Class consciousness

Class consciousness is a term used in political theory, particularly Marxism, to refer to the beliefs that a person holds regarding their social class or economic rank in society, the structure of their class, and their class interests. It is an awareness that is key to sparking a revolution that would, "create a dictatorship of the proletariat, transforming it from a wage-earning, property-less mass into the ruling class" according to Karl Marx.

While German theorist Karl Marx rarely used the term "class consciousness", he did make the distinction between "class in itself", which is defined as a category of people having a common relation to the means of production, and a "class for itself", which is defined as a stratum organized in active pursuit of its own interests.

Defining a person's social class can be a determinant for their awareness of it. Marxists define classes on the basis of their relation to the means of production – especially on whether they own capital. Non-Marxist social scientists distinguish various social strata on the basis of income, occupation, or status.

Early in the nineteenth century, the labels "working classes" and "middle classes" were already coming into common usage. "The old hereditary aristocracy, reinforced by the new gentry who owed their success to commerce, industry, and the professions, evolved into an "upper class". Its consciousness was formed in part by public schools (in the British sense) and Universities. The upper class tenaciously maintained control over the political system, depriving not only the working classes but the middle classes of a voice in the political process."

Class consciousness, as described by Georg Lukács's famous History and Class Consciousness (1923), is opposed to any psychological conception of consciousness, which forms the basis of individual or mass psychology (see Freud or, before him, Gustave Le Bon). According to Lukács, each social class has a determined class consciousness which it can achieve. In effect, as opposed to the liberal conception of consciousness as the basis of individual freedom and of the social contract, Marxist class consciousness is not an origin, but an achievement (i.e. it must be "earned" or won). Hence, it is never assured: the proletariat's class consciousness is the result of a permanent struggle to understand the "concrete totality" of the historical process.

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