6. Marx on Class Consciousness and Organization

Draper notes the “Hegelian phraseology” and focuses on numerous issues of organisation in his study.

There are some difficult and mysterious issues in neuro-philosophy lurking behind the problems here. The problem of understanding what consciousness is has come to be called the “hard problem” with a mountain of books and a play by Tom Stoppard about it. The discussion here will stick to the sorts of things that Marx must have been thinking about.

This is to ignore here the distinction between the interests of the class member, for example, the proletarian, and of the class itself, for example, the proletariat. Higher wages are an interest of the proletarian, while membership and solidarity are interests of the proletariat.

It has simply been overlooked that the notion, which has been so widely attributed to Marx, was never mentioned by him. In the very early work, there is some mention of consciousness, especially in writings with Engels. In 1844, Marx wrote of the Silesian “consciousness of the nature of the proletariat” (MECW 3, p. 201) and even in later works, for example, about proletarian “consciousness of their historic mission” (MECW 22, p. 335), but there was always much more about organisations and their importance. Engels gave more prominence to consciousness, beginning with his reference in 1845 of the working class in England having “clearer … proletarian consciousness.” In the English version of Capital, there is an appearance of the term “class consciousness,” which is a misleading translation of Selbstgefühl. Marx was speaking of the hard times in which the workers individually had sufficient self-regard that they would rather starve than go to the poorhouse. This is individual self-respect (also a relevant factor) rather than consciousness of class position.

This mistake is criticized by Cohen (2001, pp. 73–77).

In Engels’ early Principles of Communism which played an important role in the composition of The Communist Manifesto, he wrote that “this throwing together of great masses in one place … makes the proletarians conscious of their power” (MECW 6, p. 346; but only of power). Engels wrote that from the English working class’ “consciousness of oppression” “proceeded the Trades Unions, Chartism, and Socialism” (MECW 4, p. 418). Even when Engels wrote about revolution and consciousness at the very end of his life (1895), he was writing about “a complete transformation of the social organisation [involving] the masses themselves” (MECW 50, p. 520).

In speaking of the importance of the organisation of workers, Marx was not concerned merely with getting the right structure for a single workers’ organisation. He was concerned with expanded militant participation, the development of workers’ movements, improved coordination of political activities, strengthening of parties supporting and acting on behalf of workers, and cooperation between parties.

As Hal Draper has argued, “Marx was the first leading figure in socialism to adopt a position of support to trade unions and trade unionism, in principle” (Draper 1978, p. 81, with interesting discussion following).

Interesting attention has been given to this issue by Michael Levin (1980).