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In Marxism, class consciousness is the set of beliefs that persons hold regarding their social class or economic rank in society, the structure of their class, and their common class interests.^[1]^[2] According to Karl Marx, class consciousness is an awareness that is key to sparking a revolution which would "create a dictatorship of the proletariat, transforming it from a wage-earning, propertyless mass into the ruling class".^[3]

Although Marxists tend to focus on class consciousness (or its absence) among the proletariat, the upper classes in society can also think and act in a class-conscious way. As Leonard Fein pointed out, "The very rich have been well aware of their class privilege and have labored mightily to protect and defend it".^[4]^[5]

Marxist theory

Early in the 19th century, the labels "working classes" and "middle classes" were coming into common usage in British society. David Cody writes about this time period: "The old hereditary aristocracy, reinforced by the new gentry who owed their success to commerce, industry, and the professions, evolved into an 'upper class' (its consciousness formed in large part by the Public Schools and Universities) which tenaciously maintained control over the political system, depriving not only the working classes but the middle classes of a voice in the political process."^[6] As the Industrial Revolution progressed, the sharpening of socioeconomic divisions caused each group to become more acutely conscious of its position in the hierarchy.^[6]

While Karl Marx rarely used the term "class consciousness", he did make the distinction between "class in itself", which is defined as a stratum of society sharing common grievances and a unified perspective; and a "class for itself", which is defined as a stratum organized in active pursuit of its own interests.^[7]

Categorizing a person's social class can be a determinant for their awareness of it. Marxists categorize classes based on their relation to the means of production, especially on whether or not members of the class own capital. Non-Marxists differentiate society's various groups based on social stratification, i.e., income, race, gender, ethnicity, education, occupation, or status.^[8]^[9]^[10]

Whereas Marx believed the working class would gain class consciousness as a result of its experience of exploitation, later orthodox Marxism, in particular as formulated by Vladimir Lenin, argued that the working class, by itself, could only develop "trade union consciousness", which Lenin characterized in What Is to Be Done? as "the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers, and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation."^[11] To overcome this (in Lenin's opinion) limited worldview, a vanguard party of the most politically advanced section of the working class was needed to help replace trade union consciousness with class consciousness.^[12]^[13]

Criticism

The Polish political philosopher Leszek Kolakowski disputed the notion that class consciousness could be instilled from outside by a vanguard party. In Main Currents of Marxism and his other writings, he stated that 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".^[14]^[15]

Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises asserted that "Marx confus[ed] the notions of caste and class". Mises allowed that class consciousness and the associated class struggle were valid concepts in some circumstances where rigid social castes exist, e.g., when slavery is legal and slaves have a common motive for wanting to end their disadvantaged status relative to other castes, but that class is an arbitrary distinction in capitalist society where there is equality before the law. Mises believed that under capitalism, one's wealth does not very much affect how one is treated by legislators, law enforcement, or the courts.^[16]

Mises' follower Murray Rothbard argued that Marx's effort to portray workers and capitalists as two monolithic groups was false because workers and capitalists routinely compete within themselves, such as capitalist entrepreneurs competing with each other for market dominance, or native workers competing with immigrant workers for jobs. Rothbard said that if there is constant conflict among members of the same class (like, for example, among landowners, nobility or slaveowners), then it is absurd to claim these landowners, nobles and slaveowners can also have shared objective interests with one another against a different class such as their workers, peasants or slaves.^[17]

Examples

References

^ Erik Olin Wright (2006). "Class". In Beckert, Jens; Zafirovski, Milan (eds.). International Encyclopedia of Economic Sociology. Routledge. p. 62. ISBN 978-0415286732.
^ Elizabeth Borland (2008). "Class consciousness". In Parrillo, Vincent N. (ed.). Encyclopedia of Social Problems, Volume 1. SAGE Publications. p. 134. ISBN 978-1412941655.
^ Laura Desfor Edles; Scott Appelrouth (2020). Sociological Theory in the Classical Era. SAGE Publications. p. 48. ISBN 978-1506347820.
^ Leonard Fein (June 17, 2012). "Where Is Class Consciousness?". Forward.
^ Michael Parenti (1978). "Class Consciousness and Individualized Consciousness". Power and the Powerless. St. Martin's Press. pp. 94–113. ISBN 0-312-63373-4.
^ ^a ^b David Cody (August 30, 2021). "Social Class". VictorianWeb.
^ André Munro. "Class consciousness - Social Stratification, Marxism & Class Conflict". Britannica.
^ Jon Elster (1986). "Class Consciousness and Class Struggle". An Introduction to Karl Marx. Cambridge University Press. pp. 122–140.
^ Ashley Crossman (July 25, 2019). "Understanding Karl Marx's Class Consciousness and False Consciousness". ThoughtCo.
^ "Class Consciousness 101". libcom.org. 2017. Archived from the original on 2017-04-29.
^ Vladimir Lenin (1902). "The Spontaneity of the Masses and the Consciousness of the Social-Democrats". What Is to Be Done? – via Marxists Internet Archive.
^ Vladimir Lenin (1902). "Trade-Unionist Politics And Social-Democratic Politics". What Is to Be Done? – via Marxists Internet Archive.
^ "Class Consciousness and Working Class Emancipation". libcom.org. 2021. Archived from the original on 2021-03-02.
^ Leszek Kolakowski, "My Correct Views on Everything", The Socialist Register 1974, pp. 1–20
^ 'Marxism, being a scientific theory, could not be a spontaneous product of the working class [according to Lenin], but had to be imported from outside, by intellectuals equipped with scientific knowledge, became the peculiar ideological instrument to justify a new idea of the party of manipulators. Since the working class is in principle incapable of articulating theoretically its consciousness, it is possible and even necessary that the "genuine" theoretical consciousness of the working class should be incarnated in a political organism that could consider itself the carrier of this consciousness regardless of what the "empirical" working class thought about it, given that the "empirical" consciousness of this class is irrelevant in defining who in a given moment represents its interest. This is why the theory of class consciousness instilled from outside and the whole idea of scientific socialism so conceived served to justify the fact that in all kinds of political activity and later in the exercise of political power, the working class may be and must be replaced by the political apparatus which is the vehicle of its consciousness at the highest level. The whole Leninist and then Stalinist principle of dictatorship which the proletariat exercises through the intermediary of its self-appointed representatives, is only a development of the idea of "scientific socialism" so conceived.' Leszek Kolakowski, "Althusser's Marx", The Socialist Register 1971, pp. 111–128
^ Ludwig von Mises (2007) [1957]. Theory and History: An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution. Auburn, Alabama: Ludwig von Mises Institute. p. 113. ISBN 978-1933550190.
^ Murray N. Rothbard (2006) [1995]. Classical Economics: An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought Volume II. Auburn, Alabama: Ludwig von Mises Institute. pp. 382–384. ISBN 978-0945466482.