History and Class Consciousness

When the post-war economic boom showed clear signs of ending, there was a frantic effort by banks and governments to sustain it through easy credit. Because their consumption of goods, including the purchase of homes, not only continued as before but increased, many members of the working-class in the USA, Canada, and Europe acquiesced when encouraged to consider themselves part of a new "middle class."  A comment on this illusory class formation follows, edited from an email note that I sent in December 2009:

>   Living through both the genuine boom of the post-war
>   period and then the bubble or credit economy of the
>   last thirty-some years, I saw the rise of this
>   so-called "middle class." Elizabeth Warren and other commentators
     have rightly expressed concern about its future..
>
>   The "middle class" is in fact something that emerges
>   only during such economic decades. There are really
>   only two classes, those who buy labor power and
>   those who must sell it. In the post-war boom and in
>   the subsequent bubble, there however arose what
>   Engels would call a "labor aristocracy," working
>   class people able to win wages and benefits that
>   allowed them a version of the life of the
>   bourgeoisie or the petite bourgeoisie (i. e. owners
>   of their own means of production such as small
>   shopowners or farmers). The same conditions that
>   produced this lifestyle produced value systems that
>   were similar to those of the petit-bourgeoisie and
>   based on the defense of the automobiles, college
>   education for their kids, and occasional luxuries
>   that they could now afford.
>
>   I don't personally like to see the word "middle
>   class" used to describe this formation. For one
>   thing, it is based on income rather than on the
>   place of the individuals in the means of production.
>   It is "structurally" a meaningless phrase.
>
>   What does the "middle class" do when under attack?
>   Here, the illusions bred by an illusory status
>   become a danger--as Germany between the wars would
>   suggest. Fascism is middle class "socialism."

I do not, however, see Fascist movements on the rise despite the shock to their expectations that this "middle class' has endured. It is true that there has been a turn to the right evident in such phenomena as the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts and in the rise of the Tea Party nationally, but these are the actions of people still bewildered after the bursting of the bubble. There is hope that recognition of the "new normal" (as the financial commentators call it) will restore the class-consciousness that had been obliterated--or at least suppressed--in the bubble economy. Unfortunately, there is at this time in the USA no large and visible movement that can give voice to the demands of this restored consciousness of what it means to be a member of the working-class, but there has been a beginning in actions like the march for jobs and peace in Detroit on August 28, which was a prelude to a much larger gathering in Washington, D.C., on October 2.

In Europe, where the ideas of socialism have never been totally effaced, not even by some decades of affluence, the fightback against the austerity measures that will further erode living standards for the damaged "middle class," and in fact deepen the recession, is beginning now that traditional August vacation days have passed. A preview of what is to come across Europe will occur tomorrow in France on Tuesday, September 7--and that is one reason that I felt that I had to begin my blog now, even though I will "observe" the day's events from far-away Revere Beach. On September 29, there will be a trans-European eruption of protests and strikes.

It is significant that European resistance to the austerity measures immediately takes the form of strikes, the unique weapon of the working-class. Class-consciousness has not been lost there, nor is it greatly befuddled by the thirty-year bubble economy. Georg Lukacs argued in History and Class Consciousness that the class-consciousness of the working-class is the self-consciousness of history. Will the class, and history, begin to move forward this month?