International Proletariat 63 (Class Consciousness)

They (the workers) are, in Marx's words, 'Class-in-itself' by definition vis-a-vis capitalist class but remain a lump of mass unless they organize themselves into 'Class-for-itself' on the basis of common class interest. The link between 'Class-in-itself' and 'Class-for-itself' is class consciousness, i.e. radicalization of social consciousness. This remains a herculean task with all the efforts by the generations of revolutionaries, particularly since the revolutions and counter revolutions of 1848-51. Ruling classes have strong ideological and coercive apparatuses at their disposal, where as we are scattered lot, confused and bewildered at the ongoing state of affair where mob lynching has become a common thing and brutalization of sensibilities have reached so low that people around look at it as theatrical performance. All of them, the perpetrators and victims belong to the workers' collective. In US any bloody lumpen would claim to own the country and shoot non-whites ordering them to leave his country, as if the country belongs to his father? Its same in India.

It's not to be pessimistic and lament about, 'what could be done'? Things could always be done and eventually the protagonist of the future shall be the proletariat but it seems long way to go. The level and form of social consciousness is such that substantial working population are supporters of Trump and Modi respectively in 2 countries. Marx wrote in the !8th Brummaire of Louis Bonaparte that man makes his own history but not the way he pleases or in the circumstances obtaining as the legacy of the past generations. In the light of the form and level of the social consciousness obtaining in the world with the right reactionaries aggressively vocal, a new workers international is needed with the first task of aggressive radicalization of social consciousness through intensive propaganda and political education with a missionary zeal. The role of students and democratic intellectuals shall be crucial. I have no blue print but we must work out. Oppression is global, so must be the resistance.