Class consciousness is the awareness of one’s position within the economic system — the realization that workers share common interests opposed to the capitalist class. Marx saw it as the turning point where individuals stop seeing themselves as isolated laborers and begin acting as part of a collective force. Without class consciousness, exploitation appears normal; with it, the working class can organize, resist, and eventually seize power to transform society.
Occupy Wall Street was somewhat class conscious with their slogan "We are the 99%"
In What Is To Be Done? (1902), Lenin warned that class consciousness doesn’t grow automatically from daily struggles. When workers act on their own, their awareness usually stays at the level of fighting for better pay or safer conditions. He called this “trade-union consciousness” — important, but still limited to life within capitalism. True socialist consciousness, he said, has to be developed through study, theory, and political organization. It must be consciously brought into the workers’ movement by those who understand the broader system and its laws.
That’s why Lenin argued for an organized vanguard party — a group of the most disciplined and educated workers who help raise the understanding of the whole class. The party connects everyday struggles to the goal of ending exploitation entirely. Without this organized leadership, spontaneous movements can erupt with great energy but quickly fade or get absorbed back into the system. With it, the working class can move from resistance to revolution.