Saturday, June 6, 2009

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proletariat since 1945, and why after fifty years of pro-
revolutionaries 'speaking the workers' language' this drift has not
been reversed. They have been busily dropping pebbles in the jar
but the level of the water has not risen. Why has the pro-
revolutionary movement had no success in conveying its
message? Why has the working class not listened to its
educators?

Consciousness is a political category. A world-wide or even
national conscious proletarian identity would involve a high degree
of organization, which is another word for consciousness. There is
no objectivity existing, separate sphere of revolutionary
consciousness and certainly none that is owned by a particular
section of humanity; the working class especially do not own
consciousness, they do not own anything (except their
playstations). So, if revolutionary consciousness does not exist
objectively, that is, as an immediate determination of the material
base, then organizations must bring it into the world. Organization
carries consciousness into the world; as consciousness is not
present 'naturally' it must be transmitted by and organizing agency,
but which organization?

It is the pro-revolutionaries themselves who contribute
consciousness to the revolution, but unless we understand pro-
revolutionaries as being an objective expression of the negation of
capitalist society then we are bound to see both their antagonism
to all aspects of the existing order (and not just to some political
issues) and their role of transmitting to the working class values
that transcend existing conditions, as being more than a little
subjective and therefore fallible. Most pro-revolutionary groups
view themselves as being objectively constituted by the need of
society to overthrow capital and therefore they see themselves as
qualified to prescribe values and strategies to the proletariat. We
completely refute this assumption; all pro-revolutionary groups are
subjective bodies, created by the subjective will of their
participants, their perspective therefore never escapes their
subjectivity (if this were not so, then there world not be many small
pro-revolutionary groups competing against each other, but only
one organization. Of course, most pre-consciousness
organizations have a tendency to see themselves as the one true
faith, and on this basis launch their critiques of each other). Pro-

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