Has anyone ever thought the problem with workers is the fact that they are workers, and being such, have the individual and social ethics of a worker? Meaning, in identifying as hard-working, reliable, clever, etc., do workers (employees) have a very strong tendency to disdain those that are not, or whom they perceive are not? Possibly even, work itself, which leads, even generationally, to identifying as ‘hard-working’  leads to not having much of a social conscience with fellow workers at all, especially those that are less successful, such as the frequently unemployed.

Is individualism itself bound up in the identity of the “worker”? Perhaps the belief and practice of self-reliance have a flip side that causes us to not be concerned with those outside ourselves. Or to constantly make the excuse that ‘why can’t they be successful as I have?’, completely ignoring all systematic and historical causation.

In Marxism, “man” (human beings) is Homo Fabor, or “Man the Maker”. Marx’s characterization of humankind is in the most creative as well as productive sense–he doesn’t mean that human beings are born drudges, as some his detractors and even practitioners and disciples say.  To Marx, as well as factually, human beings produce socially and culturally, both the former and the latter being brought to us by history, or earlier generations. For Marxism, it is inevitable that the working classes in capitalism, the Proletariat, would become conscious of their overwhelming political, social, and technical power over all the machinery of their civilization. Their oppression under capitalism (as in all previous class-bound socioeconomic systems) would nonetheless make them experts at doing the ‘real work’ of production and finally shrug off the Bourgeois profiteers of the system.  Identity, both individual and collectively lead to class consciousness on the part of the working classes and the realization of their power. This is only the very simplified version but it will suffice to help make the proposition in this post.

But what if individual, expertise, pride in work, etc. among workers leads not to identifying socially with other workers in a class consciousness but to more individualist consciousness. Productivity and expertise themselves might lead to this and not to class consciousness.