{"id":79513,"date":"2025-01-03T06:00:05","date_gmt":"2025-01-03T11:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=79513"},"modified":"2024-12-28T17:27:49","modified_gmt":"2024-12-28T22:27:49","slug":"the-workers-of-the-world-are-uniting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2025\/01\/the-workers-of-the-world-are-uniting\/","title":{"rendered":"The Workers of the World Are Uniting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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\u201cWorkers of the world, unite!\u201d\u00a0 So Marx concluded The Communist Manifesto<\/em>.\u00a0 Today, it is happening.\u00a0 Not the way Marx or his ideological heirs intended.\u00a0 Rather, across the globe, working class citizens are voting out the progressive elite that has governed them for so long with so little to show for it.<\/p>\n

A lead article in the Wall Street Journal<\/em> proclaims The Progressive Moment in Global Politics Is Over<\/a>.\u00a0 A team of three international reporters\u2013Bertrand Benoit, David Luhnow, and Vipal Monga\u2013gives the evidence.\u00a0 (The article is behind a paywall, but I\u2019ll give you the gist.)<\/p>\n

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They say, \u201cThis past year showed that the progressive politics that dominated most industrialized countries over the past two decades or more is shifting to the right, fueled by working-class anxieties over the economy and immigration, and growing fatigue with issues from climate change to identity politics.\u201d<\/p>\n

What has happened with the re-election of Donald Trump is happening in country after country.\u00a0 Already, three-fourths of the governments of the member states in the European Union are led by or are in a coalition with a right-of-center party.<\/p>\n

The left and center-left governments of Germany and France have fallen, with right and center-right parties winning in recent parliamentary elections and working to form governing coalitions.\u00a0 Canada\u2019s left-leaning prime minister Trudeau has become deeply unpopular and his governing demise seem imminent.<\/p>\n

The only outlier is Great Britain, who voted in a Labour government led by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, but after only six months his popularity has plummeted.\u00a0 The gainers are not the Tories, members of the \u201cConservative Party,\u201d which was ousted after 14 rules of ineffective rule, but the populist Reform Party.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t that the working class has turned \u201cconservative,\u201d exactly.\u00a0 Marx was right that workers have grievances and class antagonisms, though he was wrong about their nature and their solutions.\u00a0 There were times when populism<\/a> took a leftwing form, but in a time when the left has become the elitists and the establishment, the populist reaction is to the right.\u00a0 Says the article:<\/p>\n

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In\u00a0country after country, many working-class voters\u2014especially those outside the biggest cities\u2014are signaling the same thing: They mistrust the establishment\u2014from academics to bankers to traditional politicians\u2014and feel these elites are out of touch and don\u2019t care about people like them. . . .<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a broad shift that goes across countries,\u201d said Ruy Teixeira, a lifelong Democrat who now works for the center-right American Enterprise Institute think tank. \u201cWorking-class people are just p*ssed off\u2014about immigration, about all the culture war stuff, and the relatively poor economic performance that has shaped the working-class experience in the 21st century.\u201d. . .<\/p>\n

Far-right parties \u201chave solidified around a constant, ongoing critique of elites,\u201d said Stefan Marschall, professor of political science at Heinrich Heine University in D\u00fcsseldorf. \u201cWhereas right-of-center parties, which are much more firmly anchored in the political system, can\u2019t really engage in this classic elite criticism.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But existing \u201cconservative\u201d parties are considered part of the establishment and are run by the elite.\u00a0 Besides, the conservative parties want to slash government social spending, support free trade, and have made their peace with causes such as climate change and the European Union.\u00a0 The populists don\u2019t like that.\u00a0 Nor do they like the left\u2019s green agenda, which has sent energy costs soaring and has hurt manufacturing jobs, the left\u2019s multiculturalism with its support of unassimilated immigration, which has sent crime rates soaring in historically peaceful European nations, or the left\u2019s constant scolding of its old working class constituency in the name of the culture wars.<\/div>\n
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Parliamentary democracies tend to have multiple parties across the entire political spectrum that must form coalitions to gain a legislative majority that can choose a prime minister, who, in turn, can form a cabinet and thus, as they say, \u201ca new government.\u201d\u00a0 So the new populist parties are sometimes forming coalitions with traditional conservative parties.\u00a0 Europe still has its fascist legacy\u2013there were different fascist parties in most nations of Europe during the pre-war years\u2013so that is coming back with some, though by no means all, of the new populist parties.\u00a0 Traditional conservatives and \u201ccenter-right\u201d populists, however, are resisting that influence and are refusing to form coalitions with extremists.<\/div>\n
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The United States, with its two-party system, makes for democracies that are more stable.\u00a0 The populists have put Donald Trump into office, and the old style of conservatism is mostly out of power in the new Republican Party.<\/div>\n
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Now that the workers of the world are uniting, we\u2019ll have to see if they can govern.<\/div>\n
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Photo:\u00a0 Demonstration of Farmers in Paris <\/a>by Croquant\u00a0 via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0<\/a> .\u00a0 [Sign:\u00a0 \u201cNo country without farmers.\u201d]<\/em><\/div>\n
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“Workers of the world, unite!”\u00a0 So Marx concluded “The Communist Manifesto.”\u00a0 Today, it is happening.\u00a0 Not the way Marx or his ideological heirs intended.\u00a0 Rather, across the globe, working class citizens are voting out the progressive elite that has governed them for so long with so little to show for it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":79531,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[600,12,13,19,36],"tags":[15694,3022,1761,15691,15697,3638],"class_list":["post-79513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crime","category-culture","category-economics","category-government","category-politics","tag-elites","tag-karl-marx","tag-populism","tag-progressive-politics","tag-right-wing-populism","tag-working-class"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Workers of the World Are Uniting<\/title>\n<meta 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