Fragmentations

Societies have always been divided by class. Going back in time these were the priests, the soldiers, the merchants and the working people. In some societies this was rigidified into a hereditary cast system. Elsewhere promotions were occurring, though decreasingly so. These structures were possible as long as land, owned by the church and the military, was the major source of wealth. Trade encroached on this monopoly and occasionally gave power to the merchants. But the great upheaval came with industry. Mechanised production brought a new class into the circle of power: the entrepreneurs. The ensuing class struggles opposed land and industry, while the clerks sided mostly with the land owners, and the bankers with the industrialists. This resulted in a compromise when the rules of capital accumulation were accepted by all the contenders. By the late 19^th century they had joined together as a ruling class, over and above the labouring masses.

The majority’s living and working conditions have been described by several celebrated authors. For some it was the Gilded Age, la Belle Époque, but for vast numbers it was the most squalid poverty. The new 20^th century was rebellious. The upper-class felt threatened in life and limb by anarchist bombs and revolvers, and the working classes were labelled as dangerous. Labour was organising itself and flexing its muscles in the workplace. Capital was in trouble at home and on the question of conflicting foreign empires. This led to war, mass conscription, indescribable butchery of the bravest and best, and to a second helping twenty years later when civilians bore the brunt. During both World Wars, production and distribution came under centralised government control. And, in the intermediary period, world finance and trade had collapsed following the Wall Street crash of 1929. Capitalism, as the private property of the means of production, had failed dismally. However, in 1945 America was the only industrial nation left untouched by the destruction, and was producing about half the world’s wealth. And America remained the stalwart champion of private profit capitalism.

After the wartime (creative?) destruction, reconstruction in the war-scarred nations set off a new cycle of economic expansion. The technologies based on coal were replaced by internal combustion and electricity. This was largely financed and provided for by America, with a firm hand on the politics of the assisted nations. Free market capitalism was back in the saddle, and was proclaimed the only alternative to the state capitalism of the “Communist” Block. The war had bonded societies with a common purpose, behind a charismatic leader. The conscript armies had brought down class barriers through uniformity. Full employment had pushed up wages and strengthened the workforce’s bargaining power. And those who had done the fighting came home with expectations. These elements brought widespread middle-class conformity. But the post-war generation could not comply. Higher education, colour and electric sound opened perceptions that were different and gave a multitude of perspectives. The uniform world was broken into fragments. Minorities were coming out of the shadows and closets to proclaim their right to be different, and women – until recently a majority of citizens - were demanding equal opportunities and pay, and some respect. But ethnicity, gender and sexual preferences cut across class divisions. And, as these movements took centre-stage, the class struggle was pushed into the background.

The late 1980s and the 1990s witnessed the spread of market capitalism to China, Eastern Europe and Russia’s newly formed Commonwealth of Independent States. And this gave a boost to some countries in the southern hemisphere, while recalcitrants in the Middle-East and the Balkans were stamped on. Notwithstanding the dotcom blip, 9/11 and an expanding theatre of war, by 2008 the world’s production had doubled. The exploitation of labour had intensified – with working conditions resembling those practiced in Europe and North America a century earlier - and capital was accumulated by a few at a proportionate rate. But outsourcing the production of consumer goods meant the loss of industrial jobs, which could only be replaced by services. The old industrialised nations moved their production to less developed regions, to profit from cheap labour and slack rules on working conditions, pollution control and taxation. Corporations globalised, transporting goods around the planet, making at the lowest price and selling at the highest one. Meanwhile, in those traditional manufacturing countries, workers saw their factories close and were left to scramble for part-time employments.

Following the middle-class fantasy of the post-war years and the impact of a cultural mutation, the demand for equal rights and opportunities by minorities and women relegated class struggle, and the loss of factory jobs helped destroy the power of workers’ organisations. In some sectors union membership dropped to zero. Services tend to scatter the work-force and individualise the workers, whereas industry brings them together with a common objective. This unity of intent is a force that can oppose the power of abusive employers. When the workplace is at home, on a bicycle, or all over the place at unpredictable times, common purpose disappears, along with the capacity for mass actions. The labouring classes have been crushed and disseminated, and their past organisations have been made redundant. But, just as the new services economy has developed largely due to the internet, so labour is using that same tool to begin to reorganise in ways adapted to the present work environment. Their major handicaps are the persistence of antiquated ideas and the non-class divisions of society. When the concept of a proletarian dictatorship is brought up to date, and when women and men, gay and hetero, black, brown and white realise they have everything to gain by acting together, then a serious opposition can be made to the powers that rule the world, and to their hubris and Olympian disregard that are destroying the planet.