Class Consciousness

 No matter how strong our convictions are about socialism may be, these alone will not win the day. We need to make an argument. And a successful argument must appeal to everyone in general. It must rely on rational claims of a kind they will recognise. We try to win them over through persuasion rather than force or bribery. If people cannot persuade or be persuaded then there can be no shared beliefs or co-ordinated collective action.

 It requires us to understand where other people are coming from.  People have different experiences and possess different information; they have different values and do not always share our criteria of judgment. To persuade them we have to make connections with our audience – with what they might think, feel and be familiar with. This is not about tricking people or fooling them. It is about truly persuading them to share our views on a particular issue – and that means developing a relationship. True persuasion is democratic. In giving people reasons to act with us we recognise that they aren't inferiors who can be compelled but thinking, feeling and speaking beings.

Class consciousness is not only something that comes from top to bottom nor is it something that springs forth spontaneously from the grass root. It is simply a reflection of social realities while living in a capitalist society where the exploited and the exploiters are locked in a confrontation. Class consciousness is not some complicated theory that only some three to five exceptional geniuses can comprehend, it is a type of consciousness that grows inside the mind of every person that lives under capitalism.  The great majority at this present time are still under the complete psychological and ideological control of capitalism. The majority of workers strongly believed that their interests can be adequately served within the framework of the capitalist system. They remained discontented but directionless, rebellious but not revolutionary. Most workers do not harbor revolutionary aspirations; they do not make demand a change in the system.

The working class have the legal right to use their majority of ballots in any way they choose. The workers are organised in large industrial plants and could easily become conscious of their power. The more potential political power the oppressed classes possess, the more urgent it is for the ruling class to insure that that potential power is not transformed into actual power. Therefore, it is even more essential for the capitalist class than it was for the ancient slaveowners or medieval nobility to convince the people that the state rules in behalf of all citizens. The slaveowners and nobles persuaded the slaves and serfs that class rule was right; the  bourgeoisie tries to tell the workers there are no classes.

The feudal lords had to surrender their dynastic privileges to the ascending bourgeoisie, better known today as the capitalist class. The owners of all resources and means of wealth form a class of their own; the owners of labour power as their only possession in the market, another. Political, judicial, educational and other institutions are only the mirror of the prevailing system of ownership in the resources and means of production. One class owns and controls the necessaries, the economic resources of the world. That class, for its own protection and perpetuation in power, subjects all other institutions to their prevailing class interests. As more and more corporation executives and millionaires become government officials, their scholarly defenders emphasise ever more insistently the non-capitalist character of the state. Government purports to give favours to no class or showers favours on all.

A vote for the small, then – which has few candidates? Yes. A vote of confidence in it and of confidence in the revolutionary tomorrow. A vote in the form of solidarity with it. A vote in the form of adherence to its principles. The only goal worth striving for is the emancipation of the working class, and  the abolition of class rule