To the Discussion Bulletin:
Readers of DB, of course want to get rid of wage slavery. I think
the biggest obstacle to the end of wage slavery is class
consciousness. Lenin in "What is to be done" thought that workers
would only develop trade union consciousness and needed the
vanguard party to develop class consciousness. I would assume
that DB readers are rightly against the idea of a vanguard party.
A Vanguard party does not necessarily give workers class
consciousness but it does give them someone ruling over them. I
think the problem now is that workers don't even develop trade
union consciousness.
Marx thought that class consciousness would develop naturally from
workers working together in factories. Marx mentioned class
consciousness in only a couple of letters. At the start of the
21st century the idea of class consciousness is very important.
It is much harder today for workers to develop class
consciousness. The ruling ideas are those of the ruling classes
and now the majority of workers are only exposed to the ideas of
ruling classes. Now with the concentration of corporate media it
is more like the ONLY ideas are those of the ruling classes.
Where I'm working now, workers take wage slavery as so natural
that when you complain to co- workers about what your doing on the
job, the reaction is if you don't like what your doing, why are
you working here go home. In a lot of work environments when you
complain about the stupid work your doing co-workers agree with
you. Workers that agree that some of the stuff you do on the job
is stupid and that there are better ways of doing things may at
some later date develop class consciousness. But how are workers
that think that everything the boss tells you to do no matter how
stupid, you do and don't complain about it because that the way
the world is, going to develop class consciousness?
I would like DB readers to discuss ways to develop class
consciousness among workers when the ideas of the ruling classes
have such power and control over your society.
Michael Stec
