---------- Forwarded message ----------
From:
Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante.monson@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Oct 26, 2013 at 3:26 PM
Subject: Breaking social class solidarity via bias ? : "characteristics of the political and social landscape of post-socialist countries" ?
To: "
econowmix@googlegroups.com" <
econowmix@googlegroups.com>
Mariya Ivancheva (Central European University, Sociology and Social Anthropology)
just uploaded a paper on Academia.edu:
The Bulgarian protest wave of 2012-2013
http://www.academia.edu/4888291/The_Bulgarian_protest_wave_of_2012-2013
" I show a number of characteristics of the political and social landscape of
post-socialist Bulgaria, which have made the anti-neoliberal or anti-capitalist framing of the protests in-
creasingly difficult. I claim that a reason for this has been a few mutually reinforcing characteristics of the
Bulgarian protests, typical not only for Bulgaria, but also for other post-socialist countries.
First, the recurrence or persistence of a strong neo-liberal capitalist party in power – which draws on the
symbolic legacy of state socialism but fervently destroys socialist welfare institutions – perpetuates a
strong ‘anti-communist’ framing of the protests. Second, the trope of the ‘hard-working middle class’ – a
main slogan of the transition to liberal democracy and free-market capitalism since 1989 – has made in-
ter-class alliances between the economically vulnerable low- and high-skilled workers impossible. Last,
but not least, given the decades of creation of neo-liberal hegemony in the country, ‘smoothly functioning
capitalism’ has been seen as a solution to, and not the cause of, impoverishment, indebtedness, and pre-
carity. These three motives, which are all present in the Bulgarian case, make it impossible to frame
protests in an anti-neoliberal and anti-capitalist way. They also draw a line between parallel but not coin-
ciding waves of social protests around the world: a demarcation that might turn out to be a frontline in
emergent mobilization for global social change. "