Thanks for another great thought-provoker, Eugene. I will be away
from computer for the next days but I want to slip in a thought in this
thread because I have been giving this problem of false consciousness some
thought, especially in respect to workers, but also all social classes. My
experience has generally confirmed the idea that a key driver of people's
political and social consciousness is the relationship they have with
property - their own, and that of others. Just measuring income and assets
in dollar totals loses much of the dynamics of this relationship. In my
opinion it is property (of which money is one form) that really constitutes
membership and aspired membership in a social class. Property comes in
various forms; capital (loosely, objects that can be worked on or with that
can produce saleable products) at one end of the spectrum and personal
property with negligible value (mundane clothes, dishes, etc.) at the
other. Its the relationship people and families have to the first end, to
capital (money-making property) that I think has the deepest effects on
working people and everyone else. These relationships come in many, many
forms, from outright ownership, to owing a substantial debt to be the
caretaker of some property, to owning a capitalist business, to working for
a capitalist and identifying with their capital and methods of
business. Aspirations for shifting one's class position - for example,
quitting one's job and owning one's own business - also play an enormous
role. When major aspects of the capitalist property system break down, or
especially, alternate between stability and mass misery, working people
begin to restructure their conception of property - personal, private and
public - and under those conditions, begin to lose their false,
individualistic consciousness and gain a much more realistic sense of the
socio-economic system they are collectively trying to live in. Under such
conditions, mass working class consciousness often begins to
emerge. Attitudes about social issues undergo deep transformations as the
oppressed engage in struggle; notions of emancipation and freedom become
paramount. Rich capitalists, of course, would see this process in just the
opposite way - when the workers begin to think of property and social
change in a socialist way, they are losing their minds. The essential idea
I am suggesting here is to view people's relationships with property as a
key to comprehending core features of their political, social and cultural
consciousness. As their relationships with property change, so does their
consciousness.
Best,
- Steve
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