Publication

According to this paper, one of the striking features of the post-Cold War political landscape in the West has been a consensus among conservative and social democratic parties in favor of rolling back government expenditures, curbing social spending, and eroding the welfare state. The financial crisis has added momentum to this. The rise of the 'indignados' and the Occupy movements is a response to these new conditions, just as trade unions and social democratic parties were to the industrial revolution. Just as it took decades for workers to win the right to organize trade unions, and for social democratic parties to achieve state power, the new movements face a long struggle to create a new social order, predicts the author.