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In these formulations Marx is trying to make the point that consciousness is an aspect of human life activity. Thus the well-known Marxist statement that social being determines consciousness is making the uncontroversial claim that social being as a whole determines one of its own aspects. Of course, we often want for methodological reasons to focus on consciousness and need to remember as we do so that our current social being easily leads us into …

…of one ruling before it, is compelled, merely in order to carry through its aim, to represent its interest as the common interest of all the members of society, that is, expressed in ideal form: it has to give its ideas the form of universality, and represent them as the only rational, universally valid ones. (TGI 62) The strength of this paradigm is such that an even partial rejection of it may appear to constitute irrationality.