On 2012-01-07, at 4:38 AM, James Heartfield wrote:
> ... I regret to say it, but despite the high profile of the recent ‘Occupy’ protests in England and Spain, and the Syntagma square protests, overall the ruling class has got away with whatever it wants, even to the point of forcing out the elected governments of Greece and Italy, replacing them with governments of technocrats, tasked with cutting public expenditure and wages. What is remarkable is that this anti-democratic measure is mostly accepted.
True, but it is hard to know what to do next. The unions have been calling short-lived general strikes, which have generally been well attended but aren't that threatening. What actions can the various components of the European left call for which go beyond the current demonstrations and strikes? At one time, the logical progression was for the labour movement to escalate to extended political strikes aimed at toppling governments and replacing them with the workers' parties which it founded, but the social democratic parties are no longer perceived as such, having themselves presided over cutbacks while in government, and this alternative no longer exists. The anarchist tactic of trashing symbols of capitalist power is even less likely, much less likely, to engage the masses.
The conservative wing of the ruling class sees that the protest movement is at an impasse and is not prepared to cede ground to liberal politicians and pundits who are alarmed that there is only so far you can push the masses before discontent become uncontained. The conservatives, however, are confident they can wear down whatever popular opposition now exists if its moves are calibrated and the process of chipping away at social programs is a slow, grinding one which doesn't provoke further unrest, and their optimism is mirrored by the pessimism which pervades much of the far left. It's not a European phenomenon, of course. The same considerations are guiding ruling class responses to the outbreak of protest in the Arab countries and in the US.
> Pointedly, though, most of this misery is contained in the European periphery, and the ruling classes in Britain, Germany and France have been cautious in unleashing a full-blown assault on mass living standards.
Also true, but which is not to say that the British, German, and French workers are the relatively happy campers that Wojtek, to a lesser extent, the peculiarly named Somebody Somebody claims them to be.
Charles Kupchan writing in the current issue of Foreign Affairs notes that in Europe, "as in the United States, economic conditions are the root of the problem. Over the past two decades, middle-class incomes in most major European economies have been falling and inequality has been rising. Unemployment in Spain stands at over 20 percent, and even Germany, the EU’s premier economy, saw its middle class contract by 13 percent between 2000 and 2008. Those who slip through the cracks find a fraying safety net beneath them; Europe’s comfortable welfare systems, which have become unsustainable in the face of global competition, are being dramatically scaled back." ("The Democratic Malaise", January/February 2012)
A New York Times survey of the mood of German workers, regarded as the most privileged in Europe, also reported last year that "low salaries — and higher prices — are a core complaint of German workers who are increasingly demanding wage increases after a decade in which their real earnings dropped by 4.5 percent when adjusted for inflation, according to a recent report by the International Labor Organization. Exports have grown robustly in part because workers agreed years ago to reduced wages and reduced hours to make Germany more competitive. Like workers in other industrialized nations, including the United States, Germans also have had to accept that the jobs available are not as secure as they once were. The number of people in nonstandard or atypical employment in Germany increased to 7.72 million in 2008 from 5.29 million in 1998, according to the Federal Statistical Office." ("Bavaria booms, but Germans feel economic malaise", December 24, 2010).