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“There is a contradiction between the workers’ being and the workers’ consciousness. It would be quite remarkable if that were not so in a capitalist society. If that was there the matter rested, with the control by the ruling class of all the significant means of education and communication, then this who discussion would be meaningless because it wouldn’t matter in the slightest what workers thought. But the domination over the production of ideas is never enough for those who rule, because the reality of workers’ lives is in contradiction to the ideas that dominate the society. It is the contradiction between being and consciousness which produces change. The hostile and alienating nature of work in this society (in addition to all the institutions inside and outside the factory designed to sustain the discipline of work) forces workers to resist their daily reality, individually and collectively. The response to that resistance tends to expose the mythology of freedom and equality and continually transforms the consciousness of workers. This is especially true of workers who have not yet been socialized into the accepted and institutionalized forms of resistance, such as the union grievance procedure, government boards, and so on. It is likely that those sections of the working class who were relatively new to the factories.....were least likely to accept the discipline of factory work and the discipline of the union. .....There is a continually developing contradiction between being and consciousness. They act upon each other. ...activity continually emerges to assert itself as the overriding element in that combination.” P 1245-126. |