Theory
The concept flows from the theory of commodity fetishism — that people experience social relationships as value relations between things, e.g., between the cash in their wage packet and the shirts they want. The cash and the shirt appear to conduct social relations independently of the humans involved, determining who gets what by their inherent values. This leaves the person who earned the cash and the people who made the shirt ignorant of and alienated from their social relationship with each other. So the individual "resolves" the experiences of alienation and oppression through a false conception based on a "natural law" argument that there is a fundamental need to compete with others for commodities.
In Marxist terms, not only is there no such objective need separate from the formulation of the general problem of production and distribution for a given society, moreover, Marx said each against all competition is antithetical to the very concept of society, and therefore sets up a contradiction or historical dynamic which over time is resolved in favor of the class with the greatest ability to act in its own rational self-interest. Ruling elites, traditional or otherwise, suffer from false consciousness to the extent that they see the social orders they command as predetermined or inevitable.
Read more about this topic: False Consciousness
Famous quotes containing the word theory:
“every subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view, and it seems inevitable that an objective, physical theory will abandon that point of view.”
—Thomas Nagel (b. 1938)
“There never comes a point where a theory can be said to be true. The most that one can claim for any theory is that it has shared the successes of all its rivals and that it has passed at least one test which they have failed.”
—A.J. (Alfred Jules)
“The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)