false consciousness

English

Etymology

Calque of German falsches Bewusstsein, as used by Friedrich Engels in a letter to Franz Mehring (1893).

Noun

false consciousness (plural false consciousnesses)

  1. (Marxism, including its brand of social sciences) A faulty understanding of the true character of social processes due to ideology.
    • 2007, Roy E. Allen, Human Ecology Economics‎, →ISBN, page 187:
      The author is less inclined than Jung to treat freedom as an ideological illusion or false consciousness.
    • 2016 January 29, Paul Krugman, “Plutocrats and Prejudice”, in The New York Times‎, ISSN 0362-4331:
      If the ugliness in American politics is all, or almost all, about the influence of big money, then working-class voters who support the right are victims of false consciousness.

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Further reading
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