Saturday, June 6, 2009

46

Political priorities and consciousness

The absurdity of pro-revolutionary consciousness is its content (its
beautiful form a cloud softly crackling as it passes behind the
eyes, and behold: enlightenment!), if it were a commodity of high
uses value then those who possessed it would have a capacity for
establishing political priorities and getting to the heart of the matter
- and yet they faff about, getting nowhere. All those who pursue
consciousness are completely at odds with one another over its
content and the means of its transmission; those who have no
power and continue to pursue political consciousness fail to
understand that political consciousness is something deployed by
those who have power as a mask of their power.

If the workers were to have consciousness, then what would its
content be in non-revolutionary situations? What precisely is the
most radical positions for workers to take on Northern Ireland, to
support the UFF, or the Real IRA or the Peace Process, or not to
get involved at all? What is the most radical position for workers to
take on the recent riots in the north of England, to support the
ethnic identity of the Pakistan nationalists, to understand the riots
as working class resistance to fascism and not, say, the
entrenchment of the leadership of particular forms of primitive
accumulation (drug gangs, the expulsion of Hindu's protection
rackets, etc, accumulation of national capitals in Pakistan), to
support the integration of both 'communities' in a harmony of
'different' identities, to support the white working class who have
no political representation, or no to get involved at all? What is
the most radical position the working class can take on asylum
seekers and how would this be demonstrated? What is the most
radical position the working class could take on policing, the
Prevention of Terrorism Act, CCTV, and how should that be
demonstrated? How would the working class express these
politics if it decided on them? If these questions could be
parachuted into the workplace by activists as ideological issues
then at best it could wind everybody up into camps of
conservatives and radicals, with the radicals being no more
revolutionary then the conservatives, but it is more likely that most
people would continue to be uninterested.

It is a simple fact that the working class have no power over these
issues and therefore to hold opinions on them would be a form of

2 comments:

  1. Where is 1 through 44 and how can i get a copy of this? your links do not work.

    What truly astounding work. I can only try to share the ideas and the work with as many people as I can.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sorry I was having a little difficulty navigating- never mind.

    ReplyDelete