false consciousness

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English

Etymology

Calque of German falsches Bewusstsein, as used by Friedrich Engels in a letter to Franz Mehring (1893).[1]

Noun

false consciousness (plural false consciousnesses)

  1. (Marxism, including its brand of social sciences) A faulty understanding of the true character of social processes due to ideology.
    • 2007, Roy E. Allen, Human Ecology Economics‎, →ISBN, page 187:
      The author is less inclined than Jung to treat freedom as an ideological illusion or false consciousness.
    • 2016 January 29, Paul Krugman, “Plutocrats and Prejudice”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN:
      If the ugliness in American politics is all, or almost all, about the influence of big money, then working-class voters who support the right are victims of false consciousness.

Antonyms

Translations

References

  1. ^ Friedrich Engels (1893 July 14) “Engels to Franz Mehring”, in Marxists Internet Archive‎, London, retrieved 7 January 2024:
    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. Because it is a process of thought he derives both its form and its content from pure thought, either his own or that of his predecessors.

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