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Why Socialism Often Fails and so Many Americans Lack Class-Consciousness [1]

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Date: 2023-01-01

Present day Amazon strike.

Let’s start with a definition of class-consciousness. It’s an awareness that work creates the wealth and value in everything that a society produces and requires. This fact is anathema to the capitalist, who believes that their wealth and capital comes from their bank account.

The capitalist class will do everything in their power to conceal this fact. They are fond of demonizing arguments against building a more egalitarian/socialist society as communistic. Mainly because they have succeeded over the years in making it a dirty word that’s feared almost instinctually by most of us. What the word “communism” actually was intended to refer to was a more advanced stage of socialism where the primary means of production, both industrial and agricultural, was owned by the entire population and not privately.

Inherited Authoritarianism: Why Socialism Fails

Fidel Castro

Admittedly what happened in virtually all countries attempting to build socialism was in reality the creation of a form of state capitalism usually run by a party claiming to represent the people. But in reality, they transferred alleged public ownership and control to an elite party group not under the control of the masses. It was erroneously claimed this made things socialist. It did not. Nor was it ever considered that a form of democracy was still necessary. I will concede that a society cannot long survive debating whether they take a capitalist or socialist road. But either road still requires democratic institutions.

I believe the latter was a major flaw in virtually all countries that attempted to embark on a socialist path. “Dictatorship of the proletariat” quickly transformed the advocates of socialism into a new and authoritarian ruling party which controlled the masses. What was also not factored in was that socialism has no developmental blueprints to follow and was inheriting a society that was formerly both patriarchal and authoritarian.

Socialist changes cannot/should not be imposed by decrees from above. There also remained many pro-capitalism forces willing to do almost anything to stop the changeover to socialist policies.

Ho Chi Minh, NLF leader during the Vietnam War.

This is not to say that some aspiring socialist countries did not make progress and bettered the lives of their people. Despite a lifetime of U.S. aggression, invasion and boycotts, Cuba’s far from perfect application of socialist values has survived, warts and all, to overcome a collapse and has, with far less resources, improved the lives of its people in dramatic fashion despite also being abandoned by the Soviet Union.

Cuba under Fidel did much to address poverty, public health and racism, which was a major problem under Batista. I think the long persecution of Cuba by the U.S. only verifies for me they must be doing somethings right. And I am well aware of Cuba’s shortcomings.

Vietnam also is a better place since defeating the U.S. And they managed to put an end to Pol Pot’s insane regime and defeated China’ aggressive incursion in a short war. And today welcome U.S. tourists despite what our country did to them. I personally know friends who has visited there, and they were well treated wherever they went.

Inherently a Potentially Violent Contradiction

National Guard surrounds workers at Flint, Michigan auto strike.

The relationship between workers and owners/capitalists is a power relationship ultimately backed up by force and violence, as was demonstrated by the long and sometimes violent hundred-year struggle in America to establish a government recognized right to unionize.

And by the fact that employers/owners can typically request help from the cops, National Guard, or hired goons and thugs when there’s a strike. I cannot recall any instances in which any goverment, state or federal, called upon these forces to back workers against employers. There may be incidents where that happened, but I cannot think of one.

The Role of our Dominant Capitalist Culture

It may sound like a bit of an oversimplification, but as a bastion of domestic and international market capitalism, neither major political party in America has historically been based on a working-class perspective or consciousness. And certainly not regarding the poor and the working poor. The dominant culture and perspective presented to the masses has always been strictly bourgeois; you get ahead by becoming one of them and getting rich enough to exploit the labor force.

Different Strokes Cast — 1980s.

Workers are typically portrayed in movies and on T.V. as loyal, happy middle-class workers and mostly white collar. Servants in households are idolized for their submissiveness. The working poor and poor are rarely portrayed. Poverty is a product of choice, laziness or genetics, not the flip side of capitalist wealth. Socialist, workers power advocates, and leftists are by definition evil, illegitimate movements to be feared and suppressed.

Sally Field in Norma Ray.

Unions are greedy and upset the business community’s stability and ability to find cheap labor we are often told. Of all the various subjects thousands of T.V. sit-coms and programs have covered over the years, how many have featured union worker struggles, their organizers or the poor? A couple or two sounds about right. Perhaps “Good Times” came closest to one, about a working-class black family in the Chicago projects.

However, there have been quite a few documentaries on labor movement struggles and strikes, although most are independent, non-Hollywood affairs with a much more limited circulation. Norman Rae with Sally Field is the only Hollywood movie I can think of at the moment that featured a union struggle. And without union achievements we would not have nearly as large of a middle class as we have today.

This Disneyland view of our society has been challenged repeatedly since the 20th Century. But only for a brief time in the early to mid-20th Century was the capitalist system itself targeted — mainly before WWI and WWII. This was solved by purging the unions after both wars of the leftist forces which helped build and lead their struggles.

Vice President Richard Nixon was thought to be the one in the early 50s secretly assigned to busting the power of the unions by helping to facilitate the mob in infiltrating and tossing out the independent and honest leadership while red baiting and McCarthyism swept the country. And to make sure that blacks and certain low wage sectors of the economy would mostly be kept out of the unions.

The Failures of the Labor Movement

Leave it to Beaver cast, 1950s.

The power structures have been successful over the years in holding back the notion among the working classes that there be an independent labor movement that plays a direct role in politics and government. What is a pretty obvious fact is that just about every government we’ve ever had holds allegiance to the capitalist system, and by extension fealty to that upperclass of financial interests than dominate the economy. It’s one of the fundamental reasons why the inherent faults and injustices that flow directly from the capitalist system and way of life have never been addressed or overcome. I’m not, by the way, talking about a formal labor party that runs candidates in elections, but one that organizes and lobbies around perceived class interests and brings workers into a national movement that expands unionization and its influence across the country and in government. And votes accordingly.

The end result is that today many American workers, especially white workers, have been thoroughly depoliticized in terms of their seeing the need to organize along political lines which are defined by working class interests. One reason, if not the primary one, that so many MAGAnites have backed class enemies like Donald Trump. White collar and office workers have been particularly difficult to organize along labor lines. It is encouraging to see today new and independent efforts to organize workers emerging in new and lower paying industries led often by black and Hispanic workers who have been left out what’s left of the union movement that at one time boasted 35% of the work force and is down today to less than 15%.

The ruling elites will make every effort to either bust these unions or depoliticize them. Moving jobs and investment capital overseas, a move initiated by the dominant capitalist elements of the economy that began as early as the late 50s. Along with the massive importing of raw materials which has further served to devastate many cities and cripple union membership.

So Where Does Class Consciousness Come From?

Chicago teacher’s strike.

It comes from an ability to understand society as a whole as well as your own position in it in a much different way you were taught and brought up to understand it. In point of fact, we are taught nothing in this regard. Either in school, at our place of worship, or in the media or on television and in the movies. It is the last thing the power structure wants you to be aware of. If enough people had this basic understanding, changes would have occurred long ago.

There are no magic words to be uttered that can undo a lifetime of unawareness in this regard. It only becomes clear to an individual through struggle, social interactions, and a willingness to accept their own lack of self-awareness in certain areas. Education is only possible when the mind is willing to listen to it. We must work in a way that can open minds to progressive arguments.

On a positive note, as already mentioned we do see an awakening in recent years of union movements addressing historically low wage workers in emerging new businesses and industries. These struggles are often led by working class black and Hispanic workers than have largely been left out of the American middle class. In is essential for these unions to maintain political independence and realize the need for unions to take on issues beyond the workplace.

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