Quote:
Originally Posted by tooblue
But the fabrication is real, ergo you have Marxism. False consciousness by default is relative; hence my fallacious comparison of wealth is also real and actually is not non-sequiter … or fallacious.
So, let me try and put this discussion in terms that relate to this forum, for we are not in a philosophy class … I often read and discern from the tone of posts that many here feel discouraged at the depth of the teaching in church –say in Sunday School. In Marxist terms the institutional gospel simplification processes misleads the general body of the church (aka the proletariat) about the real gospel and history of the church etc.
Does that make the many critiques who have voiced displeasure concerning teaching, religious Marxists? And yes I am aware of the absurd irony, but maybe this is worthy of discussion  |
Nope. For Marx false consciousness is not relative. It simply isn't. It's the product of historical economoic realities--the means and relationships of production.
You can make up your own notion of false consciousness if you want to, but you're contradicting Marx when you do so. He was not putting his ideas forward as "real fabrications." Marxists don't accept the idea that Marxism is composed of "real fabrications." You simply want Marxism to be something it doesn't put itself forward as. Wanting to make it something other than what it is doesn't make it so.
How about you actually study Marxism before you decide that it is what you want it to be? Saying Marx and Marxists don't realize that their thinking is composed of "real fabrications" but that YOU DO, when you haven't demonstrated a basic understanding of their ideas is such arrogance as to be almost incomprehensible.
Marx was not a relativist. You trying to make him into one just demonstrates that you don't understand what you're discussing.
Postmodernists (or others, but you sound like some kind of eccentric postmodernist) might claim that his ideas were more relative than he knew, but this does not change his and Marxists understandings of them. It does not make the Marxist notion of false consciousness relative. It does not make postmodernists into Marxists. It makes postmodernists rejectors of Marxism who insert contradictory notions in their place. It makes them postmodernists whose relativism is absolute, a grand narrative in its own right.
You are trying to insert a notion that contradicts Marxism into Marxism so you can declare your notion Marxist. It's folly. You'd benefit from reading Isaiah Berlin's commentary on Marx and Marxism. Why don't you read it and we can talk some more?