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Originally Posted by Sleeping in EQ
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?
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It is arrogant to presume someone has not studied Marxism simply because that someone's ruminations are at first glance patently absurd. I understand the condemnation, however, it is misplaced and woefully condescending. Such an attempt at absurd connection is in fact a very good indicator of not only basic but sound understanding of Marxism.
I am not trying to contradict Marx or claim he is a relativist. In fact I am not pasing judgement on Marx; in fact this thread is not about Marx, nor is it an attemtp to make Marxims something it is not. I am playing with the philosophy in a manner that is unique to me and my experience -especially as it pertains to my own ideology. Surely you can see some value in probing whether or not it is possible, though absurd as it may sound, to be both a relativist and a Marxist ... the possiblility of which you summarily dismissed rather domatically along with a great deal of denegration in a drive-by in the Religion forum
Therefore I do know what I am arguing and why ...
Where do we go from here. My ideas don't fit within the linear framework of your understanding. Therefore you suggest I require further education. More reading is a good thing, I certainly have access to the commentary, but that will not satiate the quesitons and probing I have laid out at present ... it will not deal with the silly notion of a relativist who also is a Marxist, shops at Voldemart and will vote for Romney.
If you can embrace the absurdity of a relativist who is also a Marxist perhaps we can probe the Marxist proclivities of those who critique the manner in which the gospel and history of the church is taught in Sunday School ... ?!