The
US is notoriously unkind to “intellectuals.” Popular culture
portrays intellectuals as absent-minded, divorced from the everyday
world, and obsessed with spinning useless, but harmless abstractions.
They are good to keep contained in universities where they can give
future cogs in the capitalist machine a taste, but not a passion for,
impractical thought. Regrettably, those posing as intellectuals have
gone far to earn contempt, favoring arcane, specialized languages and
scholastic debates.
That's
not to say that there is no room for thinkers in the US, but they are
dubbed “pundits,” “experts,” “researchers” or
“consultants,” words that ring with practicality and
single-mindedness; they are purveyors of small, easily digested ideas
and not the “big” ideas associated with intellectuals.
In
the US, we are taught to distrust big ideas unless they are linked to
religions. But then religion has been compartmentalized, shunted off
to Sunday mornings or weddings and funerals. All the big ideas we
need were decided with the ratification of the US Constitution.
We
can thank corporate marketers and their masters for our continuing
alienation from big ideas and taste for small ones. They prefer ideas
that are easily and flashily packaged, readily digested, and quickly
obsolesced. They select for us ideas that can go “viral,”
grabbing the attention of not thousands, but millions. They select
ideas that easily fit in a two-minute TV commentary or on 6 or 8
column inches of news print. Intellectuals didn't invent the term
“sound bite.” Nor did they invent “twitter.” Corporate taste
makers did. So what we get in the market place of ideas are small
ideas, commodified ideas with shiny packages.
Thus,
it may be hard to understand how Francis Fukuyama fits into the world
of ideas. We know him for his celebrated 1992 book, The End of
History and the Last Man, an ambitious intellectual tome
designed to place triumphant capitalism and its attendant bourgeois
democracy at the pinnacle of a long historical, dialectical process.
A big idea indeed!
Of
course it wasn't that difficult to conjure a motive for this rising
star of the Right. On the heels of the fall of the Soviet Union and
the European socialist countries, Fukuyama saw the opportunity to mark "paid” to the theoretical foundations of Marxism by
co-opting the Hegelian “dialectics” that Marx was schooled in and
replacing the socialist ideal with something that looked remarkably
like the socio-economic system of late twentieth-century US
capitalism. Moreover, since Fukuyama had discovered the “end of
history,” we needn't worry about any serious future military
conflagrations or rebellions because we were entering the blissful
era of market justice, parliamentary democracy, and human rights.
Fukuyama's
big ideas can take small credit for the pious military crusades led
by the US ruling class in the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, and
recently in Libya and Syria, as well as the meddling in Eastern
Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa. Those who failed
to accept the end of history soon felt the wrath of history's
enforcer. At the same time, the resistance to Fukuyama's vision of
history's end challenged his big idea. The intense confrontation
between the US and peoples in the Middle East and Latin America
shattered the idea that with the demise of the Soviet Union the world
would rush to embrace the values of the US and Europe.
With
the “end of history” forestalled by unforeseen events, Fukuyama
knocked around the research institute/think tank/academic circuit,
writing books and resisting the temptation to join the courtiers of
the mass media trading in small, nasty ideas. He passed on the
enormous earnings available to the likes of the O'Reilly's,
Limbaugh's, or the other aristocrats of wind-baggery. Instead, he
scoured the landscape to find new opportunities to float big ideas.
And
now he's back with a new big idea.
Fukuyama
won a think-piece in the June 28/29 weekend Wall Street
Journal entitled “The Middle Class Revolution.” He argues
that “All over the world, today's political turmoil has a common
theme: the failure of governments to meet the rising expectations of
the newly prosperous and educated.” Cognizant of the worldwide mass
risings of recent years, Fukuyama chooses this moment to offer an
explanation, a theoretical explanation for those risings, an
explanation palatable and comforting to US elites.
He
rightly understands that linking the most recent mass upsurges
requires sizable ideas. While there are many similarities, there are
many differences as well. Successful exposition of their common
features would tell us much about the underlying processes and likely
offer a glimpse into the future. In short, it would give us a theory
of contemporary social change, a decidedly big idea.
Unfortunately,
he gets it all wrong.
He
builds his case around reflections on events in the streets of
Tunisia, Egypt, Brazil, and Turkey, a mixed collection neither
reflective of all of the mass activity of our time nor sharing many
common features. Seduced by recent headlines and sensationalist
accounts, Fukuyama finds the “middle class” as the revolutionary
agent in all cases. Besides the elusiveness of the term, he offers no
evidence beyond youth, cell phones, and the presence of a vaguely
sensed entrepreneurial spirit to justify the assignment of this role.
And he is equally slippery in explaining what constitutes a “middle
class.” Instead, he considers a series of candidates: income
($6,000-30,000 year), relative income (the middle of a country’s
income distribution), and relative level of consumption (greater than
the subsistence level of the poor). Rejecting these, he settles on
“education, occupation, and the ownership of assets,” none of
which is produced as evidence regarding any of the particular
countries under review. In fact, the demographics of the four
“revolutions” fail to show common attributes; nor do they
demonstrate a rising of the “middle class.”
When
Mohamed Bouazizi, a fruit vender in Tunisia, set himself afire
in December of 2010, he became the symbol for the uprisings that
pundits have dubbed “the Arab Spring.” Tunisia, under Ben Ali,
was one of the success stories of neo-liberalism, a poster child for
corporate-friendly “competitiveness” and foreign investment. Its
industrial and service economies were relatively well developed.
While the neo-liberal regimen delivered growth, modest GDP/capita,
some social benefits (education and welfare), it was rocked by the
economic crisis and the scourge of high unemployment. The youth
(constituting nearly half of the population) endured one of the
world's highest unemployment rates: 30.7%. As in the US, Tunisian
youth are relatively well educated, but denied access to meaningful
employment. The relative affluence of Tunisian elites enjoying the
fruits of a growing economy and the lack of opportunity for a
youthful population spurred the overthrow of Ben Ali.
Egypt
presents a different picture. While Sadat and Mubarak also embraced
the tenets of neo-liberalism, they did so in the shadow of Nasser's
legacy of anti-imperialism, public ownership and social welfare.
Moreover, free market capitalism fared far worse in this country.
Despite a large industrial base and due, in part, to a relatively
large agricultural sector (56.5% of Egyptians live outside of urban
areas), Egypt achieved a GDP/capita roughly only 2/3 of that of
Tunisia.
But Egypt shares with Tunisia an extremely youthful
population with massive un- and underemployment. With little
government educational expenditure, it is no surprise that Egyptians
have a relatively low participation in higher education.
Egyptian
professionals-- the social base for the Muslim Brotherhood-- could
count as a “middle strata,” though they are a small part of the
population. Most Egyptians, however, enjoy an income only marginally
above poverty, marking membership in what would properly be
considered the working class.
The
global economic downturn only brought the plight of young Egyptians
to the fore and prompted mass action and the deposing of Mubarak. The
subsequent Morsi presidency brought a further disintegration of the
economy and a spike in unemployment and poverty. The Muslim
Brotherhood failed to attempt an exit from neo-liberalism and
restored the foreign policy of Mubarak, even betraying the Syrian
government to imperialism.
The
people have again taken to the streets. In the words of Salah Adly,
General Secretary of the Egyptian Communist Party, Egyptian
Communists believe “that
what happened
on 30th
June is a
second wave
of the
Egyptian
revolution
that is stronger
and deeper
than the
first wave
in 2011.
It has
taken place
to correct
the path of
the
revolution and
seize it
back from
the forces of
the extreme
religious right...”
The
street demonstrations in Turkey,
a country that has one historic foot in the Arab world and a
tentative one in Europe, is more a political struggle than an
explosion of economic discontent. Turkey's demographics are similar
to a European country, a poorer European country like Portugal or
Poland, but with a much higher percentage of youth in the population.
The Islamist president Erdogan represents cultural traditions that
conflict with that of more secular youth. Of course others, including
workers, who have economic demands, support the demonstrations, as do
unemployed youth. But they do not challenge the structures of
bourgeois democracy or monopoly capitalism. Turkish Communists
recognize this fact. As Kemal
Okuyan, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of
Turkey, states “... this
is an outburst of a huge social energy. It is powerful in extent and
effect. But there are some Marxist criteria for defining a situation
as a revolutionary crisis. We are far from that. At least for now...”
Brazil,
Fukuyama's final example of a “middle class” revolution,
demonstrates its own unique demographics and weaknesses. Despite
showing exceptional economic growth, Brazil counts as one of the most
economically unequal countries in the world. Highly urbanized,
Brazil's poverty is concentrated in city neighborhoods, with all of
the attendant social problems of poverty intensified. The large and
growing service sector affords enough jobs to contain unemployment
below crisis levels. But grinding poverty and the contrasting extreme
concentration of wealth produce a persisting tinderbox.
Brazil's
social democratic government has shown occasional anti-imperialist
spunk, standing up to US arrogance at different times. This, along
with the government's competent management of the capitalist economy,
and some social welfare initiatives, has spawned national pride. At
the same time, support for the government is fragile because of its
inability to dent the massive economic and social inequalities
suffered by working people. This contradiction between national
sentiment and contempt toward the working class was brought home by
the mass objection to new soccer stadia, in a soccer-crazed country,
expressed by the mass demonstrations.
Clearly
what all of these countries do share is a popular response to
the failure of leaders, institutions, and political parties to
overcome the legacy and reality of colonialism, imperialism, and
global capitalism. Fukuyama hides this failing behind the mythology
of middle class dissatisfaction with the level of consumerism and
cultural expression: they rebel because they want to be like us in
Europe and the US. One would never guess that an almost unprecedented
and persistent economic calumny has shaken the social and political
foundations of nearly every country over the last five years. One
would never guess that all four of the countries under discussion
suffer from severe economic and political problems unsolved by their
past and current leaders.
In
Tunisia, Ben Ali's embrace of neo-liberal fundamentalism was a
bankrupt answer to youth unemployment. In Egypt, corrupted leaders
brazenly counted on the accommodation with imperialism to prop up
their aloof rule over an abused people. Turkey's leader, like
politico-theological leaders of other persuasions, overstepped the
limits of governance and opened the door to airing the many
grievances of the opposition, formerly trumped by religious
commitment. And Brazil's social-democratic government learned the
folly of attempting to manage capitalism while promising to rectify
its inequities.
From
the Indignados to the Occupy movement, from the revival of the Latin
American left to the Arab Spring, authentic popular up-risings have
emerged from the failure of capitalism to deliver the future and
security so seemingly assured before the great crisis of 2008.
Millions have been failed by the institutions, parties, and leaders
that they formerly trusted. It's not as though they have been dealt a
bad hand, but it is as though there is no good hand to be found in
the deck.
Spinning
theories based on such a corrupted sociological idea as the “middle
class” guarantees failure. Of course one can't blame Fukuyama
entirely for buying in on one of the great intellectual frauds of our
time. Everyone, from the Chamber of Commerce to the misleaders of
labor, likes to remind us that we are all members of a vast
collection of people located economically between the rich and the
poor. Within this distorted picture there is something for everyone.
We all share home ownership, a good job, vacations, family, and
comforting values, so the fantasy goes. The unfortunate poor are with
us because they have failed, though they deserve our compassion and,
perhaps, our charity. The rich are with us because they are
successful and merit our respect. This harmonious picture is only
disrupted when the rich get too greedy or the poor get rebellious.
This
myth serves the ruling class, their political flunkies, and labor's
class collaborationists in maintaining class peace and stability. But
most importantly, it obscures the real class divide between employers
and employees.
The
divisions that spark genuine revolution are not between some muddy
notion of a middle class at odds with an equally obscure specter of
government, but between the power and dominance of capitalist
corporations and the diverse and largely unrepresented workers who
enrich them. This sharply drawn class division accounts for the
fundamentally economic, but also cultural and spiritual alienation of
youth. Whether conscious or not, this division generates discontent
and outrage. Expressed in many ways, the conflict between the
employers and their employees stands behind the conflicts of the
twenty-first century. And only its resolution in favor of the
employee class – the working class-- will bring these conflicts to
a close.
It's
not a new idea; it's a big, but not too big of an idea; and it’s an
idea that promises an escape from the failure of capitalism:
Socialism.
Zoltan
Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com