Michael Yates wrote: "What went wrong? Looking at the broad sweep of history, we can perhaps identify some of the forces at work and bad decisions taken. First, as Marx pointed out, capitalism creates workers in its own image. It is hard for workers to grasp the nature of their circumstances, .."
Mike B) comments: "Here, I would more deeply develop observations on reification and the fethishism of commodities ... If workers don't consciously understand that their skills and time are commodities in the marketplace, they remain lost, suseptible to manipulation by others as opposed to candidates for making change for themselves. When they see themselves as the producers of the world, they can begin to "accumulate" the integrity necessary to organize to reclaim the the social product of their labour. They can begin to see that solidarity with other workers gives them more power in the marketplace. They can begin to see why they feel helpless and powerless as atomised individuals who define their freedom in negative terms i.e. "my freedom is directly related to your unfreedom : women, blacks, other workers, other nationalities and so on.
Question: Michael - I enjoyed your article. In relation to the comment from Mike - could I ask both of you as to whether there is a little too much emphasis on the 'concious' aspects of revolt? Perhaps inchoately, I am trying to refer to the citation "'ruling class' being unable to rule any longer'" & one of the strands in Lenins' What Is to be Done?" - that it is not propaganda that will change the attitude of the workers, but thier life experience. Hari
