Om oförenade proletärer ...

Det skrivs mycket om om den politiska vänsterns kris i Europa nu. Trots att vi sägs leva mitt i den värsta ekonomiska krisen sedan 1930-talet med ökande arbetslöshet överallt i Europa, så tycks de borgerliga regeringarna dominera. Varför?

Kanske har det att göra med vänsterns brist på en sorts sammanhållande metaberättelse, kanske beror det på att borgerligheten tagit över den röda politiken, eller, har vi kanske alla i någon mening blivit goda liberaler?

Slavoj Zizek sätter dock fingeret på en annan tänkbar orsak som har att göra med frågan: Vad katten avses med begreppet arbetare nuförtiden? Vem räknas som arbetarklass i en tid när en metallarbetare tjänar mer än en gymnasielärare? Zizek skriver:

"…It is as if the three components of the production process – intellectual programming and marketing, material production, the providing of material resources – are more and more autonomized, emerging as three separate spheres. In its social consequences, this separation appears in the guise of the “three main classes” of today’s developed societies, which are precisely NOT classes but three factions of the working class: intellectual laborers, the old manual working class, the outcasts (unemployed, those living in slums and other interstices of the public space). The working class is thus split into three, each part with its own “way of life” and ideology: the enlightened hedonism and liberal multiculturalism of the intellectual class, the populist fundamentalism of the working class, more extreme singular forms of the outcast faction. In Hegelese, this triad is clearly the triad of the universal (intellectual faction), particular (manual workers), and singular (outcasts). The outcome of this process is the gradual disintegration of social life proper, of a public space in which all three factions could meet – and the “identity”-politics in all its forms is a supplement for the loss of the social space proper. This identity-politics acquires a specific form in each of the three factions: post-modern multicultural identity politics in the intellectual class, regressive populist fundamentalism in the working class, half-illegal initiatic groups (criminal gangs, religious sects, etc.) among the outcasts. What they all share is particular identity as the substitute for the universal public space.

The proletariat is thus divided into three, each part played against each other: intellectual laborers full of cultural prejudices against the “redneck” workers, who display populist hatred of intellectuals and outcasts, who are antagonistic to society as such. The old call “Proletarians, unite!” is thus more actual than ever: in the new conditions of the “post-industrial” capitalism, the unity of the three factions of the working class IS already their victory."


Via Mariborchan