Riots and looting in France. Tent camps in Madrid. European governments are having trouble containing their discontented subjects. In Spain the issue was high rents and evictions. In France it started with school students protesting about the teaching conditions but, in the face of police brutality, turned into riots and looting as others joined in.
Under capitalism the excluded majority will always be discontented to one degree or another. There will always be something to be discontented about as capitalism is not a system whose aim is to meet people’s needs and so neglects or meets them only inadequately. If it’s not housing, it’s education. If it’s not education, it’s the cost of living. If it’s not the cost of living, it’s some other aspect of everyday life.
Protest demonstrations express and measure discontent. An intelligent government, with an eye on being re-elected, may judge it politic to concede something. A government that misjudges the situation risks getting what it got in France: riots, running battles with the police, and looting.
As we report in this issue from correspondents on the ground, the demonstrations in France and Spain last month were in no sense revolutionary. Their aim was to get the government to take measures to alleviate a particular problem. A mass demonstration may be a step beyond voting for some politician and then leaving things to them; the protestors are at least doing something themselves. But it isn’t necessarily any more successful.
Some critics of capitalism see the mass demonstration as the best way to get reforms. Others even imagine this is the way capitalism will be ended. We don’t want to get into a discussion about the best way to get reforms, as reforms, however welcome some might be, are not our aim. However obtained, they can only ever mitigate a problem, never solve it which is what we want. What a government can offer is limited by the nature of capitalism as a system whose priority is making profits for those who own and control the places where what society needs is produced.
No more than voting for reformist politicians can mass demonstrations pressure governments into doing something they are incapable of doing. Capitalism can’t be made to work in the interest of the excluded majority. Governments can’t spend money to improve things for that majority at the expense of the profits of the owning class. That’s the nature of the beast. Street protests and riots can’t make capitalism change its spots, and they certainly can’t overthrow it.
Widespread popular democratic self-organisation based on mandated delegates not leaders is the way – but it needs to be conscious organisation to replace capitalist ownership and production for profit by common ownership and production to directly meet people’s needs. Only a democratically organised, socialist-minded majority can do this. It can’t rely on street demonstrations for this but can use the means to hand – the vote – to win political control and employ it to dispossess the privileged ruling class.
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