Class Consciousness

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Nick
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Class Consciousness

Post by Nick »

Is class consciousness, in the Marxist Sense, the foundation for "economic progress" on the individual level, as well as the societal level? I think it is.

I put economic progress in quotes because I don't want to restrict it's meaning to just having lots of money or capital. Rather, I want it to mean an overall quality of life based on having access to essential things like food, shelter, health care, education, transportation, and communication, along with the ability to participate in an adequate amount leisure activities that individuals and groups find appealing, i.e. making the economy work for you.
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Re: Class Consciousness

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I don't know much about Marx myself, but I encounter him a lot in my pursuits. Can you recommend a text by Marx?
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Re: Class Consciousness

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Animus wrote:I don't know much about Marx myself, but I encounter him a lot in my pursuits. Can you recommend a text by Marx?
I studied Marx for two trimesters back in college, and I would have to say, no, don't read Marx.

In economics, what Marx wrote that is good and meaningful is not original (can be found in mainstream economics, although stated with different emphasis), whereas what he wrote that is original is not good.

What Marx means by "class consciousness" is that he has an idea of what people in a particular class SHOULD do and SHOULD think. When they don't do that, it is "false consciousness."
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Re: Class Consciousness

Post by Nick »

Animus,

Well, this isn't a text by Marx, but this is an interesting lecture given by Alan Woods on the Relevance of Marxism Today.

You might want to just browse around the whole site, there's a lot of good stuff in it.

As for actual texts by Karl Marx you might want to look up the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital. Youtube has a lot of stuff on them as well.

Also Leyla's posting of this video was pretty good too.
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Re: Class Consciousness

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DHodges wrote:What Marx means by "class consciousness" is that he has an idea of what people in a particular class SHOULD do and SHOULD think. When they don't do that, it is "false consciousness."
I don't interpret it that way. Class consciousness means that one has an awareness of their relation to the means of production in society, or lack-there-of. You'll notice that the real capitalists in our modern society are very class conscious, but much of the working class and poor are still very much in the dark about their standing when it comes to who controls and therefore benefits most from the means of production. This is partly due to propaganda from the capitalist class in the form of union demonization and spreading the belief that the capitalist is a superior individual who has a right to control the means of production outside the democratic process for reasons not much different than those given by Kings and Queens, e.g. divine rights, chosen by god, etc.

I think one the most interesting points Michael Moore made in his new film, Capitalism, is the blatant contradiction in how Americans view democracy. On the one hand they might say our democratic rights are inalienable, yet they don't want to extend these rights to the work place and are seemingly ok with a handful of individuals at the top determining how massive organizations go about doing business that affects their very livelihood.
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Re: Class Consciousness

Post by Ryan Rudolph »

A few related comments:

Economic progress or stability in the working class is sometimes stifled due to the overly callous behavior of managers who do not identity with employees problems very strongly, probably because of how many lies they have heard. Many managers build up a hatred and disrespect of employees due to years of problems they experienced, and they tend to react aggressively to employee behavior if it inconveniences the company/themselves at all, the result is that the working class become victims of management who treat their employees as if they are expendable garbage, and that individual employees are of no particular worth. I think managers slowly become jaded due to the lazy unintelligent flow of employees that they are forced to deal with on a continuous basis, so they tend to lump all employees into the same camp, and it creates a sort of dehumanizing effect, which allows managers to easily terminate people who inconvenience them in some way, even if they do not exhibit a history of company-threatening behavior. For instance: I have worked many jobs where my co-workers were afraid to call in sick due to fear of termination, even if they have never taken a sick day for years.

An emotionally unstable manager ends up treating others below him much like a dictator treats his citizens. Another problem in many companies is that head management has a poor connection with individuals on the "field" level, who do most of the real labour. There are many forces that management is unaware of such as how their own behavior slows down the progress of field workers, and how firing people for poor reasons, no reason, and especially to employees who have dedicated themselves strongly to the company for many years creates a sort of karmic backlash where employees stop caring and working to their potential. And then the management are forced to lash out again with terminations, this sort of behavior eats away at the corporation like a cancer until the company develops such a poor reputation that it only attracts the very people it wanted to avoid in the first place.
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Re: Class Consciousness

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Well I have read a fair amount about economics, but I haven't read Marx specifically so occasionally I find his concepts illusory. I get the issue of class consciousness now and I'll probably check out his work.

I wanted to add to Ryan's last comment about the backlash from employees when management is unconscious to the needs of the employees. That is that according to the National Retail Security Survey approximately 45% of inventory shrinkage is the result of employee theft. This includes product as well as office equipment like pens and staplers. In one account basic office supplies accounted for 1.5 billion in losses. Ironically this also ends up costing tax payers money as the NRSS points out:

Consistent with
the pattern observed in all previous NRSS
studies, loss prevention executives again
indicated that they believe employee
theft to be the single most significant
source of inventory shrinkage. As
was the case last year, retailers again
attributed 47 percent of their inventory
shrinkage to employee theft. Assuming
a total shrinkage dollar amount of
approximately $40.5 billion, this
translates into an annual employee
theft price tag of $19 billion. This is a
staggering monetary loss to come from
a single crime type. In fact, there is
no other form of larceny that annually
costs American citizens more money
than employee theft.


http://lpretailcouncil.org/PDFDocs/NRSS ... 0Nov07.pdf


So, it can end up being this decaying loop of insanity. The employee feeling alienated from the organization feels no remorse about lifting some office equipment which inevitably falls back on their shoulders in the form of pay cuts or corporate bailouts so they can keep their jobs. The employer alienated from the employee fails to appreciate his role in the dynamic as well, as the apparent aggressor in a rotten system.
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Re: Class Consciousness

Post by Ryan Rudolph »

yes, that is a good point, I know quite a few individuals who have stolen from companies merely as revenge for what they deem injustices committed by the company they work for, whether it be shorting them pay, which many companies resort to for many reasons, or forcing someone to work long hours, etc. Sometimes the employees have actual grievances, and sometimes they are imagined, but the truth remains - the inability of management to deal with these problems head on in some sort of fair fashion resorts in massive loses by companies as employees find satisfaction through theft, damage to their means of production and so on.
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Re: Class Consciousness

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Nick Treklis wrote:I don't interpret it that way. Class consciousness means that one has an awareness of their relation to the means of production in society, or lack-there-of.
Well, how relevant is this "relation to the means of production" really? Is it really the dominant factor of economic life?

I work for an insurance company. What is the "means of production"? Is it the computer system and huge database? Is it the big pot of money (reserves - capital itself) that allows them to write policies? How different is my relation to all this if I own stock in the company?

Maybe I'm a bad example, because I am not what Marx would refer to as proletarian - I suppose Marx would consider me a member of the bourgeoisie. And yet there are people working here that would be hard to argue are anything other than working class - the people that clean the windows and take out the trash, the low level wokers to whom it is just a job. And there are plenty of people who work as contractors - they do in fact own their own means of production (if that is the computer and knowledge they have is the "means" - I'm thinking of programmers in particular) - and yet their daily life is not really different from that of an employee.

So Marx' view seems to rely on a cartoonish view of the fat cat industrialist factory owner exploiting his workers and is able to do so because of the huge factory mechanism that is the "means of production." How much of modern life is really like that?

(Of course, this is different here in the US, compared to Third World countries where there is a great deal more exploitation going on. )
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Re: Class Consciousness

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DHodges wrote:
Nick Treklis wrote:I don't interpret it that way. Class consciousness means that one has an awareness of their relation to the means of production in society, or lack-there-of.
Well, how relevant is this "relation to the means of production" really? Is it really the dominant factor of economic life?
Absolutely. I mean come on, it's what our civilization is built upon.
DHodges wrote:I work for an insurance company. What is the "means of production"? Is it the computer system and huge database? Is it the big pot of money (reserves - capital itself) that allows them to write policies? How different is my relation to all this if I own stock in the company?
It doesn't have to be your job specifically. I'm talking about how the vast majority of society, which is made up of the working class and poor, has no direct and/or indirect control over the means of production and how this results in a relatively small amount of capitalists having way too much power and influence over society and the direction it's headed. It's entirely anti-democratic, and one could very easily argue that democracy is the foundation on which modern society, and all the civilized components found within it, were built.
DHodges wrote:So Marx' view seems to rely on a cartoonish view of the fat cat industrialist factory owner exploiting his workers and is able to do so because of the huge factory mechanism that is the "means of production." How much of modern life is really like that?
Well it's not because of what the means of production is, it's because so few people actually own the means of production relative to the population, and because of this, and not surprisingly, those few who own the means of production are the same ones who benefit most from it. Even if you never read a word of Marx, this much should be obvious.

So back to my point about class consciousness, I think it's essential, if the working class and poor want to benefit more from the means of production, that they must first understand their relationship to it. Without it they can't begin to take the right steps to fix the situation, e.g. expanding democratic control to the means of production, direct democracy, so and and so on. Also, they are much more vulnerable to being mislead by propaganda as we can clearly see in these conservative movements where people are unknowingly fighting against their own economic interests.
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Re: Class Consciousness

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Studied 2008 IRS Data Book last night... /shakeshead
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Re: Class Consciousness

Post by Nick »

What did you find?
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Re: Class Consciousness

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Nick Treklis wrote:What did you find?
First of all, it was sparked by Glenn Beck's video "Arguing with Idiots: Franklin vs Marx"

Here's what I found (my response to my cousin):
Income tax in the USA is progressive to a point. The highest tax bracket (2009) is $372,950 and up. Over 335,000 Americans claimed $1,000,000 or more income. A person can earn an indefinite amount above $372,950 and still be in the same tax bracket (35%). People in the smallest tax bracket ($0 - $11,950) get all of their returns, but still only have $11,950 to live on. A person earning exactly $372,950 still has $242,417.50 to live luxuriously with. An individual earning $1,000,000 sits comfortably upon $650,000.

The top 1% pay most of the taxes by virtue of making copious amounts of money. Some even claim more than $10,000,000 annually. The issue of vast income disparity, class separation and poverty is not resolved by the "progressive" system in place.
Basically, what Beck calls a "progressive" tax system is compressed upon the the majority.

Here is some other excerpts from our conversation:
I took my numbers from one of multiple tables that of "Filing as Head of the Household". You probably fall into a different class of people.

"But unless you have some system which rewards people for hard work, people generally will not work or they will work the absolute bare minimum that they can get away with."

Really? Then we aren't reading the same books and we aren't members of the same species. People actually work harder toward a goal if it is their goal. If they are given the flexibility to be creative and feel like they've made a genuine contribution to the product. The carrot-and-stick incentive system occasionally backfires and otherwise keeps people chasing an unattainable dream.

Google attributes some 20% of employee time to whatever the employee wants to do. Out of that time Google produced many of its innovative applications like Google Maps.

The carrot-and-stick approach to incentives is based on a free-market ideology and not fact. There are facts on human psychology available to economics and several psychologists have published books on the research. Check out Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational.

Or subscribe to TED (Technology Entertainment Design) they host such presentations to do with economics.

Career analyst Dan Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don't: Traditional rewards aren't always as effective as we think. Listen for illuminating stories -- and maybe, a way forward.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/dan_p ... ation.html

Behavioral economist Dan Ariely, the author of Predictably Irrational, uses classic visual illusions and his own counterintuitive (and sometimes shocking) research findings to show how we're not as rational as we think when we make decisions
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/dan_a ... sions.html

"If you take away all incentive and rewards then nobody will work. Even if you get rid of money as a reward system, you have to replace it with a new system of reward which is equally compelling"

You can engender an environment where people feel as if they have a creative contribution to the product and consequently a sense of well-being, as for example Google does.

Humans are not all about money, although I wonder sometimes about some of us.

" there are many who have become rich because they unlike others were willing to take risks which worked"

All that requires extant CAPITAL and its a major gamble.

For someone who dislikes the theory of biological evolution, you seem to embrace the "Survival of the fittest" mentality when it comes to economics. You even embrace CHANCE.

"And the sad thing is, you'd not even know what you were missing out on because it was never invented. How many peoples lives have been saved because of CAT Scans, MRI's and the medicine private industry has developed? And yet we wouldn't even know better if we lived in a Riskless society where everyone had the same amount."

Plenty of people throughout history have made discoveries and inventions in abject poverty and contradiction of the social ethos. For example Galileo and Copernicus. No one paid Giordano Bruno for his work on the cosmos which would bridged Copernicus and Galileo - leading to modern satellite television, etc.. - and he was executed by his peers for developing his theories.

People are not entirely consumed by material wealth, that is just one element of human nature which has become engendered in our modern free-market system. We've chosen to cultivated our wordly-half and neglect the spirit-half.

As for CAT and MRI, there is no indication that any of the inventors were incentivized by monetary gain. All of those inventors had their ideas outside of any business owned by them. MRI inventor Dr. Raymond V. Damadian founded FONAR after inventing MRI. Neither contributor to the invention of CAT went into commercial production. The first CAT was built at Atkinson Morley Hospital in Wimbledon, London, UK.

More often than not physicians and the like invent things out of concern for the health of their patients or simply out of a deep insight (as in CAT) or even an accident (Penicillin).

Inventions like the Treasure Trolls or Beanie Babies are completely valueless, vacuous luxury. Completely unnecessary and an utter waste of resources. That is the kind of crap the free-market usually makes.

robably the most influential force over human psychology is this: Approval. The reason people come on social networking sites to make boring statements about their life is for self-affirmation. For the response of other individuals. To feel loved and accepted in a group.

People who pursue material wealth at the expense of genuine human relationships often find themselves unhappy as a result. Approval trumps gratuity.

In many respects the incentive to becoming rich is to have the approval of the society. The society, as your statements reflect, approves of wealth as an indication of hard-work or merit and disproves of poverty (even with extreme malice or exile/jail).

The incentive for owning a flashy fast car is not so much getting from A to B, or even getting their faster, it is getting their flashier in order to earn the approval of members of society at large. To appear successful and win friends.

A lot of what humans do is for approval and when you come across someone like Bruno who does things not for approval but for curiosity - at the expense of approval (death in his case). These people who free themselves from their inherited chains, appear as a threat to the society at large, but quite often are liberators of society.

One can't necessarily see the value in the unchained when one is still in chains.

The marketting sector understands this far better than anyone else it often seems. Commercials explicitly appeal to the desire for social approval. A currently airing BMW commercial remarks "Smart is owning the car today everyone else will want tomorrow.". Gillette asks "Where can you find confidence these days?" Guess where...Gillette razors!

Marketers set out to appeal to our basic desires, and in large part our base desire for approval. They barely even tell us anything about the product anymore, they simply promise to satisfy a basic desire. Usually, however, these desires cannot be satisfied by material products. This was traditionally the place of "God". Material products are temporary gratification to a life-long lacking.

Confidence is not to be found in Gillette razors or any other product, it is to be found in a deep philosophical understanding of reality. The only way to throw of the chains of our base desires and inadequacies is to confront them face-to-face and philosophy/religion is supposed to provide that avenue. However, it is up to the individual to follow that path and take the necessary steps, and an individual rarely does so contrary to the society they exist in. Because it requires an individual contradict their own basic desires to even consider it a worthy pursuit.
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Re: Class Consciousness

Post by Leyla Shen »

What Marx means by "class consciousness" is that he has an idea of what people in a particular class SHOULD do and SHOULD think. When they don't do that, it is "false consciousness."
Oh, yeah? Citation, please.

I'll take you head on, Mr Bourgeoisie.
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Re: Class Consciousness

Post by Leyla Shen »

Animus wrote:I don't know much about Marx myself, but I encounter him a lot in my pursuits. Can you recommend a text by Marx?
I highly recommend Kamenka.
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Re: Class Consciousness

Post by Leyla Shen »

Is class consciousness, in the Marxist Sense, the foundation for "economic progress" on the individual level, as well as the societal level? I think it is.
Yes, it is necessarily and by definition.

Marx argues class consciousness against the distorted ideological beliefs of the bourgeoisie. Class consciouness is historically relevant analysis. One does not search for general, transcendent "sociological laws," but engages in the analysis of the development and struggle between opposites in any given epoch (such as the nobility and the plebs under feudalism and the bourgeoisie and proletariat in capitalism).

For Marx, "false consciousness" (and I cannot even say that he ever used that term himself, but DHodges is the educated man who has studied what others have said about Marx, so he should know...!) is precisely ideological consciousness, and nothing more. The entirety of his work supports this.
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Re: Class Consciousness

Post by Animus »

Animus wrote:
The marketting sector understands this far better than anyone else it often seems. Commercials explicitly appeal to the desire for social approval. A currently airing BMW commercial remarks "Smart is owning the car today everyone else will want tomorrow.". Gillette asks "Where can you find confidence these days?" Guess where...Gillette razors!

A small correction here, it was Hyundai who says "Smart is wanting the car today everyone else will want tomorrow". BMW's commercial claims "BMW is Joy".
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Re: Class Consciousness

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Leyla Shen wrote:For Marx, "false consciousness" (and I cannot even say that he ever used that term himself, but DHodges is the educated man who has studied what others have said about Marx, so he should know...!) is precisely ideological consciousness, and nothing more. The entirety of his work supports this.
I have not read Marx in about 25 years, so if you say I am misrepresenting him, I will accept that.

BTW, I accept that there is plenty to criticize in capitalism. I don't have a problem with communes, if that's what people want to do. I just think that Marx made a few fundamental errors and does not have the solutions to the problems we face.
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A contradiction in certain Marxist circles

Post by Nick »

If it is ever implied that class consciousness and control over the means of production will lead, in a deeply meaningful sense, to a more thoughtful, intelligent, wiser, and conscious individual, I would say look at the capitalist class we have right now. Due to the capitalist's economic and academic standing, one would think this class of people would be filled with very wise and conscious people. Obviously this is not the case, so this appears to me to be a contradiction of sorts within certain Marxist circles who claim that class consciousness and control over the means of production will lead to a better kind of person beyond their economic and academic standing. This contradiction I believe would be caused by Marxists failing to put as much emphasis on individual revolution as they do social revolution.
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Re: Class Consciousness

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Re: Class Consciousness

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I somewhat disagree with what the author states but he's pretty much right on. Obama is putting the final screws to the gambit, Wall Street runs this White House as they've done for a good 100+ years or more. Look for the Internet to be filtered by mid 2010. Obama gave up the keys on September 30th. The UN is now in control and will forever remain so. World regionalism is already in the European Union countries. They have their first President, Herman van Rompuy, he's from Diebert's home country, so he knows the deal.

Obama is the false messiah. He rules for 3 and 1/2 years to mid 2012. The next person who arrives on the scene will be the anti christ. My best guess (feeling) is Prince William. He has the look and he has the genetic makeup to be so. He's as cross bred as can be and still be called a human being. The Queen has signalled that it'll directly transfer to William in 2012, as she's already signed the papers ceding her "authority" in incremental steps so as not to alarm the common man.

We'll see what happens as Pope Benedict is the last papal monarch. (see pagan solar wheel at Vatican Square)
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Re: Class Consciousness

Post by mensa-maniac »

DHodges wrote:
Animus wrote:I don't know much about Marx myself, but I encounter him a lot in my pursuits. Can you recommend a text by Marx?
I studied Marx for two trimesters back in college, and I would have to say, no, don't read Marx.

In economics, what Marx wrote that is good and meaningful is not original (can be found in mainstream economics, although stated with different emphasis), whereas what he wrote that is original is not good.

What Marx means by "class consciousness" is that he has an idea of what people in a particular class SHOULD do and SHOULD think. When they don't do that, it is "false consciousness."

Mensa says: That's interesting D.Hodges, I bet Marx makes generalizations, if he is not original as you say. I would think it would be a "false consciousness" if the particular class lived above their class, above their means to live, now that would be a false consciousness!
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Re: Class Consciousness

Post by Leyla Shen »

Yes, well--too bad Hodges is wrong, completely wrong about what Marx calls class consciousness and, therefore, his proclamation in relation to whether or not it is "original" loses any credibility.

Interesting how it inspired an unoriginal generality from you, though....
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Re: Class Consciousness

Post by Leyla Shen »

THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO
from PT I. BOURGEOIS AND PROLETARIANS

[...] At this stage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeoisie. Thus the whole historical movement is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie [ed. the middle class]; every victory so obtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie.

But, with the development of industry, the proletariat not only increases in number, it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalised, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing competition among the bourgeois [ed. individuals of the middle class], and the resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The unceasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihodd mnore and more precarious; the collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon the workers begin to form combinations (trade unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for the occasional revolts. Here and there the contest breaks out into riots.

Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battle lies not in the immediate result but in the ever-expanding union of the workers. This union is helped out by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political struggle [...]

This organisation of the proletariat into a class, and consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves [...]

Altogether, collisions between the classes of the old society further in many ways the course of development of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all times with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles, it sees itself compelled to appeal to the prroletariat, to ask for its help, and thus to drag it into the political arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own elements of political and general education--in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie.
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Re: A contradiction in certain Marxist circles

Post by Leyla Shen »

Nick Treklis wrote:If it is ever implied that class consciousness and control over the means of production will lead, in a deeply meaningful sense, to a more thoughtful, intelligent, wiser, and conscious individual, I would say look at the capitalist class we have right now. Due to the capitalist's economic and academic standing, one would think this class of people would be filled with very wise and conscious people. Obviously this is not the case, so this appears to me to be a contradiction of sorts within certain Marxist circles who claim that class consciousness and control over the means of production will lead to a better kind of person beyond their economic and academic standing. This contradiction I believe would be caused by Marxists failing to put as much emphasis on individual revolution as they do social revolution.
You can't compare a class-conscious proletarian with bourgeois capitalists. Apples and oranges.
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