The people as a collective whole are not "conscious" (etymology: "know with") in that if they are aware of being manipulated, they don't have the reasoning ability to even care. This is a stage worse than pure ignorance. This is why it is stated later on that if there is any hope for the future, it is with the proles. For they are outside the system, and they have not (yet) been conditioned to "unthink":

Just as Marx foresaw, in the nineteenth century, that the Revolution would come from a spontaneous uprising of the proletariat as they shook off the chains of their oppressors, so Winston writes in his diary that if there is hope, it lies in this 85 percent of Oceania’s population that exists outside the confines of the Party.

-  quote from 'enotes , 1984- "Then and Now"'