I think you're treating capitalism's current strength as if it were a permanent feature of history rather than a historical stage. Marx never argued that capitalism would collapse because people simply became convinced by communist arguments. He argued that every mode of production develops contradictions that eventually become too great to manage. Class consciousness is a product of struggle, not a prerequisite for it. Think about it: the Roman peasant did not wake up one morning as a conscious feudalist, and the medieval burgher did not first write liberal theory and then overthrow feudalism. Material development came first, political consciousness developed through conflict, and only afterwards did a new ruling class consolidate its ideology. Why would socialism be the only exception?
I also think you're giving bourgeois ideology too much credit. Yes, capitalist media, surveillance, advertising, and education are vastly more sophisticated than anything previous ruling classes possessed. But they exist precisely because the bourgeoisie cannot simply rely on naked force anymore. Their ideological apparatus is not evidence of invincibility; it is evidence of constant maintenance. A stable ruling class does not need to spend billions manufacturing consent every year.
As for the 20th century, I don't think "we blew our only shot" is a Marxist conclusion. The Russian Revolution happened in one of Europe's least-developed capitalist countries, after a world war had shattered the state. The Chinese Revolution emerged from semi-colonial conditions. Neither represented the mature capitalist societies Marx expected to become socialist first. Their successes and failures should therefore be analyzed concretely, not mythologized either positively or negatively. People also overestimate the permanence of capitalist legitimacy. In 1900, monarchy looked eternal. In 1985, the USSR looked permanent. In 2005, globalization looked unstoppable. History repeatedly humiliates predictions of permanence.
The real question is not "why aren't workers revolutionary?" but "what objective conditions produce revolutionary organization?" Right now, the working class is fragmented, international capital is highly mobile, unions are weak in many countries, and communist parties are either marginal or revisionist. Those are organizational problems, not proof that capitalism has transcended its contradictions. Ironically, many of the tendencies you describe are
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