> Actually, I'm not clear, either, as to what you mean, concretly, by
> "the
> kind of self-consciousness that would underpin each."
In Bush's case, it's to some significant extent evangelical christianity including Book of Revelation fundamentalism (both of which seem to be anchored, as Marx claims re the degree of prejudice and superstition in self-consciousness in general, in a particular kind of social relations) and neoconservatism with its Straussian etc. aspects.
In Kerry's case, if we take say the ideas about deficits that figured in Yoshie''s post, prejudice and superstition are also important (even if we allow for the fact that, as Doug points out, you can't transfer judgments about deficits that were true in the psychological conditions of the 1930's to current ones without first confirming that there is continuity in these conditions of the kind this would require). But Kerry won't be getting much of the Book of Revelation fundamentalist vote, will he?
Marx's analysis of Napoleon III in the Eighteenth Brumaire in terms of differences in self-consciousness isn't explaining "two radically different social orders," is it?
Ted