Proletarian Consciousnsess, or not....

[Connolly]

What do you make of this...


""Proletarian conciousness

I've mentioned the historical experience of communism as a factor in the demise of socialist consciousness amongst the working class. In fact, I think it's more profound than this.

Marx argued that certain classes, due to the concrete conditions of their lifestyles, particularly their relationship to the means of production, were impelled towards certain social demands. Peasants, for example, might live for generations in a society that accepted landlordism as ordained by god, but they were impelled, nevertheless, towards a consciousness that demanded the abolition of landlordism. Individuals demand security, and control of one's conditions for existence and prosperity is the best guarantor of security. The notion of owning the land they worked had a magnetic pull on all peasants. Similarly, artisans desired control of their workshops and a moral regulation of the market. The bourgeoisie demanded control of their workers, capital and a law-bound, stable, free market.

Marx noted that the conditions of existence for the proletariat were necessarily collective. Their labour was socialised, i.e. meaningless unless pooled. The proletariat were incapable of individual subsistence - unlike artisans or peasants they could not personally own the means of survival. In socialised capitalist labour, individual workers contribute to the production process, but the division of labour makes each individual contribution meaningless in itself. Operating a single lathe, heaving cole, signing chits, answering phones or whatever cannot in themselves provide the means for living. The proletarian does not produce the requirements of individual existence directly (i. e. food), as does a peasant, not even indirectly, as does an artisan or a bourgeois, as the product of his labour has no marketable use-value, it is only useful as a partial input to a chain of production. Only the end-product, the fruit of many inputs, has a marketable value.

A peasant can theoretically support himself and his family with his plot of land. He can imagine self-sufficiency and his psychological desire for security finds expression in an ideal vision of complete control over his means of subsistence. The peasant, stripped of "false consciousness" always wishes to be a proprietor. The proletarian cannot imagine similar circumstances for himself. There is no point fighting for control of his segment of the production process. What advantage could there be in owning privately one's section of the conveyer-belt? In isolation, it will produce neither food, nor marketable products.

Thus, for Marx, the proletariat is impelled to desire personal security through collective ownership of the entire, integrated production process. The human instinct for control of oneself and one's immediate environment, which for previous classes meant essentially a drive towards perfecting private control of the means of personal subsistence and wealth creation, for the proletariat is converted to a desire for collective control and ownership of the means of production. This is why the proletariat is the universal class, impelled towards some form of socialism or communism.

But Marx did not consider an alternative realisation of the human instinct for security in the proletariat born of capitalism. The proletarian, with equal or superior reason, might seek security through control of the means of consumption, rather than of production. Proletarian consciousness is not analogous to the artisan's desire to own securely his own tools and workshop, rather it is analogous to the artisan's desire to control the market for the goods he produces. The proletarian seeks not collective ownership of the socialised labour process, which after all must be a weak form of psychological personal security as it is excessively dependent on the goodwill of one's fellow 'owners' of collectivised production. Rather, the proletarian seeks a personal grip on the means of consumption, i.e. money, in particular wages. The consciousness of the proletarian is quite as egoistic as that of the peasant - he desires the security of a guaranteed pot of money, and the confidence that this can be relied upon indefinitely. This does not a capitalist entrepreneur make (capitalism is dependent not upon security, but risk), nor does it rule out class-consciousness and class struggle (collective struggle might well, at historical junctions, be the best guarantor of individual proletarian's pot of money), but it does mean that the proletariat's imagined ideal is not collective ownership. It is not socialism. The rise of socialist ideologies was not a consequence of the decline of false consciousness. The explanation must be sought elsewhere."""

[piet11111]

without control over the means of production this pot of money ( the means of consumption) that the person controls can lose its value at the whim of the market and it does not get rid of the exploitation.
besides we already have that its called a wage that we get to spend "freely" already (what meager scraps are left after paying the essentials)

this does not offer any security at all to the people as the only true control over the market can be gained through control over the means of production through collective ownership.
with that the need for control over the "means of consumption" aka money falls away as we can do without.

[Kibbutznik]

Murray Bookchin spent some time analyzing this in his essay "Listen, Marxist!", which is published in the anthology Post Scarcity Anarchism. Rather than quote it in length, I'll just tease out the most important part, IMO.


"Hence it requires an act of high consciousness for the proletariat to use its power to achieve a social revolution. Until now, the achievement of this consciousness has been blocked by the fact that the factory milieu is one of the most well entrenched arenas of the work ethic, of hierarchical systems of management, of obedience to leaders, and in recent times of production committed to superfluous commodities and armaments. The factory serves not only to "discipline," "unite," and "organize" the workers, but also to do so in a thoroughly bourgeois fashion. In the factory, capitalistic production not only renews the social relations of capitalism with each working day, as Marx observed, it also renews the psyche, values and ideologies of capitalism."(Emphasis mine)

[davidasearles]

Connolly- good points on consciousness regarding the means of production and consumption. I doubt that there is any inevitable consciousness in either direction, or whether some won't see it one way and some the other - or that people can't see both simultaneously.

A while back I used to advocate for collective worker control of the industrial means of production but then someone suggested to me that I ought to include the means of distribution with that. I didn’t really know why I agreed to include it until now. It had seemed to me that if workers controlled the industrial means of production that that would necessarily include control over who gets what and how. But for a better understanding by a wider audience I can see now why specifying distribution was a good idea.

But whether Marx got it just right or not in a particular writing or writings – the issue to me is whether we as workers get it right. Sadly on this whole site I see damned little advocacy of collective worker control at all. Hopefully that will soon change.

[KC]

"Hence it requires an act of high consciousness for the proletariat to use its power to achieve a social revolution. Until now, the achievement of this consciousness has been blocked by the fact that the factory milieu is one of the most well entrenched arenas of the work ethic, of hierarchical systems of management, of obedience to leaders, and in recent times of production committed to superfluous commodities and armaments. The factory serves not only to "discipline," "unite," and "organize" the workers, but also to do so in a thoroughly bourgeois fashion. In the factory, capitalistic production not only renews the social relations of capitalism with each working day, as Marx observed, it also renews the psyche, values and ideologies of capitalism."(Emphasis mine)

If this were true then factory workers would be the most reactionary, not the most progressive, of the working class. Bookchin fails here to realize that the factory system doesn't "renew the psyche, values and ideologies of capitalism" but actually brings the power relations of capitalism out into the open, effectively dispelling those values/ideologies. It does the exact opposite of what Bookchin claims.

[The Grapes of Wrath]

I doubt that there is any inevitable consciousness in either direction

Agreed.

I think that while the question of proletarian consciousness is a good and meaningful pursuit; I am curious whether it is the appropriate question.

Coming from an American perspective (I have not been to another country and I believe for any revolution to succeed it needs to begin in the US), is "proletarian" consciousness really what is going to create and sustain an economic and social revolution?

A large proportion of the American people are not traditional proletarians in the whole sense of the word (this would, of course, depend upon one's definition of "proletarian"). The US is bleeding factory jobs; American factories just cannot compete with foreign ones ... for the most part, costs are just too high and those jobs are going overseas at an ever increasing rate.

Is this dwindling area of the workforce, the tradition defintion of "proletariat", going to lead any revolutions? I would assume that, in truth, they would get more protectionist and more conservative ... a form of 'conservative socialism' if you will ... highlighting their expendability in America's economic system.

The new "proletariat" of service workers, from McDonald's to Best Buy, would have to be the workforce to motivate. But at the same time, for any socialism to succeed it needs to enlist the middle class - plus those with college degrees, which in America is a very large proportion of the population (albeit dwindling as the traditional "proletariat").

So, the real question is, who is it we are trying to bring consciousness, too?

- Are middle class insurance underwriters exploited?
- How do we unify Wal-Mart greeters and advertising marketers?
- Do these people even have consciousness?

TGOW

[Kibbutznik]

If this were true then factory workers would be the most reactionary, not the most progressive, of the working class. Bookchin fails here to realize that the factory system doesn't "renew the psyche, values and ideologies of capitalism" but actually brings the power relations of capitalism out into the open, effectively dispelling those values/ideologies. It does the exact opposite of what Bookchin claims.

How then do you explain the failure and dissolution of worker's movements the world over?

The capitalist factory system places many mutually contradictory demands on the workers within it. Have you actually worked in a factory, comrade? You can't boil down a prescription that Marx made 150 years ago and expect it to automatically apply to the modern factory system.

Like it or not, the capitalist system has evolved. It has evolved precisely because of the pressures that worker's movements have placed on it. The threat of overthrow has forced capitalists to adopt methods of management that socialize the values of capitalism.

Nowhere is this more apparent than your average non-unionized shop. I've worked for a couple years in a local bread factory. The non-unionized workers were not spontaneously developing a socialist consciousness, they were internalizing the values of capitalism. You cannot expect consciousness to develop organically out of the working conditions. Capitalists are not that dumb.

The factory system weds the worker's self-worth to the factory hierarchy, to the ideology of the company. This process is automatic unless you fight to oppose it. The same conditions that lead to the internalization of capitalist values can also lead to their rejection. Agitation and activism are the key, not a defaulting to doctrinaire socialist talking points.

[davidasearles]

I know that this is crazy talk - WE SHOULD NOT CONCERN OURSELVES WITH CONSCIOUSNESS.

There is a goal - and I don't know how many people even on this site buy into it - of collective control, of the industrial means of production and distribution by the workers.

Instead of trying to raise people's consciousness why don't we come right out and say that we are working for the goal of worker collective control?

If a man wanted to go out with a woman would he try to raise her consciousness about himself or would he simple screw up his courage and ask her out. (I suppose if humanity relied upon the consciousness path we wouldn't have any problem of over population:-)

We supposedly want other workers to want collective control of the means of production, etc. but we can't come right out and talk to them about it. Instead we must come up with these intracate "minimum plans" that address everything under the sun BUT collective worker control. Just what in hell is that all about??

Whose idea was it, and what are the factual and logical bases for an educational theory that says that "consciousness" must be "raised" BEFORE any worker should be talked to about workers acquiring collective control?

It seems quite backward to me. How about to others?

[The Grapes of Wrath]

There is a goal - and I don't know how many people even on this site buy into it - of collective control, of the industrial means of production and distribution by the workers.

Instead of trying to raise people's consciousness why don't we come right out and say that we are working for the goal of worker collective control?


Whose idea was it, and what are the factual and logical bases for an educational theory that says that "consciousness" must be "raised" BEFORE any worker should be talked to about workers acquiring collective control?

It seems quite backward to me. How about to others?

In the words of Homer Simpson: "Hmm, I agree with your ideas and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter."

TGOW

[PRC-UTE]

Whose idea was it, and what are the factual and logical bases for an educational theory that says that "consciousness" must be "raised" BEFORE any worker should be talked to about workers acquiring collective control?

It seems quite backward to me. How about to others?

as I understand it, class consciousness can only be attained as a class, in the course of a struggle, so you're quite right. it can't be just instilled in working people by arguing for it in the abstract.

I think you are creating a false dichtomy here, though. raising the idea of workers' control is not incompatible with minimum or transitionary demands/programmes at all. you have to have some form of elementary struggle before you can raise socialist ideas. anyway, I'd like to hear more about how these demands should be raised, through shop stewards, or do you think these are no longer viable organs of class struggle? through new insitutions like workers councils?

on your point re consciousness not being inevitable (sorry I am too lazy to go back and quote it): you hit the nail on the head. the argument that proletarian revolution is inevitable is another example of vulgar materialism, which is all too common.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Dave Searles is a DeLeonist parliamentarian, although his "constitutional amendment" signature may prove to be an interesting tactic.

[Vanguard1917]

How then do you explain the failure and dissolution of worker's movements the world over?

How would you explain its rise in other periods?

[davidasearles]

TWO matters:

#1

P.U.:

as I understand it, class consciousness can only be attained as a class, in the course of a struggle

das:

Thank you for that statement. "class consciousness" is this neat idea that explains too many things without verification. It can an only be attained as a class, and since none of us individually has the ability to perceive as a class its existence can never be anything to us but a supposition.

A century ago it was the accepted belief in science that light could not travel through a vacuum. And when evacuation pumps and bell jars were developed that were capable of creating at least partial vacuums to a significant degree and that the damned light shone through the bell jars unabated it was argued that it was not the air which had been pumped out that had served as the medium to allow for the transmission of light - that all space must be permeated with some unperceivable stuff that allowed for light's transmission and this stuff was referred to as "the ether" This was not ether as in ethoxyethane, CH3-CH2-O-CH2-CH3 but stuff whose sole property was to allow the transmission of light through space. It just had to exist was the thought of the day, or else how could light travel from the sun and distant stars to Earth without it?

In the same way there just must be this thing called class consciousness - otherwise it leaves us with the scary idea that revolution is in the main the net result of millions and billions of actors with their own perceptions and ideas.

There is no demonstrable heaven and no demonstrable class consciousness. Believe in either or both if you wish but do it knowingly.

#2

from the person who identifies himself as "Jacob Richter":

Dave Searles is a DeLeonist parliamentarian

das:

Even if you were capable of defining either or both of those terms (which of course you are not capable of) specifically which of my arguments would these affect? You might as well label me a Catholic, but even the Catholic Galileo was capable of upending the established order of what passed then for scientific thought.

[PRC-UTE]

Thank you for that statement. "class consciousness" is this neat idea that explains too many things without verification. It can an only be attained as a class, and since none of us individually has the ability to perceive as a class its existence can never be anything to us but a supposition.

There is no demonstrable heaven and no demonstrable class consciousness. Believe in either or both if you wish but do it knowingly.

There's not a state of mind in which substantial numbers of the working class realise their interests as a class is in ending wage slavery and taking control of society and production, distribution and exchange? Cos that has happened, I'm not sure what your point in denying it is.

[davidasearles]

p.u.:

There's not a state of mind in which substantial numbers of the working class realise their interests as a class is in ending wage slavery and taking control of society and production, distribution and exchange? Cos that has happened, I'm not sure what your point in denying it is.

das:

Workings of a collective class mind distinguishable from the the net of actions by individuals?

Believe it if you want to. I certianly am not saying it cannot exist, anymore than I would say that heaven doesn't.

"'Cos' it has happened?" Sure it has. Sure it has.

[Kibbutznik]

How would you explain its rise in other periods?

You've got the cart before the horse. Capitalism has involved to deal with the internal threat that it had been unwittingly mobilising against itself. There is nothing automatic or inevitable about raising class consciousness. We have to fight for it.

[PRC-UTE]

Believe it if you want to. I certianly am not saying it cannot exist, anymore than I would say that heaven doesn't.

"'Cos' it has happened?" Sure it has. Sure it has.


The Railroad Rebellion and the Russian Revolution sure happened and involved groups of people changing their consciousness through mass actions.

If you want to quibble over whether it's an individual or group thing, okay, but I don't see why we should get hung up on it. obviously a lot of individuals make decisions that shape a group. Anyway, the real point was that it's not inevitable as you mentioned previously but as a dialectical process.

[davidasearles]

p.u.

The Railroad Rebellion and the Russian Revolution sure happened and involved groups of people changing their consciousness through mass actions.

If you want to quibble over whether it's an individual or group thing, okay, but I don't see why we should get hung up on it. obviously a lot of individuals make decisions that shape a group. Anyway, the real point was that it's not inevitable as you mentioned previously but as a dialectical process.

das:

Sorry to have seemed to quibble, but it wasn't me who was insisting that "consciousness" could only be raised one way. (Yes my posiion has been that consciousness is not inevitible.)

"groups of people changing their consciousness through mass actions"

but you as an individual here are particiapating in an INDIVIDUAL action utilizing your powers of language to pursuade other INDIVIDUALS, so it doesn't always have to be the action of MASS to build a collective will does it.

And consciousness is such a low goal. Counsciounsness even class consciousness insures wise action? No.

I'm more of a behaviourist and I am advocating that others become more of behaviourists as well. We have so long dealt with classconsciusness as a means to obtaining a goal that we think that class consciousness IS the goal.

What is the goal not stated in terms of class consciousness?

What is the goal not stated in terms of organizing people into communist parties or mass movements?

What is the goal not stated in terms of trying to eliminate all social authority?

What is the goal?

What is the goal?

What is the goal?

[Guerrilla22]

There has to be obviously some kind of conscious, or at least a highly conscious group to spur the proletarian class along, as well as organize and establish discipline within the movement. Without this, no revolution is likely to succeed.

[davidasearles]

Gue.:

There has to be obviously some kind of conscious, or at least a highly conscious group to spur the proletarian class along, as well as organize and establish discipline within the movement. Without this, no revolution is likely to succeed.

das:

This putting of the spur is an interesting analogy. Organize and establish discipline! The workers are a horse or a class of unruly school children. Oh my!

No thank you. I suggest that a political movement, within the current political system of the United States, anyway, can be built upon a singular goal of collective control of the industrial means of production and distribution by the workers. I suggest that political movement is more likely if idealogs do not attempt to present a Hobson's choice that the people must give up on the idea of sovereign democratic political governement in order to obtain worker collective control of the industries.

[Hit The North]

I know that this is crazy talk - WE SHOULD NOT CONCERN OURSELVES WITH CONSCIOUSNESS.



We should not concern ourselves so much with consciousness. Action against the rule of capital (which does not necessitate elaborate theory or an abnormal degree of proletarian class consciousness) is more important. In fact, consciousness cannot be "raised" without it.



There is a goal - and I don't know how many people even on this site buy into it - of collective control, of the industrial means of production and distribution by the workers.



I agree. But if workers do not acquire class consciousness, that is, understand their common interest as a class and opposition to other classes, then what would motivate workers to take up the challenge of collective control of the means of production and exchange?


Workings of a collective class mind distinguishable from the the net of actions by individuals?


Well, this is a fairly sarcastic and deliberately confusing manner of stating an obvious fact: that revolutions are produced through the collective activity of individuals uniting in a common interest. There's nothing mysterious about it.

If we all believe that the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class, then what is the driver of this action, if not a conscious and practical realisation on a mass scale of the need to revolutionise our social relations?

[Guerrilla22]

This putting of the spur is an interesting analogy. Organize and establish discipline! The workers are a horse or a class of unruly school children. Oh my!

No thank you. I suggest that a political movement, within the current political system of the United States, anyway, can be built upon a singular goal of collective control of the industrial means of production and distribution by the workers. I suggest that political movement is more likely if idealogs do not attempt to present a Hobson's choice that the people must give up on the idea of sovereign democratic political governement in order to obtain worker collective control of the industries

Well I'm not suggesting that the workers are a horse or a class of unruly school children. Any political movement needs to have an ideology and aims behind it along with people to organize and establish some kind of discipline within the movement, otherwise you get a situation like Spain where everyone is running around doing there own thing or cannot decide what to do while the opposition proceeds to crush you.

I don't see your idea of working within the framework of the current US political system to collective property as being plausible. The US political system was set up and designed to to empower a ruling class and to maintain property relations as is. Let's face it; the architects of the US political system were the elite class. Today the US political system remains a tool for the elite to maintain the status quo and to better themselves. The only way to achieve revolutionary change would be to organize a movement to throw out the current system and repalce it with one that would enable the workers.

[Hit The North]

You've got the cart before the horse. Capitalism has involved to deal with the internal threat that it had been unwittingly mobilising against itself. There is nothing automatic or inevitable about raising class consciousness. We have to fight for it. [bold added]

This, perhaps, underscores the difference between your brand of anarchism and Marxism. We Marxists don't hold with the idea that capitalism can evolve beyond its inherent contradictions. The antagonisms and conflicts which accompany capitalist accumulation cannot be solved by the capitalist system. Sure, new managerial strategies may develop in order to attempt to integrate the allegiance of individual workers to the company and, along with the dependency workers are subjected to, due to the division of labour, this may avert industrial struggle for a time. But the very motion of capitalist accumulation - based on exploitation and periodic crisis, means that the antagonisms assert themselves sooner or later as capital attempts to right itself by shedding labour and increasing the exploitation of the labour which remains.

But if you're right and capitalism has evolved beyond the class struggle, then no end of consciousness raising - no matter how hard you "fight for it" - will amount to anything.

[davidasearles]

Gu.:

Any political movement needs to have an ideology and aims behind it along with people to organize and establish some kind of discipline within the movement, otherwise you get a situation like Spain where everyone is running around doing there own thing or cannot decide what to do while the opposition proceeds to crush you.

das:

Can ideology come up with a goal that will be acceptable to people across ideologies?

I think that goal has been identified well over 100 years ago - collective worker control of the industrial means of production and distribution. But then along came the DeLeonists, Leninists, Syndicalists etc. who while acknowledging the goal established a set of ideological rules by which they thought everyone had to follow in order that the goal could be reached. Unfortunately people have followed these false gods instead of following the goal. In the US we have an established political system which is capable of altering all sorts of social relationships. But we also have a left wing which wants to try everything BUT openly clearly and consistently identifying to the people that goal without trying to tie to the proposal the elimination of the very political process by which the people may if they choose obtain that goal. Go figure.

[davidasearles]

das:

There is a goal - and I don't know how many people even on this site buy into it - of collective control, of the industrial means of production and distribution by the workers.

btb:

I agree. But if workers do not acquire class consciousness, that is, understand their common interest as a class and opposition to other classes, then what would motivate workers to take up the challenge of collective control of the means of production and exchange?

das:

I think that we way too much analyze things.

What motivates people? There is less and less work available by which to acquire the necessities of life. I myself have had to put off for over a year a medical test to determine if the polyps that I have may have turned cancerous. And my family has health insurance. We just cant afford the over thousand dollars deductible and copay. As I say, there is less and less work available. So I am motivated to try to find work - but at the same time I can see the writing on the wall that next year, the year after and the year after that there will be even less work available.

Why do I have to be class conscious at all to see that if the workers collectively controlled the industrial means of production and distribution that I and a whole lot of other people (even most of the current owners of that capital) would be a hell of a lot better off.

[Vanguard1917]

There is nothing automatic or inevitable about raising class consciousness. We have to fight for it.

OK, and if that's always been the case, you can't really blame the current dissolution of the working class movement deterministically on the objective conditions of the workplace.

[The Grapes of Wrath]

But if workers do not acquire class consciousness, that is, understand their common interest as a class and opposition to other classes, then what would motivate workers to take up the challenge of collective control of the means of production and exchange?


Well, I would state that currently there is a movement in America where the vast majority of the population are interested in turning towards some form of mass-based healthcare. Most do not know what exactly it should or will look like, all they know is that something needs to be done.

Regardless of whether it is turly socialized medicine, government run healthcare, government provided insurance, more health industry regulation ... people want something done.

They have a motivation: to have healthcare!

But the question is, is this motivation collective or individual??

Everything tends to be heading towards extreme individualism. From individual dorm rooms on college campuses, to iPods, to work.

I've read articles from time and have seen news segments on how young people today are (probably exagerated) extremely individualized so much so that they expect work to be that way. They show up in their flip-flop sandals, t-shirts and jeans, they expect to be able to do this or they walk, they expect this much pay or they walk.

Obviously those are extreme instances, but idea of it all seems to ring true: the individual.

I think that any such movement needs to look towards the individual in the mass-based movement ... neo-Nazis and terrorists do it, why can't the left?

Let us emphasize that person's individual needs (healthcare, work, a better life) rather than "become a socialist to save the world! give everyone around the world freedom! let's feel good about ourselves" ... that works for some, it does, but honestly, the kids I know (who we need to recruit!) might act like that is a big deal to them, but in truth, everything is about 'them'. Why fight it?

(Please note: I am speaking in generalities, some individuals might be collective minded, but most kids and young adults that I have met and know -- roughly 180 --- feel the way I have stated above; and I can't imagine that most other kids don't feel that way.)

As for adults of all ages, leftists have the best leverage with them: their families. We need to emphasize what socialism/communism or whatever will do for their family! "You will have healthcare, here's how; you will have a good job to provide for your family, here's how; struggling to pay for education? not anymore! here's how!"

I think that we are going to find that their motivations and our answers go together; we just need to convince them, as individuals, of that.


Any political movement needs to have an ideology and aims behind it along with people to organize and establish some kind of discipline within the movement, otherwise you get a situation like Spain where everyone is running around doing there own thing or cannot decide what to do while the opposition proceeds to crush you.


And herein lies the question and the problem with what I have stated above. I can't really, honestly, see any other alternative than the creation of a party or movement.

And I cannot see it working clandestinely outside the government to bring it down Tyler Durden style ... in America, once you advocate destructive rioting in the streets, killing people and blowing shit up you've lost your audience.


I'm more of a behaviourist and I am advocating that others become more of behaviourists as well. We have so long dealt with classconsciusness as a means to obtaining a goal that we think that class consciousness IS the goal.

What is the goal not stated in terms of class consciousness?

What is the goal not stated in terms of organizing people into communist parties or mass movements?

What is the goal not stated in terms of trying to eliminate all social authority?

What is the goal?


Exactly. In truth, I don't know what any of your motivations are. I do know mine. What I do know is that you and I have at least one large goal in mind: collective ownership of the means of production and distribution.

Yea, I haven't written a book about these ideas of mine, I haven't created a manifesto, I haven't spent days researching and compiling data to make it the best idea ever so I am sure you are going to find a million holes in my arguments. But I think the basic idea is sound ... let's individualize our motivations and keep our goals collectivized.

Class consciousness? It is important, yes it is. But let us use an individual's motivations to create class consciousness rather than the other way around.

TGOW

[davidasearles]

das:

I'm more of a behaviourist and I am advocating that others become more of behaviourists as well. We have so long dealt with classconsciusness as a means to obtaining a goal that we think that class consciousness IS the goal.

What is the goal not stated in terms of class consciousness?

What is the goal not stated in terms of organizing people into communist parties or mass movements?

What is the goal not stated in terms of trying to eliminate all social authority?

What is the goal?

tgow:

In truth, I don't know what any of your motivations are. I do know mine. What I do know is that you and I have at least one large goal in mind: collective ownership of the means of production and distribution.

das:

We are very close. But we don't have to look too far for motivation. We all have to eat. We all need somewhere to live. We all, in general, need health care. We all need clothing. We all need transportation to some degree. We are all capable of working to easily acquire an abundance of these things if workers collectively controlled the means of production.

There are people who don't see that? What can we do but to specifically point it out to them? If they don't agree they don't agree. If we are correct, eventually they will agree. I just see all of this class-consciousness stuff as a lot of back ground noise. Why does anyone even have to know about classes beyond being of the understanding that the workers need to collectively control the industrial means of production and distribution?

[Hit The North]

Well, I would state that currently there is a movement in America where the vast majority of the population are interested in turning towards some form of mass-based healthcare. Most do not know what exactly it should or will look like, all they know is that something needs to be done.



I think the problem in the USA is that there may be a strong sentiment that there should be a more equal and humane health system, but that there is, at the moment, no movement for it. The left-wing of the Democratic Party may share in this sentiment but, as a party which represents big capital (alongside the Republicans), it will continue to fail to deliver socialised health care unless there is a strong movement from below.

If you're right and Americans do not know exactly what it should look like, they only need to look north of their border to Canada, across the Atlantic to Europe, or down the Caribbean towards Cuba.

Anyway, I'd suggest the reason there is no movement and confusion about the form health care should take, is because there is a low level of class consciousness amongst the working class - to the point where there is no - or an extremely weak - labour movement to provide the bedrock for the campaign and a strong rejection amongst many working class Americans of anything being socialised or collectivised.

This brings me to your other point about the movement towards a more individualised and atomised form of society in America. This process afflicts all the most developed capitalist economies - the USA, all the more, as it is the most advanced capitalist society and has a weak tradition of a mass workers political organisation which can promote and defend collectivist ideas. The cult of the individual, which is promoted by the bourgeoisie, has a firmer grip on the minds of the American worker for these reasons (that is, the material success of American capital and the lack of class organisation of the American working class). There are no doubt other sociological or cultural-historical influences here as well.

Nevertheless, as socialists/communists/anarchists/blah de blah, it is our task to demonstrate the flimsy and hollow conception of individualism under advanced capitalism. How it is based on the notion of an atomised, acquisitive individual, divorced from its human social relations and defined through its consumption. We can counter pose this with the socialist view of the human individual as a creative, expressive being who realises her potential and maximises her pleasures through human social interaction. By placing the emphasis on the creative and social nature of individuals we also place a normative demand on individuals to take control of their social relations and, therefore, power over their own lives, pointing out how this can only be done socially, not individually.


And herein lies the question and the problem with what I have stated above. I can't really, honestly, see any other alternative than the creation of a party or movement. Agreed.


And I cannot see it working clandestinely outside the government to bring it down Tyler Durden style ... in America, once you advocate destructive rioting in the streets, killing people and blowing shit up you've lost your audience. No, it must be an open, democratic party of the workers which attempts to involve as many workers as possible in the activity of changing their own lives.

das:
Why does anyone even have to know about classes beyond being of the understanding that the workers need to collectively control the industrial means of production and distribution? But how is this understanding reached? The demand for workers control does not exist in a vacuum. Before workers can be convinced of the need to collectivise the means of production and place it under workers control, they need to be convinced that the current relations of production cannot meet their needs or the needs of the society as a whole. They also need to recognise their own ability to run society.

[davidasearles]

Btb quotes das:

Why does anyone even have to know about classes beyond being of the understanding that the workers need to collectively control the industrial means of production and distribution?

And btb comments in part:

But how is this understanding reached?.

das:

That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?

btb continues:

The demand for workers control does not exist in a vacuum.

das:

nothing does

btb continues:

Before workers can be convinced of the need to collectivize the means of production and place it under workers control, they need to be convinced that the current relations of production cannot meet their needs or the needs of the society as a whole. They also need to recognize their own ability to run society

das:

I think that we have to respect the fact that even in a single individual person that people are usually convinced of contradictory things – being of a mixed mind people say. And people will even say that they are convinced of something but then when you analyze with them what the have said they often will conclude that they actually are of an opposing viewpoint. Attorneys, police, clergy, therapists, sales people, etc are able to exploit this trait (for good or bad) all of the time.

I would have a hard time believing that at least 90% of the population does not have some serious reservations about the viability of private ownership of the means of production. Similarly, if the unfathomables of market and finance capitalism were to be taken out of the equation (unfathomable apparently even to the banks and automobile corporations) and a cooperative (producing what it was decided that people would work for) were proposed, then given the choice of collective control or sure poverty under capitalism I would have a hard time believing that any less than 90% of the people would think themselves and their workmates capable of collective control.
But I can see how other people don’t necessarily agree with me on this.

[Kassad]

It's hard to say. In all honesty, we can do whatever we can to help the people formulate opinions rationally and to support our ideology, but in the end, it is experiencing the pain and suffering of the class struggle that will awaken the proletariat. There is no substitute for the experiences they feel and that's what will be the biggest rallying cry to our movement.

[davidasearles]

kassad:

experiencing the pain and suffering of the class struggle that will awaken the proletariat

das:

Is not that pain and suffering already being experienced by multitudes and the fear of such felt by yet others?

[Guerrilla22]

And herein lies the question and the problem with what I have stated above. I can't really, honestly, see any other alternative than the creation of a party or movement.


It will have to be through a party or organized movement, clearly there will have to be quite a bit of cohesion in order to pull of something of the magnitude that we are proposing (worker controlled state)


And I cannot see it working clandestinely outside the government to bring it down Tyler Durden style ... in America, once you advocate destructive rioting in the streets, killing people and blowing shit up you've lost your audience.

A guerrilla style war is likely out of the question, as are other methods of attacking the state apparatus through violence in all likelyhood.

[davidasearles]

gue quotes someone:

And herein lies the question and the problem with what I have stated above. I can't really, honestly, see any other alternative than the creation of a party or movement.

and gue states:

It will have to be through a party or organized movement, clearly there will have to be quite a bit of cohesion in order to pull of something of the magnitude that we are proposing (worker controlled state)

das states:

I would suggest an unorganized movement to push politcally eveywhere possible for collective worker control of the industrial means of production. Leave the current state in place but with the workers in collective control of wealth production (the end of classes) it would make workers the primary economic force of the society with the all of the ability to influence the state that implies in addition to being able to influence the state through their numeric voting strength.