Answers 2

The decline of the industrial workers movement in western Europe takes different forms. In the UK its basis is clear from union membership figures and what has happened to wages. In the UK the hourly earnings of union members averaged £14.00 in 2010, 16.7 per cent more than the earnings of non-members (£12.00 per hour). But despite the obvious advantage of (still) being in a union, membership declined in the public sector by 5% 1995 - 2010 and by 7% in the private sector in the same period. It is now 6.5 million out of an economically active population of 24 million. Collective TU agreements declined from covering 38% of the workforce in 1995 to 30% by 2010. Today union membership is mainly in professional occupations (43% of all union members); manufacturing represents 19% of all union membership.

The jobs where union members have their highest concentrations account for only 34% of all workers. The big majority of workers are non - unionised. Union membership in many sectors is small or tiny. Overall on average there is no union presence in 54% of workplaces. (http://www.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/)

It is therefore easier for unions to appear to be lobbying for the 'privileges' of their special type of jobs, when they fight the employers - or the government - even where their success is patently in the interests of all.

The growth of social movements, the greens, anti-capitalist protest in the last ten years in the west does not substitute for basic social and economic organisation of a whole class. In the west we are weak and getting weaker. So while the social and economic systems of capitalism are in decline, the basic infrastructure of its natural opponent is also decaying.

But let's assume for a moment that we want a positive end to capitalism. Would it be possible? To get to the heart of the matter we have to look at the power of people who oppose a system to force it to compromise. (Nothing to to with Miliband and co. They do not propose a compromise with capitalism; they propose its defense - at all our costs.)

We must not be fooled by our own weakness. Western capitalism is on its knees. Leader writers may want us to believe that at the turn of a financial tap, big capital could simply destroy any real opposition in any particular country. But economics and politics are not the same thing.  Both need calculation. At the moment European banks stand in fear of the Greek election voting against austerity. The new government could simply repudiate all the debt. The main power in Europe, Germany cannot invade if the Greeks vote against austerity. Any attempt by the Greek colonels to repeat their 1970s coup would mean civil war and, probably, international brigades based on mass movements in big south european countries. On the other hand the Chinese are very interested in Greek assets in shipbuilding and access to the Med and could/would make a deal with the new Greek government. In other words, there is a serious way forward for a small country with a population of 10.7 million to start down the road of rolling back the priorities of some of the biggest capitalist forces in the world.

I have painted this little picture to show just how precarious the whole thing is for our rulers. Now let's draw out some more general conclusions.

In this period big capital, especially in the west wants, more than anything else, its security. It is not interested on transforming the world. It will fight for its life. It will fight not to die. Its movers and shakers are unattached in a completely new way, from particular nation states. That makes it politically weaker whatever its nominal economic strength. So, in this period, it will, it has to, compromise. No more gunboats up the Yangtse. No major land wars. (There is no single state with the capacity to run a major war - even at the size of the VietNam war.)  Challenges to capitalist priorities are safer today than was the Chinese revolution in 1949, or the new welfare State in the UK in 1948.

A tri-polar capitalist world, Asia, the US and Europe, allows greater room for maneuver to any profound social rebellion. And the un-manufactured counter-culture building up between the youth inside continents and between them undermines all official ideology across the globe.

Attached to this counter-culture is the development of a new 'common weal.' A huge battle is raging in the ether over the 'ownership' of ideas, whether they be scientific, or medical, or political. Capitalism is progressively losing that battle and new communities of guardians, like the international journals of scientific knowledge, are beginning to be established. Uneven development, a basic requirement of capitalist economic and social 'progress' (whereby different rates of profit for the same commodities are always available to the owners of capital) is being undermined, as the larger ex colonies break free of western empires and their financial monopoly. Global solutions seem more and more possible, even required, as international movements grow for the constitutional right not to go hungry, for a global minimum wage to all toilers, for freedom from disease.

All these, and other elements appear as the contradiction between the apparent economic power and the social and political weakness of the international capitalist system enlarges to its breaking point.

So. If we decide we want to change things fundamentally we can. That's the message. However, putting the majority, the 99%, together behind such a goal is another matter entirely. I'll come back to that if I may.