The Wisconsin protests and the re-emergence of the American working class

[Donnachaidh]

http://wsws.org/articles/2011/feb2011/pers-f18.shtml

Growing mass protests in Wisconsin involving tens of thousands of state workers, teachers, students and their supporters against sweeping attacks on working conditions and democratic rights mark a turning point in the political life of the United States and of the world.

The recent toppling of the presidents of Tunisia and Egypt by mass protests signified the re-emergence of revolutionary struggle by the working class. The conditions that created these struggles, however, are universal—mass unemployment, staggering levels of social inequality, and a political system that is completely impervious to the demands and interests of the vast majority of the population. The eruption of mass protests in Wisconsin is an initial expression of a new era of open class struggle in the country that has long functioned as the center of the world capitalist system, the United States.

After the 1980s—which saw the smashing of the PATCO air traffic controllers strike and the defeat of militant strikes of Hormel, Greyhound, and Phelps Dodge workers—the class struggle in the United States was artificially suppressed. This was made possible due to the thoroughly reactionary role of the AFL-CIO trade union, which has systematically worked to isolate and defeat every struggle of the working class, while integrating itself ever more closely into the corporate and political establishment.

Especially after the liquidation of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy, when the bourgeoisie’s triumphalist denunciations of socialism were at their height, some denied that the working class even existed. History—as in the famous phrase from the Communist Manifesto, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”—it was claimed, had ended.

More at the link --

[HereSince1628]

1. Grand sounding, but at this point "re-emergence" is more poetry

than reality. Not that poetry can't be useful.

But the support for the red-shift in Wisconsin was due to working class voters. Both the ones who didn't get out to vote and the ones who did but who voted for the red-shift.