The Misconception of Consciousness in Marxism

The Misconception of Consciousness in Marxism is a foundational monograph within the broader framework of Integrative Theoretical System Studies (ITSS) and Integrative System Theoretical Realism (ISTR). The book argues that Marxism cannot be adequately criticized only at the socio-economic or political level, because its deepest error lies in its model of consciousness itself. Against the Marxist assumption that social being determines consciousness, the study develops a layered critique showing that Marxism is anthropologically reductive, ontologically unstable, epistemologically inadequate, and philosophically incoherent. The work is foundational for ISTR because it brings together several of the system’s central pillars in a concentrated form: the critique of reductive identity, the reconstruction of consciousness as a conditioned and dynamic process, the psycho-ethical analysis of ideology, and the genealogical method through which modern secular ideologies are traced back to older symbolic and metaphysical formations. In this sense, the book does not merely criticize Marxism as one doctrine among others, but clarifies one of the deeper generative problems from which later ideological critique within ISTR emerged. Methodologically, the study integrates several traditions that are rarely combined at this level: the Austrian philosophical tradition of Brentano, Meinong, and Ehrenfels; Buddhist philosophy and Abhidhamma psychology; selected insights from neurocognitive science; and schema theory as developed in contemporary psychology and psychotherapy. Together, these approaches are used to reconstruct consciousness as intentional, patterned, non-substantial, psycho-ethically charged, and irreducible to class position or material determination. A major original contribution of the book is its genealogical argument that Marxism can be read as an inverted, metastasized, and secularized continuation of older dualist-heretical structures, especially those associated with Cathar ontology and Bogomil theology. Through this lens, Marxism appears not simply as a modern economic theory, but as a secular ideological recoding of earlier antagonistic metaphysics. This genealogy is further clarified through the book’s threefold symbolic model of cosmic struggle, moral rapacity, and Manichaean binary. The monograph also situates Marxism within a wider ideological dynamic. While its direct object is Marxist consciousness, the study shows how similar structures of inversion, identity-clinging, and symbolic antagonism later reappear in progressive, feminist, and postmodern ideological forms. In this respect, the book connects closely with other foundational works in the ISTR corpus and helps clarify the broader architecture of ideological mutation developed there.Written from outside prevailing academic habits that often govern discussions of Marxism, this study combines philosophical critique, genealogical reconstruction, and interdisciplinary synthesis in order to challenge one of modernity’s most influential models of consciousness at its roots.