Labor, democracy and class struggle

Abstract

Debased and discredited as never before, labor, democracy, and class struggle have been undergoing an intense process of erosion. Jobs available to the majority of the population have become increasingly precarious, intermittent, and unprotected; democracy, reduced to empty rituals and false rhetoric, has lost credibility; class struggle has gradually faded from the horizon of dispersed and atomized workers. Yet, these three spheres – interconnected and complementary – constitute the very basis of human and social life. Thus, when labor is penalized and disorganized, political action and the exercise of democracy are also compromised. The blatant exhibition of force and devastation appears to cast a hypnotic and paralyzing spell over the masses. For this reason, indifferent to the loss of hegemony, the masters of the prevailing “order” reinforce their economic, technological, and military supremacy, resorting ever more frequently to arbitrariness and to sophisticated forms of fascism disguised as democracy to legitimize themselves.