In the body of Marxist thought, there are probably few concepts that have come in for more criticism than the so-called “correspondence theory” of consciousness, which Marx articulated most explicitly in his 1845 essay The German Ideology. In this famous attack on the idealism that dominated German philosophy in the early part of the nineteenth century, Marx insisted that one’s perceptions of the world do not arise ex nihilo, but correspond closely with ways in which one goes about making a living in the world. “The phantoms of the human brain,” he argues, are “sublimates of their material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises.” As one’s material circumstances or the conditions of one’s labor changes, one’s worldview is almost certain to change with it. Anyone who has watched a progressive friend mutate into a rabid defender of property values after buying a piece of real estate can probably attest to the alchemical power of home ownership. As Marx famously concluded, “life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life.”

You can certainly dismiss this as a bit of vulgar Marxism, and you’d probably be justified in doing so. But as a wise man once quipped, vulgar Marxism explains about 90 percent of what goes on in the social world. If you don’t believe me, allow me to direct your attention to that notorious mouthpiece of vulgar Marxism — the New York Times. Recently, the Times ran an illuminating story on the shifting ideological attitudes of doctors that could have been a footnote in The German Ideology. Doctors have traditionally been petit-bourgeois entrepreneurs who own and operate their own independent practices. As such, the American Medical Association, aligned itself firmly with the Republican party and vigorously opposed Medicare or anything else that smacked of “socialized medicine.” But as the Times reports, doctors

are abandoning their own practices and taking salaried jobs in hospitals, particularly in the North, but increasingly in the South as well. Half of all younger doctors are women, and that share is likely to grow . . . Because so many doctors are no longer in business for themselves, many of the issues that were once priorities for doctors’ groups, like insurance reimbursement, have been displaced by public health and safety concerns, including mandatory seat belt use and chemicals in baby products.