>Charles: I don't think the Marxist position is that most of what is obvious is
>false consciousness, is it ? I realize there is the famous quote from Marx on
>the differences between appearances and essence, and we wouldn't need science if
>all things were the way they appeared., but I don't treat that as a call to
>treat all or even most appearances as false.
No, only the important ones. Of course things that are merely mundane are pretty much as they appear to be. But Doug's objection is well made. Any appeal to common sense is suspect.
>
>In this case, the surface false ideology is not the connection between slavery
>and racism but the false ideology of the ruling class that they are not
>connected. In other words, the analogy to your nonrandom example below is not
>the perception that slavery is connected to today's racism , but the exact
>opposite :the false mass perception and ideology today that they are not
>connected.
Here I just don't get you at all. The screamingly obvious point is that slavery is widely reviled by societies that tolerate racial discrimination. Or am I mistaken? Is slavery embraced by America's political elite as a lost opportunity that they would like to return to at the earliest opportunity? No of course not. Only the most cranky of the fringe would embrace slavery as a positive.
And yet all that condemnation of slavery coexists with systematic racial discrimination. How can that be? The answer would be obvious to anyone who cared to think it through. Opposition to slavery is in no sense incommensurate with racism. In fact no less a figure than the president (whom I guess we must take to be in some sense representative) motivated his race policy as a reparation for slavery. And this the same president who stage managed the execution of Ricky Ray Rector to boost his ambitions, and who increased police funding to tame the inner cities.
Of course it is a lot easier to strike a radical posture against slavery (or fascism) because liberals will line up behind you. But such support will melt away when it comes to challenging their own privileges. -- Jim heartfield