September 30, 2011--Class Warfare: The American Fall

Finally, this fall, the public demonstrations characteristic of the Arab Spring are spreading to other regions.

What began in Tunisia inspired Egyptians, Libyans, and then Syrians as well as others. Greece we have been hearing about--people fed up with their government and its belt-tightening policies have taken to the streets in protest. Then there were youth riots in London, inspired by a sense of economic desperation and the growing awareness that jobs and career opportunities for young people have contracted in ways that are more than cyclical. Something more structural may be happening.

In Spain, again led by the young, there have been continuous street demonstrations, as in England, largely the result of the extraordinarily high unemployment rate among recent secondary school and university graduates. Youth jobless rates as high as 40 percent have been reported.

India too has witnessed the emergence of a class of protesters. The economic growth rate in India is among the highest in the world and so the motivation for the activists there has less to do with lack of economic opportunity than the perception that the government is riddled with abuse and corruption.

The same is true in Israel, where the high-tech economy is also booming while at the same time the largest demonstrations in the nation's history have been routinely taking place. Hundreds of thousands have moved into the streets to express their outrage that the Netanyahu government does not represent their interests (that it is too beholden to the ultra-orthodox political parties) and that the growing economy has spanned a class of oligarchs who not only control the economy but are amassing wealth at such a rate that soon there will be an Israeli Gilded Age.

And closer to home-but thus far largely ignored by the mainstream media--finally after the collapse of our economy--the result largely of corporate shenanigans and corruption--people are taking to the streets. In this case Wall Street itself.

The police in New York appear to be responding in ways that seem similar to how they literally handled anti-war protesters back in the Vietnam War days--macing and arresting scores. As at that time this kind of response is likely to increase turnouts and fuel passions.

What is characteristic of these demonstrations, protests, and in some cases revolutionary actions is well summed up by Yochai Benkler, a director of the Beckman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard:

You're looking at a generation of 20- and 30-year-olds who are used to self-organizing. They believe life can be more participatory, more decentralized, less dependent on traditional models of organization, either in the state or the big companies. Those were the dominant ways of doing things in the industrial economy and they aren't anymore.

It will be interesting to see where this goes. If I were the CEO of Goldman Sachs I would be beginning to get concerned. We may be witnessing the arrival of the American Fall.