THE working class will neither unite politically, nor man the barri-
cades, for a 10 per cent rise in wages or 50,000 more council flats. In
the foreseeable future there will be no crisis of European capitalism so
dramatic as to drive the mass of workers to revolutionary general
strikes or armed insurrection in defence of their vital interests.

Andre Gorz Reform Or Revolution

Socialist Register, Vol. 5, 1968.

It is strange that Gorz should have written these words. That same year had seen a wave of international protest and struggle that was not sparked by economic crisis. In France, events were brief and explosive. In Italy, the long hot autumn continued to smoulder for ten years. The process was uneven. It was white hot in Europe and the US but a damp squib in the UK (so what else is new)

He was not the first. Anthony Crossland had argued that the class struggle was over and that socialism would simply happen as a result of enlightened good sense. Herbert Marcuse argued that the working class had been bought off by consumerism. Yet the 60s and 70s seemed to prove them wrong. The legions of people who would argue that there is no such thing as the working class any more, that everyone is just a consumer and so on is an old argument. Youl could probably trace it back to the leader of the German SPD in the late 19th century, Bernstein. At every lull in activity people line up to say that it couldn't happen. It is over.

Is it over? Possibly. Possibly not. Human beings are contrary creatures. I would be just as daft and arrogant to suggest that I know it will happen because the above commentators were proved wrong. I do know that I would never have predicted the anti-capitalist/anti-globalisation movements of the late 90s and early 2000s. I would never have predicted what would happen in Argentina a few years ago or what is happening in Latin America today. I would never have thought that an anti-war movement would have brought so many people out on the streets. Predictions work fine for the stock market and the weather (and even then...) for history? We do not fare so well. The right is on the rise and in France Sakorzy is feted as the new Thatcher. But he's not having it easy. Class struggle is still alive in France. None of this denotes a possibility of a future left revival. But then, it doesn't herald its opposite either. History is the activity of real people. Real people do not respond to blueprints or schemas. The future is still unwritten.