I have recently been thinking about (and also reading a book that focuses on this issue some) the question that Marx poses of how the working class comes to move from a “class in itself” to a “class for itself”. In a sense this issue calls forth many other issues, topics. Among them; What is the place of popular education? What is the place of the intellectual (and the educator) in emancipatory struggles? In a very broad sense what is the place of ‘culture’ in the struggle to move away from Capitalist worldview and toward a more humanistic, Socialist worldview. To begin with it may be helpful to do some basic defining of terms.
For Marx the creation of the Capitalist system of production entailed the creation of a working class. In this sense all Class identity is a relational identity. There is no Working Class without a Capitalist Class or vice a versa. We frequently hear about the capacity for Capitalism to ‘create’ wealth or ‘generate’ wealth. What is frequently forgotten is that it concurrently generates immiseration and poverty. Given the length of this reflection, I don’t wish to get into the formula by which this occurs, you can find some of this in earlier reflections. The point is that the inception of Capitalism locates certain persons in roles not of their choosing. In a sense you don’t automatically ‘choose’ to be in the role of a Capitalist or Worker, and most certainly you don’t completely dictate the parameters of those roles within the economic sphere. Marx would say that to a great degree by living in Capitalism without having any ownership of the Means of Production you are automatically designated as a member of the Working Class. This means that all these individuals exist “in the Class itself”. This is not really a decision that requires any agency on the part of the individual (or even community). By the way, without totally distracting from the purpose of this entry I want to highlight that no amount of ‘positive thinking’ or ‘spiritual insights’ or even ‘knowledge’ changes this objective condition. However, there has to be a ‘shift’ that must occur for revolutionary change to proceed. This shift is the shift of the workers recognizing not only that they are part of the Working Class in Capitalism but most importantly that they have a common interest (and enemy) in their emancipatory struggle as A Member of The Working Class!
I have mentioned this before but one of the things that has truly been an obstruction in untangling this issue is that contemporary Capitalsim has generated such levels of wealth as to give certain member of the working class the illusion of ownership of their lives. I have mentioend before that this is most evident when we look at some of the members of the working class in certain industries. It is difficult to see a mult-millionair athlete in the same ‘location’ as a factory worker. Or a Oscar winning actor as a member of the same class as a cleaning lady.
What is most important to remember is that I am not being naive, I am not saying they have identical life-issues or that they are the same in some crude measure of day-to-day existence. What I am saying is that if we take seriously what it means to understand that a system critique we have to understand the needs of the system and who functions to fulfill the task reaquired by the needs of The System! One way to think of it is that a linch-pin found in an airplane bomber functions in the same way as a linch-pin found on a school desk. But obviously they are not the same thing…they operate in the same manner for the distinct item to function properly to accomplish its goal. A worker functions to generate surplus value which in Capitalism is hoarded (stolen) by the Capitalist. This is why we can say that every worker in Capitalism is underpaid! He/She generates more than they are remunerated. In fact Marx felt that there was an inverse relation between work and wealth. I will just give a simple example that might illustrate this point. I remember years (decades) ago seeing a catalogue in the faculty lounge at my high school. It was a high end dress/clothing catalogue. They had dresses in this catalogue that cost thousands of dollars. They were brand name dresses, which is to say that the designers names were the ‘selling’ point of the dress. It is highly possible that the person (probably a woman) that put in the most actual work (body movements) to create the dress got paid the least (certainly one of the lesser amounts!) This was especially true because months later I remember reading a lot about the ‘sweat shops’ being run by some of these brand name corporations. What is interesting is that I remember reading that many professional athletes make the equivalent of their salaries within the first third of their ‘season’. Again, more can be said about this but suffice to say that we can begin to understand the exploitive pattern that is inherent in Capitial accumulation.
Just simply to understand the logic of Capital accumulation would be a small step in moving from ‘class in itself’ to ‘class for itself’ consciousness. The problem is that Capitalism has also devised a million ways to divide and conquer whether that is race, gender, nationality etc. But it is also true in Class positionality. It has also devised a million diversion tactics to obscure the centrality of Class positionality in Capitalism. Lenin spoke eloquently of the Labour Aristocracy. This was a section of the working class that is easily bought off and convinced that they really do exist in rarefied reality apart from the logic of the System. We must find ways to break this brainwashing in ourselves and among our communities. I also want to end by saying something about ‘false consciousness’ which is not only a problem among the labour aristocracy but also among the poor working class. I was talking to a friend of mine and he spoke about how some ‘immigrants’ look to the middle-class U.S. citizens as existing in a ‘promised land’ of security. I certainly remember this feeling myself. My ‘white, middle-class friends seem to have it all…I am now very aware of how this ‘chasing’ the American Dream is inherent in Capitalist logic. This generating of a false consciousness is key to continued patterns of exploitation. As George Carlin was so fond of saying “It’s called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it”. I think we need to not overly romanticize the poor, and their insights, perceptions without engaging critically the question of how they are also drinking from the same poisoned well that we all are.
Here I will plead again for the need of an ongoing educational project for all members of the working class (the vast, vast majority of humanity) to seek not Capitalist (for profit) education/insights etc. but rather those that pursue the common good, public, socialist, communist, anarchist realities. This is going to be a journey whose destination can not be fully predetermined precisely because it rests on ongoing praxis and horizons not yet available to our vision. This journey for emancipation must be fought at every level…internally and externally.
Prophetic Ruminations 