The following links to the essay by the Ta Paidia tis Gallaria’s (Children of the Gallery) Collective Burdened by the Debt Crisis one of the most significant analysis of the crisis immediately facing the proletariat (in 2012: the working people whether employed, unemployed, or unemployable — they know who they are) in Greece (and other “western” countries). As the essay correctly, in my opinion, argues the mid 70s was a turning point to the capitalism characterized by the working class militancy of the 50s and 60s. The 70s was the beginning of what has lead to the neo-liberal assault on the working class and the dept crisis that we are currently living under. What should be added here is that the ruling classes were able to take advantage of a number of factors that are characteristic of modern capitalism: privatisation of the population (that meaning for an individual is lived through private pleasures, and mostly commodities of private consumption); bureaucratisation (especially of the working class organisations, such as unions); the resulting conflicts between rank and file and union leaderships; the inability of the rank and file to create new forms of political/social resistance; and I think a growing neo-illiteracy and generalized indifference towards knowledge that goes beyond the immediate and trivial and to be found throughout all layers of society (at this most superficial level this makes it difficult for people to be able to develop alternatives that go beyond immediate, gut based responses or can create alternatives to “experts”, but at deeper levels, it creates difficulties in taking control of society and one’s beliefs, and accepting the various platituteds of neo-liberal deficit-ism).
http://www.tapaidiatisgalarias.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/burdened.pdf
