By Prof Ujjwal K Chowdhury

 

The middle classes world-over are the ones that have benefited the most from the modern state and its support of public transport, public schools, public health, public housing programs, public sector jobs. And, the middle classes today across the world are up in arms against the system and coming to the streets. From Occupy Wall Street in US to Arab Spring in Egypt, from anti corruption movement in India or anti-austerity movement in Spain or Greece to anti fundamentalism movement in Bangladesh, from movement against rape in South Asian nations to movement for political stability in Nepal, the middle class is in the forefront. 

 

What have happened in the last decade or more that has led to the angry young man and women on the streets so frequently? 

 

“I think of it as grand larceny because it goes well beyond the privileges enjoyed by rich firms and rich families in all our countries. This partly explains why middle class people everywhere, from Chile to Egypt to India were taking to the streets to protest this in different ways. The protests are not just about the particular issue that might ignite a street protest or an occupation but about a larger mix of injustices,” Prof Saskia Sassen. Sassen is a Dutch- American Sociologist and Professor of sociology at Columbia University who coined the famous term “Global City” and later also “Global Street”. 

 

In reality, these kinds of protests are happening all over the world, around specific issues in each country. It becomes the occasion for actually enacting a much larger project than is indicated by whatever issue is the immediately visible complaint in a city, a country. For instance in Tel Aviv, the starting point was the high prices of apartments. In August 2011 about 100,000 people set up tents in central areas to protest- it was the first time Israel witnessed this massive scale of socio-economic protest. The second point to make here is that there is a lot of suffering and impoverishment and degradation of conditions of life today that is invisible. The people might be living in the same houses, but inside the houses there is growing poverty and impoverishment. In Latin America, we have had professors and housewives— imagine, two very respectable sections of society - do food riots, they went to get food –that is pretty basic. 

 

The so called rich governments in rich countries-- they don’t have the money to develop some of the basic infrastructure. Greece and Spain are simply the vanguard. At the same time corporate profits have risen sharply over the same period. The middle classes, modest enterprises, and the state are growing their debts and the corporate sector, including finance, is growing its wealth. And in this stealing of the house, and not just things by the corporate giants, the State or parts of it have played their roles. This is crony capitalism. 

 

The resources of states have gone disproportionately to the global corporate sector (and to war!). So global South countries see this at their sharpest in the 1980s’ and 1990s’ and 2000s’, and now this extraction is hitting rich countries-- the Eurozone and the US begin to extract resources from the state and citizens to pay banks –the language is to “rescue” banks. Partly, the governments have allowed enormous tax evasions by big corporations even as they raise taxes for small modest enterprises. Some of this hits the news—the recent law suits against Amazon, Starbucks and other respectable corporations which have tried to avoid paying billions in taxes to the US, to the UK. 

 

The social contract with the liberal state is not working any more. The elite are not affected and the super poor never got any benefits. It is the middle classes which got so many benefits. Now when there is talk of austerity, the middle classes are the ones most immediately affected. The liberal state with all its problems had a social contract with the middle classes. It’s broken now and it’s broken in China, in the United States, South Africa – ideology makes no difference here. 

 

But we the middle classes were converted into consumers and the main beneficiaries of much of the resources of the state –from schools and hospitals to roads and electricity, and we paid for it through our taxes. But too much of our taxes now goes to bailouts of banks and luxury projects... and that is why the social contract between the liberal state and the middle classes is broken. 

 

In the US thousands have started to live in tent cities since 2010. These are tent cities set up by municipal governments. But there are also encampments in the desert, often referred to as slab-cities—because they are often old buses and cars made into housing and you need some heavy rocks to keep them from shifting given strong winds in the desert. Over 9 million households have lost their homes in the US since the late 2000s. Now these are mostly modest middle class families, who at one point owned or expected to own a house! 

 

Now the Occupy movement worldwide is, I think, a movement that is about making social capabilities among vast strata of our societies— the impoverished middle classes. For example, Occupy Wall Street is now “occupying” the restoration of a mostly lower-middle class area destroyed by Hurricane Sandy in the Northeast of the US- they are making sure the $ 50 billion of tax payers money the US government has promised will go to the right people and places. Or -Tahrir square- they are occupying the emergent democratic system to make sure that it will take off and be democratic. In India, for instance the projects of transferring help to the poor via individual accounts –a good project! But what about the poor who have no access to electronic accounts— this is something where middle class activists can really help and construct themselves as a movement. 

 

The Arab Spring and the Occupy movements are about the changing social equation between the State and the middle classes. This is an indication then also of this break down. This is not about party politics, and it is not about power. So the Old Left says the Occupy movements don’t have a plan and no leadership. But this is not what Tahrir Square and the Occupy movements are about. Systemic change undermining the connection between state and middle class is already in process. There is now the emergence of a new global class whose spaces include all kinds of cities of the global South as well as North –but only parts of those cities –the spaces of power. For instance the new global class in Sao Paolo, or New York ,or Johannesburg , connects with the elites in many cities of the Global South and North much more than they connect with their own hinterland. New alignments are getting made, even as many aspects of the old divide still carry enormous weight –hunger, disease, housing all are still much worse in poor countries than in rich countries, no doubt. 

 

All of this is also part of Prof Sasken’s notion of the Global Street. It is one of the places to meet, recognize each other, strategize, and become witnesses to historical processes, including small, specific initiatives of powerful actors that can have negative effects on some social sectors. This diversifying of the occupy movements worldwide is about “making” –making social justice , something we can make without also having a political platform, making a political party, having funds for organizing elections. There are many strategies. India and Nepal have some very significant movements of this sort –by women, by farmers, by environmentalists. 

The author is the Managing Editor of www. newglobalindian.com and President of the advisory board at Whistling Woods School of Communication, Mumbai.