Afraid to protest

After World War II, social movements in Western countries generally put their old revolutionary dreams behind them. Western capitalism settled into an unprecedented scenario of continued growth and stability. The new political actors were people of the middle classes, students and professionals, rather than oppressed, hungry, angry peasants and workers. Class consciousness was diluted in a new sea of individualism and consumerism.

In this period, capitalism as a machine of growth was endorsed by leftist parties and unions, in return for social benefits, income distribution and political democracy. Growth, prosperity and the welfare state made capital-labor conflict an exception, normally resolved by collective bargaining or electoral contests.

Millions of European citizens who had known wars, revolutions and fascism, at last found themselves under the umbrella of a system that protected them in illness, unemployment and old age. Their children grew up in a new civic culture, which preferred social mobility within order to doctrines of class struggle and visions of an earthly paradise.

In Spain we were late in joining this scenario, which became possible only after the end of Franco's regime; but the welfare state and rising living standards, with general access to education and healthcare, left its mark on a society long accustomed to a dysfunctional administration and inefficient public services.

But times are changing, and now, as grim news rains down day by day, history may throw some light on the scene. In this deep crisis, with millions of unemployed and aggressive policies of social cutbacks, are we looking at the end of the "old" paradigm of capital-labor consensus that rose from the ashes of World War II, and in Spain helped to consolidate democracy?

This may well be so. With a government so convinced of its strength, and so little disposed to make concessions, the unions and social movements cannot negotiate, since they would receive nothing in return; and protests cannot be channeled through existing institutions and organizations.

In the face of the resulting prospect of disorder, the government and the media that support it will call for an iron hand and repressive action. Many people will find they have turned from citizens into subjects. Workers will find themselves dependent clients of capital, afraid to protest; while the social sectors most impoverished by the crisis will lay the blame on democracy and established politics, for the failure of a system that no longer affords them material prosperity.

Such may be the perverse effects of trying to eliminate or ignore all demands and claims that take shape outside the official policy and its party. This restrictive definition of politics opens the doors to an unbounded triumph of financial and speculative capitalism, and treats social conflicts as mere challenges to public authority. What lies behind this ultra-conservative blueprint is a fortification of property and the market, and a restoration of capital-labor relations entirely in favor of capital.

By breaking the ample agreement on economic growth, social benefits and the distribution of wealth, the new order will end up excluding from the system many of those who had assimilated it. In spite of the obvious gains that this will afford to the political and financial elites, the real beneficiaries of the new order, the result may be a new period of confrontation, with high levels of extra-institutional conflict. In short a return, by a new circuitous route, to the old culture of class confrontation that left so much of Europe in ruins, not so very long ago.

Julián Casanova is a professor of Contemporary History at the University of Zaragoza.