The ruthless redistribution/reduction of wealth inside of the world's working class (see 15 September) - via profit - via global finance - from west to east - chasing the goal of 'equal poverty for all ' - sets the conditions of struggle, of upsurge and of revolt and revolution, for us all. The US worker is now at levels of wealth comparable to their position in 1961. 12 million 'illegal' latino workers take whatever an employer is prepared to pay them under whatever conditions. European workers are being driven backwards. This is the resource that global corporations is using to build the frugal incomes of the millions they are bringing into production for the first time in China and India.
The economic condition of the working class in Western Europe is still buttressed by key pillars of the welfare state and, to some extent, by a vast layer of unproductive workers, either attached to state functions like civil servants, teachers and health workers of all varieties, or who do the electronic spade work for the finance industry. In Britain for example, the share of people in these occupations is 44% of the UK's total workforce (12.7 million now described by government as being in the 'professional, managerial and technical category.) Official reports have taken to describing these workers as 'knowledge workers' as though they produce 'knowledge' rather than types of services. (See 'Britain at Work ...', John Phillpott, Chief Economic Advisor, CIPD, February 2012.)
There is a whole argument to be had (including with some notable Marxists like Negri and Zizek - see 'The Year of Dreaming Dangerously.' Verso 2012) about the increasingly popular (and mystifying) idea of 'knowledge workers.' But we already know - whatever people call them - that this sector in the west often lead many of the main trade union struggles that take place. Nevertheless, It would be easy (but not inevitable) for these layers to cut themselves off from their class by insisting on privileges over others in accord with their perceived professional status.
Certainly for some time the political elites in Europe (but not in the US) regard this group of workers as providing, ultimately, some of the same safety from revolution that they used to believe came from the massive subsidy and support that they provided for their peasantry and latterly, small farmers, (a view which was the origin of the Common Agricultural Policy - which still accounts for nearly half of EU spending.)
When we look beyond western Europe and the US - lurching as they are towards their own multiple crises of economics, of politics, of identity - at the upsurges, revolts and revolutions that are happening in the world today, there are common themes emerging which hold up a window to the future for us all.
Throughout the rebellions in North Africa, in Venezuela, Mexico and Greece there has been a living assumption among those who take to the streets that they are entitled to conditions of life which, they believe, are common among the advanced western countries. There is a definite image alive among the protestors. They do not believe that the conditions of their own nation or nationality provide the boundaries for their hopes or for their rights. They want modern hospitals and schools available to all. They want economies that provide jobs, reasonable incomes and security. They do not believe that anybody is more entitled than they are to these things because they live somewhere else. They are the first rebels in history who have a very concrete image of what they think is possible. That image is of course a distortion of the truth in that the economies of the west are built to serve the rich but under different conditions than their own. They are imagining that an economy can be built that would serve the majority. They are dreaming of an economy built, not for its own sake, but for human progress. They have, as they see it, a global standard to aim for.
Disenfranchisement is a vital component of current revolutionary thought and action. In North Africa the form it takes, against autocratic regimes, is obvious. In Venezuela and Columbia it is the disenfranchisement of the indigenous (majority) Indian population. In Greece it is the `troika's' role in internal Greek affairs. At its revolutionary best, the fight against disenfranchisement leads to democratic and universal demands rather than a fight for one ethnic or religious group supplanting another.
The political focus in all these cases, in 'democratic' Greece as much as totalitarian Egypt, is for a new government. New leaderships are defined by millions engaged in these battles as a precondition for progress. There is an implicit, and sometimes explicit rejection of older oppositions and traditional objectors. They seem to be as much tied to the old conditions as the ruling groups, parties and juntas. It is as though only the whole people can decide who will lead - not history - not prior records. Everything must be judged with fresh eyes. (Which is not to say that when whole societies do get to vote there will not be more conservative social strata who make their judgments based on much more limited perspectives of immediate self interest.)
There are deep social and political processes at work in countries where global trends meet and blow previous societies apart. We must come back to them, over and over again. But are there some lessons that the anti-capitalist left, here in the west, might draw initially?
In parts of Western Europe (Greece, Portugal, Ireland and now Spain) the national-democratic issue takes the form of opposition to the IMF's, the EU's and the World Bank's austerity programmes and stimulates active, mass opposition. In Britain the degree to which popular sovereignty is overwhelmed by the drives and ambition of the City makes for an economic-democratic thread among those who actively oppose austerity. It is exactly the same issue. Who has power over the direction of the economy and therefore over politics? Given the global face of the capitalist system there will always be a national-democratic flavour to its opposition, especially among peripheral countries (which opens its own dangers.)
The desire for a different political leadership is utterly mainstream throughout the West. The left needs to find ways of linking this deeply held and well judged attitude, held by tens of millions, with the basic right of a secure, comfortable life. For example in Britain, the organised left outside the Labour Party have long seen a potential National Government as a key political instrument of the right, a result perhaps of the historical experiences in that field. A national government is still a fall back position for Britain's rulers even now, should there be another stage in the economic collapse. But it perhaps for the left to call for a 'new National Government', where the political leadership can be completely renewed in order to reorganise, renovate and re-power the economy, save the NHS and reverse inequality.
Studying real facts and testing the conclusions. There is no alternative.
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