Protest Movements: Class Consciousness and the Propaganda Song.

The Purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship of propaganda songs to social movements. The role and function of the propaganda song has in the past received little attention from sociologists and social scientists as a whole. The primary usage of the propaganda song is to create political or social consciousness favorable to the position of the movement or individual using the propaganda song. The original interpretation of the concept "political consciousness" connotes a predisposition for social change. Lenin derived the concept of political consciousness from Marx who viewed class consciousness as the subjective means of facilitating change in the social structure. For Marx, class membership was originally an aggregate of persons in a given economic strata or "a class in itself." Class consciousness emerges when members of a class (the proletariat) identify themselves with the class (the proletarian class) and their position in the stratification system and when the members of the class are aware of their historical role in the Marxian theoretical scheme or a change-oriented "class for itself." Mills correctly defines three elements essential for class consciousness to exist: (1) a rational awareness and identification with one's own class interests; (2) an awareness of and rejection of other class interests as illegitimate; and (3) an awareness of and a readiness to use collective political means to the collective political end of realizing one's interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]