French Government Falls As Social-Democracy Falters Amid New Global Debt Crisis - Part 6 of 9

In the 30 years after 1980, real capital was accumulated, output did increase, and the global working-class did increase, indeed, the working-class globally, doubled in size between 1980 and 2000, and increased by 30% after 2000 to 2010, making it the largest class on the planet for the first time. But, that increase was not even. There was again a combined and uneven development. The biggest increase was of the working-class in those newly industrialising economies. It was there, also, that this was reflected in a bigger proportional rise in real wages. 

In the old developed economies, a 200 year process of the gradual disappearance of the petty-bourgeoisie, as it sank into the ranks of the working-class, was reversed. Since the 1980's, the size of the petty-bourgeoisie, in those countries, has risen by 50% bringing with it a rise in its social weight, and most notably where that petty-bourgeoisie always has most effect, in its electoral significance.

This was not a fortuitous reversal of workers being able to escape wage-labour, but a further deterioration of their condition, as growing unemployment threw them out of the labour market, forcing them into the misery and precarity of self-employment, as I have described before, culturally symbolised, at the time by a series of comedy dramas such as Only Fools and Horses, Minder, Auf Wiedersehen Pet, and Boys From The Blackstuff.

It was that which was reflected in the ructions in the UK Conservative Party, and its equivalent, the US Republican Party. Both had been conservative social-democratic parties, representing the interests of the ruling-class owners of fictitious-capital, but whose voter base and membership was dependent upon large numbers of the petty-bourgeoisie. In the late 80's, both saw a rise in the influence of that petty-bourgeoisie on their votes, and in their membership, as it asserted its power.

This immiserated petty-bourgeois was also closely tied to the other precarious social layers in the decayed urban areas in which it subsisted. The old social-democratic consensus was broken by it, in the form of Reagan and Thatcher. But, both set in motion a process that was out of their control. In the US, the Republicans began to be rent asunder, and saw the rise of the interests of the petty-bourgeoisie, as manifest in the growing support for the Libertarians, and, in the early 2000's, the Tea Party, and finally Trump.

In Britain, Thatcher became increasingly a vehicle for those same kinds of petty-bourgeois ideas, which in the 1990's, also saw the development of its outriders in UKIP, and its subsequent brand names, as well as in the takeover of the party itself by the Eurosceptics. Its ultimate demise has come in the form of the split of its social-democratic voters and members to the Liberals, and its petty-bourgeois/Tory voters and members to the Farage Company.

Similar developments occurred in Europe. But, its in the US and UK where this process has been most pronounced. It was not just that the progressive social-democracy of the period 1950-74, which hit the buffers in the 1970's, as the long-wave turned to its crisis phase, gave way to the conservative social-democracy of the late 70's and 1980's, but that, as this conservative social-democracy presided over the effective asset striping of large-scale capital, as it promoted the illusion of paper wealth, in the form of inflating asset prices, it also, set the course for its own demise at the hands of the petty-bourgeoisie.

By the time of the 2008 global financial crisis, as the buffers were, thereby, hit, in relation to its own illusory ideas, the petty-bourgeoisie already had the momentum behind it. In the US and UK, social-democracy has already vacated the field, in terms of the political regime. Its only defence resides in the imperialist state itself, as representative of the ruling class, and in the hands of a relatively small number of progressive social-democratic forces.

Cameron was its last hurrah, as he tried to continue the model of Blair, just as Obama/Biden were its last hurrah in the US. In France, Hollande performed a similar role, to Blair, but his failure amid a continued opposition to a collapse into petty-bourgeois reaction, simply delayed the inevitable confrontation, as Macron, representing no real social forces, became its last encore, in France.

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