POPULAR PROTESTS AND THE CRISIS OF THE GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY

There are a number of essays and books about the new epoch of protest that the world has entered since the recession of 2008-present, which started in the US and spread to other countries. Do deep recessions cause chronic protests, and if that is the case, why did the world not see such trends during the Great Depression of the1930s? Or is it the case that epochs of popular protests actually take place amid periods of economic expansion, or at least relative affluence, as was the case in the 1960s?

The question is how one defines 'age of protest' while living in it, when it is very difficult to discern its features within the social  structure and political economy. Does the fact that Islamic countries started the 'Arab Spring' in 2011 entail an age of popular protest movements resulting in regime change? Will structural or systemic change take place in 'Arab Spring' countries, or have they merely changed leaders without impacting the institutional structure? And does this mean that mass protests will end, or will they continue until there is systemic change?

Do grass roots protest movements of disgruntled middle classes and workers in Spain and across much of Europe as well as in Canada, Chile, Russia, and even conservative Israel and US - "Occupy Wall Street" - entail that the masses have lost confidence in the social contract, in the political economy and established institutions that the political shapes? How do we know that all of these movements are not an ephemeral occurrence amid economic hard times and all will go back to the status quo ante in good time? Are we living in an era similar to the 1960s that gave us the civil rights, human rights, and women's rights movements, all gradually co-opted by the established institutions?

All signs are that the world economy is undergoing transition that impacts the social structure in a fundamental way, and therein are the causes of mass protests seeking change. We are at the beginning of a new age where capital concentration enabled by political systems claiming to represent all people have developed obvious contradictions that undermine the social contract. The capitalist world economy under a neo-liberal model with finance capital as its backbone, buttressed by the state as well as international organizations such as the IMF, OECD, World Bank, World Trade Organization, among others, is in its early stage of causing deep structural transition in the social structure; namely, downward social mobility amid social discontinuity. Social discontinuity rests behind the age of mass protests, structurally not very different from the first such age of protests in the 16th century Europe when the broad masses of the population recognized that the transition from the feudal-manorial system was causing disruptions in the social fabric at the expense of displaced peasant and workers.  

German theologian Martin Luther did not know that he was living in the age of protest, any more than his followers including the more radical Thomas Munzer that led social uprisings and became a symbol of egalitarians and socialists. The Protestant Reformation, which started with Luther castigating the abuses of the Papacy and church hierarchy, was not just a religious movement against the corrupt Catholic Church, but a popular movement against the nobility inexorably linked to the upper clergy and royal government, as well as the emerging merchant class.

The Protestant Reformation marks the beginning of mass movements, with the German Peasant's War followed by other mass protests that questioned the Age of Absolutism. This was first evident in 17th century England - Civil War and Glorious Revolution - that appeared to be a religious struggle on the surface, but was in essence a political and social struggle amid social discontinuity. In the 16th century clerical authority figures like Luther who enjoyed the support among of the German elites afforded a sense of legitimacy to protest. In the 17th century, John Locke representing the intelligentsia and merchant class questioned the established institutions, thus affording legitimacy to protest against the old order. Locke's philosophy that provides philosophical grounds for dissent came after the English Civil War, but it influenced the Age of Reason in the 18th century. Intellectuals - religious or secular -  provided the theoretical grounds for expressing opposition to an establishment that did not reflect the rapidly changing conditions in society, namely, social discontinuity.

The nature of protest movements, which had been middle class from Luther (Reformation) and Locke (Glorious Revolution) to Rousseau and Robespierre (French Revolution), took a turn toward the left during the revolutions of 1848 when Marx and Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto. Reflecting working class interests, nineteenth century ideologies - varieties of socialism, anarchism and syndicalism - afforded a sense of legitimacy to mass protests on the part of workers, minority populations and women against a bourgeois establishment that placed narrow walls around the institutional mainstream. Whether in Czarist Russia, US, or Mexico, in the 19th century government representing set out to crush mass protest movements with brutal force, presenting them as treacherous to 'the national interest', which meant the interests of the small establishment; a concept no different than regimes used to combat Protestant reformers in the 16th century, English Liberals in the 17th century, French republicans (anti-royalists) in the 18th century. 

Protests movements in early modern European history coincided with the transition from the agrarian economy to merchant capitalism that both the Protestant Reformation represented as well as Locke's Liberalism. In short, the middle class of northern Europe was at the core of these movements that never spread to predominantly Catholic Southern Europe. Similarly, the protest movements and popular revolutions of the 19th century were a reaction to the dreadful conditions that industrial capitalism was creating among workers from the mines of Russia to the factories of the US. Protest movements focused on the political economy creating such conditions, namely on the privileged class benefiting from the exploitation of subsistence labor values. The rapidly evolving market economy was creating social hardships, thus social disharmony largely because government was structured to represent the propertied classes and to keep the rest of society conforming to the existing system.

In the early 21st century, much of the world is experiencing a new protest era owing largely to rapid change in the political economy. There are differences between the current age of protest stemming from deep structural changes in socioeconomic structure and the popular protests of the 1960s. In the 1960s, protests aimed at curtailing wars of imperialism as Vietnam symbolized when there was upward mobility for the middle class in the Western World. At the same time, the 1960s protests were a middle class cultural reaction to the 1950s era of conformity stemming from the globalization of the Cold War used as a pretext to preserve the status quo even though the status quo included a society of racing, xenophobia, and gender inequality. Protest stemmed from social groups demanding a political voice into the institutional mainstream, not the overthrow of that institutional structure.

In the early 21st century, the entire institutional mainstream is questioned as not serving the vast majority of the people. There is the reality of downward socioeconomic mobility as the record of the past three decades indicates, a reality that has convinced many people to doubt the social contract best serves the majority. In the 1960s, there was hope of a better future for the young generation, whereas the young generation of the early 21st century does not have the same high hopes for a future better than that of their parents. On the contrary, the current generation realizes that society is democratic and seemingly egalitarian for an increasingly smaller percentage of the population that is at the top of the income pyramid, while the vast majority is squeezed down by finance capitalism that otherwise democratic regime endeavor to protect and preserve.

The Occupy Wall Street movement is a recognition that American democracy works for an increasingly smaller percentage of the people, while the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder must make due with high unemployment and underemployment, a health care system and higher educational system that leave millions behind, jobs that barely pay subsistence wages, a social safety net that is gradually disappearing. Protesters come from all walks of life, from society's mainstream to protest the tyrannical institutions that operate in the name of the open society but in reality work as tools of oligarchical political and socioeconomic powers.The situation is not very different for protesters in England, Ireland, France, Spain, across Southern and Eastern Europe. If the triumph of the market economy over Communism entailed better times for all in the future, why has much of the Western World sunk into worst times two decades after the fall of Communism? Where is the promise land that capitalism was to deliver under seemingly 'democratic' government?

Not that things are much better in Asia, In 2011, much  of Asia, including India and Japan, experienced mass protests. Naturally, war-ravaged  Pakistan and Afghanistan are special cases, but India and Japan that are politically stable have felt the pressure from citizens who lack of confidence not just in their political leaders, but in the political economy working for a small percentage of the people. The lack of confidence by an increasingly larger percentage of people raises the question of legitimacy regarding the social contract as much in Asia and Eurasia, as it does in Europe and US.

From Nigeria and Uganda experiencing social unrest owing to various causes from tribal and political to fundamental economic hardships; from Russia where nationalist regimes governing on behalf of oligarchs replaced Communism to Romania where there have been mass protests and riots in Bucharest over a controversial government health plan and austerity policies, people recognize that the market economy under the neoliberal model is the beginning of mass socioeconomic disruptions at the expense of the many and for the benefit of the very few. The situation is not very different in Quebec province, Canada where hundreds of thousands have been protesting college tuition increases; or in Spain, Greece, and Italy where hundreds of thousands of people recognize that austerity measures benefit finance capital but destroy the average middle class and working class families, and all in the name of “saving” the global political economy that exists under the 'democratic' label.

Social discontinuity is inevitable because capitalism is a dynamic system based on the constant accumulation and concentration of capital in fewer private hands and fewer countries. In a previous essay, I argued that
 the dialectic of social and cultural change is invariably linked to grassroots forces trying to find expression within the institutional mainstream. The success of the American political economy, and to a large degree the Western one as well is largely the result of the success of mainstream institutions to co-opt 'identity movements' and grass roots cultural trends/movements. As long as the institutional mainstream will have the ability to co-opt identity social movements and cultural trends, society will remain strong and dynamic; failure to successfully co-opt will result in the gradual waning of the entire system and it will be the nascent stage of social discontinuity.

LEFT-RIGHT POLITICS in the 21st CENTURY

Reading or listening to Western journalists, analysts or mainstream politicians describe political parties one has no clue of what they really mean. Invariably, they label social-democratic groups as 'far left'; they place middle class environmental groups in the same category and call them radical left;  anti-globalization groups are in the same category as Communists; leftist rebels in Latin America are 'terrorists' without any distinction from Islamic or extreme right-wing groups employing para-military methods to achieve their goals. How can the news reader/audience possibly understand anything from the term 'radical' when the mainstream media uses it to lump together al-Qaeda, Colombian rebels FARC, environmental groups of varying types, social-democrat movements, and protesters against austerity programs? Is the intention of such rhetoric to inform, or to indoctrinate the audience toward conformity to the status quo?

Providing no explanation of the ideological and political terminology leaves the reader/listener/viewer confused and forced to associate anything politically evil with the terminology used. Why do mainstream media journalists, politicians and analysts, especially in the West deliberately use hyperbolic terminology to stigmatize any progressive group by lumping it together with fringe elements of varying types? Given that there is often no attempt to ascertain the details of the group's ideology and/or platform/agenda, and given that the loaded ideological/political terms have a different meaning today in different countries because society has moved toward a neo-liberal model under globalization, it is important for the reader/listener/viewer to look at the agenda or intention behind the rhetoric.

Just as Stalin and pro-Soviet groups used the term 'social-fascists' in the 1930s to describe those that were not Stalinists, and just as American journalists, politicians and some intellectuals in the 1950s used the term 'totalitarian' to describe both the Soviet Union as well as the Nazi and Fascist regimes, similarly today there is an amorphous term 'leftist' to describe anyone and anything advocating anything from environmental protection and minority rights to trade union rights and anyone opposed to neo-liberalism, globalization and military intervention in non-Western countries. This trend continued during the early Cold War in the US amid the Communist witch hunts when intellectuals, journalists and politicians endeavored to engender conformity among the general population, and it continues today during the age of globalization with the purpose of engendering conformity to the neo-liberal political economy. For example, in the 1950s a pacifist advocating abolishing nuclear weapons was a leftist, someone supporting Communism and the USSR.

As far as the critics of Franklin D. Roosevelt were concerned, he was a radical leftist, while as far as Stalinist were concerned, he was a social-fascist. Did these terms say anything at all about FDR, or did they really describe the critics ideological and political orientation? To some people, Obama is a radical leftist who appeases gays and Islam, while to others he is a mainstream Democrat who supports the sociopolitical and economic status quo while pursuing militaristic policies abroad. Is he either of those things, a bit of both, or something different? And what about cases of politicians who may be fiscal conservatives but have a progressive - left-leaning - position on sociocultural issues, or any such combination? Unless there is deconstruction to ascertain issue by issue the politician or political party, how well does the label 'left or right' serve the public? Today, mainstream media journalists, analysts and politicians expediently use terms 'far left' not to describe anything about the political party, person or position, but to stigmatize and defame, without really saying anything about the specific policies.

During the French Revolution of 1789, the terminology of leftist and rightist politics and rhetoric emerged. The term left designated the seating of Estate General representatives that sat on the left side of the assembly hall, and adopted progressive positions, that is, positions that benefited socially, economically and socially the Third Estate representing mainly the middle class, as opposed to the nobility and clergy represented by the second and first estates respectively. The French Revolution evolved from a moderate phase in 1789 to a more progressive phase in 1793, thus the term left evolved, because a leftist in 1789 was a moderate (centrist) in 1793.

In the course of the 19th century, as Europe was embracing increasing influences from the middle classes and workers during the dawn of mass politics, the terms left were attributed to anarchists, syndicalists, and socialists of varying types from Utopian to Marxian. Rightist politics became identified with those demanding either the preservation of the status quo, or reverting to a bygone era - hence the term reactionary, also made popular during the French Revolution.

The term 'centrist' emerged to describe mainly classical liberals and advocates of liberal democracy - both in the Lockean and Jeffersonian sense - those who believed in some compromise to the unrepresented classes of people in the bottom of the social ladder and outside the mainstream. The terms right, center and left have never had a fixed meaning across different nations or even within a country, considering that a radical in New York is not the same thing as in Mississippi. Such terms have always reflected society's political establishment and mirror the critics' ideological/political position rather than the position of the movement or person they describe.

In a more conservative Western society like America, the term left or radical could easily describe a centrist, whereas in a more progressive society like Norway, terms like left do not describe the same political ideology, group or party as in the conservative society. Moreover, a position that was once far left or radical, such as the right to collective bargaining for trade union workers, eventually became mainstream, and currently radical owing to neo-liberalism that prefers no collective labor contracts or any protection for workers. Therefore, we see that a program or position, which at some point in history in a particular country is radical, could evolve into a mainstream or status quo position and back to radical depending on political and socioeconomic conditions.

Clearly, the media, mainstream political parties and institutions mold public opinion to accept hyperbolic rhetoric describing political ideology, group or party as 'far leftist'. However, the self-proclaimed 'leftists' have had a hand in defaming the progressive forces, given that Socialist political parties across Europe have evolved into neo-liberal ones, embracing policies that are more accommodating to big capital and globalization than conservatives. This has been the case across Southern Europe. Considering that the Socialist political parties or Labour in the case of the UK are linked to trade unions also calling themselves 'leftist', the term has lost its meaning because the label and rhetoric may be progressive but the policies are neo-liberal and hardly different in essence from those that conservatives pursue.

When a genuine socialist or even social-democratic political party or group emerges, as in the case of Greece with SYRIZA, the entire Western media, analysts and politicians label it 'far left', or radical left. In essence, SYRIZA platform reflects policies that European Socialists or social-democratic parties of the 1970s would have embraced without raising an eyebrow. Clearly, what has changed is that society throughout much of the world, especially the West, has moved so far toward a market-dominated mode that center-leftist positions are now called far left, or radical left.

Varieties of progressive groups and political parties that emerged in 20th century open societies where women, minorities, and workers demanded political representation and basic human and political rights. This meant that left, center and right groups fell under a large ideological and political umbrella. The issue of whether there is a gap between ideological positions, actual platform and practices of political parties is another issue. Similarly, a left-wing politician in the US may be a Kennedy-style Democrat, while that same politician may be a center-rightist at best in Norway or Spain. Nor does the label left mean the same thing geographically in the US today as it did in during the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

It could be argued that people want simple terms to describe politicians and do not care about specifics or nuances. Left-right political terms are subject to relativist interpretations that include factors such as geography, epoch, given societal and political conditions. The discerning 'consumer' of news and analysis would do well to investigate the intention behind the rhetoric, for as the philosopher of language Ludwig Wittgenstein argued, intention behind words is of the essence and not necessarily the words. Finally, the only way to make sense of loaded terms that mainstream media, and politicians use is to examine the source using the terms.