manipulation. There is a need, as with all concepts in this area, to establish
ground rules for using the arguments, which can otherwise turn into a
powerful myth to uphold totalitarian or other undemocratic governments
(seedictatorship of the proletariat). As with similar ideas, for example
alienation, it is assumed that there exists an essential human nature that is
discoverable whatever the apparent characteristics. It is historically similar to
ideas in traditional Catholic political theory, for example inAquinasor
Augustine, where the thesis that man has fallen from a state of grace justified
hieratical authority. The idea is that, uncontaminated by external forces,
unfallen people would perceive society correctly, and neither be the tools of
the exploiters nor be able to exploit, because a potential exploiter would not be
able to disguise from himself what he was doing. It is this general distortion
which gives false consciousness its power. An example might be the acceptance
both by factory owners and workers that minimal pay rates and high job
insecurity were necessary for the economy to flourish. The theory, shared by
both sides, justifies to everyone both exploiting and being exploited. Only
where the exploiters actually do realize that matters might be organized
otherwise but continue to maintain the economic theory in question, does a
‘false’ consciousness become a ‘mendacious’ consciousness.
Fanon
Frantz Fanon (1925–61) was born and initially educated in one of France’s
overseas possessions, Martinique, and ended his political life in what was then
another, Algeria. In between, he was a psychiatrist, practising as such in Algeria
in 1956 when he resigned and joined the outlawed Front de Libe ́ration
Nationale (FLN), which conducted a successful guerrilla war against French
colonialism. His work became, even during his lifetime, a major source of
inspiration and doctrine for anti-colonial and anti-racist movements world-
wide, and continued to influence radical movements, particularly in Africa,
into the 21st century. His best-known book,The Wretched of the Earthalso
achieved significant literary acclaim, a rare accolade for a work of political
protest. The essence of Fanon’s work was to take many currents of radical
thought in post-war France and apply them, first to the anti-colonial struggle,
and secondly to racism generally. Thus, he combined radical psychiatry with
Marxismand even traces ofexistentialism, to produce a synthesis which
allowed an analysis of oppression outside the constraints of orthodox Marxist
thought, limited, as it often is, to the developed capitalist economy. It is a
relatively short leap from producing such an analysis of the plight of oppressed
colonial populations to applying it to the situation of racial minorities inside
developed economies, and it is probable that Fanon has been just as influential
Fanon