Civil unrest is a shot across the bows for the ruling class

Matthew Carr on the angry, broke middle class

European governments are finding that bail-outs for bankers and the rich are provoking social discontent among the population as a whole

FIRST POSTED JANUARY 30, 2009

Two years ago the UK Ministry of Defence's Strategic Trends depicted an alarming futuristic scenario in which proletarianised middle-class radicals engage in revolutionary activity and violent 'flashmobs' threaten the authorities with lawless disorder. There are growing signs that these predictions may be more prescient than was originally thought.

Last night's scenes in central Paris were just the latest in a string of violent clashes across Europe since December's 'Greek Intifada' where the police shooting of a teenager became the catalyst for a major grassroots revolt. During January, police have confronted demonstrators protesting deteriorating economic conditions and political corruption in Latvia, Lithuania and Bulgaria. There have been smaller demonstrations in Spain, Turkey, Denmark and Italy.

Whatever their specific national contexts, these disturbances are another consequence of the bursting of the speculative capitalist bubble and the illusion of unlimited prosperity that once sustained it. In the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, one 63-year-old protester criticised "the lies, corruption and those grinning, fat faces behind the windows of Parliament". A young Frenchman interviewed by the BBC last night complained about Sarkozy's government aiding bankers but leaving ordinary people to their own fates.

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These disturbances cannot be explained away by the usual references to 'anarchists' and 'outside agitators'. For too long European politics have been conducted by career politicians who have mostly accepted the neo-liberal model as the only game in town and allowed irresponsible and unaccountable financial elites a free hand.

While their electorates may have accepted such behaviour when times were good, they may be less disposed to do so in stagnating economies, where bail-outs for bankers are accompanied by wholesale redundancies and cuts in benefits for the most vulnerable sectors of society.

All these factors mean that Europe's 'winter of discontent' may become more widespread. How will the societies affected by these upheavals respond? One possibility is repression. In Greece and Italy in the

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Luckily for the rulers of Europe, they have pooled their resources into the most fearsome, oppressive, undemocratic structure on earth: the EU. Democracy is all but finished here, unlike the USA, where State power is still strong (though declining) and many citizens bear arms. EU subjects may rail all they like against their supposed rulers, but the real power is centred in Brussels. National laws, national law enforcement, are increasingly subordinated to EU diktat. So what if the French got rid of Sarkozy? Whoever took his place would simply replace him on the EU Council, where his ultimate loyalty would lie. Never before in Europe's history have their peoples been so utterly enfeebled, their rulers os utterly empowered to crush any hint of serious rebellion, as now. Worse, the people are fragmented, political activity is alien to most of them, there are no alternative ideological movements. The "war on terror" has enabled authority to vastly increase its power over the people, with laws that criminalise us all. We are all terrorists now, should authority implement such laws. For "terrorist" read political activist. Add to this the "global warming" propaganda, and you have an awesomr assembly of tools by which our rulers can utternyl subjugate us. "Terror" justifies their enforcement of a forthcoming police state, "global warming" justifies the forthcoming rationing of goods and services. Even the most well organised, mass political revolutionary movements of the past, would be hard pressed to threaten, let alone overthrow, the awesome power that now controls us. Today's feeble murmerings of discontent will lead nowhere.

Posted by Harlan Leyside at 8:35pm on January 30, 2009

The winter of our disco tent! A learning curve as the working class again learn how to fight back. The global capitalist bubble has burst, to keep control costs, and most governments are in deep debt. What happens when they can't pay their riot police? Harlan Leyside appears to have lost the plot. Putting global warming in quotes presumably means he's one of those who haven't understood the science and thinks it's a conspiracy to enable a crack down on consumers. His comment is a deranged rant against the EU, and fails to notice the effect street riots are having. Governments fall when the streets fill up with protesters, that's how safely in charge they are. The worst prospect is the election of far right parties across Europe, which is a distinct possibility if governments don't address the concerns that the far right capitalise on - immigration and foreigners taking jobs. So far they have ignored both, at their peril.

Posted by Peter Simmons at 12:19pm on February 2, 2009

Irrespective of one's political persuasion, I think we can all agree that there has to be a change. What has happened is not an accident of fate but, as Matthew Carr correctly asserts, the result of decades of greed and avarice. Good sense would dictate that this situation could not go on forever. The time has definitely come for governments to serve their ordinary citizens by sensible regulations which would ensure a more equitable distribution of wealth and more accountability by those commanding such heights of their economies. Socialist! Communist! I could hear the cry, but to ignore the mess we are in to maintain so called liberalism would be disastrous. European governments have been more aware of this than their American conterparts, especially those of the Scandinavian countries. Here in the US we are seeing the results of the worst excesses of untrammeled, unfettered popular liberal policies which have, not surprisingly, brought down everything in its wake. Time for real change, indeed.

Posted by Yolande Agble at 12:03am on February 13, 2009