{"id":2178,"date":"2013-01-01T21:09:45","date_gmt":"2013-01-01T21:09:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rainer-rilling.de\/blog\/?p=2178"},"modified":"2013-01-02T09:06:13","modified_gmt":"2013-01-02T09:06:13","slug":"class-in-the-21st-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rainer-rilling.de\/blog\/?p=2178","title":{"rendered":"Class in the 21st. Century"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Gesellschaft\"<\/a>ist der Titel eines bemerkenswerten Aufsatzes von G\u00f6ran Therborn<\/a> in der Nummer 78 der New Left Review <\/a>(Nov.\/Dez. 2012, S.5-29). In der Linken der BRD wurde Therborn in der zweiten H\u00e4lfte der 1970er durch seine drei B\u00fccher Science, Class and Society<\/em> (1976), das herausragende What Does the Ruling Class Do When It Rules?<\/em> (1978) und The Ideology of Power and the Power of Ideology<\/em> (1980) pr\u00e4sent. In der Folgezeit bearbeitete er eine F\u00fclle von Themen, zunehmend mit Schwerpunkt Europa bzw. europ\u00e4ische Gesellschaften, Sozialpolitik und – vor allem – Ungleichheit. Der Text in der NLR kn\u00fcpft stark an die letzte Thematik an und gibt zu einem guten Teil einen schon 2009 im Newsletter der International Sociological Association<\/em> publizierten Beitrag <\/a>wider. Was an Therborns Aufsatz (und nicht nur diesem) auff\u00e4llt, ist die durchaus angenehme Einfachheit seiner starken Behauptungen. Das 20.Jahrhundert war f\u00fcr ihn klar das Zeitalter der Arbeiterklasse und er bilanziert: „While the working-class century no doubt ended in defeat, disillusion and disenchantment, it also left behind enduring achievements.<\/em>„(7) Doch die Marxsche „Gro\u00dfe Dialektik“ zwischen den Vergesellschaftungspotentialen der Produktivkr\u00e4fte und den Produktionsverh\u00e4ltnissen“ brachte nicht die erwarteten Resultate, wurde suspendiert, ja: revidiert. Sogar die „Kleine Dialektik“ zerbrach: in den reichen Nordl\u00e4ndern setzte eine epochale Bedeutungsminderung des industriellen Kapitalismus ein. Therborns Wendungspunkt ist nun, dass sp\u00e4testens seit den 90ern der Satz gelte: „nations are converging while classes are diverging….What this amounts to is the return of class as an ever-more powerful determinant of inequality<\/em>.“ (12f.)<\/p>\n

Einkommensspreizung, die Daten des Human Development Index (Einkommen, Lebenserwartung, Bildung) oder Ern\u00e4hrung und Konsumptionsmuster st\u00fcnden daf\u00fcr.\u00a0 Therborn:<\/p>\n

Class and class conflict in the 21st century will develop in two new configurations, both predominantly non-European and with their centres of gravity well to the south of Natoland. One is likely to be driven by the hopes and resentments of the middle class. Another will find its base among workers and the popular classes in all their diversity\u2014the plebeians, rather than the proletariat. In both configurations we can distinguish two conceivable paths ahead. A conception is already taking shape of the 21st century as the age of the global middle class. The workers of the last century are banished from memory; a project of universal emancipation led by the proletariat is replaced by universal aspiration to middle-class status. Dilma Rousseff, the former guerrillera who replaced Lula as President of Brazil, has declared her wish to \u2018transform Brazil into a middle-class population\u2019. In its survey of global perspectives for 2012, the oecd spoke of the need to \u2018buttress the emerging middle class\u2019, while Nancy Birdsall of the Center for Global Development has referred to the \u2018indispensable middle class\u2019 and urged a shift from \u2018pro-poor growth\u2019 to \u2018pro-middle-class growth\u2019 as the objective of policy-makers. (…) In a world in which the modernity of the working class and of socialism have been declared obsolete, middle-class society has become the symbol of an alternative future. The developed countries of the North Atlantic are retrospectively dubbed middle-class\u2014although this is an American notion which never really caught on in Europe. The core of this utopia is a dream of boundless consumption, of a middle class taking possession of the earth, buying cars, houses and a limitless variety of electronic goods, and sustaining a global tourist industry. (…)\u00a0 We can thus identify four class perspectives for the decades to come which appear plausible to a sociologist\u2019s eye: globalized middle-class consumerism; middle-class political rebellion; industrial class struggle\u2014perhaps giving rise to new social compromises\u2014with its centre in East Asia; and heterogeneous mobilizations of the popular classes. The social character of the new century is yet to be determined, but class will certainly be of vital importance.“<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

F\u00fcr die Freunde der Arbeiterklasse hat Therborn also zwei Nachrichten. Die „gute Nachricht“: classes are back again. Die „schlechte Nachricht“: It’s the middle class, stupid!<\/span> Dies aber ist der strategische Kontext und klassenpolitische Hintergrund, in dem die regelm\u00e4ssigen und sich im Dezember 12 h\u00e4ufenden Neuigkeiten (s. FAZ 3.1. 13 S.10 ausf\u00fchrlich) \u00fcber das „Stagnieren“ oder „Schrumpfen“ der Mittelklasse hierzulande ihren Platz haben, ob von Bertelsmann <\/a>\/ DIW\u00a0 <\/a>oder vom Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft\u00a0 <\/a>bzw. der Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung<\/a>: die Konstellation der Klassen – auch der herrschenden Klassen \u00fcbrigens, \u00fcber welche in diesen Studien (und allerdings auch bei Therborn) kein Wort verloren wird.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ist der Titel eines bemerkenswerten Aufsatzes von G\u00f6ran Therborn in der Nummer 78 der New Left Review (Nov.\/Dez. 2012, S.5-29). In der Linken der BRD wurde Therborn in der zweiten H\u00e4lfte der 1970er durch seine drei B\u00fccher Science, Class and Society (1976), das herausragende What Does the Ruling Class Do When It Rules? (1978) und … <\/p>\n

\u201eClass in the 21st. Century\u201c<\/span> weiterlesen<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,2,6,71],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gesellschaft","category-kapitalismus","category-linke","category-transformation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rainer-rilling.de\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rainer-rilling.de\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rainer-rilling.de\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rainer-rilling.de\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rainer-rilling.de\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2178"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.rainer-rilling.de\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2190,"href":"https:\/\/www.rainer-rilling.de\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2178\/revisions\/2190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rainer-rilling.de\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rainer-rilling.de\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rainer-rilling.de\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}