The oppressive class lacks internal unity because its members deny class membership

Evidence

This fact explains an apparent paradox: since the unity of the oppressed class stems from the fact that it is experienced as an Us-object in the face of an undifferentiated “They” which is the Third or the oppressing class, one might be tempted to believe that by a sort of symmetry the oppressing class apprehends itself as a We-subject in the face of the oppressed class. But the weakness of the oppressing class lies in the fact that although it has at its disposal precise and rigorous means for coercion, it is within itself profoundly anarchistic. The “bourgeois” is not only defined as a certain homo œconomicus disposing of a precise power and privilege in the heart of a society of a certain type; he is described inwardly as a consciousness which does not recognize its belonging to a class. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1042

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to Beauvoir’s account of privilege and the oppressor’s bad faith in The Second Sex; also parallels Marx’s concept of class-consciousness asymmetry echoed in Parable of the Sower’s class divides. — connects to: Any antagonistic class must internally bear something of the lumpenproletariat. — Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason, 304