We are fighting a class war, that has been raging for some time, and has been particularly ferocious over the last ten years.
"The financial strategy in this class war is to popularize "identity politics" prompting voters to think of themselves as women, ethnic or racial minorities, or sexual categories (LBGTQ) instead of economic categories such as wage earners, debtors and/or renters. True identity politics should begin with economic class consciousness, solidarity and mutual aid. There can be little promotion of group self-interest without this." Junk Economics
On one side we have the banks, the corporations, with the help of the state. Their weapons are austerity, Atos, privatisation, the rentiers, the stripping of the welfare state, the national health service, the education system, automation, surveillance, and the list goes on and on. These institutions are highly organised and know exactly what they are doing.
On the other side we have the poor, the sick the disenfranchised, the unemployed, the destitute, the criminalised and all the rest of us. Including we who believe we are a bit better off because we have learned to gauge happiness by the shape of our bank balance. Or in our ability to just accept things, get used to it and move on. Within this the middle classes are slowly beginning to realise that the above institutions are not even interested in their aspirations for themselves and their children any more. If they ever did.
Our weapons are much more powerful than theirs, but we lack if the last ten years are anything to go by, the organisation, imagination and vision to create institutional change.
There is less need for the coordinator class as a buffer between rich and poor any more in the face of raw belligerent power.
When the neoliberal’s say “ Everything for us and nothing for you” they include in this the wage earners and the middle classes to. The decline for this class may be a bit slower, but under neoliberalism, we are all heading in the same direction.
To clarify. Here we are talking about institutional change, not cultural change and social issues. These we have made much progress on. But we need to talk about our failure to address the severe retrogression on economic and political issues that have spiralled out of control, particularly over the last ten years.
A failure to address these issues through cooperation, association, affiliation, collabourations or through the many options, politically socially and culturally we have at our disposal will see the next ten years even worse than the last. We may entertain the fantasy that capitalism will, or is, burning itself out. and we can sit back and watch this happen. That unfortunately looks as if that is what we have been doing and it is not working. With nuclear extermination of the species raising its head again there may be less time than we think.
The present is bad and no doubt will get worse. But the future could be bright, if we understand what we have and start to use it constructively and collectively to build a vision towards a future we want. There has never been a better time to do this. But it will not happen on shiny websites, but in the deep base building work needing done in our communities and the imagination to encourage others.