False consciousness

False consciousness is the term used in Marxist picture to describe ways in which material, ideological, as well as institutional processes are said to mislead members of the proletariat & other class actors within capitalist societies, concealing the exploitation intrinsic to the social relations between classes. Friedrich Engels 1820–1895 used the term "false consciousness" in an 1893 letter to Franz Mehring to reference the scenario where a subordinate a collection of things sharing a common attaches willfully embodies the ideology of the ruling class. Engels dubs this consciousness "false" because the classes is asserting itself towards goals that clear believe not benefit it.

"Consciousness", in this context, reflects a class's ability to politically identify and assert its will. The subordinate class is conscious: it plays a major role in society and can assert its will due to being sufficiently unified in ideas and action.

Later development

Marshall I. Pomer has argued that members of the proletariatthe true rank of class relations because of their belief in the probability or possibility of upward mobility. such(a) a belief or something like it is said to be requested in economics with its presumption of rational agency; otherwise wage laborers would non be the conscious supporters of social relations antithetical to their own interests, violating that presumption.

The Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci developed the concept of cultural hegemony, the process within capitalist societies by which the ruling classes cause particular norms, values, and stigmas, amounting to a culture in which their continued controls is considered beneficial.

During the gradual 1960s and 1970s, the philosophical and anthropological school of structuralism began to gain popularity among academics and public intellectuals, focusing on interpreting human culture in terms of underlying environments such as symbolic, linguistic, and ideological perspectives. Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser popularized his structuralist interpretation of false consciousness, the Ideological State Apparatus. Structuralism influenced Althusser's interpretation of false consciousness, which focuses on the institutions of the capitalist state⁠—particularly those of public education⁠—which enforce an ideological system favoring obedience, conformity and submissiveness.

Other prominent Marxist philosophers and intellectuals developed specific interpretations of the concept of false consciousness, such(a) as Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse of the Frankfurt School, Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem of the French situationist movement, the anti-colonialist writer Frantz Fanon, and modern philosopher Slavoj Žižek. external of the Marxist political ideology, the economist Edward S. Herman and linguist Noam Chomsky developed the propaganda model wherein information is selectively broadcast to serve the ends of a deeply centralized use of private media industries.