Indignés, révoltez-vous !

Indignés, révoltez-vous !

Deux universitaires britanniques proches du mouvement anti-globalisation, David Harvie et Keir Milburn, publient dans le Guardian du 4 août 2011 une chronique où ils assimilent la crise financière générale en cours et divers événements parallèle, dont essentiellement la “crise Murdoch”, pour faire une analyse de la situation et exposer les perspectives qu’ils envisagent. Cette analyse commence par le constat de l'état d'effondrement et dissolution du néo-libéralisme...

«Just days after the deal that was supposed to banish it, the eurozone crisis is back. Poor growth figures put a “new” financial collapse back on the cards. The response from politicians, bankers and business leaders is more of the same – more of the same neoliberal policies that got us into this situation in the first place. Neoliberalism no longer “makes sense”, but its logic keeps stumbling on, without conscious direction, like a zombie: ugly, persistent and dangerous.»

L’analyse générale de Harvie-Milburn est cohérente et permet d’aller au-delà des anathèmes auxquels se réduisent en général les critiques du Système. Il y a quelques certitudes selon eux, qui nous semblent tout à fait fondées et rejoignent certaines de nos appréciations : le néo-libéralisme est réduit à l’état de zombie et se trouve en pleine phase de décomposition, ou d’effondrement. La “crise Murdoch” n’est pas une occasion de renouveau mais un aspect de plus de cette décomposition. Pour les deux auteurs, il importe que le public développe une exploitation indirecte de cette situation en accélérant ses mouvements de protestation comme ceux qu’on a vus en Grèsce ou en Espagne, ou épisodiquement au Royaume-Uni («The only way out of the present impasse is to spark mass political action such as seen with the UK student movement in the 2010 protests»).

L’intérêt de ce texte se trouve effectivement dans l’intégration de diverses crises, dans la logique de la crise générale, pour mieux apprécier la substance de cette crise générale et envisager parallèlement des mouvements de déstructuration. C’est une conception au moins tactique, sinon stratégique dans ses effets éventuels, que nous n’avons cessé de défendre.

«Neoliberal governance has common traits across the planet. But its instantiation in each country has been shaped by the peculiarities of that country's history. In each, a different (re)arrangement emerged between sections of the ruling class that would enable the imposition of neoliberal policies on populations that, on the whole, didn't want them.

»Rupert Murdoch, and the tabloid culture he helped to establish, was central to this process in the UK, not least with the defeat of the print unions at Wapping. Other elements of that compact include a Thatcherite Conservative party and a neoliberalised Labour party, a highly politicised police force and, especially after 1986's big bang deregulation of the stock market, the dominance of finance capital. It is no coincidence each of these elements has been racked with scandal in the past few years.

»Neoliberalism, however, requires more than the internal realignment of a national ruling class. Every semi-stable form of capitalism also needs some sort of settlement with the wider population, or at least a decisive section of it. While the postwar Keynesian settlement contained an explicit deal linking rising real wages to rising productivity, neoliberalism contained an implicit deal based on access to cheap credit. While real wages have stagnated since the late 1970s, the mechanisms of debt have maintained most people's living standards. An additional part of neoliberalism's tacit deal was the abandonment of any pretence to democratic, collective control over the conditions of life: politics has been reduced to technocratic rule. Instead, individuals accepted the promise that, through hard work, shrewd educational and other “life” choices, and a little luck, they – or their children – would reap the benefits of economic growth.

»The financial crisis shattered the central component of this deal: access to cheap credit. Living standards can no longer be supported and, for the first time in a century, there is widespread fear that children will lead poorer lives than their parents. With the deal broken, parochial ruling arrangements in the UK have started to lose coherence.

»The scandals, therefore, are symptoms not of renewal but rather of neoliberalism's zombie status. The scandals represent the zombie's body decomposing even as it continues its habitual operation. The phone-hacking scandal is not, then, as some have claimed, a British spring, the UK equivalent of the revolutions in the Maghreb or the indignants' movements in Spain and Greece. Unlike these other moments, the role of the “public” in Hackgate has largely been a passive one. But it would also be mistaken to claim this scandal alters nothing. Such a world-weary, sceptical position only reinforces the neoliberal “end of history” doctrine that change is impossible.

»The scandals have revealed that which was hidden, yet such revelation is not enough to save us. What we lack is the belief ordinary people can act collectively to get some traction on the world. The only way out of the present impasse is to spark mass political action such as that glimpsed in Greece, Spain and the Maghreb, as well as the student movement in the UK. Any prospect of this reaching the level of social force needed to finish off neoliberalism is predicated on the hope that the embrace of tabloid and celebrity culture is a symptom of the powerless position neoliberalism places us in, and not its cause.

»The collapse of neoliberal ideology and the revelation of the corrupt nature of contemporary policing and politics must be taken into account as we craft the political forms that can spark social movements. Left on its own, the indignation caused by Hackgate is just as likely to collapse back into the sense of impotence that pervades our situation.

dedefensa.org