I think that the older Marxist conception of class consciousness as a function of the position you occupy in the class system as a direct reflection just doesn't work. I mean the real failure of Marxism lay in this prediction that there would crystallize a distinct working class consciousness that would have political implications, that could aspire to political power and, indeed, to total power. That didn't happen, so it turns out that that's one of the reasons that contemporary Marxist thought about culture and about consciousness has to factor in certain truths one gets from psychoanalysis or psychology that deal with fantasies, delusions, the imaginary dimensions of a life lived in poverty. People respond to poverty in different ways. There is no mechanical way that produces worker consciousness. So that's where a theory or a conception of the imaginary and of the imagination which has traditionally been in the care of our artists, our writers, and so forth comes in. It turns out that the utopian visionary thought about the future and so forth doesn't always take a liberatory turn. It also can take the form of a new system of oppression, in which you live out fantasies of domination against what you regard as the enemy of the community, whoever it may be, whether defined in terms of race or class.
[Full text: http://eserver.org/bs/55/white.html]
Carl
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