We Are More Than Commodities: False Consciousness
and Why It's Still Relevant
By Colin Jenkins
"It is not consciousness of men
that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their
social being that determines their consciousness."
- Karl Marx [1]
October 26, 2015 "Information
Clearing House" - "HI"
- In Robert Tressell's literary classic, The Ragged Trousered
Philanthropists, a significant scene occurs in Chapter Seven when
some of the book's main cast of characters, a group of English
laborers at the turn of the 20th century, gathers during
a break in their work to discuss matters of labor, technology,
unemployment and poverty. A lengthy conversation ensues:
'I don't see no sense in always grumblin',' Crass
proceeded. 'These things can't be altered. You can't expect there
can be plenty of work for everyone with all this 'ere labour-savin'
machinery what's been invented.'
'Of course,' said Harlow, 'the people what used to
be employed on the work what's now done by machinery, has to find
something else to do. Some of 'em goes to our trade, for instance:
the result is there's too many at it, and there ain't enough work to
keep 'em all goin'.'
'Yes,' cried Crass, eagerly. 'That's just what I
say. Machinery is the real cause of the poverty. That's what I said
the other day.'
'Machinery is undoubtedly the cause of
unemployment,' replied Owen, 'but it's not the cause of poverty:
that's another matter altogether.'
The others laughed derisively.
'Well, it seems to me to amount to the same
thing,' said Harlow, and nearly everyone agreed.
'It doesn't seem to me to amount to the same
thing,' Owen replied. 'In my opinion, we are all in a state of
poverty even when we have employment--the condition we are reduced
to when we're out of work is more properly described as
destitution.'
'Poverty,' continued Owen after a short silence,
'consists in a shortage of the necessaries of life. When those
things are so scarce or so dear that people are unable to obtain
sufficient of them to satisfy all their needs, those people are in a
condition of poverty. If you think that the machinery, which makes
it possible to produce all the necessaries of life in abundance, is
the cause of the shortage, it seems to me that there must be
something the matter with your minds.'
'Oh, of course we're all bloody fools except you,'
snarled Crass. 'When they were servin' out the sense, they give you
such a 'ell of a lot, there wasn't none left for nobody else.'
'If there wasn't something wrong with your minds,'
continued Owen, 'you would be able to see that we might have "Plenty
of Work" and yet be in a state of destitution. The miserable
wretches who toil sixteen or eighteen hours a day--father, mother
and even the little children--making match-boxes, or shirts or
blouses, have "plenty of work", but I for one don't envy them.
Perhaps you think that if there was no machinery and we all had to
work thirteen or fourteen hours a day in order to obtain a bare
living, we should not be in a condition of poverty? Talk about there
being something the matter with your minds! If there were not, you
wouldn't talk one day about Tariff Reform as a remedy for
unemployment and then the next day admit that Machinery is the cause
of it! Tariff Reform won't do away with the machinery, will it?'
'Tariff Reform is the remedy for bad trade,'
returned Crass.
'In that case Tariff Reform is the remedy for a
disease that does not exist. If you would only take the trouble to
investigate for yourself you would find out that trade was never so
good as it is at present: the output--the quantity of commodities of
every kind--produced in and exported from this country is greater
than it has ever been before. The fortunes amassed in business are
larger than ever before: but at the same time--owing, as you have
just admitted--to the continued introduction and extended use of
wages-saving machinery, the number of human beings being employed is
steadily decreasing. I have here,' continued Owen, taking out his
pocket-book, 'some figures which I copied from the Daily Mail Year
Book for 1907, page 33:
'"It is a very noticeable fact that although the
number of factories and their value have vastly increased in the
United Kingdom, there is an absolute decrease in the number of men
and women employed in those factories between 1895 and 1901. This is
doubtless due to the displacement of hand labour by machinery!"
'Will Tariff Reform deal with that? Are the good,
kind capitalists going to abandon the use of wages-saving machinery
if we tax all foreign-made goods? Does what you call "Free Trade"
help us here? Or do you think that abolishing the House of Lords, or
disestablishing the Church, will enable the workers who are
displaced to obtain employment? Since it IS true--as you admit--that
machinery is the principal cause of unemployment, what are you going
to do about it? What's your remedy?'
No one answered, because none of them knew of any
remedy: and Crass began to feel sorry that he had re-introduced the
subject at all.
'In the near future,' continued Owen, 'it is
probable that horses will be almost entirely superseded by motor
cars and electric trams. As the services of horses will be no longer
required, all but a few of those animals will be caused to die out:
they will no longer be bred to the same extent as formerly. We can't
blame the horses for allowing themselves to be exterminated. They
have not sufficient intelligence to understand what's being done.
Therefore they will submit tamely to the extinction of the greater
number of their kind.
'As we have seen, a great deal of the work which
was formerly done by human beings is now being done by machinery.
This machinery belongs to a few people: it is worked for the benefit
of those few, just the same as were the human beings it displaced.
These Few have no longer any need of the services of so many human
workers, so they propose to exterminate them! The unnecessary human
beings are to be allowed to starve to death! And they are also to be
taught that it is wrong to marry and breed children, because the
Sacred Few do not require so many people to work for them as
before!'
'Yes, and you'll never be able to prevent it,
mate!' shouted Crass.
'Why can't we?'
'Because it can't be done!' cried Crass fiercely.
'It's impossible!'
Anyone who has ever taken part in a similar conversation with fellow
workers knows that this fictional account couldn't be any more real,
even over a century later. While it occurred in an imaginary,
1900-ish English setting, it surely resonates in a 21st-century
American reality where collective working-class dissonance - what is
referred to in Marxist circles as "false consciousness" - remains
ignorant to the casual effects of capitalism. The conversation is
packed with the typically tragic ironies of impoverished, insecure
workers searching for any reason to explain their collective plight
absent of blaming a system, let alone the faces of that system,
which uses and discards them as it pleases. The lone conscious
worker, Owen, does his best to enlighten the bunch. The main
opposition comes from Crass, a character who symbolizes the epitome
of false consciousness, not only in his ignorance of the system but
perhaps even more so in his ill-informed, emotional pushback, which
echoes the misleading narrative so often presented through
mainstream channels. When pressed toward realizing the truth of his
existence - and more importantly, the reason for it - Crass'
dissonance hardens into an acceptance of hopeless despair summarized
by those fatal words we've become all too familiar with - "that may
be the case, but there's nothing we can do about it... it's just the
way it is."
Such dissonance is expected in a highly divisive
and unequal class society, especially when the prospect of a
highly-conscious working class represents the single biggest threat
to the few that benefit from this artificial arrangement. The key in
forging this collective dissonance is found in turning a blind eye
to material conditions and replacing the physical reality created by
these conditions with a worldview shaped directly by ruling-class
interests, which are accepted as being in line with the interests of
all - a phenomenon which Antonio Gramsci referred to as
cultural
hegemony. In
The German Ideology, Marx emphasized this cultural dynamic which
inevitably stems from capitalism:
"The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch
the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force
of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The
class which has the means of material production at its disposal,
has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so
that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the
means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are
nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material
relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas;
hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one,
therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the
ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore
think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the
extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this
in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers,
as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution
of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of
the epoch." [2]
The false consciousness that is theorized by Marx
and exposed in this particular scene of Tressell's book has real
effects that continue to plague the working class. Unemployment,
underemployment and poverty have characterized the typical
working-class existence for the past four centuries; and, rather
than being correctly viewed as manufactured realities, have
gradually become accepted as an inescapable part of human life on
earth. However, they are hardly inescapable or necessary. And this
understanding may only be realized through an assessment of the
mechanisms of capitalism.
Feudalism to Capitalism, Peasant to Worker
Unemployment has been a staple of the capitalist
system since its birth from the remnants of feudalism. In purely
mechanical terms, it is easy to see why this is the case. Since
capitalism rests on a fundamental relationship between capitalist
and worker, whereas the worker's labor is used to extract profit for
the capitalist, its foundation is characterized by exploitation.
However, this exploitation may only be realized if the masses of
people are placed in a position where they are transformed into a
commodity to be bought and sold. Since humans are inherently
autonomous beings, artificial material conditions must be
constructed in order to separate them from the rights of basic
necessities, such as housing, food, water, etc., so they are then
compelled to offer themselves on the labor market to be used as the
owners of the means of production (capitalists) see fit. This is not
a natural process; hence, the reason why wage-labor is historically
viewed as not much different than chattel slavery. In
Capital, Marx tells us:
"But in order that our owner of money may be able
to find labour-power offered for sale as a commodity, various
conditions must first be fulfilled. The exchange of commodities of
itself implies no other relations of dependence than those which
result from its own nature. On this assumption, labour-power can
appear upon the market as a commodity, only if, and so far as, its
possessor, the individual whose labour-power it is, offers it for
sale, or sells it, as a commodity. In order that he may be able to
do this, he must have it at his disposal, must be the untrammelled
owner of his capacity for labour, i.e., of his person. He and the
owner of money meet in the market, and deal with each other as on
the basis of equal rights, with this difference alone, that one is
buyer, the other seller; both, therefore, equal in the eyes of the
law. The continuance of this relation demands that the owner of the
labour-power should sell it only for a definite period, for if he
were to sell it rump and stump, once for all, he would be selling
himself, converting himself from a free man into a slave, from an
owner of a commodity into a commodity. He must constantly look upon
his labour-power as his own property, his own commodity, and this he
can only do by placing it at the disposal of the buyer temporarily,
for a definite period of time. By this means alone can he avoid
renouncing his rights of ownership over it." [3]
This is not an intended or natural element of
human life; rather, it is an artificial arrangement constructed by
those who wish to own the world. "One thing, however, is clear -
Nature does not produce on the one side owners of money or
commodities, and on the other men possessing nothing but their own
labour-power," explains Marx. "This relation has no natural basis,
neither is its social basis one that is common to all historical
periods. It is clearly the result of a past historical development,
the product of many economic revolutions, of the extinction of a
whole series of older forms of social production." [4] The
capitalist epoch is surely not the first to base itself on such
arrangements, but it is the latest.
The transition between feudalism and capitalism
was not seamless, according to Marx, but rested on similar dynamics.
"In England," he writes, "serfdom had practically disappeared in the
last part of the 14th century. The immense majority of the
population consisted then, and to a still larger extent, in the
fifteenth century, of free peasant proprietors, whatever was the
feudal title under which their right of property was hidden." [5]
This period of transition, which was neither feudalistic nor
capitalist, facilitated the transformation from an obligatory,
formal dependence which characterized the relationship between lord
and peasant to an informal dependence that materialized under
capitalist relations. "The economic structure of capitalistic
society," Marx writes, "has grown out of the economic structure of
feudal society. The dissolution of the latter set free the elements
of the former." [6]
While the hierarchical dynamics remained intact
during this transition, the possibility of forging a collective
resistance developed alongside the new relationships that were
introduced under capitalism. This was noted by Marx on many
occasions, perhaps most clearly in his take on the peasantry in
revolutionary France in 'The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon':
"The small peasants form a vast mass, the members
of which live in similar conditions but without entering into
manifold relations with one another. Their mode of production
isolates them from one another, instead of bringing them into mutual
intercourse. The isolation is increased by France's bad means of
communication and by the poverty of the peasants. Their field of
production, the small-holding, admits of no division of labour in
its cultivation, no application of science, and, therefore, no
multiplicity of development, no diversity of talent, no wealth of
social relationships. Each individual peasant family is almost
self-sufficient; it itself directly produces the major part of its
consumption and thus acquires its means of life more through
exchange with nature than its intercourse with society ... Insofar
as millions of families live under economic conditions of existence
that divide their mode of life, their interests and their culture
from those of other classes, and put them in hostile contrast to the
latter, they form a class. Insofar as there is merely a local
interconnection among these small peasants, and the identity of
their interests begets no unity, no national union, and no political
organisation, they do not form a class. They are consequently
incapable of enforcing their class interest in their own names,
whether through a parliament or through a convention. They cannot
represent themselves, they must be represented." [7]
This strain in Marxist thought continued for
decades. In a 1919 edition of L'Ordine Nuovo, Gramsci remarked on
what he perceived as the mentality shaped by the peasant experience
in feudal settings:
"The psychology of the peasants was, in such
conditions, uncontrollable; real feelings remained hidden,
implicated and confused in a system of defence against
exploitations, merely egotistical, without logical continuity,
materialized in sham indifference and false servility. The class
struggle was m ixed up with banditry, blackmail, burning forests,
laming livestock, kidnapping women and children, with attacks on the
municipality: it was a form of basic terrorism, without steady and
effective consequences. Objectively then the psychology of the
peasant was reduced to a tiny sum of primordial feelings caused by
the social conditions created by the parliamentary-democratic state:
the peasant was left completely at the mercy of the landowners and
of their sycophants and corrupt public officials, and the main worry
in their lives was to defend themselves physically against
unexpected natural disasters, against the abuses and barbaric
cruelty of the landowners and public officials. The peasant has
always lived outside the domain of the law, without a legal
personality, without moral individuality: he has remained an
anarchic element, the independent atom in a chaotic tumult, held
back only by fear of the carabiniere and of the devil. He did not
understand discipline; patient and tenacious in the individual
struggle to take scarce and meagre fruits from nature, capable of
great sacrifice in family life, he was impatient and wildly violent
in the class struggle, incapable of posing a general aim and of
pursuing it with perseverance and systematic struggle." [8]
Long before false consciousness became a concern
within the capitalist working classes, the consensus idea in Marxian
circles warned against this "narrow-minded" mentality carried forth
from the peasantry of feudal society. While the societal structures
between feudalism and capitalism largely remained the same,
especially in regards to how the subaltern related to the power
structure (peasant to lord, tenant to landowner, worker to
capitalist), the individualistic, survivalist posture of the peasant
was confronted with the possibility of a collective resistance that
would present itself under the newly-formed structures of
capitalism, where workers would be corralled together in packs.
Gramsci noted this inevitable transition and its effect on
consciousness, especially in regards to the working classes in what
he described as "capitalistically backward" nations like Russia,
Italy, France and Spain:
"In reality large ownership has remained outside
free competition: and the modern state has respected its feudal
essence, developing juridical formulae such as holding in trust,
which maintain in fact the existence and privileges of the feudal
regime. The mentality of the peasant has thus remained that of the
servant of the soil, who revolts violently against the "bosses" on
particular occasions, but is incapable of thinking himself part of a
collective (the nation for the owners and the class for the
proletarians) and of developing systematic action and permanent
revolt to change the economic and political relations of social
existence." [9]
With the arrival of capitalism came the reality of
a collective struggle and, subsequently, the capability of the
peasant-turned-worker "thinking himself part of a collective" -
something that, as Gramsci noted, was impossible on the sporadic and
disconnected feudal landscape.
Overcoming False Consciousness
"Only if false consciousness is transformed
into true consciousness, that is, only if we are aware of reality,
rather than distorting it by rationalizations and fictions, can we
also become aware of our real and true human needs."
- Erich Fromm [10]
As capitalism evolved in the United States, so too
did the probability of widespread, working-class consciousness. This
was evident throughout the first half of the 20th
century, which birthed a radical labor movement that garnered many
key victories. However, despite this period of working-class
progress, capitalism ultimately prevailed. The late-1900s brought
higher concentrations of wealth, tax schemes beneficial to the
wealthy, increased inequality, and an overall deterioration of the
industrialized working classes which, after fighting for decades to
carve out a piece of the pie, were decimated by globalization.
Our new reality is now shaped by crippling and
lifelong debt, poverty wages, chronic underemployment and
unemployment, and rampant insecurities regarding access to basic
necessities. The problems faced by Owen, Crass, and the entire
working crew showcased in Tressell's book are the same problems we
face now. They are the same fundamental problems faced by
working-class people centuries over: a lack of autonomy, a lack of
control, and a near-total absence of self-determination. And,
ironically, with the onset of globalized capitalism, the ownership
class has become more connected than ever, while the working class
has become more disconnected than ever. This disconnectedness, and
the reversal of many of the hard-fought gains won by organized
labor, has created an environment that breeds false consciousness.
The modern, disconnected working class has become
less reliant on one another and more susceptible to the corporate
culture directed from the top. This hegemonic culture now influences
everything from public schooling to advertising and marketing to
entertainment to the workplace. Naturally, the isolation and "social
dislocation" that has accompanied this culture (and the material
conditions shaped by globalized capitalism) "breeds a reactionary
form of nostalgia." [11] This cultural effect helps explain the
tendencies of members of the working class to embrace divisive (and
ultimately self-destructive) ideologies such as racism, misogyny and
homophobia, to vote against their best interests, to worship wealth
and celebrity culture, and to gravitate toward proto-fascist
elements such as the Tea Party. In this sense, the persistence of
false consciousness is directed, or at least stimulated, from above.
"To deny this," as Michael Parenti wrote, "is to assume there has
been no indoctrination, no socialization to conservative values, no
control of information and commentary, no limitation of the topics
to be considered in the national debate… and that a whole array of
powers have not helped pre-structure how we see and define our own
interests and options." [12]
False consciousness is, at its core, an
ideological problem; but it is shaped by the realities created by
capitalism - exploitation, isolation, and dehumanization - as well
as the mechanisms that force capitalist culture upon us, mainly
derived from the privatization and profitization of elements that
influence thought, such as education systems and media. Thus, the
hegemonic culture that dominates working-class thought serves as a
deceptive foundation whereas the appearance of conscious thought,
and even the conscious seeking of knowledge, is not as free-flowing
as it appears to those who actively engage in this process.
Friedrich Engels explains:
"Ideology is a process accomplished by the
so-called thinker consciously, indeed, but with a false
consciousness. The real motives impelling him remain unknown to him,
otherwise it would not be an ideological process at all. Hence he
imagines false or apparent motives. Because it is a process of
thought he derives both its form and its content from pure thought,
either his own or that of his predecessors. He works with mere
thought material which he accepts without examination as the product
of thought, he does not investigate further for a more remote
process independent of thought; indeed its origin seems obvious to
him, because as all action is produced through the medium of thought
it also appears to him to be ultimately based upon thought." [13]
Overcoming false consciousness will require a
complete rejection of hierarchical relationships from within the
working class, especially in regards to education. Since public
education is trending in an opposite direction, with
highly-structured and authoritative elements being introduced
through legislation like No Child Left Behind, programs like Common
Core, and privatization efforts centered in the charter school
movement, informal programs must develop. This will require
interaction. This will require a willingness to discuss difficult
topics, and attempts to cut through hardened and callused
dissonance, ala Tressell's protagonist, and a rejection of
traditional notions of education as being characterized by formal,
top-down, dictating interactions. This will require an understanding
that "there is no such thing as a neutral educational process," and
that "education either functions as an instrument which is used to
facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of
the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the
practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal
critically and creatively with reality and discover how to
participate in the transformation of their world." [14] This will
require the realization that we are more than just commodities.
Notes
[1] Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of
Political Economy (1859). Accessed at
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm
[2] Karl Marx, The German Ideology. Part 1:
Feuerbach, Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlook, The
Illusion of the Epoch. Accessed at
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htm
[3] Karl Marx, Capital: Volume 1, Chapter Six.
Accessed at
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch06.htm
[4] Ibid
[5] Marx, Capital: Volume 1, Chapter 27. Accessed
at
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch27.htm
[6] Marx, Capital: Volume 1, Chapter 26. Accessed
at
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch26.htm
[7] Karl Marx,
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852), Chapter 7.
Accessed at
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/ch07.htm
[8] Antonio Gramsci, Workers and Peasants.
L'Ordine Nuovo, 2 August 1919. Translated by Michael Carley.
Accessed at
https://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/1919/08/workers-peasants.html
[9] Ibid
[10] Erich Fromm, Marx's Concept of Man, (New
York, NY: Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1961), 1-85. Accessed at
http://www.marxists.org/archive/fromm/works/1961/man/index.htm
[11] Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse
and Revival of American Community (Simon & Schuster, 2000)
[12] Michael Parenti, Dirty Truths: Reflections on
Politics, Media, Ideology, Conspiracy, Ethnic Life and Class Power
(San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books, 1996), 210.
[13] Friedrich Engels in a letter to Franz Mehring,
July 14, 1893. Accessed at
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1893/letters/93_07_14.htm
[14] Richard Shaull, Preface to Pedagogy of the
Oppressed (Paulo Freire). (2000) New York : Continuum
Copyright
2013 by the Hampton Institute. All Rights Reserved.
