Raising class consciousness

Your mistake is to think that the SPGB is a vangardist party. In fact we would agree with Rosa Luxemburg, and are against Lenin.How to propagate socialist ideas? I don't think there is one best answer or magic bullett.

The SPGB isn't really "Luxemburgist" either, but certainly closer to Luxemburg than Lenin.But yes, that's not what you were asking.I think we have to utilize every method we can, and also look into the psychology of how people make and change beliefs, I think this aspect has not adequately been thought about in the past.What do you think?

Finding the appropriate formula for inspiring and insitgating social revolution is, of course, the Holy Grail for all socialists and through history various strategies, as you say, Cyber, has been tried and found to be wanting. The old slogan is the only one we have to go by, "educate, organise and agitate".Presently, the Party is having to re-evaluate how we go about this in practical terms since it is clear that we (and our left-wing rivals) are not being successful. Capitalist ideas of nationalism and faith in reformist politics are still prevailing and it isn't just a temporary fad as with Brexit or Trump but a long-standing obstacle to the advancement of socialism.But saying that, there has been many socetial developments that have grown successful and assists us. Sexism, homophobia, and even racism, although not disappeared, has very much diminished in their influences. In our own lifetimes, we have witnessed the changes in attitudes grow more and more inclusive. Even religion despite the apparent resurgence of militant islam has less power and many churches scramble to re-define themselves to maintain popularity.I have not found anyone who disagrees with our goal but have met many who doubt it can be achieved by the means and methods we advocate. Our task is to instil a confidence and hope within our fellow worker that the status quo cn be overthrown without detrimental effects upon them, themselves, since events in history seems to indicate that revolution always has a neagative downside.One thing is very obvious, we need new members, so if you do agree with our principles, cheering us on from the sidelines is not sufficient. We need you as part of the team.

Here are some quotes that maybe food for thought“A period of revolution begins not because life has become physically impossible but because growing numbers of workers have their eyes suddenly opened to the fact that problems hitherto accepted as part of man’s unavoidable heritage has become capable of solution…No crisis of capitalism, however desperate it may be, can ever by itself give us socialism ” – Will Capitalism Collapse? “If we hoped to achieve Socialism ONLY by our propaganda, the outlook would indeed be bad. But it is Capitalism itself unable to solve crises, unemployment , and poverty, engaging in horrifying wars , which is digging its own grave. Workers are learning by bitter experience and bloody sacrifice for interests not their own. They are learning slowly. Our job is to shorten the time , to speed up the process” – Socialism or Chaos We can quote from Paul Mattick with his understanding to his own political experiences:“There is no evidence that the last hundred years of labour strife have led to the revolutionizing of the working class in the sense of a growing willingness to do away with the capitalist system…In times of depression no less in than these of prosperity, the continuing confrontations of labor and capital have led not to an political radicalization of the working class, but to an intensified insistence upon better accommodations within the capitalist system…No matter how much he [the worker] may emancipate himself ideologically, for all practical purposes he must proceed as if he were still under the sway of bourgeois ideology. He may realize that his individual needs can only be assured by collective class actions, but he will still be forced to attend to his immediate needs as an individual. It is this situation, rather than some conditioned inability to transcend capitalism. He may realize that his individual needs can only be assured by collective class actions, but he will still be forced to attend to his immediate needs as an individual. It is this situation , rather than some conditioned inability to transcend capitalist ideology, that makes the workers reluctant to express and to act upon their anti- capitalist attitudes…” – Marxism, Last Refuge of the Bourgeoisie Also from Sidney Hook in his From Hegel to Marx who said“…the struggle to achieve institutional change produces changes in those who participate in the struggles. The Praxis of trying to bring about a new order, no abstract doctrine, educates the workers …Marx‘s great insights that human beings cannot change the world without changing themselves, and that social struggles, under certain conditions, are the best school for acquiring an education in social realities are not isolated thoughts but organically connected with his materialistic theory of history .… The class struggle is not a doctrine, but the school in which doctrines arise are tested and used or discarded. The working class not only becomes conscious of itself in these struggles, but it changes and re-educates itself by its revolutionary practice"  Another insightful comment upon the non-commital and non-involvement of many workers in creating socialism comes from Hegel in his Philosophy of the Mind:“If, therefore man does not want to perish he must recognise the world as a self-dependent world which in its essential nature is already complete, must accept the conditions set for him by the world and wrest from it what he wants for himself. As a rule, the man believes that this submission is only forced on him by necessity. But ,in truth , this unity with the world must be recognised, not as a relation imposed by necessity , but as the rational …therefore the man behaves quite rationally in abandoning his plan for completely transforming the world and in striving to realise his personal aims, passions and interests only within the framework of the world in which he is a part”  Anton Pannekoek describes in The Workers Council that“[class consciousness] is not learned from books or through courses on theory and political formation, but through real life practice of the class struggle”  While Wilhelm Reich in Sex-Pol describes class consciousness ande explains:“Everything that contradicts the bourgeois order, everything that contains a germ of rebellion, can be regarded as an element of class – consciousness; everything that creates or maintains a bond with the bourgeois order, that supports and reinforces it, is an impediment to class consciousness”and again“Against the principle of self-denial preached by political reaction, we must set the principle of happiness and abundance …Any socialist political economist can prove that sufficient wealth exists in the world to provide a happy life for all workers .But we must prove this more thoroughly, more consistently, in greater detail than we generally do”and again“Question: If two human beings, A and B, are starving, one of them may accept his fate, refuse to steal, and take to begging or die from hunger, while the other may take the law into his own hands in order to obtain food. A large part of the proletariat, often called the lumpenproletariat, live according to the principles of B .Which of the two types has more elements of class consciousness in him ? Stealing is not yet a sign of class consciousness but a brief moment of reflection shows , despite our inner moral resistance, that the man who refuses to submit to law and steals when he is hungry, that’s to say, the man who manifests a will to live, has more energy and fight in him than the one who lies down unprotesting on the butchers slab …we have said that stealing is not yet class consciousness. A brick is not yet a house , but you use bricks to build a house” Finally, we have from Murray Bookchin's contribution in his article Listen Marxist “ The Marxian doctrinaire would have us approach the worker, better still – enter the factory – and proselytize him in preference to anyone else. The purpose ? to make the worker class conscious. In the end , the worker is shrewd enough to know that he can get better results in the day-to-day class struggle through his union bureaucracy than through a Marxian party bureaucracy …the worker becomes revolutionary not by becoming more of a worker but by undoing his ‘workerness‘. His ‘workerness’ is the disease he is suffering from, the worker begins to become revolutionary when he undoes his ‘workerness' , when he begins to shed exactly those features Marxists most prize him – his work ethic, his character-structure derived from industrial discipline, his respect for hierarchy, his obedience to leaders, his consumerism, his vestiges of Puritanism. In this sense, the worker becomes a revolutionary to the degree that he sheds his class status and achieves an un-class- consciousness. He degenerates and he degenerates magnificently. What he is shedding are precisely those class shackles that bind him to all systems of domination. He abandons those class interests that enslaves him to consumerism , suburbia and a book-keeping conception of life” So, Cyber, we hold only generalisations  but possess a political approach that when exercised will not be counter-productive or have a negative effect. One of the great principles of the SPGB is our opposition to leadership, so whatever weaknesses or mistaken views we hold or  accused of, they cannot be imposed upon others with possibly even worse consequences. The validity of the SPGB's ideas will either be accepted or rejected by discussion and debate, plus by actual concrete developments on the ground. The SPGB are not going to become entryists or a vanguard who proclaim that we are possessors of the Holy Grail, that all must follow.Anyways, your question is a question the Party has always consideredhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/jackson-ta/articles/1906/07/class_conciousness.htm

We have.'Free Access to all goods and services, no wages needed'or'Common ownership of the earth's resources and democratic control of the production of goods and services'

And it is not based on political promises. It is something that mankind can achieve struggling for its own liberation, and we do not need leaders, and chieftans to do that. Workers do not need the rich peoples, or our own exploiters, or to become their tailgater  in order to liberate themselves. How workers are expecting that their own exploiters are going to liberate them ? We have been so fucked up by the bourgoise ideology that millions of workers are supporting their own rulers and masters