Crisis to Insurrection: Notes on the Ongoing Collapse

The crisis runs deep. The economies of the US and Europe are in profound crisis and the developing economies are also beginning to feel its effects. Everywhere it is workers who are paying the price. The crisis is being socialized and austerity is the order of the day; the crisis is used as a pretext for further savings and cuts. In other words, capital has intensified the class war. But the proletariat has started moving. The revolts in North Africa and the Middle East have challenged the neoliberal world order and its division of the world, and the movement of the squares in Southern Europe and Occupy in the US have picked up the baton and joined the new protest cycle. Even though dictators have been toppled in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, the protests continue. This is also the case in Greece, Spain and Portugal where people reject the austerity programs. There are protests in Bulgaria and Bosnia. In Syria the civil war is raging. In China the number of strikes continue to rise. In Turkey the youth reject Erdogans neoliberal success and urban restructuring and in Brazil the dangerous classes have taken to the streets. There are a variety of protests going on the ones in the West are defensive, the ones in the rest of the world offensive and reformist but together they are knocking a hole in the neoliberal world order. The old mole is back.

Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen is Associate Professor at the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen.