In 2012 the Arab Spring will blossom into the springtime of nations

By JuanManggagawa

Arab Spring - eight months on

Undoubtedly 2011 will be remembered as a year of global protests. The year opened with the downfall of Tunisian dictator Ben Ali and ended with Occupy protests in the US and around the world. In 2012, the Arab Spring will blossom into the springtime of nations, that is, into a series of uprisings in more countries that will upend the ancien regime of capitalist globalization.

Such a forecast may seem fearless at first but taken from a longer view of history, it will appear as determined by the law of motion of post-modern capitalism.

While the popular uprisings in the Arab countries are directed at corrupt dictatorships, the underlying causes are the pervasive dissatisfaction at the lack of jobs and opportunities primarily among the youth but also among workers and even the middle class. Globalization has ravaged the Arab region as much as the rest of the world. Unemployment, contractualization, retrenchment, rising prices and stagnant wages are the norm in Egypt and Tunisia. Everywhere the masses have become poorer while only the elite have become richer under globalization.

Seen from this vantage point, the global rebellion of 2011 is merely the most recent explosion emanating from the subterranean tectonic collision between the 99% and the 1%. In the US, while Tahrir Square is an obvious inspiration to Liberty Plaza, arguably the occupation of Wall Street owes as much a debt to the Republic Windows and Doors factory occupation of 2008 and the occupation of the State Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin in 2010.

The Arab revolts, the Occupy movement, the European general strikes and even the wildcat strikes in China are part of a long-running thread of anti-globalization protests that dates back to the Zapatista revolt against NAFTA onto the Battle in Seattle that shutdown the WTO conference and then the reinvention of socialism by Latin American radical governments.

Looking back to the past, it now seems all too easy to project the connection to the present. But the real challenge is to foretell the future course of events. The intractable economic crisis and the possibility of a double-dip recession will be a crucial factor in generalizing and radicalizing the protests everywhere.

The Great Recession did not proceed to a new Great Depression thanks to the bailout of the bankers and speculators. Nonetheless the real economy has not rebounded since the masses have been sold out instead of bailed out. Rather than increasing the aggregate demand by redistributing the wealth from the 1% to the 99%, governments have been embarking on another round of austerity. The poor who are the last to benefit from a period of prosperity, if at all, are now the first to be sacrificed amidst the crisis.

At best a protracted stage of low if not zero growth awaits global capitalism. Hundreds of millions of workers will remain unemployed while the rest will wallow in low-wage, contractual work. Masses of youth will be trapped deep in joblessness, debt and criminality. At worse, a renewed contraction in consumption and lack of investments in the real economy will thrust capitalism over the edge into the feared double-dip recession. Such will be the fertile ground for a global conflagration of rebellion and victorious revolts in more countries.

Seething discontent has now matured to mass protests. People are waking up to the belief that resistance and rebellion is the antidote to the corporate greed that is running amuck around the world, creating the worst economic crisis since the 1930’s, and destroying the jobs and lives of millions. With even the so-called democracies in the US, Europe and elsewhere being exposed as dysfunctional and debilitated, people are learning that only through struggle can a new world be forged.

Corporate globalization is plainly the context of the crisis and revolution that the world is going through. Globalization has inaugurated not a post-industrial society but the unadorned class rule of corporate interests and the insatiable pursuit of profit by global capital. Class antagonisms have not been attenuated but on the contrary are heightened.

Evidently the working class is the absolute majority in the world. The so-called services are being industrialized, that is put under the regime of mechanized production and social labor. The modern office is little different from the automated factory. In both, low pay, long hours and insecure jobs are the norm. Professions are transformed from independent livelihood into wage-labor. Mental workers are joining manual laborers in organizing unions to protect their interests as wage-slaves.

Globalization has unleashed not so much the creative power of capital as its destructive forces. The genie of finance capital has been liberated by the liberalization of trade and investment and has left a path of destruction in its wake. Capitalism in the age of globalization is hopelessly bound up in its innate contradictions brought to their peak.

The workers, the poor and the youth are inevitably impelled to revolt by the vicious attacks against their living standards and social rights. Globalization by its very nature transforms the economic turmoil in one nation into a world crisis. It obliges the struggle in one country to become an international fight.

If this does not come true in 2012 then it will in the near future.

JuanManggagawa is based in Manila, National Capital Region, Philippines, and is an Anchor for Allvoices.