> I think Marx's gamble in publishing _Capital_ is that if workers are made aware of their role in capitalism, they would find it intolerable. But there are no guarantees.
What develops in capitalism, according to Marx, isn't "consciousness" in a sense having no logical space for rational self-consciousness and self-determination, i.e. for "freedom" in his particular sense; it's rational self-consciousness itself.
This occurs, he claims, via the particular forms of capitalist self-estrangement.
The development is expressed in two main ways: the development of the productive forces of social labour and and the integral development of every individual producer.
The role of "scientific socialism", i.e. of the critique of political economy that is Capital, was to reveal these developments and the transcendence of capitalism - "the act of universal emancipation" - implied by them, i.e. to demonstrate that capitalism "begets its own negation with the inexorability which governs the metamorphoses of nature".
The "concrete political trajectory" issuing from this critique was specified in Engels's claims re this kind of socialism:
“To accomplish this act of universal emancipation ['humanity's leap from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom'] is the historical mission of the modern proletariat. To thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions and thus the very nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed class a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, this is the task of the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, scientific socialism.” http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch24.htm
That the task was "to impart to the know oppressed class a full knowedge of the conditions and of the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to perform" confirms that what was required for the act was the developed degree of rational self-consciousness appropriation of such "full knowledge" would itself require.
This understanding of "critique" and its role was specified long before in the 1843 letters to Ruge (where the emphasis was on religious and political rather than economic self-estrangement):
"The reform of consciousness consists only in making the world aware of its own consciousness, in awakening it out of its dream about itself, in explaining to it the meaning of its own actions. Our whole object can only be – as is also the case in Feuerbach’s criticism of religion – to give religious and philosophical questions the form corresponding to man who has become conscious of himself.
"Hence, our motto must be: reform of consciousness not through dogmas, but by analysing the mystical consciousness that is unintelligible to itself, whether it manifests itself in a religious or a political form. It will then become evident that the world has long dreamed of possessing something of which it has only to be conscious in order to possess it in reality. It will become evident that it is not a question of drawing a great mental dividing line between past and future, but of realising the thoughts of the past. Lastly, it will become evident that mankind is not beginning a new work, but is consciously carrying into effect its old work." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/letters/43_09.htm
Marx was mistaken about the capacity of the self-estrangement that is wage-labour to produce the degree of "integral development of every individual producer" required to appropriate the "full knowledge" to be imparted by scientific socialism and, more generally, about the role of economic self-estrangement in the development of rational self-consciousness so the "concrete political trajectory" pointed to by his critique wasn't and isn't practicable.
Ted