April 2011 - Centre for Civil Society - University of KwaZulu-Natal

mass media and the education system.
It also needs to keep a grip on the consciousness of millions of ordinary
working people and make them believe that in spite of all its vices
capitalism is the best of all possible socio-economic systems. However,
even control of the state, the media and the education system is not
enough for this nice cosy set up to remain unshaken. All these other means
of control break down if the system is not capable of providing at least a
reasonable, tolerable existence for the majority of the people.
Workers can take quite a lot, so long as they can get on with paying the
rent or the mortgage, putting enough food on the table for their families,
having a decent education system, healthcare system and so on. They can
even accept some degree of loss of such services. They can grudgingly
accept what their trade union or party leaders say when they present such
attacks as “temporary” and as a price to be paid for improving things in
the future.
The point is that there is a limit to all this. If such a situation is prolonged,
if the calls for workers to make sacrifices is repeated over and over again,
and if in the middle of all this the world is shaken by an almighty financial
crisis which then leads to growing unemployment accompanied by
increasing inflation, then all the means at the disposal of the capitalist
class to convince people that their system is the best possible available are
no longer sufficient, and things begin to change.
The apparent “sudden” breaking out of the Arab revolution is an indication
of this, as are the mass movements in the advanced capitalist countries. In
France in the autumn we saw 3.5 million people take to the streets in
protest at Sarkozy’s austerity measures. In Greece we have seen general
strike after general strike. In Britain on March 26 we saw anything between
500,000 and 800,000 workers and youth protest against Cameron’s
draconian austerity policies. This was the biggest trade union organised
demonstration in the history of Britain. In the USA we saw the magnificent
mobilisations in Madison, Wisconsin.
What is happening in the United States must be of real concern to the US
ruling class. They were taken by surprise by the Tunisian and Egyptian
revolutions, but what we saw in Wisconsin shows that revolution is not
affecting only the Arab countries. It is in the air everywhere.
The Economist article points out in fact that there has been sharp change
in opinions in the USA: “This is most marked in the country that used to
epitomise free enterprise. In 2002, 80% of Americans agreed that the
world’s best bet was the free-market system. By 2010 that support had
fallen to 59%....” The sharpest drop was actually between 2009 and 2010
when it fell from over 70% to below 60%.
This figure, however, is an average across all social classes. If we look at
the opinions of ordinary working people, especially those at the bottom of
the ladder we see an even more marked shift in opinion. As the article
continues, “Capitalism’s waning fortunes are starkly visible among
Americans earning below $20,000. Their support for the free market has
dropped from 76% to 44% in just one year.”
So what we have now is a majority of the lower paid US workers no longer
having the illusions they may have had in the past. This is an important
development in the situation in the United States and it indicates that
more struggles are on the way like the one we recently saw in Wisconsin.