[lbo-talk] Contradictions of contemporary working class consciousness

[Carrol Cox]

In the late '60s and early '70s activists increasingly started complaining
about "too many meetings." Perhaps there were, but I suspect the complaint's
substance was that "the movement" was reaching its outer limits -- that that
old bugaboo "objective conditions" was taking control, and the objection was
not to too many meetings but to lack of results from those meetings. After
all, normal "leisure" is in fact a series of meetings -- only we call them
"parties," "weddings," "coffee breaks," "nights out with the [boys/girls],
picnics, Christmas Dinners, and so forth. From (roughly) 1963-68 "meetings"
were a hoot: they were the best part of life; they were living. And then the
world began to turn grim. Meetings became a chore, one more factoid damning
"the left." (Perhaps the best literary expression of this is The Odyssey --
"meetings" constitute its vision of beatitude (until, for example, Odysseus
rudely interrupts the daily "meetings" of the suitors). Telemachus calls a
meeting and obviously everyone enjoys it greatly. Then the Telemachiad
climaxes in a "meeting" at the palace of Menelaus. Nausicaa with her maids
doing the laundry. 


> -----Original Message-----
> From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
> On Behalf Of Carrol Cox
> Sent: Wednesday, August 14, 2013 2:40 PM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Contradictions of contemporary working class
> consciousness
> 
> Michael is quite correct. I want to add an essential element of that
> bourgeois ideology: the conviction on the part of workers that they are
> powerless.
> 
> 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.
> >
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> 
> 
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