GS English: Addendum to Competition of Capitalists and Preview of Wage Labor
Von webmaster • Dez. 29th, 2025 • Kategorie: InternationalGS English:
Addendum to Competition of Capitalists and Preview of Wage Labor:
On the “necessarily false consciousness” found in the “character masks” of the capitalist mode of production
[Translated from Gegenstandpunkt: Politische Vierteljahreszeitschrift 3-2025, Gegenstandpunkt Verlag, Munich]
“Thus everything appears reversed in competition. The final pattern of economic relations as seen on the surface, in their real existence and consequently in the conceptions by which the bearers and agents of these relations seek to understand them, is very much different from, and indeed quite the reverse of, their inner but concealed essential pattern and the conception corresponding to it.”
(Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 3, International Publishers, p. 209)
Marx claims that those who actively shape capitalist competition and those who go along with it have a necessarily false consciousness. Not of this or that, or of all kinds of things — it would be hard to find any necessity for that — but of the necessities that quite generally and unshakably govern people’s material existence in this world: earning money and making a living with it. In other words, a distorted perception of the universal constraint that everyone knows, has to reckon with and cope with in practical terms.
There are in fact plenty of misconceptions circulating about this, especially about the difficulties and opportunities involved in accomplishing this life task. But every halfway practical person knows this much about reality: you need money to live and there are basically two ways to get it. You either earn it from an employer who has an interest in the work you are willing to do and money to spare for it. Or you have enough surplus money, from somewhere or other, to invest it profitably, as an employer in your own company or as a loan for interest or some similar return. It is also widely known and perceived as reality that opposing interests are regularly aimed at the same sum of money: employers and employees compete over the price of the work to be paid for; consequently, companies sometimes compete for suitable workers while employees very often compete for a job; the minority living on interest income join in on the employers’ side with a focus on returns. This is not always pleasant; representatives of the competing parties make life even more difficult for each other by quarreling over corrections in the opposite direction; and they offer ideological justifications for their position that are not just considered wrong by the opposing side, they are actual distortions shaped by personal interest. But what it really comes down to is, at bottom, always clear: each side fixates on its source of income and fights for what it yields using the other side’s dependence as leverage. So far, so good — or bad. But what is reversed here? Where is false consciousness at work? Especially necessarily false — what kind of necessity is there?
How it is false
How it is necessary
How is it Consciousness
In Practice: The World of Competition
https://en.gegenstandpunkt.com/article/necessary-false-consciousness
„Nachtrag zur „Konkurrenz der Kapitalisten“ und Vorblick auf die „Lohnarbeit“:
Zum ‚notwendig falschen Bewusstsein‘ der ‚Charaktermasken‘ der kapitalistischen Produktionsweise“ (GS 3-25)
Marx attestiert den Machern und Mitmachern der kapitalistischen Konkurrenz ein notwendig falsches Bewusstsein. Nicht von irgendetwas oder von allem Möglichen – dafür wäre eine Notwendigkeit auch schwerlich zu ermitteln –, sondern von den Notwendigkeiten, die allgemein und unausweichlich das materielle Dasein in dieser Welt bestimmen: Geld zu verdienen und damit einen Lebensunterhalt zu bestreiten. Eine verkehrte Wahrnehmung also von dem universellen Sachzwang schlechthin, den jeder kennt, mit dem jeder rechnen und praktisch klarkommen muss.
Worum es in unserer Gesellschaft geht, das ist im Grunde klar: Jeder kapriziert sich auf seine Einkommensquelle, kämpft um deren Ertrag mit dem Druckmittel der Abhängigkeit der Gegenseite. So weit, so gut oder auch schlecht. Aber was ist daran verkehrt? Wo ist hier falsches Bewusstsein am Werk? Und das auch noch notwendig – mit was für einer Notwendigkeit denn?
https://de.gegenstandpunkt.com/artikel/zum-notwendig-falschen-bewusstsein
