Exercise 11: What is Class Consciousness 


Who is this exercise for?

This exercise is best for organisations who are trying to develop their theory and practice together, where amongst the group there is a rough knowledge of on the ground politics in at least three countries, and where everyone in the group feels somewhat confident engaging in some level of theoretical/political reflection: it’s not a situation where there will just be a few people contributing and other people feeling lost. Read the exercise and make the judgement about whether this would be good for your group. 

What problems is this exercise trying to address?

People talk a lot about consciousness or class consciousness as an important factor in furthering the aims of an organisation or movement. As James Yaki Sayles notes:

“… Making history requires the making of informed choices, and the making of decisions to act in one way and not another. Choices must be made on a particular interpretation of reality. Read Wretched carefully, and you’ll see that Fanon talks much less about the use of arms than he does about the need for the people to develop their consciousness, and learn to lead themselves ...”

It can be useful to know how different people within an organisation understand consciousness. For CCTE, consciousness is never about knowing certain facts but about being able to do certain things. We also believe that consciousness is formed through the process of struggle, and everyone’s consciousness is ‘incomplete’ relative to the level of struggle their society is at. As soon as their consciousness develops, they will be able to change their material conditions in a way that requires a new consciousness. 

This exercise isn’t about coming up with one answer or one definition as an organisation. Its aim is to bring out peoples’ existing ideas, and showing what still needs to be learned. This exercise also tries to understand what kind of consciousness different people in the group think is necessary for which moments in the revolutionary development of a society. We find that there is often a problem of assuming one general level of consciousness that all people need in order for revolutionary activity to take place. We think that instead it is more realistic to work in a situation where there are varying levels of consciousness amongst different people and at various stages of struggle. We are concerned with this question on a very practical level. 

Techniques Deployed

Writing Instead of Talking 
Simultaneous Work

Materials

Three sheets of A3 paper, or 4 sheets of A4 taped together 
Pens or pencils 

Participant Numbers

At least 3. The more participants, the larger the paper. 

How Long Does it Take?

At least 40 minutes, if all materials prepped beforehand. Longer if your group needs to discuss the results for longer (the discussion could be postponed to a later meeting). 

Instructions

Step 1: Take three different situations of struggle. For example, you might pick Britain, Burkina Faso, and Cuba. Or make it more relevant to your own context, but make sure there are some clear differences between the places, for example in the type of economy the country has, the type of political activity, or the character of its socialist tradition. 

Explain to the group that you are all going to examine these situations and try to work out what kind of consciousness is appropriate or desirable in each case. Explain that consciousness is not like a high striker where you’re trying to hit the bell. Instead, consciousness is always being developed and changed as the organisation and the struggle learns, and each time one thing is understood, and the people change the conditions that they are in using that understanding, new conditions present themselves. 
Image of a ‘high striker’.


Step 2: Draw the outline of 3 big brains on three sheets of paper, and write the name of the place you are considering above each of the brains. 

Each of the brains should be divided into four quadrants with a wiggly line, and each quadrant titled  Marxist Political Economy, Historical Materialism, Communist Morality, and Organisation. Write somewhere roughly what these mean: 

  1. Marxist political economy are things in the category of ‘I am aware that one class produces everything’ 
  2. Historical materialism is things similar to ‘I know about various historical examples of class struggle’
  3. Communist Morality means things like working on individualism as a group or a person, ie consciousness of Guevarist principles of transformation and struggle 
  4. Organisation means things like people having opinions about the appropriate formation of the party, how struggle should take place, and so on. 

It’s important to note here, that when CCTE does exercises like this, we are not trying to say that everything fits neatly into these categories. Our aim here, and we would be disappointed if it didn’t happen, is people saying ‘I’m not sure if my thing fits into 3 or 4’, or two people writing the same thing in 2 and in 1 and then noticing that, or someone saying ‘one of my things doesn't go into any of these categories, or goes into all of these categories’. This is literally what the exercise is trying to do, is open up these conversations, through the act of a kind of rough sorting. The exercise should be engaged with as such, and everyone should be made aware of this. What you don’t want is for people to boycott the exercise through either a sense of intellectual superiority, or through a suspicion that their ideas are being put through a machine that’s intended to produce only one kind of substance, kind of like how some old pots make everything taste the same. 

Step 3: [7 mins]

Now everyone should write in the quadrants, writing things as specifically as possible that they would put under these categories - these should be things that you might count as being ‘organisational consciousness’ or ‘consciousness of marxist political economy’ in these countries. What kinds of things might people say or understand if they have a level of consciousness that is conducive to revolutionary activity? The most lauded level of specificity is the level of making up a phrase from an actual conversation. The things will range from the very basic (‘If we stop work at the factory, they won’t be making any profit’) to the very complex (‘We should be practicing criticism and self criticism every week according to the practice of Ho Chi Minh’) if you believe those complex things might be things that many people do or could conceivably have a consciousness of.



Step 4: [7 mins] 

Now you will ask everyone to look at what’s on the brains. Ask everyone to go around marking up the different statements according to the following, using their respective numbers.

A: This is a foundational thing that everybody in the society must learn as soon as possible. 

B: It is absolutely necessary that everyone in a mass organisation have this level of consciousness. 

C: It is fine if there is a revolution and most people don’t have this level of consciousness, but all the revolutionaries must.

D: This takes a long time to build a full understanding of and we should have low expectations for this level of consciousness. 



Step 5: [7 mins] 

Discuss the results. Where is there unanimity? Where are there clean splits? Where are there minority views? Write under each brain what the group has learned with respect to each stage of the revolution.  

Remember that the things which are important to learn about post-revolutionary consciousness are very different to the things which are important to learn about pre- or mid-revolutionary consciousness. They might be things which simply help us adjust or correct our priorities in our own situations, for instance.