Why is neoliberalism so resilient/worker's movements so weak?

[Mr. Piccolo]

It has been several years since the 2008 economic collapse and there has been no real push away from neoliberalism, and I would even argue that there have been a number of significant victories over labor in a number of countries. Why is this the case?

My own guess is that working-class organizations have atrophied badly in the last several decades. Culturally, I think people are more individualistic and aspirational today and that has helped to ruin solidarity among working people. Also, I would surmise that there are more outlets for people to distract themselves from their misery (video games, television, ironically, computers and the Internet) than there were in the 1930s.

From an economic and political standpoint, the capitalist class seems to have perfected a kind of foxhole Keynesianism (just enough to keep the whole rotten structure from totally collapsing) along with an institutional network of think tanks, NGOs, PR firms and supranational organizations (IMF, EU, World Bank) that is hard to challenge.

Is there any way for the workers to regain the kind of strength they had in the 20th century and reach out to the mass of working people?

[Strannik]

My opinion: neoliberalism is basically methodical system for destroying all human relationships beside monetary. As such it is the ultimate ideological form of bourgeois society - when all organization is based on monetary relationships, no one can challenge people who produce and sustain monetary relationships.

Also, there's an odd thing I have noticed. Marx writes in "Grundrisse" that bourgeois society is basically made up of three cathegories - Labour (value-creating activity), Money (abstract form of value that can be exchanged) and Right (abstract "control" over results of labour). The odd thing is that all political discussion in society seems to be about Labour and Money, while basically no one in left or right challenges the bourgeois concept of Right.

At the same time Right (of property) is the fundamental thing that separates bourgeoise from the working class. NOT how much anyone works or how much value they produce.

A capitalist who works 24/7 is still a capitalist, because they work for increasing their property rights = wealth. A worker who is laid off is still a proletarian, because what they are denied is the possibility to sustain themselves.

Perhaps the Left should start to talk about what exactly are rights and how are they created and justified, since the ruling class does not seem to want to talk about this. Perhaps that's where their weak point lies.

[Comrade #138672]

Good posts. Both posts raise some interesting points.


My own guess is that working-class organizations have atrophied badly in the last several decades. Culturally, I think people are more individualistic and aspirational today and that has helped to ruin solidarity among working people. Also, I would surmise that there are more outlets for people to distract themselves from their misery (video games, television, ironically, computers and the Internet) than there were in the 1930s.Indeed. Individualism has ruined solidarity for the working-class. However, during this economical crisis, I would say that individualism has been broken at least a little bit, because people are forced to seek solidarity to defend themselves against the merciless austerity measures.

It is true, that the especially the Internet has really distracted some people on one hand, but on the other, it has also made it possible for many working-class people to connect with each other all over the world. It is a dialectical process which offers quite some potential for the working-class. It doesn't just work one way, but two ways. As Capitalism grows and advances, it creates its own gravedigger.


Perhaps the Left should start to talk about what exactly are rights and how are they created and justified, since the ruling class does not seem to want to talk about this. Perhaps that's where their weak point lies.Yes. And that is where we should hit them.

[TheEmancipator]

Cultural Hegemony is my bet. For many people the "far" Left are just a bunch of angry syndicalists who hold the world hostage every now and then for "trivial" reasons. To others (especially in America), being a leftist just means being a softy liberal pot smoker who doesn't contribute to society. These images have been engineered by the capitalist class to demonise true leftists.

I know I will sound a bit provocative and snobby, but I also think a lot of people are intellectually ignorant and focus only on the short term and the practical. The "live for the present" attitude coupled with this means populist politicians usually win instead of those who actually want to make a difference. When I ask most of my friends why they vote for centrist/centre-right parties, they don't have an answer, they just vote because their parents told them to, and said the others were evil.

I have to disagree when you say that neo-liberalism is somehow supported by many people. If you ask any person on the street if they like neo-liberalism, most will answer no, even some shopkeepers, etc. Its just most are either ignorant of the fact that it is the dominant ideology or ignorant of what neo-liberalism actually is. A lot of petite bourgeoisie are still living in the days of John Stuart Mill and fair, progressive capitalism.

[Art Vandelay]

Cultural Hegemony is my bet.

Culture is superstructure. I'm not saying the theory has absolutely no merit, however that is not the main reason. We are now just seeing the beginnings of a new revolutionary period, however it is still in its infancy. We are now just exiting a period of reaction which began in (roughly) 36'.

[Old Bolshie]

Culture is superstructure. I'm not saying the theory has absolutely no merit, however that is not the main reason. We are now just seeing the beginnings of a new revolutionary period, however it is still in its infancy. We are now just exiting a period of reaction which began in (roughly) 36'.

It's definitely a new revolutionary period. Europe (especially in the West) is becoming poorer due to the rising of the emergence economies in Asia and South America. The whole purpose behind the austerity plan is to impoverish those countries in order to make them economically competitive. This is creating a revolutionary situation in Europe but remember that not all revolutionary situations end in a revolution.

[subcp]

The classical worker's appears to have died from the combination of 2 things; the movement of production industries to concentrated zones in developing/emerging economies with a far cheaper labor price, stripping the advanced capitalist 'heartland' of its "traditional proletariat". The Situationists and Camatte wrote about the PCF treating the French industrial working-class (at Peugot, Renault) as their own private property; the identity of the factory worker and associated culture of workerism (specifically factory-workerism). The second thing was the demise of the USSR and Warsaw Pact; the source of inspiration and funding for those who perpetuated the place of factory workers and their culture (like the PCF). This suggests the idea of hegemony and counter-hegemony either was never accurate, or that since the recomposition of the working-class starting in the '70s, there is no longer a prospect of creating a counter-hegemony via the classical worker's movement.

Edit: In one of the issues of the Situationist International journal, they describe remnants of the non-Trotskyist, non-Leninist communist groups as, "extremely well prepared and well read on how to carry out the revolution; the revolution of 1917". Meaning, history isn't static; we need to be at the head of events like the Marxists of generations ago- when situations changed, the most advanced communists changed as well to meet new situations and circumstances. 1917 was almost a hundred years ago; 1936, 1956, 1968; all many decades and generations ago. Capitalism has changed since all of those historic markers of revolutionary ferment, 2008 was important, but it was a culminating factor of a process that started when the rate of profit began to fall again after the post-WWII economic boom (documented and described by various sources, the clearest is likely Kliman), we need to look beyond old ways of thinking when times change.