Question of the week: How have changes in capitalist production shifted the composition and organization of the workforce, and the working class as a whole? What have trends like automation, uberization, and online collaboration meant for the participation and status of women in the workforce? Of youth?
Building working-class consciousness in my area is difficult for several reasons:
1. Their incomes allow them to drive big trucks and keep the gas tanks filled;
2. They Believe that the enemy are immigrants who will steal their well paying construction jobs;
3. Their xenophobia, racism and nationalism informs their sense of class unity. Theirs is unity against the immigrant and minorities, not unity against the real robber barons of society, the owners of production, the orporations, the billionaires, and their lobbyists who inform public policy.
Solution: Point to their true enemies.
Bumper stickers attacking Corporate Greed, showing that our energy policies result in destruction of the environment, their personal health and not producing the jobs they covet.
Illuminate the facts about the Big Pharma.
Illuminate the facts about who really benefits from Capitalism.
Teach them to look up at the real power – instead of looking down at scapegoats.