THE question! Why do the working class not respond? First because the enemy is armed and ruthless. If the working class is not united, it's curtains! Then, ideologically/culturally .....Partly it's the relentless brainwashing, partly it's the human predilection to identify with the interests of one's oppressors, who are by definition more powerful.
I guess I'm arguing that the various identification processeses that start in childhood continue throughout one's life. When you're "grown up" you identify with the capitalists instead of identifying with your parents. (it's an absurd identification; their interests are completely counter to each other but....) We all know that a kid won't rat on parents when severely abused, because the parents are "everything." This gets translated into adult life and is exacerbated by the alienation and fragmentation that accompanies daily labor: the working class may in fact be running the world, but it doesn't feel like that to them because they make very few decisions and are culturally represented as being crap. Moreover, unless they unite, they are as helpless and vulnerable as the children of abusive parents.
So we need an anti-consumerist identity politics for the working class....oh, and a radical "spirituality." I know religion/spirituality are dirty words for the left, but I profoundly disagree with this. At any rate, I don't think people will ever get on the other side of obfuscating identifications if they don't start to understand the workings of their own consciousness. Trading one master for another is not what we want.
Joanna