The social conditions of wide layers of the population, including young people especially, are more and more desperate. Social inequality, poverty, low wages, homelessness, drug addiction, unemployment and under-employment, the destruction or unavailability of decent education and health care – these social facts confront tens of millions in the US. Meanwhile, a handful of CEOs and Wall Street swindlers live like emperors.
2018 has seen the first stages of an upsurge in the class struggle, as popular outrage has begun to erupt. The strikes by tens of thousands of teachers and school employees in West Virginia and Oklahoma was a powerful indication. Teachers in Arizona and other states, bus drivers, telecommunications workers and many more may well walk out. The conditions for a general strike are brewing.
Beyond the borders of the US, there have been strikes this year by metalworkers in Germany and Turkey, airline workers in France and university lecturers in the UK. In the Czech Republic, Skoda autoworkers are threatening to strike. Protests by workers have erupted in Iran, Tunisia, Morocco, Greece and elsewhere.
What does this resurgence mean for art? The suppression of the class struggle in recent decades has been very harmful to culture too. Major strikes in the US reached one of their lowest points in history in 2017. Art and the artists are very sensitive to popular moods. Filmmaking in particular is nourished by rebellion and resistance. What will it do for the cultural and intellectual atmosphere if millions break out of the straitjacket of the trade unions and the Democratic Party?
World Socialist Web Site Arts Editor David Walsh will discuss the implications of this explosive change in the global political and social situation for art and culture. |
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