Comments on: THE STATE, CLASS AND FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS WITHIN THE AMERICAN WORKING CLASS

By: The State, Class, and False Consciousness | Mediaroots

The State, Class, and False Consciousness | Mediaroots — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 06:29:01 +0000

[...] PROJECT CENSORED — In the United States the American working class has seen itself become increasingly involved in fighting imperialistic wars abroad, financing a growing military budget, and losing its social safety net at home yet at the same time regularly acting politically inconsistent with their own class interests. This has been to the gain of US-based multinational corporations and to the detriment of working people. Until the working class in the United States realizes that the predominantly corporate-controlled state does not serve their personal and class interests they will not see any significant improvement in their lives. On the contrary, as long as working people continue to support the two major parties they can expect to see many more years of corporate dominance of the United States political, economic and social system. The primary issue that working people must address to resolve this problem is the question of false consciousness. [...]

By: Media Freedom Foundation Project Censored Report by the President: Peter Phillips 2012-2013 | Dailycensored.com

Thu, 05 Jul 2012 21:47:22 +0000

[...] Also see Dr. Jeremy Cloward’s original article http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/the-state-class-and-false-consciousness-within-t… and Dr. Peter Phillips recent op-ed [...]

By: Pcrawley08

Pcrawley08 — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 07:34:00 +0000

Guess I’ll just open my own contracting firm, get into the petty class, eat healthy exercise, invest in the future(oil, blue chippers, etc.), and stay out of the way, b/c Americans are stupid and tired and lazy and brainwashed..It’s worthless man

By: Guest reader

Guest reader — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 03:41:00 +0000

I give you an A+ on writing a Marxist paper that is academically solid and applies to current issues.

However, when it comes to reality, Marxism overgeneralizes and makes assumptions that aren’t realistic. For example: 1) the “working class” is a large number of people living in different regions with different cultures and circumstances that don’t really have the same interests that you assume in the paper. More people identify with language, region, religion and other things that “class.” 2) the media being controlled by the elite is true to some extent but there are many other international sources especially with the internet. Most of project censored stories do end up on major news outlets eventually. 3) assumptions about US involvement in Afghanistan are questionable. The goals are to create a stable country that won’t be run by Taliban like leaders. It’s not America’s fault that Afghanistan is a mess and nobody else will do anything about it. Same with other countries.

These are just a few critiques. Marxism boils down complex issues to simplistic terms that don’t reflect reality. Health care, wars, energy, elections and poverty are huge problems that require time and political will to solve. If everyone did vote (only 40% of eligible voters do) we could have better representatives. Unfortunately people just don’t care and most of those people are the “working class” who let others rule them. Stupid people get what they deserve and that’s what most of the American public are. Sorry to disappoint anyone who reads this.

Bravo on a good research paper.