False Consciousness

False consciousness is a complex cognitive-epistemological and socioeconomic political concept. First explored by the philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment, notably Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson, its most common association is with the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

Although false consciousness is one of the most central Marxian terms, Marx and Engels use it only once each in their published works to refer to distorted knowledge or inadequate expression of reality. Marx used the term in his 1854 essay, “Der Ritter vom edelmutigen Bewußsein” (The Knight of Noble-Minded Consciousness). However, he uses it not in a conceptual way to categorize a certain phenomenon [Page 351]but to refute a slanderous article by August Willich, claiming the latter attempted to detect “a false consciousness behind a correct fact.” The connotation of Engels's usage of the term is something more substantial. In a letter to Franz Mehring dated July 14, 1893, he discusses the genesis of ideology (superstructure) and how it affects structure. He admits that he and Marx emphasized how structure determines superstructure but neglected to work out how superstructure affects structure. In this context he asserts that ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker. Consciously, it is true, but with a false consciousness. The real forces impelling him remain unknown to him; otherwise it simply would not be an ideological process. Hence he imagines false or seemingly motivating forces.

Thanks to the first generation of Marxist philosophers, particularly Georg Lukacs, the concept of false consciousness assumed its current preeminence. In his classical essay “Class Consciousness,” Lukacs suggests that Marx's concept of false consciousness arises as a reply to bourgeois philosophy and sociology of history, which reduce progress to the role of individualities or supernatural forces like God. Now, Marx resolves this dilemma of bourgeois theory of history, Lukacs suggests, by developing his concept of historical materialism and by presenting human relations in capitalist society as reification. Then, by referring to Engels's letter to Mehring, Lukacs introduces the concept of false consciousness. He poses the question whether historical materialism takes into account the role of consciousness in history. In this connection he speaks of a double dialectical determination of false consciousness. On the one hand, considered in the light of human relations as a whole, subjective consciousness appears justified because it is something that can be understood. That is, it gives an adequate expression of human relations, but as an objective category, it is a false consciousness as it fails to express the nature of the development of society adequately. On the other hand, this consciousness in the same context fails to achieve subjectively determined goals because they appear to be unknown, unwanted objective aims determined by some mystical, supernatural alien forces.

The work of Marx and Engels explores how human relations can be brought into an agreement with human consciousness. The mature work of Marx on this question is Das Kapital, most particularly the first chapter on commodities. In his analysis of commodity, Marx differentiates between value in use and value in exchange. The use value of commodities is obtained by transforming natural objects into useful objects, say, by transforming wood into tables through useful or productive labor to satisfy various human needs. The exchange value is the relative value of commodities, or the socially necessary labor time to produce them, and is realized in the consumption of commodities. The exchange value is realized in the exchange process; that is, by relating commodities to one another and exchanging them for one another. Now, in his analysis of the relationship of use value and exchange value, Marx sees a mutual negative relationship. He thinks that this negative relationship results from reversal of the exchange process, going from the aim of production (satisfaction of needs) into the obtaining of exchange values. The aim of production, then, is no longer satisfaction of human needs but rather production and realization of exchange values. This gives rise to the fact that products as commodities dominate humans rather than humans their products. This is, in turn, the reason why everybody strives to realize exchange values and becomes commodity fetishists. As a result, human relations take the form of social relations between products.

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