Awakening the Class: People Power & Class Consciousness
The Louisville Workers Brigade
6/1/2025
What is power? Power is the ability to shape the world around us, to make decisions that affect the lives of others, including our own. Power gives agency, allowing an individual or group to determine their own path and to feel safe while doing so. However, historically, this power has been reserved for the ruling class of each society, with them representing the pinnacle of power, and for good reason. The ruling classes' total dominion over the means of production—the lifeblood of human civilization—gives them the power to force others to work for them and their interests, turning the great swathe of the human population into worker drones, serving their masters without question. With this, the ruling class can sculpt the political, economic, and cultural aspects of civilization, allowing them near-unfettered power to shape the lives of millions of people and the natural world.
However, this unequal distribution of power isn’t without consequence. While the ruling class is the dominant social grouping of any given society, their grip on power isn’t truly secured. Throughout history, the wanton exploitation and oppression the ruling classes have wrought upon the masses give rise to resentment—a subterranean fire that burns, growing larger and more destructive, until eventually, it erupts from the ground, burning away the old systems of rule in a revolution that sets out to create a new society built on entirely new social dynamics. This is the story of class struggle, and time and time again, the ruling classes are overthrown by the exploited and oppressed class, who build a new system.
Under our present economic, many call upon the subterranean fire of the working class to struggle for a new world, to reclaim or stake out power for working and oppressed people from the “elites,” to have the interests and demands of working and oppressed people finally given the attention, care, and importance they are due—this is the essence of “People Power,” and to ensure that People Power is at its most effective, its most potent, it must be combined with class consciousness.
People Power, in essence, is the modern form of populism. People Power frames society between two abstract, semi-defined groups: “The People” and “The Elites”. “The People” represents the traditional urban and rural working class, who slave away day in and day out for pennies on the dollar while also suffering from various forms of exploitation, oppression, and brutalization. However, depending on who you ask, “The People” could also include landlords, small-time business owners, cops, and many more whose interests do not align with the working class. On the other side, you have “The Elites,” who are the corporate and political forces that run this country at the expense of the many, with their political leanings dependent on who you ask. To combat “The Elites,” People Power advocates call for grassroots mobilization, focused on mass participation and non-violence, especially during the Trump presidencies, that leads to acts of civil resistance of all stripes—strikes, boycotts, rallies, etc., etc.
At the heart of People Power, as with traditional populism, there is an infantile understanding that our world and our ways of life are dictated by uber-wealthy figures who are keen to keep the common man down to sustain their extravagant lifestyle. Though it expresses an infantile understanding of class dynamics, the political framing of People Power lacks clarity. As with populism, People Power lacks a true center, a guiding direction that leads to actions toward a better world for working and oppressed people. In the 21st century, People Power is synonymous with reformism that expends so much time and energy winning meager concessions from the owning class, political sideshows (“Figting the Oligarchy” tour) that push people back into mainstream political parties and institutions, or is used to diffuse anger and resentment with the establishment, ultimately, quenching the embers of the subterranean fire that come up. This is particularly most revealing in the central issue with People Power: who is who? Who are “The People” and who are “The Elites”? As detailed previously, the definition of these two groups isn’t clear, with “The People” becoming a hodgepodge of just any “anti-establishment”-leaning person, and “The Elites” becoming anyone in a position of power and authority, with party allegiance and supposed ideals determining who is a member of “The Elites.”
Furthermore, the lack of a clear definition of “The Elites” means that People Power can easily become co-opted, with all its energy directed at a single person or group rather than the entire system. Take, for instance, the recent attention given to Elon Musk and Trump. Despite the fact that Democrats are no friends to working people, and Obama and Biden were horrible presidents, the calls for “People Power” are only being chanted when faced with Musk and Trump. Yes, both Musk and Trump are reactionaries that are a threat to the working class, but at the end of the day, they are a symptom of the problem; focusing all our attention on them at the expense of challenging capitalism leaves us bound to the status quo as we look for the milktoast Democrats to save us, and they will never do that. Instead, they allow the reactionaries to assault the working class, give weak condemnations of the actions of the reactionaries, and when working people take to the streets, Democrats will evade any criticism, take center stage in the calls for People Power, and direct all efforts to support the Democratic party, with their entourage of loyal lieutenants across the community and Labor Movement ensuring all goes to plan.
The end result is that People Power becomes a call to support the Democrats and maybe pass a few helpful reforms here and there, but ultimately, the machines in place that led us to this situation remain intact, allowing further exploitation, oppression, and brutalization of the working class. Instead of class struggle, People Power becomes “civil engagement” and the “mis-leaders” claim that the issue isn’t the entire owning class but only the section of them that supports the Republicans and that if we just beat the Republicans, capitalism will work for everyone; there is no need for militant class struggle or a revolution, or so they claim. This is untrue. No matter which political party is in power, the interests of the working class are never given an ear; the only people whose concerns are given any weight is the owning class.
This doesn’t mean, however, that People Power is a lost cause. In fact, the essence of the meaning of People Power calls us to stand in firm defiance of class collaborationism, with it demanding the creation of an independent working class movement that has institutions and organizations that struggled for its interests toward the goal of empowering and eventually liberating working and oppressed people from the exploitation and oppression wrought by capitalism.
A popular saying of the Black Panther Party was “All Power to the People.” This phrase, similar to People Power, manifested in the words and actions of the Black Panthers. Though not without criticism, the Black Panthers understood that they were waging a struggle not against a single politician or institution but against an entire system: capitalism. The Black Panthers struggled to build People Power with the Black community through education, survival programs, and direct actions to assist in creating an independent radical working class movement that stood for revolution, not reformism. These efforts were accelerated in Chicago under Fred Hampton, who helped orchestrate the first Rainbow Coalition, with the intention of uniting the racial and ethnic groups of Chicago into a single working class movement, and for his actions, he was assassinated by the FBI.
This version of People Power stands in stark contrast to the modern displays of “People Power.” The People Power spoken by the radicals and revolutionaries of the New Left stood for working class independence in all aspects of life, class struggle and unity, and, most importantly, revolution. Unfortunately, due to the failings of the New Left, which weren’t helped by government repression and espionage, the radical legacy of People Power has been replaced by “civil engagement” and spontaneity. The element that made the People Power of the '60s and '70s so revolutionary was class consciousness.
Class consciousness reveals the “class-reality” of society and gives us the responsibility of uniting with fellow working people to oppose, challenge, and overthrow the rule of the owning class. Through gaining class consciousness and reinforcing it with the study of theory, our understanding of the world and the methods we employ to initiate change and fight for a better world improves, and it's this critical piece that made the People Power ethos of the Black Panthers more impactful and resonating. If People Power is the understanding of the need to fight for working people, then class consciousness gives us the direction that is desperately needed to effectively combat the exploitation, oppression, and brutalization the international working class suffers at the hands of the owning class. Combining People Power with class consciousness requires that we study theory, regardless of medium, and that those who attain class consciousness lead and develop fellow working people, creating a solid militant minority with the direction and vision necessary to struggle for working and oppressed people.
The infusion of People Power with class consciousness is accomplished through studying theory, engaging in praxis, and organizing with a working class organization. By studying theory, we understand the world around us and are empowered to take action. By engaging in praxis, we must share theory in a digestible way to fellow working people and tie it to their struggles, and stand with them, regardless of background or identity, in whatever struggles they’re facing. By organizing with a working class organization, we thrust ourselves on the frontlines of the class struggle and the building of People Power, braving all manner of attacks by the owning class while we fight toward revolution. In doing these three things, we bridge the gap between People Power and class consciousness, creating the foundations for a revolutionary working class movement echoing the original meaning of People Power.
Once the working class movement is solidly led by the most class conscious amongst us, our movement will see the development of independent working class organizations, stronger and more widespread meaningful reforms, greater unity among all sections of the working class, the shrinking of doomerism, and, most importantly, a clear vision for revolution that we can see ourselves progressing to on a daily basis.
In the words of Fred Hampton:
"We ain't gonna fight no reactionary pigs who run up and down the street being reactionary; we're gonna organize and dedicate ourselves to revolutionary political power and teach ourselves the specific needs of resisting the power structure, arm ourselves, and we're gonna fight reactionary pigs with INTERNATIONAL PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION. That's what it has to be. The people have to have the power: it belongs to the people."
The story of society is a story of class struggle—a struggle between exploiter and exploited, between the slavemaster and the enslaved, between the lord and peasant, between the boss and the worker. From this struggle, the struggle of the exploited classes, a powerful subterranean fire bellows up and burns the old ways to the ground and leaves the former exploiting class dispossessed and the exploited class on top to create a new world. This is the origin of capitalism—the infantile owning class rallied the masses to topple the feudal aristocratic orders of old to create a new society built on property and democratic ideals. But as our current economic system erodes the democratic ideals that it was supposedly built upon, leading to greater exploitation and suffering for the working class, the subterranean fire is brewing once more. This time, however, the fire is chaotic, directionless. Under the banner of “People Power,” the subterranean fire that is meant to spark a revolution, barely singes the eyebrows of the owning class, leaving our exploitative and oppressive society remaining intact. To fan the flames of the subterranean fire, to sharpen class conflict and advance working class interests toward reform and revolution, People Power must be guided by class consciousness reinforced by revolutionary theory. With People Power directed by class consciousness, the subterranean fire will rise higher and higher all around the owning class and their servants, burning away their exploitative and oppressive rule, leading the way for the working class to usher in a world devoid of exploitation, oppression, and classes of all stripes—a clean, sustainable world for all people.
Power, Peace, and Liberation to all working and oppressed people!