Controlling…2

The middle classes are the frame that holds up the structures of power and wealth. They are the backbone of capitalist exploitation by property. Their involvement may be insignificant but it insures their support. Owning some real estate and a few shares and bonds are strong incentives to conservative thinking with regards to property. They are the chains that bind the middle classes, but in the context of a global debt slump the links are slowly rusting away. Impossible mortgages, stagnant incomes, failing public services and the vast gap – unseen for a century according to Piketty – between the middle classes and real wealth are corroding their acquiescence to upper class ideological dominance. And when subordinates feel disaffected by their superiors, it is a prelude to rebellion. A populist class alliance that takes over the state apparatus, modifies taxation and expands government spending. In the past these movements have often brought together nationalistic warmongering xenophobes. But the age when armies were sent off to the front while fortunes were made at the rear ended with the aerial bombardments of the 1940s. Today’s warmongers must choose victims that cannot fight back on an equal footing, those that have neither offensive nor defensive aerial weapons.

The total wars of the first half of the 20^th century ended in total destruction, and those examples have held back from the brink the more virulent bellicosity of nationalist demagogues. However, as the middle classes fall on hard times, nationalism and xenophobia are the best distractions from the structural causes of their deteriorating situation. Instead of finding faults in the capitalist levy and accumulation of unpaid added value, the blame is put on foreign forces, those beyond the nation’s borders and those within. This is an intoxicating mix, and its effects on societies submitted to a strong economic stress are unpredictable. The Cold War covered a period of economic expansion, when the relative wellbeing of the developed Northern hemisphere was increasing. The trickling down of wealth and middle-classification were the ideological counter offensive to communist egalitarianism. But for the past two decades, since Russia and China joined the fold of private capitalist accumulation, sharing riches and bolstering middle incomes have lost their value as propaganda, and hence their utility. The problem this poses for consumer demand was masked for a while by consumer credit, mortgages and public debts, with the ensuing credit crunches, sub-primes and debt inflations. But private capitalism is not preoccupied by general wealth, let alone the wealth of all nations. It is completely focused on the limitless possessions of individual people. It supposes that the magnificence of a few can console the multitude of their dispossession, a slightly outdated notion that is kept alive by the cult of celebrity and a few seconds of fame for those in the crowd. The social bond that exists when the group’s interests override those of individual members cannot hold when the priority is inverted. In that case social cohesion must depend on corruption, constraint and confusion. Private capitalism causes immense collateral damages and at regular intervals its financial institutions are drowned in debt, which all seems an exorbitant price to pay for the mansion life-styles of the mega-rich.