TheOldGreyWhistle wrote:To

[DJP]

TheOldGreyWhistle wrote:

To say socialist consiousness arises out class struggle is execatly what the materialist conception of history tells us. To say that the job of the SPGB is to teach workers about socialism is to make us look elitist and idealist. How did we become socialist if not from the material conditions of capitalism.

Well, it’s not quite as simple as this. Consciousness arises out of material conditions. The material condition of class society is the class struggle. So ALL forms of consciousness in a capitalist society arise from it’s antagonistic conditions, so we have contradictory forms of consciousness; fascism, reformist, socialist, religious….In other words socialist consciousness does arise out of the class struggle, but so does fascism (including it’s ‘communist’ variants)By education we should mean spreading our positions as widely and as clearly and accessibly as possible. But it is only because of the material conditions that we have these ideas in the first place. And it is only because of these conditions that other people will relate to them. Ideas do not magically appear out of the sky (or the socialist standard or Das Kapital).Here’s a little formulation for you:1. Treat concepts as coming from a historically specific mode of life2. Treat individuals as coming from a historically specific mode of life3. Treat a mode of life as a totality of internal relations.4. Changes in a mode of life are the result of the interplay of those internal relations.