Proletarians defending capitalism

[Karl Marx's Camel]

Okay so what do you think of those proletarians who defend capitalism despite having read propaganda for socialism/communism and against capitalism?

Why are there so many proletarians who have read Marx, who have read socialist/communist stuff, and still hail capitalism, capitalist states and who strongly dislike socialists and communists?

[Janus]

We just discussed this in Learning here

http://www.revolutionaryleft.com/index.php?showtopic=53790

[Janus]

Why are there so many proletarians who have read Marx, who have read socialist/communist stuff, and still hail capitalism, capitalist states and who strongly dislike socialists and communists?
So many?

I'd always thought that the main problem was that most people have never been exposed to communism except for the lies in the US history books and media.

[Karl Marx's Camel]

So many?

I'd always thought that the main problem was that most people have never been exposed to communism except for the lies in the US history books and media.

Yeah, well, I've exposed quite a few people lately (mostly out of curiosity of their reaction); articles, pamphlets etc. and they seem to shrug it off and stand by their belief of capitalism being superior, that socialism is not something worthwhile. They commented by defending capitalism. One comment which struck me by a person reading some socialist litterature was "What's wrong with getting rich"?

[Janus]

It's the capitalist mentality. You can't expect the ruling ideas of the age to not affect the people and their point of views. They see capitalism as their own alternative and the best thing to do is work under it and hppe to better their lives.

[Delta]

You have to remember that growing up in a capitalist society involves a good deal of indoctrination. You can't approach a theist and make their whole belief system look ridiculous and expect them to always change. They are too attached to it.

[rebelworker]

Dont underestimate the failures of the past in the process of turning working people off comunism.

The Bolshevik experience, held by most to be the only communism, did little or nothing to liberate average working class people. Why would a worker choose political servitued and relative financial security in America for political servitued and poverty and hardship under a communist party dictatorship.

Also most of the communist left in the us, where there are the lowest levels of working class support for comunism, was from the 60's on made up of adventurist rich kids and condasending know it all self proclaimed vanguardists who had no real program for working class liberation. Groups like the weather underground and the multitued of Vanguardist parties lead by non working class people have done alot to turn proles off comunism. Pretty much every working class person I know who has at one time or another been interested in communism has been turned of for the reasons mentioned above.

Untill the 1920's the majority of radical theory (syndicalism) was about workers liberation and collective democracy. After the Russian Revolution, in the false hopes of freedom, the mass of revolutionary minded workers put their lot in with the dictartorship of the Party burocrats lot, a road which has show itself to be utterly useless at liberating working class people. A reality that most workers in the first world have learned.

Capitalism has been able to surpass the welfare state benefits of "Communism" in most places. Why turn back.

I think radical politics are slowly being turned back in a direction where proles are at the center of their own liberation. Untill this happens, communism will offer very little for first world workers.

Other than the right to pay dues and be looked down apon by people wearing red hats ofcourse.

[rouchambeau]

Some of it may have to do with propaganda not appealing to their interests and not making reference to everyday life and personal stuggles of workers.

[Lenin's Law]

Originally posted by [email protected] 9 2006, 07:38 PM

The Bolshevik experience, held by most to be the only communism, did little or nothing to liberate average working class people.

This is mere capitalist propaganda! In reality,the inspiring examples of the Bolshevik revolution have brought great hope for millions of the worlds people! It is quite a US-centric attitude you are taking while at the same ignoring the profound influence Marxism-Leninism-Maoism has had on the hundreds of millions of the world's people in Russia, China, Eastern Europe, Latin America, etc.


was from the 60's on made up of adventurist rich kids and condasending know it all self proclaimed vanguardists who had no real program for working class liberation. Groups like the weather underground and the multitued of Vanguardist parties lead by non working class people have done alot to turn proles off comunism.

Again, more capitalist, bourgeious propaganda.

Yes, all the 60s were about were a bunch of pot smoking spoiled rich kids and a few ivory tower intellectuals. Yes, that's it! :rolleyes:

Sigh. Unfortunate that even on a site that calls itself "Revolutionary Left" we get attitudes like this whom one could find on just about every "Reactionary Right" website.

:rolleyes:

The 60s was about the prospect of great revolutionary change. It did not come to fruition but that does not mean it was not successful in other ways! It may not have achieved its final goal, but it certainly had a great civilizing and progressive effect on the people of the world - from civil rights to womens rights to gay rights to third world liberation - all non-existent before now were mass movements penetrated so deeply into the mainstream that even the bourgeious media could not hide from it!

Silly, tiny groups like the "Weather Underground" were profoundly non-Marxist; more like anarcho-terrorist group. They believed by forming a small, sect/cult with absolutely no connect with the working class they could effect change by making individual terrorist activities. Virtually every Marxist (or I would hope, socialist) with half a brain could see that this was going to go nowhere. Naturally it would be picked up by the corporate controlled media, despite its total lack of real importance and be used as a tool to smear the revolutionary left as a whole.

Looks like its still working.

And socialist and Marxist and yes, even Anarchist leaders have ALL generally been not from the working class: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Castro, The Che, Bakunin..... basically a who's who of radicals came from the professional/middle class: Marx had a PhD (although he did spend most of his life in poverty, was not a worker), Engels was a relatively wealthy businessman, Lenin and Castro were laywers, Che was a doctor , Bakunin came from nobility...

Why? Simple. Someone working in a factory 12-14 hours a day is not going to have much time to devote to theoretical essays, organizing a political party, reading/writing/debating different philosophies and designing alternative economic structures. It is completely unrealistic to expect all this from someone who is working night and day simply to make ends meet.


Capitalism has been able to surpass the welfare state benefits of "Communism" in most places.

You have things backwards.

It is the bourgeious capitalist states that adopt 'welfare state' policies in order to give their workers just a few crumbs to (hopefully, in their view) keep them from looking at revolutionary and/or socialist alternatives. The communist state does not seek to give its workers 'welfare' in the capitalist sense, ie take a few crumbs off the rich man's table, but to take control of the state itself. This is a key and crucial difference.

I would politely like to remind you to stop eating up the lies, distortion and gross falsehoods that the capitalist and corporate-controlled media represent.

[More Fire for the People]

The fact that so many comrades are disillusioned by the number of workers who ‘support’ capitalism shows their own inability to apply materialist analysis beyond the sphere of economics—even making politics a mere irrelevant contingency to economy, i.e. economism. I highly recommend that those who are dismayed by the ‘fact’ of workers ‘supporting’ capitalism should familiarize themselves with the concepts Antonio Gramsci, the Frankfurt School, and Althusser.

The capitalist class does not maintain its existence through mere political society—the police, the army, the legislature, etc., i.e. coercive institutions, but also through the ideological institutions of civil society—the families, the churches, the schools, the libraries, etc.

A working class child may be raised Evangelical Protestant and fully endowed with a fervent belief in God and the Protestant work ethic. Any attempt to dismount God from his thrown will offend his senses and make him spew vile at those who attempt it.

Another working class child will grow up in a school were the history classes are devoid of his or her history, the English classes are devoid of his or her ethnicity or gender’s literature, the Arithmetic classes are devoid of the mathematical advancements of non-Caucasians.

Another working class child will see the immiseration of the working class and other marginalized persons as fundamentally corrupt but when he or she turns to his local library to learn what he or she can do he or she won’t find any relevant works—all the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Luxemburg, etc. calling for revolution and justice are taken out while the passive, so-called ‘moderate’ or ‘historical’ works remain—and he or she will fall into bitter apathy.

[Forward Union]

Originally posted by [email protected] 9 2006, 07:21 PM
"What's wrong with getting rich"?
You have to exploit people and the environment to do it. Directly or indirectly.

[Organic Revolution]

I think the problem is that people get interested when they have the personal awakening to it. I know that some people who just get pamphlets shoved in there faces will just chuck it because it seems so inpersonal, but from the people I have accually had a sit down conversation with got more interested bevause we had a face to face, and it felt more inviting.

[cenv]

People have been exposed to a lifetime of anti-communist, pro-capitalist propaganda, so you can't really expect to just hand someone a pamphlet and expect them to immediately become a communist. That's not to say that it's pointless trying to educate people on what communism really is; I think that's very important. It's just that you're competing with a lifetime of exposure to "communism is bad!" propaganda, so it might not be as easy as just handing someone a "What is communism?" pamphlet and moving along.

[Wanted Man]

From The Elementary Principles of Philosophy (http://www.marxists.org/nederlands/politzer/onbekend/filosofie/6a.htm#a4) by Georges Politzer, translated by me:


True consciousness and falsified consciousness

We have just declared, that the ideologies mirror the material contradictions in society, that social being determines social consciousness. From this, one could deduce that a worker automatically has a proleterian ideology. But this turns out to be incongruent with reality. There are, after all, workers who do not have a class consciousness.

We must therefore take into account the fact that the consciousness of people is not always the same as the actual social relations under which they live. Engels refers to this as having a falsified consciousness.

Example. Some workers have been influenced by the theory of the corporative system that throws back to the medieval relations, that idealizes the state of the artisan, but in reality aims for the creation of a certain form of fascist dictatorship(the corporative state of Mussolini and Salazar are examples of this). In this case, the worker is conscious of the deplorable living conditions of his class, but this consciousness is not pure, not according to reality. The ideology here does mirror social living conditions, but this is not a true, not a just reflection.

Often, it turns out that the consciousness of the people is a reverted reflection. To observe the existence of misery may reflect social relations, but it becomes a false reflection when one thinks that returning to the medieval state of the artisan would solve the question. Here, the consciousness is both true and false.

The monarchist worker also has both a true and a false consciousness. Exactly because he wants to abolish the misery that he observes. False, because he thinks that this would be possible under a monarchist regime. And only because he has reasoned wrongly and chosen an unjust ideology, can this worker become a class enemy to us, even though he is part of the working class.

Therefore, having a false consciousness means to be mistaken or misled about one's own living conditions.

We can say that ideology is a reflection of the living conditions, but not an automatic one,

We must, by the way, determine that everything is being done to give us a falsified consciousness and to amplify the influence of the ideology of the ruling classes on the oppressed classes. The very first principles of a worldview which is taught us during our nurture and education, falsify our consciousness. The ties in our life, like a peasant background in some, and further the propaganda by the press and radio, all contribute to a certain clouding of our consciousness.

Therefore, the ideological work has a very big meaning for us marxists. The false consciousness must be destroyed and replaced by a true consciousness, and this cannot be accomplished without ideological work.

Those who see and describe marxism as a fatalist school, are therefore wrong, because we actually believe that ideologies play an important role in society, and that we must study the philosophy of marxism and teach it, so it can fulfill the role of an accurate tool and weapon.