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As an imperfect (or false) consciousness, this term begins with Hegel’s Phenomenology of Mind. Hegel maintained that the human mind moves dialectically from understanding (a naive, sense-based perception of the world which seems separated or alienated from it) to Reason (a fully mediated, true consciousness which grasps the world and the mind itself as a unified, complex totality).
Marx argued Hegel’s philosophy represented an inverted, false representation of humankind’s relationship to consciousness. Being determines consciousness and humankind’s being centres on actual, material life-processes. The first step to overcoming false consciousness requires the transcendence of Hegel’s phenomenology. In class societies, true consciousness also requires seeing through the mystifications that enshroud the real causes of exploitation.
Lukacs (1971) provided a precise, detailed explication/elaboration of Marx’s conceptions of false consciousness under capitalism. Through commodity fetishism, the social character of commodities ”becomes imperceptible to the senses” and the relation between men assumes ”the fantastic form of a relation between things” (p. 86). A process of reification (Verdinglichung – thingification) ”sinks more fatefully, more definitively into the consciousness of man” (p. 93). As the individuals most subjected to reification, ”the concrete dialectic between the social existence of the worker and the forms of his consciousness force them out of their pure immediacy” leading to a clearer, mediated conception of how to cause social change (p. 168).
Lukes develops false consciousness outside a Marxist framework. False consciousness exists in situations where grievances concerning real, empirically identifiable interests (e.g. clean drinking water, environmentally sound production techniques) are curtailed (or even absent) because people cannot imagine alternatives or accept things as natural and inevitable.
Bibliography:
- Lukacs, G. (1971) [1923] History and Class Consciousness, trans. R. Livingstone. Merlin Press, London.
- Lukes, S. (1974) Power: A Radical View. Macmillan, London.
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