Two things are quite
noticeable looking back over the past year or so: first, that the global nature
of the unrest is beginning to have a powerful impact upon the way resistance develops
in individual countries. Secondly, that the crisis has gone through three
distinct phases, morphing from a banking crisis into an economic crisis and now
into a social and political one.
It is unnecessary to search
for very complicated reasons for the wave of unrest. As John Molyneux says in his blog: “The
explanation for this global tidal wave of revolt is essentially very simple.
The international capitalist system is in profound crisis and the 1%, the
ruling class, everywhere is trying to make the rest of us pay for it and in
place after place people are fighting back. From Tahrir to Oakland
We are feeding on the inspiration of each
other’s resistance. Confidence is rising and for the first time in a generation
revolution is back on the agenda.” Now, as in the other revolutionary waves of
1848, 1917 and 1968, waves of revolt are spreading out from the fault lines of
capitalism as new generations of workers and the poor learn not only that they
can, but that they must resist.
The importance of the
international nature of the rebellions lie in the fact that ‘feeding on the
inspiration of each other’s resistance’ becomes a global experience. In many
ways it is much easier to see a particular society clearly from the outside than
from within the webs of mystification and social conditioning that adhere to
you when you are born into a particular culture. To see people in other
countries fighting oppression in the same way as you are is empowering. The new
social media and technologies, while not the cause of the rebellions, clearly
assist this process, enabling film, photos, news and information to be sent
worldwide at the click of a mouse.
This also legitimises the
resistance. Each state’s ruling class portrays resistance to its rule as either
criminal or useless. Strikers are constantly told their actions are selfish or
ineffective. In London, students are still being dragged through the courts
after the fees protests of 2010. The protesting student Alfie Meadows, despite
being seriously injured by police and enduring hours of life-saving brain
surgery, was charged with ‘serious disorder’ and still awaits sentencing. As I
write this, the Spanish government is declaring the camps of the ‘indignatos’
illegal and is preparing a crackdown. This criminisation is easy for the
authorities in ‘normal’ times, when protestors are a minority, and can be
stereotyped by the media as criminals or weirdos. But when mass protest becomes
widespread such views are challenged. The impact of such global waves of
protest gives people a quite different perspective on the dialectic of
resistance.
The involvement of masses
of people in the struggle exposes the dynamics of the system and makes it
easier for ordinary people to see the way in which the crisis is used by the
ruling class in all countries, further enriching the bankers and the super-rich
while enforcing austerity on workers and the poor. The danger for governments
is that large numbers of people will now begin to see how the same conditions
exist everywhere, and how the reactions of our rulers is the same. Many begin
to understand they are not in conflict just with their local regimes, but with
a total unjust and violent system. The question of radical change then comes on
the agenda.
This is why the divisive
ideology of nationalism, with its splitting up of a global workforce into
national units pitted in competition one with the other, is so important to our
rulers, and why it is constantly reinforced. If people can be persuaded that
their real interests can only be served through adherence to a particular
national identity, which is threatened by other national identities, then their
allegiances can be manipulated. Look at the constant debate about British
identity and how immigration, Islam or multiculturalism destroy it. Look at the
nationalistic jamboree of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, or at the Olympics,
where the flag-waving has turned east London into a militarised zone patrolled
by jet fighters and missiles.
While great opportunities
are now opening up internationally for the far left, as with Syriza in Greece
and the Left Front in France, there are also dangers from the right. Once
capitalists feel there is a real danger of an ‘expropriation of the
expropriators’, fascism can be brought back into vogue as a bulwark against
socialist revolution. During the 1930s the economic crisis created conditions
in which German capitalist concerns were prepared to get into bed with the
nazis. Under the impact of severe economic crisis such a movement can attract
support. People’s anger can make them look for scapegoats: in the past,
European Jewry; today, asylum seekers, immigrants, Roma, travellers, Muslims…
In the UK at the moment the
fascist British National Party is in terminal decline, with financial problems,
splits and declining membership. This is due in large part to the work of Unite
Against Fascism and other organisations in opposing them and the English
Defence League whenever they attempted to march or organise. However, they are
not going to go away. It is worth remembering that although the BNP crashed,
hard line anti-immigration parties like the UK Independence Party saw an
increase in support in the May elections.
Elsewhere in Europe,
however, things are more worrying, with the Golden Dawn in Greece operating
very much as open neo-nazis, and in France Marine Le Pen winning a large share
of the vote. Nationalism is used constantly by modern capitalism to wrap people
in the national flag and tie them into a phoney notion of a unified nation which
elides class divisions. Fascism feeds off a virulent notion of this ‘national
identity’ which it uses to turn against immigrants and ‘outsiders’. As economic
crisis polarises society, so the politics of hate can gain a foothold.
This is why a left politics
which can explain things in class terms is so important. Writing for
al-Jazeera, the Athenian journalist Matthaios Tsimitakis points out that the
success of Syriza is extraordinary, ”..not only because of the historical
significance of having a radical left party leading the conversation, but
because it managed to bypass attempts to polarise the political agenda around
such issues as illegal immigration, national security and social order, instead
bringing to the forefront the issues of economic justice and social coherence.”
While ideas can unlock
one’s mind, it is the process of active resistance and rebellion which is
really key. It is through the ‘self-activity of the masses’ that ordinary
people begin to shake off the ‘muck of ages’, the sense of futility and
powerlessness which affects so many under capitalism. People change themselves,
rediscover and recreate themselves, through the process of rebellion against
oppressive conditions. It is through making revolutionary change that people
make themselves ‘fit to rule’. This is what we heard from the voices of the
Paris Communards of 1871. This is what we heard from the Bolshevik soldiers and
sailors of 1917 Petrograd. And this is what we saw on the faces of the masses
in Tahrir Square, Cairo, after the toppling of the dictator Mubarak.
We are living in dangerous
times. Lenin said there were years in which nothing seemed to happen, and then
times in which years seemed to be crammed into hours. The last couple of years
have been like that. We have seen a banking crisis become an economic crisis
and now a major global political and social crisis. We have seen revolutions in
the Middle East and now the growth of European left parties that are beginning
to lead a battle against austerity. The old social democratic parties cannot do
this because they are for austerity too. British Labourites like Ed Balls talk
in terms of ‘growth’ and ‘fixing ‘our’ economy.’ This ignores the fact that
crises and recessions are part of the
global capitalist system. There is no ‘normal’ growth we can all get back to.
The stakes are very high.
We have to build the resistance and organise for a socialist alternative or
face disaster. Yet I cannot help feeling we are lucky to be living in times
like these.
