>>> Mike Ballard
******************* Just to add to your excellent analysis Ted, Marx was born and died before full psychological impact of modern capitalist industrialization came to be known. I think the quote below from Eric Fromm pretty well sums up the major *psychological* stumbling block to class conscious praxis, although there are other determinants at work as well, including the very real dependency structure inherent in the employer/employee relationship i.e. the degree to which we have to sell ourselves into wage-slavery in order to eat or feed others who are dependent on us.
Mike B)
^^^^^^^^
CB: Furthermore, the whole history of "Western" anti-Sovietism/anti-Communism and the Cold War involved an intense brainwashing of the proletariat of many countries. This has shaped the mass consciousness of the last 90 years in many specific ways that are contrary to the characteristics that Marx predicted. The world bourgeoisie have consciously and vigorously countered the development of Marxist proletarian consciousness and personality. Marx did not anticipate how precise and concrete the bourgeois anti-Marxist consciousness would become.