Globalisation, Class and the Question of Democracy

Abstract

The postmodern has abandoned class. Class theory is no longer 'chic', to say nothing of class politics. The dominant social theories now accept as fact what democratic theory once treated as fiction: an individualised 'civil society' where social inequalities are seen not so much a problem as a structural necessity and as providing the basic incentive to compete in a society primarily oriented to 'success' in the global market. The prevailing academic interpretations of our era certainly contradict the reality of a capitalism in which national and international inequalities become ever more conspicuous, in which neo-liberal strategies of crisis management have not only deepened existing forms of exploitation but generated new ones through 'rationalisation' and 'structural adjustment', and in which the pressure of international accumulation increasingly works its unmediated effects on national political and social processes.