False consciousness

In Marxist theory, false consciousness is a term describing the ways in which material, ideological, and institutional processes are said to mislead members of the proletariat and other class actors within capitalist societies, concealing the exploitation and inequality intrinsic to the social relations between classes. As such, it legitimizes and normalizes the existence of different social classes. The term was never used by Karl Marx. It was used once by his associate Friedrich Engels to describe an incomplete insight into ideology, and then theorised by later Marxists in the 1920s.

According to orthodox Marxists, false consciousness is consciousness which is misaligned from reality. Thus, it is a serious impediment to human progress and correcting it is a major focus of dialectical materialism.

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