DE LA DECLARACIÓN DE MERCANCÍAS

This section discusses the Marxist perspective, including Marx’s concept of false consciousness, as well as Gramsci’s idea of hegemonic power. It also provides a critical review of the redistribution of wealth in China’s Reform Era and the rationale for employing this theoretical perspective. As what is understood by “class” differs between sociologists, it is important to acknowledge this difference and clarify for this study the understanding of “class” which is adopted, using a Marxist lens. The Bourdieusian sense of ‘social class’ focuses on language, customs and habits (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977), whereas using a Marxist lens, ‘class’ is understood in relation to the economic base as structure (Marx and Engels, 1846, p. 92). Therefore, I see young people, including vocational students, who are dependent on the state (and their parents), as members of the same class as their parents, who have to sell their labour in order to pay for food and housing.

False Consciousness and Hegemonic Power

When Engels (1893) used the term ‘false consciousness’ for the first time, he was reflecting critically on the way in which he and Marx had been primarily concerned with establishing the derivation of ideological notions ‘from basic economic facts’ and the actions people took as a result of those notions. We see this for example in The German Ideology, where he and Marx argue that: ‘The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force’ (Marx and Engels, 1846). ‘The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it’ (Marx and Engels, 1846, p. 92). But as Engels regretfully explained (1893), he and Marx had focused too much on the content of ideological notions and had ‘neglected...the ways and means by which [they] come about’. To his fellow traveller Franz Mehring, Engels wrote disparagingly of the type of ‘ideologist’ (as distinct from the materialist) and ‘so-called thinker’ who relies on the reports of other thinkers, past and present, whilst ‘the real motives impelling him remain unknown to him’, resulting in a state of false consciousness (1893). He thought that there emerged from this an accepted understanding of the way the state operates ‘which dazzles most people’. However, Marx and Engels did not further develop the concept of false consciousness (Femia, 1975; Lewy, 1982; Wood, 1988). Some have speculated that Marx underestimated the power of false consciousness and overestimated the ability of oppressed people to recognise and take action against the source of their oppression (Femia, 1975; Jost, 1995), so that later socialist

scholars such as Gramsci (1971), in their aim to explain why the revolution had still not come about, sought to achieve a greater understanding of the concept.

Gramsci, like Marx and Engels argued that the ruling class uses the state ‘to raise the great mass of the population to a particular cultural and moral level, a level (or type) which corresponds to the needs of the productive forces for development, and hence to the interests of the ruling class’ (Gramsci, 1971, p. 258). What those subjected to the state must do, Gramsci says, is engage in ‘critical elaboration’ so as to be conscious of what one really is ‘as a product of the historical process to date which has deposited in you an infinity of traces, without leaving an inventory’ (1971).

For Gramsci, false consciousness is not simply an ‘internalisation’ of ideologies, but also of the life-practices and the culture of social groups (Eyerman, 1981, p. 48). Based on Marx and Engels’s work, Gramsci developed his theory of hegemony, which, he explains, is ‘an order in which a certain way of life and thought is dominant, in which one concept of reality is diffused throughout society, in all its institutional and private manifestations, informing with its spirit all tastes, morality, customs, religions and political principles, and all social relations, particularly in their intellectual and moral connotations’ (Williams, 1960, p. 587). Hegemonic rule relies on voluntarism and participation, rather than on coercive threat and punishment. It is achieved by securing ‘the consent of the governed’ (Gramsci, 1971). In his writings, Gramsci portrayed ‘consent’ as both active and passive (Femia, 1975). On the one hand, he says, it is given spontaneously by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group, as the masses falsely believe the ideology and political leadership is the expression of their beliefs and aspirations. On the other hand, it emerges in ‘a condition of moral and political passivity’ because the masses lack the ‘clear theoretical consciousness’ to enable them to act effectively (Gramsci, 1971, p. 333). Manifested as consent given by the masses, false consciousness has made hegemonic rule possible (Eyerman, 1981, p. 47).

The concept of false consciousness helps to identify the false beliefs of subordinates which serve to sustain the dominant ideology as well as their own social oppression (Cunningham, 1987; Eagleton, 1991; Jost, 1995). For a consciousness to be false, it must include certain kinds of false beliefs ‘held by people whose own continuing oppression is partly maintained by their holding them’, and they are ‘widespread and motivating of social practice to be part of a society’s political culture’ (Cunningham, 1987, p. 255). Jost has shown some specific examples of false consciousness, including the beliefs some members of subordinate groups

may have that they are inferior or deserving of their plight, and demonstrates how they justify systems of inequality and make false attributions of blame (Jost, 1995).

The redistribution of wealth in China’s Reform Era

As false consciousness is a result of a group phenomenon instigated by the power structures of hierarchical social dynamics (Thompson, 2015, p. 453), it is important to recognise this economic hierarchy within China’s Reform Era.

As mentioned in Section 2.2.3, there is an ongoing debate about whether or not China in the Reform Era is a neoliberal country. Despite the differences between scholars on this question, they generally agree that whilst China’s economy has been growing fast, it has become one of the most unequal societies (Hart-Landsberg and Burkett, 2005; Harvey, 2005; So, 2005; Nonini, 2008). The achievement of neoliberalisation—redistributing, rather than generating, wealth and income—is realised by ‘accumulation by dispossession’ (Harvey, 2005; Nonini, 2008). A large, easily exploited, and relatively powerless labour force (e.g. migrant workers and laid-off workers from SOEs) has been feeding the needs of the neoliberal economy (Harvey, 2005; Wu, 2010). Functioning as an oligarchic institution, the state may ‘privilege some while marginalising others’ through the ‘regime of governance’ (Nonini, 2008, p. 172). Low labour costs and inflowing foreign investment have maintained the competitiveness of China’s export-oriented economy (Wu, 2010, p. 626). Managing the workforce is therefore crucial in order to stimulate production and integrate China into the global market economy.

Why Marx?

Rather than explaining the problems as the Foucauldian approach does, the Marxist perspective may help to investigate the root causes and consequences of the ways individual young people behave, especially where policies do not support their interests and leave them open to exploitation by dominant economic interests (Côté, 2014a, p. 528). The Marxist perspective draws attention to the problem of manufactured consent in the creation of false consciousness and provides radical solutions (Côté, 2014a, p. 538). However, the notion of false consciousness has been critiqued as having ‘little analytical value other than describing millions of people as unthinking, mindless dupes’ (France and Threadgold, 2016, p. 618), and is avoided by mainstream social scientists for being ‘too entrenched in Marxist doctrine’ (Fox, 1999, p. 12) and for ‘its patronizing nature’ (Geis, 1998, p. 270). As Côté explains, ‘consciousness’ does not refer to the person’s agentic abilities to think, but rather to people’s knowledge of their place in class relations (Côté, 2016, p. 858). It focuses on ‘the acceptance of ideologies that disguise what takes place between economic élites and the consequence

of these activities for people’s lives’ (Côté, 2016, p. 859). It is useful to connect the students’ experiences and perspectives with ‘existing social relations’ (White and Wyn, 1998), and locate them ‘beyond youth and young people in and of themselves’ (Sukarieh and Tannock, 2016).

Three theoretical strains—the individualisation thesis, the Foucauldian, and the Marxist perspective—have each been discussed in the above sections. The following will analyse the interplay and connection between these three selected theories.