Skip to content

False Consciousness, what's not to dislike?

The left need to face the hard truth of False Consciousness: We actually need more of what has just happened, not less. Paradoxically, the left now need to let go in order to get to grips with the new situation.

Published:
Grey.jpg
Grey.jpg

Brexit depicted in shades of grey, the percentages also meet 52% across the image.

There are a lot of shrill declarations to be heard at the moment, after Brexit, after Trump, about how 'we' now need to give the people who never got a look-in 'a voice'. As these middle class liberal and left wing commentators inhale the vapours to bring them out of shock, the real working classes get on with their lives.

Those commentators, some journalists, some academics, assume that if 'we' enable 'them' then 'they' will miraculously form a whole new polity. And so they might. Yet exactly the same commentators recoil in horror from the idea that they might be speaking for the masses, at the same time as they are doing exactly that, by default.