Modern ruling class power

[Comrade #138672]

Is it just me, or has the ruling class gained a lot more power compared to half a century ago? I'm talking about advanced Consumerism, the Mass Media, advanced bourgeois science which is used to manipulate the psychology of the working-class, the internet and mass surveillance, bourgeois psychiatry to 'capture' the most rebellious proletarians and drown them into medication, etc.

Sometimes when I feel pessimistic, I don't see how the majority of the working-class is able to fight its way out of this mess and overthrow Capitalism as it is now. If this is true, then would the proletariat be in a permanent state of class struggle (and losing)? I don't like to think about it, but I can't help it.

What do you think? Am I overestimating the power of these influences, or not? How can the working-class fight against all these influences?

[Avanti]

you are seeing them

Babylon is inside you too

it will break

it is breaking

due to higher unemployment

we will have

a very large

class of people

who aren't wanted

aren't needed

are forced

to survive outside

the system

that's the future

source for the revolution

the lost, barefoot children

[Slavoj Zizek's Balls]

Translation: Things are going to change.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

I certainly agree that the ideological weapons of the bourgeosie are even stronger than 50 or 100 years ago.

[Q]

Within bourgeois society, it is bourgeois ideology that rules supreme. This point was already made by Marx and Engels, all those years ago. The reason is not that the capitalists impose their ideology upon by naked force, but because of the way capitalist society works, in which commodity fetishism plays a big role.

The working class can oppose it, but cannot overcome it if it doesn't form itself as a class-collective. For this we need political programme and a politicised mass movement, fighting for working class power and communism. In other words, for this we need a mass party-movement.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Breaking the power of bourgeois ideology is a difficult thing to do, especially in the advanced countries like the United States where the ruling class has such consolidation. To me this means developing a mas movement with a programme that resonates with workers but also battling their ideology and attacking their propaganda;to this extent liberalism comes in a great deal (as this often serves as a primary bulwark against class consciousness): we must find means to assault such thought and expose its worthless core.

Doing this, however, on the scale which is needed as well as finding the proper means of delivering such polemics is another matter entirely. It is a problem I have been groping with for some time and one which I think is tied into the re-groupment project. Building the revolutionary movement in modern times will take a drastically different approach than what triumphed previously. Because of this I spend much of my time thinking of how ruling class ideology infects society (specifically, the means in which it infects and the affects of said cancer).

In short: yes, the ruling class has more power than previously but this is to be expected after the collapse of the last radical movement yet we must not give up and push forward with the present while grappling with the obstacles history has presented us with.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Bourgeois cultural hegemony seems to be stronger than ever. Gramsci's notion that the proletariat would produce its own organic intellectuals seems optimistic to say the least. On my pessimistic days I wonder if Gramsci underestimated the power of the cultural hegemony of the ruling class.

[Let's Get Free]

I want us to stare full into the eyes of the ruling class and I want us to see what they see. Our rulers are able to secure their rule over and over again because they are more united, more class conscious, and more politically aware. They are regularly in control, we are not.

It is my contention that however imposing the ruling class' power may be, the eyes of the ruling class reflect not surety and confidence, but apprehension and anxiety. When we become depressed at the thought of the power that governments, multinational corporations, armies and police have to control minds, crush dissent, and destroy rebellions, we should consider this phenomenon: those who possess enormous power are surprisingly nervous about their ability to hold onto their power. They react almost hysterically to what seem to be puny and unthreating signs of opposition. Is it possible that the ruling class knows something we don't?

[C.K.]

I certainly agree w/ the OP & I suffer from the same bouts of pessimism, myself. What I find disheartening is the lengths that the ruling elites have gone in order to perpetuate a lack of unity amongst the working class. Beyond the dulling of the senses through drugs, tv, food, etc, it seems that every interest, hobby or lifestyle provides some sort of antagonism w/ the person next to you.

Whether it be race, religion, sexual orientation, personal appearance, favorite sports team, favorite fucking nascar driver, the music you listen to, the kind of truck you drive, where you work, your favorite tv show, whatever...... It creates a rift, somehow. And w/ all of this stock in such trivial, mindless bullshit, who the hell has time to consider politics, or revolution, or anything outside of the MSM's political status quo?

[Sea]

I want us to stare full into the eyes of the ruling class and I want us to see what they see. Our rulers are able to secure their rule over and over again because they are more united, more class conscious, and more politically aware. They are regularly in control, we are not.

It is my contention that however imposing the ruling class' power may be, the eyes of the ruling class reflect not surety and confidence, but apprehension and anxiety. When we become depressed at the thought of the power that governments, multinational corporations, armies and police have to control minds, crush dissent, and destroy rebellions, we should consider this phenomenon: those who possess enormous power are surprisingly nervous about their ability to hold onto their power. They react almost hysterically to what seem to be puny and unthreating signs of opposition. Is it possible that the ruling class knows something we don't?The ruling class knows their political position and knows that they are the ruling class. No matter how much they shift the blame to corruption rather than capitalism, or justify their position to themselves and the world by claiming to be organizers rather than oppressors, they know damn well that their existence as a class is an inherently political one. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said they're more class-conscious. Much of the working class doesn't even seem to know that their position as workers has a political element to it.