Ok, not very snappy, the Guardian reports it as France braced for strike disruption or take any other example of how strikes are reported upon in the mainstream media. The problem, in media framing, for workplace resistance is that whatever managers do is generally not reported and is taken to be a natural good faith effort to do their job and fulfil their appointed functions. When workers grievances are ignored and repressed and they are forced into withdrawing their labour this is what gets reported, so forever the onus lands on the striker as an antagonist with a market like invisible hand of managerialism not even being registered let alone showing up in the relatively benign role of protagonist. This further creates the illusion of an all is this together belt tightening being ruined by uppity greedy workers. Much as the stories about public sector pensions, the angle was look how generous they are compared to the pension you might get in the private sector (nevermind many aren’t that generous). On no account was the story reported as- Why is your pension so stingy, profit making corporations ripping off their faithful employees, more on pages 5.
Of course essential to making such an angle untenable is the story arc of ‘the deficit’ which is basically what right wingers talk about when they need cover for their usual policy objectives, historically similar or larger deficits under right wing administrations are rarely mentioned especially when they were the result of tax cuts for the already wealthy. What we have is an unreliable narrator being presented as the voice of god, of absolute scientifically empirically proven economic veracity. It is such a powerfully propelled article of propaganda even Nobel winning economists are ignored when they dissent, it has taken on a life of its own, impervious even to recanting high priests, due to its usefulness to powerful interests and their political familiars. It is a Zombie Meme, a stumbling mumbling brain eating deficit dog whistle. And it really does not matter that it can be shown to be a false argument on its own terms, nor that the whole paradigm predicated upon infinitely assumed growth is lethally dangerous for a finite Earth.
All that matters is power, this is a war by selfish people with great wealth against anyone who might inhibit their acquisitive addiction, their footsoldiers are similarly selfish but not wealthy people and not very intelligent people who have had the carrot of great wealth ‘anyone can be rich and successful’ waved in their dullard faces. The corollary to that fever dream is that this vampiric elite do not at all believe in, like or yearn for equality in any sense. It is winners and losers and what happens to the losers does not concern them, suicide, starvation disease, just don’t clutter the streets and get in the way of the limo to the charity ball. The vast rich complexity of human culture, of the human condition is nothing but a simple game (theory), buying, selling. The hysterical attacks on The Spirit Level, a markedly inoffensive and mild book, shows just how outraged the privileged and entitled onanists of market fundamentalism have become. Like a celebrity throwing a tantrum because their dressing room only has eight and not nine pink dyed kittens frolicking among bonsai trees floating on a mini lake of Everest melt water in it, the hunger and arrogance has no limit.
Slavery is the logical conclusion of an unregulated undemocratic capitalism, in some places on earth it has never gone away, at present the shift is not that extreme, for now the game at play is to make us all live under a lifetime of debt. Firstly this creates a larger market for financiers, secondly it makes us pliable, we have to remain within a narrow set of social conditions to be able to service the debt, the alternative being prison (where you will be made to work). You will accrue debt to be educated, you will accrue debt to have health coverage, you will accrue debt to have shelter, electricity and water, you will accrue debt to have laptops , flatscreens, game consoles, holidays, cars, cosmetic surgery. You will work until very old age to service this debt, you will not join uppity strikes, you will not question your superiors, you will not be ill, you will not ponder alternatives to this system, the choice represented by a vote every few years shall be enough to quieten doubts about what a free and democratic state you live in. You may even go and kill people overseas who are do not share such free and democratic values as you, they should thank you for this.
What will keep enough people from resisting is a vague idea those with power operate in some kind of good faith, that they wouldn’t be doing this unless it was really necessary that There Is No Alternative. Coupled with a helplessness instilled into them by a media that will, to be sure, offer totems of hate (scroungers, immigrants, bankers bonuses -nb. but not the financial system) to keep things nicely divided and ruled. And all of this will take very little conscious effort as the values of this neoliberal paradise have been studiously internalised by all who prosper, or seek to prosper within it.
We will hit the hard buffer of environmental capacity at some point, we could be approaching it with foresight and preparedness, but instead this poisonous monetarism will drive us there faster and because of what is happening now we will be even less of a working human society to deal with it. The inequality being exacerbated & fortified now will accelerate under acute stressors, we have no time for this, when we should be moving into a sustainable & just model we are still contending with a corrupt globalised market holding nations to ransom and quisling politicians. Most of the dreck of how this is conveyed masks a very simple spectacle, people with little are being forced to have less by people living in great luxury, it’s simply criminal.
