Consciouness and Others

A common use of the term 'self-conscious' is to one's concern for how one appears to others, applicable to most looks in a mirror. Implicit in that usage is the attribution of Consciousness to others. Thus, there is a distinction between the awareness of oneself in association with others, and one of oneself in association with others who possess their own such awareness. Now, Consciousness, which is inherently "for me", as conceived by Marx-Engels, cannot recognize the latter possibility, which entails an in-itself existence, and so lacks the capacity to account for a concept of Self-Consciousness that even in Capitalist conditions, transcends an egocentric orientation. Furthermore, their concept thus also lacks the capacity to distinguish between conscious beings and inanimate objects. It, therefore, includes no ground for the elimination of the treatment of the former as the latter, i. e. of the exploitation of others, which is a necessary condition of their concept of Socialism.