Left-wing awareness and the fate of class consciousness

Abstract

The problem of describing the political Left and Leftism is considered on the basis of the history of the origin of the political spectrum from Right to Left and of developing contradictions between functional-reformist, ideological, emblematic-institutional, spectacle, and multiplicity approaches. The functional-reformist standpoint declares the Left is social reformism aiming at equal possibilities, liberties, and diversity. However, the two-dimensional description of the political spectrum is a non-critical following of ideas and ideals and is a consequence of natural sciences at the beginning of the 19th century. The ideological attitude to the problem of the Left presupposes an analysis and critique of differences between class consciousness, false consciousness, and the ideological subject. The ideological or class Left is more philosophical, and many philosophers, poets, artists, and critics developed considerations of it. As important examples, the theory of class consciousness and the reification theories of Gyorgy Lukacs and the Frankfurt School are considered in this article. Lukacs and his followers Adorno, Habermas, and others show the Being of man to be expression of social, productive, cultural, and other relations. The understanding of the human being as resulting from many relations is an ideological theory. So, ideologies are ambiguous: they open the possibility for understanding the truth of Being and Time, or they hide this truth. Class consciousness seeks to unmask the grounding ideologies and criticizes false consciousness: empirical and abstract, or false ideologies. So ideological multiplicity, critical conflict is the normal appearance of the truth of Being. The emblematic or party or institutional standpoint is criticized as an expression of the interests of a party apparatus.[...]