This post is the sixth part of a biweekly series posting chapters of Frank Cunningham’s Understanding Marxism: A Canadian Introduction (Toronto: Progress Books, 1981). Through these excerpts, readers will come to understand the basics of Marxist theory through a Canadian lens in a digestible, accessible, and easy-to-understand way. As 2021 marks 100 years of the communist movement in Canada, and as more young workers and students become interested in Marxism, we hope that this educational series will benefit our readers.
The following chapter (Ch. 7 of Understanding Marxism) discusses class consciousness and the barriers to it that exist under capitalism. The chapter also suggests ways around these barriers.
The original text is available to borrow through Archive.org. It has been amended minimally to include links to relevant texts, to update vital information, and to remove notes relevant only to the physical book.
In chapter four I suggested that in determining what economic class a person belongs to, Marxists are interested in what role that person actually plays in production, not in what the person happens at some time to think their class position is. But this does not mean that Marxists are indifferent to what working people think about their own economic class position. Quite the contrary. Marx, Engels and Lenin knew that a successful revolution was not possible unless working people acquired class consciousness. This does not just mean that working people must come to think of themselves as workers rather than bosses — workers know they are not bosses. Nor does it mean that a class-conscious worker is one who sees his or her boss as an enemy, out to get as much work for as little pay as possible. Again, most workers are well aware of this.
Very little Marxist literature is written specifically about class consciousness. However, Lenin wrote some important pamphlets on the subject, and Antonio Gramsci, one of the founders of the Italian Communist Party, wrote extensively about consciousness while imprisoned in Mussolini’s jails. The work of these two men, and scattered comments by other Marxists, suggest that two elements are required for full revolutionary class consciousness.
First, a worker must understand the need to get rid of the entire system of capitalism, rather than just to combat some of its worst effects. Second, working people must recognize the possibility of doing this task themselves by organizing as a class against capitalism, leading other segments of the population in a successful revolution and constructing a pro-working class state to replace the pro-capitalist one. Put more briefly, full class consciousness requires identifying the system of capitalism as the main enemy and being prepared to take a leadership role in a changing society.
Capitalism maintains its rule not just by the use or threatened use of police force. It also maintains its rule by creating a situation where working people are confused about the class nature of society, divided from one another and without confidence in their own ability to lead.
Confusion and Division
Life itself under capitalism promotes confusion and divisions among people. Our educational system is well-known for its inadequacy, and our days and weeks are divided up in such a way that it is hard to find the time to reflect on the nature of society. At the workplace workers are divided between skilled and unskilled workers and by various forms of discrimination in pay. In society they are divided between the employed and unemployed; and since in our cities people are removed from their neighbours, people are divided by where they live. Marxist sociologists and psychologists are just beginning to study these things.
However, the sources of confusion and division I will briefly discuss are mainly ideological in nature, that is, they affect people’s ideas about themselves and about society as a whole.
On the one hand, there is an overriding attempt by the “idea” machinery to discourage serious political thought of any kind among working people. On the other hand, there are some myths quite deliberately promoted in bourgeois propaganda. Three of the most important are: that capitalism is good, that socialism is evil, and that you can trust the state. There are also many attitudes that serve to divide and confuse people. I will discuss: “me-firstism,” certain effects of religion, racism (and ethnic and national chauvinism), sexism, and anti-intellectualism.
De-politicization. “De-politicization is the attempt to stop working people from thinking about and discussing important political ideas. Capitalists prefer to have people worrying only about their personal short-range problems or escaping from their cares by getting drunk or watching mind-rot on television. This is why serious political questions (like: Why not socialism?) occupy very little air time or page space on T.V. or in popular magazines, and why politically-minded people who do raise such issues are pictured as fanatics. Politics is promoted as the kind of cloakroom scheming and election-time promise-making that bourgeois politicians engage in, rather than as reflecting on our society and organizing to change it.
The de-politicized worker is one who views himself or herself as alone, isolated from other working people. Capitalists prefer to have working people think this way. They do not want workers, or anybody else who is subject to the oppression of their profit system, to recognize that they share this situation with many others and have the ability to change it by taking united action. This is why it is made very difficult for working people in one part of the country (or even of a province or a city) to find out the conditions of life and work of those in another part, much less to find out what organized action is taken by others. This is also why capitalism tries to rob people of their own histories.
We know that, even though imperfect, things like workers’ compensation for injuries on the job exist today. But how many know the history of hard campaigns waged by working people’s movements that finally forced this and other benefits through? Despite occasional lip-service to the “multi-cultural” character of Canada, we are taught that it was almost exclusively people of British or French stock who built up the country; though we are not taught the actual history of working people from these groups and their struggles. People of other backgrounds (Ukrainian, Chinese, Finnish, Jewish, Japanese, Blacks, and many more) do not learn of the vital roles their forebears played in building Canada or of their heroism in organizing against racial, ethnic, and class oppression.
For over a decade students and other groups mobilized against the war in Vietnam and the Canadian government’s despicable role in that war as an arms merchant and diplomatic lackey for the U.S. Yet today, only a few years later, college and high school students know practically nothing about the war or about the ways students and other groups organized against it. How could they, when these things are either not presented to them at all or are grossly distorted in schools and the media?
De-politicization can be fought by making people aware of the fact that they are not alone and by helping them to regain the histories of their own struggles. It can be fought also in practice by linking up specific issues people are involved in (with their landlords, in their unions, in attempts to lower prices or to resist discrimination) with broader political issues. In the first place a person must understand the need to organize with others. This is an uphill battle, since de-politicization keeps many from becoming involved in any kind of struggle or confrontation to begin with. On the other hand, it can be surprisingly easy. For example, an individual may initially be concerned only with the landlord’s unwillingness to fix the plumbing. A few discussions with other tenants may lead to that same person helping to organize a tenants’ association, and the connection between a simple individual complaint and the need for political organization has been made.
The “goodness” of capitalism. I do not think we need to be detained very long with this myth. It had more weight when North American capitalism was able to deliver some of the goods, that is, to keep wages up and unemployment down in key segments of the workforce. Although we still hear regular stories about how the system of “private enterprise” is the best in the world and how anybody can make it to the top, this myth requires that people be too ignorant of what is going on around them. In Canada today inflation and unemployment are both on the rise. The cost of housing is growing almost out of people’s reach, and even entertainment is too expensive for many. How can someone reach the top when it’s hard to find any job at all?
Even those segments of the Canadian workforce that have been highly paid, relative to others or in comparison with workers in the other parts of the world, are coming to realize that their position is quite insecure. It was the strength of the large monopolies, resting to a large extent on their imperialist activities, that made possible the famous prosperity in North America. But now the monopolies are in trouble. They are losing more and more of their imperialist holdings and are coming under fire from increasingly large parts of the population.
The result is that they are no longer able to deliver. Canadian workers particularly feel the squeeze. Because most of the monopolies are U.S.-based, they cut down on production in Canadian branch plants in response to problems in the U.S.
The “evils” of socialism. In every major newspaper in Canada there are daily articles telling us how undemocratic some socialist country is supposed to be or how many social problems it is supposed to have. This propaganda started with the first successful socialist revolution in 1917 and has been increasing ever since. The propaganda has become more refined since then (it used to be alleged that “Bolsheviks eat babies”) but the basic message has been the same in the papers, on T.V., in popular literature, and in schools — everywhere that people’s ideas can be affected. The cumulative effect is to make anti-socialism an automatic and almost unconscious response among Canadian working people. The aim is to produce a frying pan-fire attitude. No matter how bad capitalism is, we are told, socialism is at least as bad, so don’t try to change things. Promoting this attitude is a very important part of the capitalist drive to prevent class consciousness. People are much less likely to want to make drastic changes if they think the only alternative is as bad or worse. Instead they will probably adopt an attitude of despair and try to make the best of a bad situation.
Anti-socialist propaganda used to be primarily economic. It was claimed that socialism could not work. By and large this line has now been abandoned. Not only did the predictions of economic collapse prove to be false, but despite all efforts of capitalist powers to prevent it, socialist countries have been growing economically stronger and stronger. Capitalist propaganda cannot completely hide the fact that socialist countries have proven capable of eliminating unemployment, of providing adequate old age security, free education at all levels, inexpensive housing and free medical treatment, as well as having become major world industrial powers. And as these countries continue to increase production of consumer items, the charge that luxury items are scarce in socialist countries is being heard less frequently.
The main claim of anti-socialists today is that socialist countries are undemocratic. Since I will go into this question in chapter nine, I will not discuss it here except to mention that this charge hinges partly on lying and partly on isolating the worst anti-democratic measures and mistakes made during certain periods of socialist growth. Claiming that these errors and problems prove that socialism is always and everywhere anti-democratic, anti-socialist propaganda completely ignores the essentially democratic nature of socialism.
Socialists in Canada respond to anti-socialist propaganda in various ways. Some agree with it and claim that the socialist world, or some segment of it, isn’t really socialist. Often the Soviet Union — the oldest and strongest socialist country — is singled out by these people (RY-JM note: Or in our current era, countries like Vietnam or China). This attitude plays into the hands of the bourgeoisie. Most working people interpret this as an admission that the press is right and that the people of the USSR went through the difficulties of revolution for nothing. (I have observed that socialists who disown the socialist world generally rely exclusively on “facts” reported by the pro-capitalist press. I have also noted that it seems much easier to be a socialist and to be accepted in non-socialist circles if one is quick to point out that he or she opposes present-day actual socialism or at least the socialism in the Soviet Union.)
In my opinion, the correct response is, first, to attempt to bring facts about the basic democratic character of present-day socialism to working people’s attention. Marxists should at least encourage people to gain a broader view by reading material from socialist countries that gives their side of the case. Second, it is necessary to have realistic views about socialism. Present-day, existing socialism is a complex historical phenomenon. Its weaknesses, as well as its strengths, need to be understood by examining the concrete conditions of its developments in different countries. Such a realistic viewpoint is important not only for understanding present-day socialism, but also to shift Canadian working people’s major focus of attention (where capitalists do not want it) to the concrete conditions and possibilities of gaining socialism and building it with the fewest problems in Canada.
The trustworthiness of the government. The third myth I want to mention is the one that says even if capitalists are opposed to the interests of working people, we still have an impartial governmental system that will protect our interests when big business gets too rough. This myth is especially prevalent around election time, when the spokesmen of the parties of big business make pious claims to speak for all the people, and the press is full of stories about how democratic Canada is. Since the next chapter is devoted to the Marxist analysis of the state, discussion of this myth can be set aside for now. As working people learn first-hand whose interests the government serves, this bit of propaganda is becoming harder to peddle. The recent wave of government cutbacks, both federally and provincially in education and health services, coupled with government strike-breaking and stronger anti-labour legislation, speak louder than election-time words about government impartiality.
Me-firstism. Me-firstism is an attitude quite easily spread around in a capitalist society, since the capitalists believe and act on it themselves. It relates to the view discussed in chapter two that everyone is selfish and that people get ahead by being stronger and smarter than everyone else. In addition to providing the major theme of much of our “entertainment,” this attitude comes from life and work under capitalism. Capitalist societies are based on competition. Capitalists compete for profits, and workers must compete for jobs. It is not hard to see how some people think that this is how it must always be. This attitude is quite consciously pushed in the bourgeois press, especially when it comes to the unemployed. Unemployed people are pictured as lazy or incompetent sponges on society who have only themselves to blame for being jobless. In fact, unemployed people are part of the working class. They are workers for whom capitalism does not provide jobs. At least it does not provide jobs suitable for people’s abilities, and it does not provide the abilities, through education, necessary for what jobs are available.
Me-firstism stands in the way of class consciousness because it leads working people to attribute the success of big businessmen to their intelligence or courage. And it leads working people to blame themselves for their failure to get ahead. Class consciousness is not possible unless people see that capitalists are “ahead” because of other people’s work. If people blame themselves for having poor jobs or for being unemployed, they are not going to blame the system and organize to change it.
Religion and class consciousness. Contrary to what some religious leaders say, it is possible for a person to be religious and class conscious. In countries like Italy, many religious people are active Communists. In Poland and other socialist countries there are religious socialists in public office. In Canada many church leaders have been active in the peace movement and in demands for social justice. Some of these people have put the blame for war and injustice where it belongs, on the large corporations and the pro-capitalist governments that serve them. Up to point a person can even be religious and agree with the theory of Marxism. (However, these people could not interpret religious texts like the Bible literally, since they give a view of history incompatible with historical materialism. Nor could religious people agree with certain philosophical views of Marxism, such as atheism.) To a certain extent religion can contribute to class consciousness, since some moral values of religion — the values that preach cooperation and an end to injustice — call attention to the immorality of capitalism. However, religion also works against full revolutionary class consciousness.
I believe there are several reasons for this. One is that being religious tends to make a person more subject to official church doctrines, which are often anti-socialist and pro-capitalist. In fact, the larger churches are themselves part of the capitalist structure, with large land holdings and investments in capitalist enterprises. Another reason is that in some religions, such as Christianity, there is a theory of human depravity, which blames the devil or original sin for human problems. A third reason is that religious belief makes people more susceptible to anti-socialist propaganda. This is partly because the propaganda often has church authority behind it and partly because a recurrent theme of bourgeois propaganda is that socialist countries persecute religion. (In fact religious institutions continue to exist in socialist countries, though due to a real division of church and state they do not hold state-supported positions of economic and political power as in capitalist countries.)
Beginning in the 1960s, large numbers of young people began expressing discontent with the crass materialism and injustices of North American society. Many of these people became involved with the mystical or fundamentalist religious organizations that sprang up everywhere. These organizations are explicitly anti-socialist, and some are funded by certain right-wing business interests from the U.S. and elsewhere. In my opinion, religious organizations like these were able to attract people because they seemed to offer a purpose in life lacking in our society. In fact there is a purpose to the way people’s daily lives are organized, but it is a purpose not determined by the people themselves. This purpose is to extract as much super-profit as possible for a few capitalists.
A meaningful life for Canadians would be one where we controlled the country ourselves and worked together to build a happy future for ourselves and our children. But such a society will never be built unless working people come to class consciousness, and people will not come to class consciousness if they turn their backs on the material world and look to an afterlife.
Racism, ethnic and national chauvinism. Although there are some important differences among these attitudes, they can be treated together in this chapter since they have similar effects on people’s class consciousness. Canada was founded on racism and chauvinism. Native people welcomed Europeans here in exchange for which their land was stolen from them and a genocidal campaign was launched (and is still going on) under cover of racism. In Confederation, French Canada was deliberately subjected to English-Canadian rule, and French-speaking Canadians have always been the subject of chauvinistic abuse and exploitation. As each new group of immigrants arrived in Canada, they in turn were subjected to discrimination.
Discrimination affects class consciousness by making other working people the scapegoats for the economic problems created by capitalism. In 1975 Canada was experiencing a sharp increase in unemployment along with a housing shortage and other problems. At this time the government saw fit to release a draft of a policy on immigration which blamed immigrants for unemployment and urban overpopulation. At the same time the large newspapers began to publish unfounded stories linking immigrants to crime. The truth is that Canada is underpopulated and underdeveloped relative to its size and resources. But keeping Canada underdeveloped is in the economic interests of those Canadian capitalists who profit from selling the country out to U.S.-based monopolies. When these policies create unemployment and crowded cities, capitalists are anxious that they not be seen as the cause.
Socialist revolutions are not carried out by angels but by human beings who have grown up in capitalist society with all its distorted values. If working people could become perfect under capitalism, then one of the main reasons for socialism would vanish. After all, socialism is not something to strive for only for economic reasons, but it is necessary in order to raise everybody with truly humanistic values. Nonetheless, attitudes of racism and chauvinism (also the sexist attitudes I shall discuss next) stand in the way of gaining socialism in the first place. These attitudes dehumanize people. They lead them to think of large numbers of other people as subnormal. Class consciousness requires that people join in struggle with others to fight the capitalist system and to build a new society. This cannot be done unless people begin to see each other as equals.
Sexism. We have already noted how discrimination against women is very beneficial to capitalists. But is it beneficial to male workers as well? At first glance it might seem to be. Whether his wife works or not, the man does not usually have to do most of the housework, and he may vent his frustrations on his wife. Even if he takes some responsibility for caring for his children, most of the day-to-day work of childcare is done by his wife, who also must consider the children’s psychological development — how to bring them up as happy, well-adjusted people in a distorted society.
These male benefits are illusory and the sexist attitudes that accompany the oppression of women stand in the way of class consciousness. In the first place, as women’s participation in the workforce increases in Canada, their lack of trade union protection makes them both vulnerable to increased exploitation and able to be used by capitalists as a way of keeping all wages down. Hence, women’s low wages both affect the family income and endanger the male workers’ position of strength vis-à-vis the bosses. So it is in the male worker’s interests to ally himself with his female coworkers in their struggles against the capitalists. Thus more and more unions in Canada are taking up the demand to end wage discrimination against women, and women are becoming more involved in union affairs and leadership. Sexist attitudes can only inhibit working class unity.
In the second place, the system of childcare and housework favoured by capitalists, where the responsibility for these things falls upon the individual family, has severe disadvantages for the male worker. He is responsible not just for his own wellbeing, but also for that of his wife and children. This puts quite a bit of pressure on him. It is one thing to quit a bad job or to risk a job by agitating against the bosses if he is responsible only for himself. But when a family depends on his having a regular income, it is quite another matter. Men must join women in fighting for such reforms as government-funded, high quality day care. But they will not do this if they share the sexist attitude that their wives’ natural place is at home with the children.
Sexism has certain effects on the male worker’s personality that stand in the way of class consciousness. Like racism, sexism is dehumanizing. It leads one to regard 51% of the human population as inferior. Surely it is psychologically healthier for men to join women in fighting their oppression than to contribute to it in their own homes and at their place of work.
Finally, sexism is part and parcel of a whole male chauvinist psychology that feeds me-firstism. One feature of male chauvinist society is that women are thought of as having characteristics inappropriate for men. Women show emotion and are encouraged to exhibit humanistic qualities such as kindness and cooperativeness. Men, on the other hand, are supposed to be rugged, emotionless, and individualistic. This attitude of rugged manliness leads men to blame themselves for not succeeding. A real man is supposed to be a good provider, who will make lots of money and get ahead because of his individual strength, intelligence, and ruthlessness. A man who believes this philosophy is more likely to blame himself for not being enough of a “man” than to blame the system for the failures in his life.
Anti-intellectualism. To reach full class consciousness a person must figure out many things. It is necessary to understand that the main struggle in our society is the class struggle. It is necessary to see through bourgeois propaganda. And, what is perhaps the most difficult, it is necessary to detect in oneself attitudes like racism, national chauvinism, and sexism and to understand their bad effects. To do all this people must be able to think rationally and scientifically about their society and themselves. Anti-intellectualism is the attitude that there is something wrong with rational, scientific thought. It is giving in to blind prejudice, the attitude: “I may not think much, but I know what I like.”
In the eighteenth century emerging capitalism itself was a main force for promoting scientific thinking — especially among professional scientists whose discoveries led to more efficient techniques and machinery and therefore to greater profits. Then as now capitalism has needed science and hence a certain number of people who are capable of scientific thought. But this poses a problem for capitalists, because effective scientific thinking applied to society and history leads to a recognition that their class must go. One capitalist reaction to this problem is to maintain a system that makes it difficult to think about society, especially on the part of working people. This is done in several ways.
People are not born with the ability to think scientifically. They have to be trained. But under capitalism it is not easy to acquire this training. Primary and secondary education in working class schools is poor (and getting worse, due to cutbacks). It is economically difficult of impossible for the children of workers to go to college. Even in middle-class schools and in colleges people in the social sciences are not trained to think scientifically. Thinking scientifically means striving to understand why things are the way they are. This requires developing the critical habits of thought necessary to weigh different theories against the facts and test them for logical coherence. Yet even natural science courses in Canadian schools are mainly a question of just memorizing.
Effective, scientific thinking requires gaining an overview of things by relating different subject matters. Instead, the different disciplines — natural sciences, social sciences, and cultural subjects — are so narrowly specialized that connections are hard to make. Scientific thinking is critical thinking. It is thinking that does not accept anything on faith, but that strives to get to the truth even if this means challenging accepted views. Students are not encouraged to think critically but to accept the Establishment theories of their teachers, especially in the study of politics and history. Putting all these things together, it is not hard to understand why someone who has been denied the ability to think in a scientific way would take the anti-intellectual attitude: Who needs it anyway?
Another way that anti-intellectualism is spread is by having people associate intelligence with typical Establishment “intellectuals”, such as most of those who teach social science or humanities courses in universities, write books on politics or culture, and are interviewed on T.V. These people are often snobs, experts at putting other people down, and are deliberately obscure when they talk or write. When you can understand them, they usually have nothing to say to the needs of working people. If thinking scientifically means being like them, then who would want to be scientific?
In fact, Establishment “intellectuals” are themselves among the worst anti-intellectuals. Pro-capitalist “intellectuals” today spend most of their time promoting scepticism — doubt — about the possibility and desirability of rational, scientific thought. I will discuss scepticism further in chapter evelen.
Thirdly, anti-intellectualism is practically worshipped through irrationality in entertainment. In popular music, for example, feeling and thinking are set in opposition to one another, as if a person had to choose between having deep feelings or understanding things. In the movies, the typical hero is someone who violently and thoughtlessly acts on gut emotions. Under the guise of “spontaneity”, mindlessness has become a virtue.
Now more than ever, revolutionary struggle needs to be guided by carefully-pursued scientific study. To some extent this is made possible by some middle class intellectuals joining the working class struggle and putting their skills at its disposal. Marx, Engels, and Lenin were such people. But it is equally important for workers to acquire the abilities of scientific thinking themselves, which is made difficult in an atmosphere of widespread anti-intellectualism.
Leadership Confidence
Recognizing the class nature of society and the need to eliminate capitalism as a social system is not enough for revolutionary working class consciousness. It is also necessary for the working class of a country to gain the confidence to lead such a struggle. All the factors mentioned above that confuse and divide people also work against their reaching this recognition. However, this aspect of class consciousness is not just, or primarily, a matter of overcoming bourgeois propaganda, but of gaining practical experience in leadership.
Reform action. One important way that revolutionary confidence is built is through reform activity, such as trade union activity. Any time working people are able to organize and force capitalism to make even a small concession, they gain confidence in their ability to take the initiative against capitalism. It is for this reason that Marxists reject the position they call “ultra-leftist” — that all reform movements “support the system” and work against revolution.
At the same time, however, Marxists also caution against the reformist view that reform activity is enough to solve the problems in society. At a certain point it is necessary for the working class and its allies to change the social system altogether. As mentioned in chapter six, Lenin criticized the version of reformism, called economism, which held that trade unionism was the only kind of organized activity the working class needed. The limitations of this perspective will be taken up again in chapter twelve when I return to the topic of “reform and revolution”. One of its effects is to dampen revolutionary working-class consciousness. It leads working people to believe that the only kinds of gains they are able to make within a capitalist system are limited gains for economic reform. Although most economic reformists do not intend it, the attitude thus plays into the hands of right-wing trade union leaders whose approach is that workers should leave the struggle to them while they compromise with capitalists to win limited advantages. Lenin pointed out that the working class needs to organize politically against the capitalist class.
Working-class political organization. This topic brings us back to the subject of chapter six — the working class’ need for its own revolutionary political party. The existence of such a party helps to build working class consciousness in more ways than just by combating bourgeois propaganda. A revolutionary workers’ party provides a concrete organizational framework for the leadership of revolutionary struggle. Without such a framework, socialist revolution can never be more than a good idea. But, as anybody knows, it takes more than good ideas to achieve anything, especially something as difficult as a social revolution.
Another way that a revolutionary workers’ political organization builds working class confidence in its own ability to govern is by actually governing. In some capitalist countries, Communist Parties, alone or in coalition with other pro-socialist parties, already control some cities and even larger political districts. The record of these parties in such areas is impressive. Fighting against vicious anti-communist propaganda to win elections at first, they usually have little trouble holding their gains in future elections. This is because, unlike pro-capitalist political parties, they offer good leadership. They are more efficient, and they really do put the needs of working people first.
In the process of defeating imperialism through struggles for national self-determination, the workers and peasants in alliance with other classes have been able to form anti-imperialist governments in some developing countries. These societies are not yet socialist ones because not all the major means of production are socially owned and controlled. Also, some pro-capitalist forces (and in some cases even pro-feudal ones) still have influence in the state. However, these societies offer another example of where the working class can learn to govern by actually governing.
A similar situation exists in more industrialized nations, where there is the possibility of forming anti-monopoly governments. The success of the working class in leading the political battles for such governments greatly weakens the economic and political power of the monopolies, and it builds the working class’ confidence in its ability to lead.
Working class leadership. It is doubtful that the working class could gain or hold power without the support of other social groups and classes whose interests are at odds with capitalism. Most previous socialist revolutions have required an alliance of the working class with the majority of the peasantry. Revolution in industrial parts of the world requires alliances of the working class with key segments of the middle classes and with the petty bourgeoisie. It requires that popular discontent for a variety of reasons be brought together in an anti-monopoly alliance. Therefore it is important for the working class not to isolate itself from other sectors of the population and narrowly confine itself to demands that affect only wages and working conditions. It must take up all those issues that hostile pro-capitalist forces confront people with.
In Canada there have been some encouraging signs of this possibility, as parts of the labour movement have taken up stances in support of movements for women’s equality, for peace, against racial and ethnic discrimination, for protection of the environment, and other popular movements. The working class must not only participate in these struggles, it must also play a leading role in them. This involvement helps ensure the success of those movements, and it inspires confidence in the working class among members of other groups and classes. Above all, it causes members of the working class to realize that they are capable of taking the lead in the transformation of society.
Readings for Chapter Seven
V.I. Lenin, What Is To Be Done? (In Vol. 5 of the Collected Works). A critique of reformist, and especially economistic, approaches to working class organization and of anti-intellectualism.
Antonio Gramsci, The Modern Prince, in Selections from the Prison Notebooks (New York: New World Paperbacks, 1971). In The Modern Prince, as in other selections from the Notebooks, Gramsci discusses the problem of “hegemony” — roughly, the way a class exercises its control of society by other than violent means — in a way that relates to class consciousness.
Chapter Eight of Understanding Marxism will be posted on Monday, July 26th. Please see the Marxism section of Rebel Youth – Jeunesse Militante for previous chapters.