ABSTRACT

The failure of the US working class to develop a distinctive proletarian political position is often attributed to false consciousness. This usually means that workers identify their interests with those of corporate owners and implies that a true consciousness would oppose these on the basis of antagonistic class relations. The fear which the united industrial union movement inspired in capitalists in the 1940s provoked two major corporate maneouvers in that period which persist into the 1980s. The first was to brand all politically active trade union leaders as Communists and thus to isolate them from the main body of organized labor. The second was to expand production in the South during the 1950s and 1970s and then, in the 1970s, to move overseas into countries with low wage policies where trade unions were banned.