Essay On Working Class Conservatism

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The overarching theme explored within this essay is the tendency of working-class conservatism within society. This has been analyzed above in regards to class-consciousness and hegemony. The popular Marxist explanation of working class Toryism sees a manifestation of false-consciousness on part of a large majority of the working class- a condition which is felt to be redeemable under the right conditions of proletariat education. In addition to this, some scholars have suggested that hegemonic pressures play a role in influencing the class consciousness of certain sects of persons within society.

Political allegiances are to a large extent, a reflection of the vales persons within a society subscribe to in areas of their life outside the realm of politics. We can see how consent to multiple intersecting networks of power occurs because of our tendency to …show more content…

Dorothy Smith conceives of ideology as a mode of reasoning, or creating knowledge which abstracts away from lives individuals engaged in everyday social interaction. It Is through ideology, hegemony and discourse that people become convinced to accept systems of social inequality as acceptable and immune from social transformation. It remains obvious that to state that the working class by virtue of its place in the social relations of capitalist production, has a fundamental interest in socialism, and is to attribute to a determined place at the economic level. But through the indoctrination by the capitalist classes, the working class comes to conclude that the dominate form of social structure is not subject to change. “Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity.” It is not until the working classes break the chains of capitalism, and see that change is possible that significant social formation will come

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