I'm a bit late to this because I've been busy obsessing over my beautiful daughter, but I want to add to the growing chorus in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
One thing that's been far too lacking through this financial crisis, barring the Greek protests and the Spanish indignados, has been a vocal and active movement angry about what has happened. I actually see the Occupy Wall Street crowd as having the same sort of function, in that sense, as the London rioters. Clearly I'd rather bump into some articulate New Yorkers than the London rioters in a dark alley; but the fear is part of the point. Political and economic elites need a bit of fear at their backs if they're going to be spurred to change anything.
Looking back on the 20th century, it's easy to assume that all the concessions to justice, freedom and equality made over the course of the century came about because they were the Right Thing To Do. But, historically, elites don't have a great record of giving up their power and privileges out of the goodness of their hearts. The progress that has been made has usually been because elites felt that some short-term concessions were needed for their long-term security.
For example, people had been complaining about the effects of poverty in England since the Peasants' Revolt. It was a grand concern by the start of the 19th century, and became a tubthumping populist issue by the time Dickens was in his pomp. But all this achieved nothing until the rise of socialist parties led mainstream politicians to start fearing for their careers and the stability of the status quo. Germany and the UK started establishing social programmes within a few years of the SPD and the Labour party getting their first electoral successes.
Likewise, the existence of the Eastern Bloc was a huge incentive throughout the 20th century for Western countries to improve their citizens' welfare, lest they turn to Communism instead. The rolling back of those advances over the past four decades tracks pretty closely to the decline and fall of the Soviet empire.
I can remember fearing nuclear annihilation as a child in the early 1980s, so I'm not going to paint the Cold War as some sort of golden age. And, clearly, government spending as a proportion of GDP has mostly been on the rise in recent decades--even if the range of social provision has narrowed, inequality has risen, and the tax base has focused further down the income scale. But, as Francis Spufford's short story collection Red Plenty demonstrates, the competitive tension that existed during the Cold War was virtuous: countries on both sides of the iron curtain truly felt a need to demonstrate to their populations that theirs was the better system.
The West won that battle hands down but since it lost its fear I feel it has lost its way, too. Elections rarely threaten major changes: it has become a commonplace that lobbyists have a greater influence over policy than the voters who put politicians in office. We live in the era of Margaret Thatcher's "There Is No Alternative", but in these difficult times more than ever, we need to realise that there is an alternative to the status quo.
I don't believe elites will realise that on their own. But when confronted with mass, middle class protests, as during the poll tax riots, they are sometimes forced into realisation. Here's hoping.
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