If one shines a light on the continuing ‘anti-capitalist’ protests, we find that in times of crisis, the obvious candidates for ‘belt-tightening’ are the lower levels of the salaried bourgeoisie: political protest is their only recourse if they are to avoid joining the proletariat.
Although their protests are nominally directed against the brutal logic of the market, they are in effect protesting about the gradual erosion of their (politically) privileged economic place.
Most strikes today, certainly in the UK, are held by a ‘salaried bourgeoisie’ driven by fear of losing their surplus wage. These are not proletarian protests, but protests against the threat of being reduced to proletarians.
Who dares strike today, when having a permanent job is itself a privilege?
Not low-paid workers in what remains of say something like the textile industry etc, but those privileged workers who have guaranteed jobs (teachers, public transport workers, police etc).
This also accounts for the wave of student protests: their main motivation is arguably the fear that higher education will no longer guarantee them a surplus wage in later life.
Rather than submit these trends to moralising criticism, we should read them as signs that the capitalist system is no longer capable of self-regulated stability – it threatens, in other words, to run out of control..
source
Slavoj Zizek
No comments:
Post a Comment