Waiting for a middle-class revolt

As with any commodity, the cost of labour is the cost of its renewal. This means the upkeep of individual workers and their capacity to produce new generations. It includes food and clothing, health care, housing and transport, schooling for their children and some left over for entertainment. These necessities are kept at a minimum by a reserve of labour competing for available jobs. This labour reserve has mostly consisted of unqualified rural migrants forced to leave their ancestral lands for various reasons, from enclosures, potato blight and land grabs to civil war and climate disruption. Hence the competition for jobs is strongest at the bottom of the wage scale, and it weakens as the necessary skills for employment increase. This skills gap is the result of family upbringing and education. It allows the middle-class to maintain its status and climb the social ladder. When most of the population – not to mention the world – is barely literate, knowledge and skills give the upper-hand to those who have them. This began to change after WW2, with education, education, education, not only in the developed world, but in every newly independent nation. Today’s middle-classes face global competition, and the consequences are detrimental.

Just as labour has a cost that allows its renewal, so does the middle-class. The price is higher but they are fewer in number. The middle-class is more demanding with regards to lifestyle and education. And their resulting capabilities in all domains seem to justify their higher cost, as long as there is no rivalry. The first breach was working-class youths going to university and showing they could excel. But their numbers were relatively small, and they joined the middle-class fold without much disturbance. What was more troubling was the access to middle status by minorities and even legal aliens. Up till the mid-20^th century the world’s middle-class was essentially of European stock. This slowly began to change and is no longer the case. Their skills and knowledge are shared by rivals around the planet who are less demanding.

Traditional members of the middle-class have lost their monopoly and find themselves in the same situation as the working-class, that of having a reserve in waiting ready to replace them. And this rivalry tends to push down salaries. And those members of the middle-class who still run their own businesses in retail, health care, food, farming, etc., are continually being absorbed by larger entities, and end up under contract or salaried. Global competition has reduced middle-class incomes, has brought its status closer to that of the working-class, and has widened the gap with the upper-class. This decline has occurred in all developed nations, whereas in developing nations the middle-class has experienced a surge in numbers and wealth. The middle-class has faded and blossomed simultaneously in different parts of the world, but now it seems to be waning everywhere. But, even if the middle-class and the working-class do find they have common objectives, they are still faced by the armed mercenaries of the ruling class. A totalitarian police state is possible and has often accompanied the end of empire. And it is all the more possible because of twenty odd years of practicing the repression and wholesale murder of men, women and children, and because career soldiers are cut off from society in a closed fraternity where obedience to a superior is the primordial rule of conduct.

The few who hold the reins of power hold them tight. They have to be severely weakened before they let go. And ultra-violence does not deter them. Remember the Paris Commune of 1871, the Berlin Uprising of 1919, the last Kronstadt rebellion of 1921, and all the other bloody repressions from Nanking (1937) to Santiago (1973), to Grozny, Fallujah, Aleppo, etc., etc. The forces of wealth and power can only be confronted successfully by vastly superior forces. This has sometimes been the case, as in Portugal for the 1974 “Carnations Revolution”, or Iran’s 1979 “Islamic Revolution”. Those reactionary forces can also be worn down and demoralised, and their recruitment can dry up, which happened in China, Vietnam and Cuba after lengthy guerrilla and civil wars. However, none of these past strategies can apply to today’s world, where a few air traffic controllers can threaten to bring everything to a standstill, where strong popular movements build themselves and come together on social media, where electronic surveillance is universal, and where Putin is experimenting to see if his power structure can function without internet. What is sadly missing is a unifying vision of a different society, something to replace Marx’s outdated concept of a proletarian dictatorship. If the increasingly déclassé middle-class and an impoverished working-class could join forces around a common project they would be irresistible, because together they control the functioning of everything. The social demands of “yellow vests” are an element, as are those of school children for stronger action against fossil fuels. But doctors, dentists, lawyers, engineers, architects, academics and all the corporate middle tier executives are still clinging on to their shrinking privileges, whereas they should be in the forefront of the ideological struggle for change. They have all been brainwashed, but a little more pain and stress, and their children’s bleak future, might revive their humanity.