French Students who fight against the CPE reform of a labour-market to which the kids from the suburbs, who rioted only few months before, had no access anyway;
Clashes between lefty squatters and street kids during an occupation in Cologne, which took place in midst of a public debate which tries to divide the 'good working-people' from the dangerous idle under-classes;
Greek students occupying universities and critising democracy, education and ideology.
Middle class kids in Indian call centres who earn ten times more than the local building worker, but lose their life time and energy working constant night-shifts, selling pre-paid electricity schemes to the poor in the UK…
These stories from the past few months show the various ways sections of the class deal with their realities - from outright confrontation, to antagonism ending in compromise, to accepting what capitalism seems to offer (at least at first glance). What connects these stories? How can we understand them as fitting into the picture of global capitalism and global class struggle in all its complexities?
Class perspective first of all is the attempt to find and support the open and hidden tendencies, which question the fact that we produce the material conditions for our own exploitation and for the social relations, which imprisons us in our various identities.
Talking about class is not an un-historic call for unity and dignity, but a call to criticise all material divisions, privileges, ideologies, illusions, ethnical hierarchies, which are part of the working class. The current dynamic of the class relations make fixed categories like 'workers aristocracy', 'precariat' or 'lumpen-proletariat' rather despaired pigeonholes, which become obsolete and inaccurate the very minute they are used. In order to avoid these traps we try to make a collective and participating analysis of the various ongoing movements and proletarian situations.
Comments