“Workers across the developed world have been moving away from traditional working-class parties, while the left has shed most of its connections to anyone outside the email economy, and working-class concerns increasingly meet with progressive resentment and hostility…”
These are the opening lines of a recent piece from my guest on today’s podcast, titled “The New Workers’ Movement” and published in Compact Magazine. In it, he argues that by 2022, this has all become pretty obvious. And that the really interesting question is: What comes next for working-class politics?
Malcom Kyeyune is a writer, podcaster, and political commentator based in Sweden. He’s also columnist for Compact Magazine.
I’m pleased to have Malcom Kyeyune as my guest, today on Lean Out. Transcript to come tomorrow for paid subscribers.
The New Workers' Movement
The "worker's parties" in the US, UK and Canada have never really been headed by leaders with deep care for the lives of workers. Instead they have been headed by people committed to exploit workers to advance their own selfish interests. Just consider the credentials of the average politician that has claimed to be for the worker... they are all Ivy League-educated blue blood elites that have never done work with their hands. Sure, the Kennedy family was well positioned for completed care and understanding of the working class. FDR too. Right.
When have we ever had a true Joe the Plumber win an election? We should... but we won't because the elites control the entire media act that politics has to play on... and frankly voters are idiots that vote for plastic actors rather than genuine people they can relate to.
So here is the sad truth for workers... their only real hope for supportive and productive advocacy is to elect elite Republicans and conservatives that support economic nationalism. And thus they need to cut though the political propaganda and lies that these candidates are connected with big corporations and big wealth and that these are the enemies of workers.
The enemies of domestic workers today are those engaged in corporatism and globalism. It is Wall Street and George Soros. It is Justine Trudeau and Joe Biden. It is the billionaire boys club (less Elon Musk). It is 90% of the American Democrat party and 30% of the American Republican party. It is the mainstream media. It is the university administration and faculty.
Critical theory, wokeism and global warming... these are all just weaponized political and media narratives to serve the corporatists and globalists in their quest to consolidate and centralize all the power and wealthy. This requires that they destroy middle-class economic independence and create a two-tier society of people dependent on them, and them.
Workers better wake up... if they fall for it again and vote for fake charlatan leftists that claim they are "for the workers" they likely will never have another chance to make it right.
Wow. I've never heard anyone unironically use communist terms like "lumpen proletariat" and "petty bourgeoisie" before.