The struggle against capitalism is the struggle for the consciousness of the working class

Over half the world's industrial workers are women. Sept 2016, 150 to 180 million strike in India against anti-labor laws.

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The struggle to end capitalism, the struggle for the international socialist revolution, is the struggle for the consciousness of the working class. The capitalist class knows this. They use all their resources, their propaganda outlets, their education system, their religious organizations, their health care and social systems and when these fail, their military means and violence to "educate" the working class. The essence of the "lesson" they wish to teach is simple: Capitalism is the best system that is available, there is no alternative to the rule of the capitalist class, no alternative to capitalism, the working class cannot build an alternative, so knuckle down, keep your mouths shut and accept capitalism. This is their message. The recent media assault on the US sports figure Colin Kaepernick is part of this coercion. It is a brutal hopeless message. 

Socialist revolutionaries and the working class must conduct a struggle against this message, must conduct a struggle for the consciousness of the working class. Our message is as simple as that of the capitalist class, however it is diametrically opposed in its content. Our message is this: Capitalism is a social system in decay. It cannot develop human society only destroy it.  It is hurtling life on Earth as we know it to oblivion, not in centuries ahead but in the decades ahead. More than anything else capitalism must be overthrown.

But this is not our only message. We explain that there is an alternative. This alternative is the power of the working class and international democratic socialism.  Based on this we can build a democratic sustainable plan of production, distribution and exchange --------- a sustainable democratic socialist society. The working class is the progressive force in society, it is the force that can end capitalism and create this new world.  The working class is the only force that can provide a future for life on earth. 

In our struggle for the conscious of the working class we must deal with the present nature of the working class. The majority of the international working class is not organized but 200 million are in unions. Despite this being a fraction of the working class, this is still a huge force. Billions more are working together in huge factories, huge industrial and retail and agricultural workplaces. Think about the development of production in countries like China and in area after area of the world in the past period.

The working class has the potential power to end capitalism and build a democratic socialist society. However, it has not done so for one simple reason; its leadership. The working class is like a huge chisel. It has power and weight and heft. But it is blunt. It has no cutting edge. Its leadership is wedded to capitalism, supports capitalism and represses any forces within its own ranks that seek to fight capitalism. So in the struggle for the consciousness of the working class we cannot avoid the struggle against the false policies of its leadership, cannot avoid the struggle to build a new mass international leadership of the working class of tens and hundred of millions.. 

This struggle for the consciousness of the working class has reached a new stage in the last four to five decades with the development of new technology, the Internet and social media. Forty years ago when I was first introduced to revolutionary ideas I could sell maybe 40 papers a month, now still a revolutionary, I can reach thousands of people, or hundreds of thousands of people in a day. The world has changed. The capitalist class has noticed. They need this new technology, they need the Internet, but they are terrified that it will be used against them.

For those of us that are in the struggle against capitalism and in the ideological war with them for the consciousness of the working class, we must make their fears real. We must take them on in the cyber class war they have launched against the working class, the best known victims of which are Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and Wikileaks, and Edward Snowden and the many others who have been hounded to suicide or driven underground.

We have to take capitalism on in this cyber class war. We have recommended many times that our readers read Julian Assange’s book, “When Google Met Wikileaks”, an account and transcripts of a meeting Assange had with Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Its strength is that Assange, Wikileaks and many of those cyber dissenters recognize this new situation. Their weakness is they do not see the working class as the force for change, as the only force in society that can overthrow capitalism. This is understandable that here in the US in particular, the mass of the working class has not risen to its feet collectively, has not entered the war consciously as a class. 

Socialists and the working class in general must help these potential allies understand this special role workers can play as we actively defend them against the offensive they are facing from the bosses.

It is only a few decades ago that the Internet was set up. Today 40% of the world's population is connected. Two decades ago FaceBook was set up, today 1.7 billion are connected. There never was anything like this before. If the working class and revolutionaries do not see the importance of this front in the class war they will go down to a crushing defeat. To see the importance the top layers of the capitalist class give to this front see books like “When Google met Wikileaks.” See how the US Military Industrial Complex and the major corporations like Google are working together to try and prevent this new technology from being used to increase the consciousness of the working class and to organize the working class against capitalism. 

The organizers of this Blog are trying to do our part in this battle. Our Blog was started and mostly run by a couple of former blue-collar workers with no high tech experience. Yet in spite of this it has been, and is a spectacular success. In the early days of this month of August we passed our 1 million page view mark. Our blog is doing its part in the struggle against capitalism for the consciousness of the working class. But, and this is where we come to our request, we need help. To repeat: We need help. We need help in terms of high tech and computer and Internet skills to help us get our message out more widely. We need people to help us, human labor to help us. We need financial assistance to help us promote our Blog and its articles and also to pay for more of us to get training in the high tech and computer and Internet skills. 

So in the interest of the fight for the consciousness of the working class, in the interest of defeating capitalism in its struggle to dominate the consciousness of the working class, we ask our readers to hit the Donate button and send us a donation. We have received a $1,000 and a $250 donation in the past. We have also received other smaller donations. We would particularly like to receive regular donations so we could plan our budget better. We spend what funds we get in promoting our articles, in purchasing equipment for our Blog work, video equipment etc, and we hope to pay for some our most active and less skilled people to receive training so we can have more help.  

The other area in which we wish to receive help is in writing for our Blog. If you have an experience, an opinion, if you have a thought that you wish to share, if you have an idea that you think is important to our struggle to defeat capitalism's attempt to dominate the consciousness of the working class, please send us an article. Please do not think that we see our Blog as some dry composition of articles only on economics and politics and the rotten nature of capitalism. We are seeking to make our Blog more alive and diverse.  To coin a phrase from Marx,  “nothing human is alien” to our blog. I would go further; nothing that relates to our world and planet in this time of the decaying, rotting mass we call capitalism, is alien to our Blog.

I would further add that nothing that is beautiful, nothing that brings a smile to your face, or a laugh to your heart is alien to our blog. If you wept at a beautiful work of art or movie or broke in to laughter watching a squirrel throw a nut at your dog to provoke it, or were amazed the last time you read for the umpteenth time a line from a great poem, share it with our blog.  Look into your own experience and write for our Blog, help us make our Blog diverse and celebrate all the beauty and wonder of life.  

So please if you have not been reading our Blog regularly scroll back and see the very good material we have been publishing and the determined fight we have been putting up against capitalism and its attempt to dominate the consciousness of the working class and make our class hopeless and inert. And help us in this struggle. Help us by writing for our Blog, by sharing our Blog and bringing it to a wider audience and the rest of the working class, by donating to our Blog fund and doing so on a regular basis if at all possible. We can play our part in the cyber class war, defeat capitalism's attempt to dominate the consciousness of the working class and instead liberate that consciousness and at the same time help build a mass international democratic socialist international movement of the working class.

Click on our Donate button on our Blog page and make your donation. If possible commit yourself to a regular domination so we can plan our work, and make investments to take that work forward. 

Sean O’Torain