Talk:Class consciousness

Wrong class structure
The article begins with the idea finding its roots in Marxism, then uses an example that has nothing to do with the Marxist definition.

Even if one were to ignore Marxist analysis to define classes, the ideas of "aristocracy" only remain relevant to a very small minority of the world's population. The ideas of class-consiousness include recognizing, according to Marx, that with the death of feudalism came the death of the old class society. The revolutions in which the bourgeoisie overthrew the aristocracy and established capitalism are over. Now, there is a new upper class and a new lower class. The new upper class being the bourgeoisie, and the lower class being the new proletariat, who did not exist on a large scale under feudalism, and didn't exist at all before its dying breaths. Before that, the economy was peasant-based.

Marx's definitions of today's classes were more clear cut: there is no middle class anymore. That's because class-conscious definitions of society do not rely on quantitative measures of wealth, so much as on qualitative measures of what kind. To Marxists, there are only wealthier workers and poorer bosses. Those two often get mixed up and jumbled together to be defined as "middle class" these days, but if you're writing an article about Marxist ideas of class society, you should at least provide a look at Marxist ideas. To Marxists, the richest worker is still a worker robbed of the full value of his labour, and the poorest boss is still a boss robbing others of theirs.

Over the next few days, I hope to correct this issue, you may revert it back and discuss it here if you have a problem with it.

Thank you.--Che y Marijuana 15:11, Sep 19, 2004 (UTC)
 * I agree, this article takes a pretty capitalist stance on class. I've never heard any socialist, Marxist or not, use the term "class consciousness" to refer to a "middle class" realizing their place in society. When socialists talk class, we are talking about the division of society into the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. While I suppose the term "class consciousness" could theoretically be applied to the bourgeoisie, it almost always refers to the proletariat's realization of the aforementioned division of society, as well as the exploitative conditions it creates, and the importance of proletarian solidarity in solving the problem. — Ливай | Ⓣ 14:00, 25 July 2005 (UTC)


 * When were you going to make this edit? The article is currently based on the work of postmodernists, rather than Marx, and thus is filled with syntactically-correct nonsense such as the phrase "transforms the very structure of objectivity." It really, really needs the edit you proposed back in 2004. 65.185.146.235 (talk) 04:58, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Where are the references to "Class consciousness" in Marx? Why is Lukacs overshadowing Marx? Where is the discussion of "class consciousness" before Marx, and the sources that he used, the basis of his concept? Better than Lukacs, and earlier, is Max Weber's "status group" (which would address the idea that the "middle class" is a class), deriving from the medieval Estate or Stand (German). Needs work!Gsmcghee (talk) 01:14, 6 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Who cares anyway? This is not a scientific concept anyway, it is completely false and irrelevant.

Support from Luckacs full text
Ready also for fact tags for anything not supported by Lukacs original or a secondary source. 74.78.162.229 (talk) 22:25, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

False, Lie and Hoax!!
I think that it should be downright evident that class consciousness is totally false itself. Class has changed totally now, people do not unite on the basis of class, they unite on the basis of other values: culture, religion, race or ethnicity. Class has no value here at all now that everyone has the right to go to university and have free health care for all and given that there are workers who are capitalists as well so hardly meaningful to speak of class. Class is now dependent on what is in your pocket- what happens when one worker earns from 14,000 pounds a year to 60,000? Is that person still working class? No. Plus, class consciousness is used to justify mass immigration from the Third World into the First world which does not solve anything but cause unemployment, low wages and race riots. Class consciousness is the pure ideological basis of Marxism to destroy the European nations. —Preceding unsigned comment added by NatDemUK (talk • contribs) 00:10, 17 March 2010 (UTC)


 * False? No, WP:TRUE! Yes, no. He-said, she-said. But seriously, even if we pretend that you've just refuted over a century of critical theory with a single paragraph, where do we take the article from here? WP:AFD? You might do well to familiarize yourself with the aims of Wikipedia, which more than likely do not chime with the aims of your preceding comment. Cosmic Latte (talk) 02:28, 23 March 2010 (UTC)


 * "Yes, no. He-said, she-said" Stop using dialectics, that means completely nothing. I think that everyone can refute class consciousness easily having understood that it is now an irrelevent concept. Did the working class of Britain unite with the migrant workers from India? No because the British working class do not want that cheap labour migrants come into the country to undermine wages. I could not give a damn about critical theory, it is all a load of abstract nonsense to undermine Western culture, plus is not the criticism of class consciousness part of critical theory as well since that that is criticising a concept as well?


 * Quit trying to start a book bonfire, you embarrass yourself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.82.30.40 (talk) 22:53, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Improve Criticism
Ernest van den Haag? Really? He unashamedly admitted to believing that people of African descent are genetically inferior in intelligence. Why should his opinion be relevant in any wikipedia article on political theory, except as a specimen of pathetic ignorance? Surely someone could find a more intelligent critique of class consciousness by an author who is more representative of non-Marxists. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.195.161.101 (talk) 02:43, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Undue weight
I feel the article gives undue weight to Lukacs, and is indeed uncritical of him, as with the suggestion that he "completed" Marx's conception of commodity fetishism. As there is a whole article dedicated to history and class consciousness, that section should be reduced, with more material added from other sources such as Wilhelm Reich's What is Class Consciousness, Anton Pannekoek's The Party and the Working Class'' and other sources. Leutha (talk) 10:19, 22 December 2020 (UTC)