Hidden Levels of Class Consciousness: Canadian Trends


D.W. Livingstone, OISE, University of Toronto

Left intellectuals and activists often presume that transformation from capitalism requires that they instill revolutionary class consciousness in rank-and-file workers duped by dominant class ideologies. The presumption is dead wrong. Rare grassroots surveys show that many rank-and-file workers hold hopeful anti-capitalist future visions. The challenge is not instilling these visions but mobilizing them. This paper registers the relative absence of class analysis based on paid work relations since the 1980s, in conjunction with the neo-liberal offensive weakening organized labour as well as more obvious and extraordinary increases in labour force participation by visible minorities and women with children. The re-composition of the tripartite class structure of paid employment in Canada during this period is documented, including the rise of non-managerial professional employees. Levels of class consciousness are distinguished in terms of different class identities, opposed class interests and visions of the future. Many non-managerial workers are found to have a pragmatic or contradictory mixture of hopes and fears; but many more clearly desire transformation to a sustainable non-profit worker-managed economy than defend an obsessive profit-driven capitalism with managerial prerogative. Revolutionary labour consciousness is found to be much more widespread than hegemonic capitalist consciousness. Links between class position, class consciousness and the key policy issues of global warming and poverty reduction are explored, as well as their mediation by race and gender factors. Empirical analysis is based primarily on re-analysis of Clement and Myles 1982 Canadian Class Structure survey and on my national surveys of 1998, 2004, 2010 and 2016 (see: https://borealisdata.ca/dataverse/CanadaWorkLearningSurveys1998-2016 [1]). Further inquiries and mobilizing use of these findings are encouraged. The paper is grounded in and developed from Marx’s theory of class relations. The method of inquiry relies mainly on representative national surveys of the Canadian labour force. The reported research was undertaken with the explicit intent of bringing class-based paid work relations back into analysis of ecological/ economic/ political crises.

This paper will be presented at the following session: