[lbo-talk] The Necrosocial

[Eric Beck]

I agree with this, and I've been a little surprised to find myself
advancing some arguments on this thread that I'm not entirely
convinced of. For starters, I think consciousness and ideology are
terrible terms, largely because historically they've been used for so
much bad politics. But I think they might be useful if they are used
not as things in themselves -- as obfuscations that must be overcome
or states that must be reached -- but as measures of the gap between
the "subjective" and "objective." It might worthwhile to think of
consciousness if the term is taken expansively, but false
consciousness always means bridging that gap, and the whole
revolutionary/messianic machine needed to carry it out.

On 11/22/09, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> In trying to get a grip on the social dynamics of a given society at a
> given time, in the first instanc it is 'objective' place in a set of
> social relations that counts, not consciousness -- for there never has
> been any clear one-to-one relationshp between class and consciiousness.
> Hence my argument over the years that the u.ss. working class
> constitutes over 85% of the population. I think Doug is correct on that.
> But when we start analyzing consciusness, either at the present or (what
> seems more important to me) in a hypothetical future, then we do have to
> have something more flexible than 'mere' class. But, again, I'm not sure
> that it's worthwhile trying to show actual entrepreneural conditions of
> life. For one thing, historically there has been a lot of accunts which
> characterize "false consciusnes" as petty-bourgeois consciusness, and
> that, however we want to label it, is (I think) the focus of this
> exchange.