> I think the Have Nots are being led
> to feel as though they are really Haves. The implication is that
> it will become increasingly difficult to convince these faux-Haves
> that they really have something to fear from their captors.
This is true, but then it always has been thus under capitalism. (There was an analagous mechanism in tributary societies, but it worked differently on different premises.) You can see it operative in direct and indirect ways in Dickens's novels, and for that matter in Adam Smith or Milton. So while it remains one of the major weapons of oppression that operates mechanically, without need even of oiling or deliberate intent on the part of those who wield it, I don't see it as any more a barrier now than heretofore.
And I don't think it is a "mass" infection (as is, for example, the fear of joblessness, which can make individualists and cowards of us all), but only (!) a way of scattering scabs throughout the class. We do need to work hard to hammer out ways of meeting this form of consciousness, though I suspect this is a skill which has been discovered over and over again in working class history, and the need is less for "original thinking" than for reaching deeper and deeper back into our history.
Carrol