What distinguished the '60s was the very nearly spontaneous assumption, which lasted only a few years, that the world could be changed by what we did. My radicalization was hurried, if not triggered, by rather non-political activity within the English Department: we began more and more to enjoy talking about ways in which we could usefully change department policy or affect teaching conditions. Someone eventually will write a huge volume, perhaps a multi-volume work, on the events from 1945 to 1960 that (behind our backs as it were) generated this social 'atmosphere' characterized by the assumption that what we did made a difference. And this carried over into the movements in which some of us participated: we found ourselves in action, on the assumption that it would make a difference, and when that action met with resistance, quite a few of us turned revolutionary.
A speculative suggestion: All serious mass movements, whatever their stated goals, have only one goal: freedom, and that goal is defined in the process of seeking it.
Carrol
> -----Original Message-----
> From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
> On Behalf Of michael yates
> Sent: Wednesday, August 14, 2013 12:40 PM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: [lbo-talk] Contradictions of contemporary working class
> consciousness
>
> Perhaps something missing from this discussion is the power of bourgeois
> ideology. We are inundated with this from earliest age, from parents,
> churches, media, and schools. No one escapes it or is uninfluenced by it.
> Unions come into being within it, and they are influenced by it. In good
times
> and bad times. Money, success, status, these have a powerful pull on us.
It is
> a wonder anyone sees through it and embraces a radical life. Because you
> can be sure that if you do, many negative things will happen to you.
>
>
> With respect to union leaders and rank and file, one thing that the
workers
> always have is the alienation they feel as they work. Most leaders no long
> feel this. So efforts to push for rank and file democracy and control over
the
> union, led by workers themselves, can have a powerful impact on
> consciousness that no amount of radical rhetoric by leaders far removed
> from workplaces can have. Sustaining this is hard, however. Institutions
have
> to exist to support it and make it self perpetuating.
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk