Class Consciousness starts at the workplace

As Communists the question of building class consciousness is an important one. If we truly want to fight capitalism, if we truly want to build a mass movement, we need to meet people where they are at, and train ourselves to think collectively, but how do we do that?

The answer that is commonly spread about is “talk to people about the ills of capitalism”, which to be fair, isn’t bad advice, but quickly you find yourself surrounded by people who think relatively like-minded maybe not outright marxist or anarchist but at the very least critical of capitalism, still not much has changed. maybe you share with resources with your friends, but there’s one thing that just isn’t really happening on a large or small scale. Fighting power.

Most of the left will find themselves try solve this issue by joining an organisation or other that will actually do things, but unless you have a well established network of political radicals, those organisations will be cliques that achieve some minor victories but by and large, you will be amongst fringe radicals, and the organisation is unlikely to grow very massively towards people who aren’t already radicals.

I’m a firm believer of “you have to meet the people where they are at”. People aren’t magically going to become marxists. They have their own issues, struggles and their own ideas of how to fix those issues. Many also don’t have any time outside of working, spending time with family, and other obligations they may have so that doesn’t leave a whole lot of time to theorise about our current economic system.

This is why there is no better place to build class consciousness than the workplace. Everybody is there, no special arrangements need to be made, just start chatting with your coworkers during your breaks. Not about the larger economic system, not about hypothetical harm to a person you don’t know. Concrete. Actual. Experienced. Issues.

Your boss has been abusing his power? A restructure on the horizon? increased workload? unpaid overtime? These are all common issues you can start building class consciousness about. Even the most conservative of colleagues will share in these issues and slowly yet surely you can build solidarity, help each other out, build communality, join a union and build collective power.

Unions are the backbone of any political movement. The support of unions can make or break your fight against power, and unions are built by talking to your colleagues. Most importantly, they can teach you to think collectively, by trying to find causes to rally your coworkers around (they can be as silly as “fix the coffee machine” and as serious as “start paying us for overtime”). Once you have won your first collective victory you can go on to the next one and the next one and soon you have become a snowball of collective action that becomes stronger with every victory. That perpetual feedback loop teaches everybody that collectively we can achieve anything, and it’s that kind of optimism that will eventually get people out on the streets, get people to call a general strike, create targeted boycotts and make people believe that as long as we’ve got each other’s backs there is nothing the capitalists can do to break us. THAT is class consciousness at its finest. I’m not saying it’s easy to unionise your workplace, or that other attempts of building class consciousness are futile. But building class consciousness in an environment where you have the same issues and the same structures oppressing you and your comrades it is going to be 100x easier