view]] in an attempt to grasp the reality of the totality of society and of the historical process, he is condemned to a form of false consciousness. As an individual, he will always see the collective result of individual actions as a form of "[[objectivity (philosophy)|objective]] [[law (principle)|law]]" to which he must submit himself (liberalism has gone so far as seeing an [[invisible hand]] in this collective results, making capitalism the best of all possible worlds). By contrast, the proletariat would be, according to Lukács, the first class in history with the possibility to achieve a true form of class consciousness, granting it [[knowledge]] of the totality of the historical process. The proletariat takes the place of Hegel's ''[[Weltgeist]]'' ("World Spirit"), which achieves history through the various ''[[Volkgeist]]'' ("Folk Spirits"): the [[idealist]] conception of an abstract Spirit making history, which ends in the realm of Reason, is replaced by a [[materialism|materialist]] conception based not on [[Mythology|mythical]] Spirits, but on a concrete "identical [[subject (philosophy)|subject]]-object of history": the proletariat. The proletariat is both the "object" of history, created by the capitalist social formation; but it is also the "subject" of history, as it is its labour that shapes the world, and thus, knowledge of itself is also, necessarily, knowledge of the reality and of the totality of the historical process. The proletariat's class consciousness is not immediate; class consciousness musn't be mistaken either with the consciousness of one's future and collective interests, opposed to personal immediate interests. The possibility of class consciousness is given by the objective process of history, which transforms the proletariat into a [[commodity]], hence objectifying it. Class consciousness is thus not a simple subjective act: "as consciousness here is not the consciousness of an object opposed to itself, but the object's consciousness, the act of being conscious of oneself disrupts the objectivity form of its object" (in "Reification and the Proletariat's Consciousness" §3, III "The proletariat's point of view"). In other words, instead of the bourgeois subject and its corresponding ideological concept of individual [[free will]], the proletariat has been transformed into an object (a commodity) which, when it takes consciousness of itself, transforms the very structure of objectivity, that is of reality. This specific role of the proletariat is a consequence of its specific position; thus, for the first time, consciousness of itself (class consciousness) is also consciousness of the totality (knowledge of the entire social and historical process). Through [[dialectical materialism]], the proletariat understands that what the individual bourgeois conceived as "laws" akin to the [[physical law|laws of nature]], which may be only manipulated, as in [[Descartes]]'s dream, but not changed, is in fact the result of a social and historical process, which can be controlled. Furthermore, only dialectical materialism links together all specialized domains, which modern rationalism can only think as separate instead of as forming a totality. Only the proletariat can understand that the so-called "[[law (principle)|eternal laws of economics]]" are in fact nothing more than the historical form taken by the social and economical process in a capitalist society. Since these "laws" are the result of the collective actions of individuals, and are thus created by society, Marx and Lukács reasoned that this necessarily meant that they could be ''changed''. Any attempt in transforming the so-called "laws" governing capitalism into [[universality (philosophy)|universal principles]], valid in all times and places, are criticized by Lukács as a form of false consciousness. As the "expression of the revolutionary process itself", dialectical materialism, which is the only theory with an understanding of the totality of the historical process, is the theory which may help the proletariat in its "struggle for class consciousness". Although Lukács does not contest the marxist primacy of the economic [[infrastructure]] on the ideological [[superstructure]] (not to be mistaken with vulgar [[economic determinism]]), he considers that there is a place for autonomous struggle for class consciousness. In order to achieve a unity of [[theory]] and [[praxis]], theory must not only tend toward reality in an attempt to change it; reality must also tend towards theory. Otherwise, the historical process leads a life of its own, while theorists make their own little theories, desperately waiting for some kind of possible influence over the historical process. Henceforth, reality itself must tend toward the theory, making it the "expression of the revolutionary process itself". In turn, a theory which has as its goal helping the proletariat achieve class consciousness must first be an "objective theory of class consciousness". However, theory in itself is insufficient, and ultimately relies on the struggle of humankind and of the proletariat for consciousness: the "objective theory of class consciousness is only the theory of its objective possibility". ==See also== *[[Base and superstructure (Marxism)]] *[[Cultural hegemony]] *[[False Consciousness]] *[[Paul Fussell]] ==References== <references/> ==External links== *[http://en.internationalism.org/pamphlets/classconc International Communist Current, ''Communist Organisations and Class Consciousness''] {{portalpar|Philosophy|Socrates.png}} [[Category:Marxist theory]] [[Category:Political philosophy]] [[Category:Philosophical concepts]] [[Category:Identity politics]] [[ast:Conciencia de clas]] [[de:Klassenbewusstsein]] [[es:Conciencia de clase]] [[fr:Conscience de classe]] [[it:Coscienza di classe]] [[tr:Sınıf bilinci]] [[zh:階級意識]]