Anyone who's read a lot of Marxist literature is familiar with the endless rending of garments and tearing of hair over the question of how to create a class conciousness for workers. Marxism postulated that the workers would eventually realize they were a group which had interests diametrically opposed to those of capitalists, and once they did so, since they outnumbered capitalists and had direct control over the means of production (since they are the ones who actually use them day in, day out, not the "owners") they would easily overthrow capitalists and their lackeys, issuing in the pre-Communist state. (People tend to forget that there is a stage between capitalism and communism in Maxist eschatology.)

Now a funny thing happened on the way to the revolution - not a single succesful "communist" revolution came from the proletariat. The Russian revolution was lead by petit bourgeousie; the Cuban and Chinese ones came out of rural insurgencies, and so on. But the point I want to make isn't about revolutions, it's about power. There is no power without the ability to act together in pursuit of shared interests or beliefs.

Many people may share the same interests yet be unable to work together to do anything about it. The homeless, to take an extreme example, rarely organize effectively. Non unionized workers have almost no clout. Middle class suburban wives, for all the talk of "soccer mums" actually have very little clout relative to their numbers.

Or to put it another way - most demographic groups are not mobilized groups. While they may have common interests, they have very little way to act on those interests.

The precondition of power for a group is that it self identifies - that group members see themselves as a members with shared problems, goals and beliefs. Once a group has that self-identification they can exert some influence and even power. American Blacks vote overwhelmingly Democratic and that gives them power in the Democratic party. They deliver votes reliably and you can go to black leaders and if you meet their demands and the needs of the community, blacks will vote for you. The exact same thing can be said of the religious right (and yes, they do get what is most important for them. Repeate Alito, Alito, Alito to yourself until it sinks in.)

The more organized a group is, the more the self identification is layered over with communication channels, shared activites (church, social welfare programs) - the more its members take care of each other, the more powerful it will be. The extreme far end of such organizations is demonstrated by Hezbollah, which is more powerful than many official states (mostly because it is a government, whether or not it is recognized as one.)

When organization and the ideology of the self identifying group clash, the power of the group is weakened. The classic case here is the union movement, especially from the late sixties on, where the union leadership became increasingly unresponsive to the real needs and beliefs of their membership. Many saw leadership as a way to enrich themselves, and as a result they did not have the full force of their membership behind them. As they lost a more militant ideology, they likewise lost power. A sense of seperation of the group from the rest of society, a sense of otherness, and a sense of evangelism (whether union "organizing" or Christian "missionary work") is also important to group power and growth. It's hard to exert power without believing you know best and groups who grow uncertain in the rightness of their beliefs also become weak, palsied and unable to exert force or influence on the rest of society.

A demographic group (white males in their twenties) does not necessarily self identify as a group. When you're trying to advertise you may slice and dice the population to find people who share demographic characteristics which tend to respond to stimulus (advertising) in the same way because they have similiar life experiences and similiar needs due to where they are in the life cycle, but that doesn't make them a politicall effective group. They can be pandered to to get votes, but they aren't able to exert force or influence themselves, except in a very passive way.

In situations like this many demographic groups can be safely ignored. More than half the population doesn't vote and no one bothers to pander to them - they don't matter. In the same way the Democratic base, for years, wasn't even pandered to. It was sold down the river repeatedly. The reason is that Democratic strategists calculated they'd vote Democratic anyway as long as the party just said "you like Roe vs. Wade? You willing to take a chance on electing Republicans". They weren't organized to exert power in a useful way, and those who ostensibly represented them had largely been coopted. So the base was demoralized, was shrinking and was unable to exert either power or much influence.

But wherever leadership is not aligned with the interests of an already existing group, there is an opportunity for new leadership to walk in. To a large extent that's what happened with the Christian right. They existed, but they were almost entirely uninvolved with US politics. A new leadership came in and changed that. It's also what has happened in the creation of the netroots - a demographic group of relatively affluent, well educated members of the Democratic base who felt excluded, found a way to meet both offline and on using online tools, a way to communicate, a way to find out they had similiar goals, beliefs and ideology and a way to start exerting influence and power again. (That's what Lamont was always about. "We're not getting taking for granted any more. You will pay attention, or you will pay a price.")

In general, however, wherevere there is a demographic with similiar beliefs, goals and needs which has not formed into a self-identifying group there is also a power vacuum waiting to be filled. Sometimes it never happens - Marx wasn't wrong that workers had similiar interests and the power to do something about it - but he was wrong that enough of them ever would. As many forces are shoving a group together, there are others which pull them apart. And as many potential groups as there may appear to be, only a few can take precedence. Every human belongs to multiple demographic groups - but usually is only a member of one psychogrphic group. This is the long lament of liberals that so many Republican voters are voting against their own economic interests. It's true, but it's also irrelevant - they aren't voting on those interests, because they don't belong to groups that consider those interests most important (those who do consider those interests most important are generally union members or sympathizers). Instead they have formed their identities around cultural signifiers - Christianity, or guns, or a rural lifestyle they see liberals as opposed to. And they vote those, often non-economic interests. They vote, as it were, their identity, their psychological interests - not their economic interests.

And that was Marx's mistake - to assume that everything comes down to economics. It never has, and it never will. Power comes from belief as much as from gold and one man's self interest is another's sin. If you want to change the world the first step is to change how people view their relation to the world. Change that and all else will follow. Fail to change it, and nothing will.