A confused state of consciousness

It sometimes feel that decades go by in a year and other times time moves so slowly along and nothing seems to be changing at all.

Well today we are in a period of time where things are changing very quickly indeed. Almost by the day as the governor of the bank of England recently has come our and said. When asked well what’s going to happen next year to the economy he replied I’m not sure what will happen tomorrow let alone next year.

So since the global economic collapse in 2008 ordinary working people can find themselves with all sorts of odd conclusions and ideas where the is a lack of a mass works party as we find ourselves in that situation today.

For a example of this I was in my local pub the other night just casually chatting about politics and the current state of things with Greece and tee economy etc when this guy said to me well I consider myself a Tory always voted for them and feel that it was all labours fault. Maybe labour played their part but they stepped in to save the banks where we were hours away from not being able to use the banking machines and funds drying up. I pointed out they had to do this but should have gone further in fully nationalising the banks under democratic workers control using the banks funds for peoples needs not to save capitalism. But this guy went on although I’m a Tory he claims anyway I don’t agree with all this bonus’s these bankers are still getting it’s a disgrace and should be stopped. So this sort of contradictory idea of apparently being a Tory which in all honesty I’m not sure he was he has probably just been brought up to save and look out for himself which there is some good in that of course but a Tory I think not. By examining the fact that the bankers have run a mock on our economy he points out that even ordinary working class people who you may think don’t get what is going on in the wider picture do get things to a degree. But currently are drawing some wrong conclusions and are perhaps a bit naive in their thinking of how to solve the crisis.

I just find it interesting how consciousness changes and shifts on major shifts in society. As Lenin quite rightly points out consciousness always lags behind reality and this is no different today we are 4 years into the biggest economic crisis in capitalism for a very long time and workers are only now just starting to wake up to the pure class war which is going on in front of our eyes. Workers are starting to rub sleep out of their eyes and look for answers. Unfortunately those answers are possibly not the correct ones at this moment in time but they will learn through experience no doubt.

I can see a situation where when workers or more advanced layers of workers finally realise they have been lead a merry dance for so long that class anger can spill out at a fast rate in unpredictable ways.

Class consciousness is something we as Marxists study constantly looking to see where that build up of pressure is and how it is developing and where that sparks may come where the term the straw that broke the camels back comes into play. There is a build up of anger and frustration by people out there but unfortunately thus far it has only really been shown in the riots of last August which sadly if no proper fight back is forthcoming from the labour movement and the trades unions I could see reoccurring if nothing is offered as an alternative.

I sincerely hope it doesn’t but that lack of an alternative being posed apart from permanent austerity will force people to the conclusions we may not always wish for.

It is important that we as socialists and those who consider themselves Marxists to offer that alternative and bridge that gap in consciousness by raising the ideas and the political understanding with our own ranks but eventually the wider class if we can. It is a hard uphill task but a task we must take up none the less.