ABSTRACT
Although of Marxist origin, the theory of false consciousness was marginalized for a long time, both by “official” Marxism, which feared its possible use in a critique of left-wing totalitarianism, and by Western scholars because of its Marxist origins. Recent politicai history offers two “identical” examples of false consciousness: Stalinism and racism. False consciousness can often be criticized for ignoring the resulting effets pervers, the consequences of an ahistorical, nondialectical perception of an historical and dialectical reality. In Ideology and Utopia, Mannheim states that utopian consciousness is a form of false consciousness. The decisive common denominator between ideology and utopia is that both involve the possibility of false consciousness. Egalitarian utopias operate at the level of an intermediary state between macrosociology and microsociology, that is, as reform attempts seeking to alleviate certain inequalities without pretending to reorganize society as a whole.
