Many Marxists are used to thinking schematically about class consciousness and social protest, such that if the unemployment rate or poverty rate is X%, then we can (or cannot) expect an outburst of mass struggle. But that sort of approach is not advisable - if you approach matters in their specificity and historically, there is no linear, mathematical or mechanical connection between people's objective life circumstances and their propensity for political activism, even although there definitely is some connection.
The problem is rather different - the academics who pronounce on the progress of the class struggle have nothing much to do with the class struggle, and therefore they are much less likely to get it right. It is only a matter of time, before large-scale social protest returns to the USA, but when exactly it will happen, is difficult to know. The middle class is a buffer for class conflict. At the moment, most of the American middle class are in practice still following the wealthy, but at some stage many more of them will realize the wealthy are not going to help them anymore. Then things become more interesting. The other aspect is that mass demonstrations no longer have the same sort of effect that they might have had half a century ago, and the rulers know this very well. Very large and glorious mass demonstrations have been held in Europe and the Middle East (millions of people) in recent years, without bring down the governments at all, or even changing their policy. The crowd can certainly assemble, walk, shout slogans and throw bottles, but at this stage it does not really know what to do, other than fight with the police. The Left is crippled, because most of these people understand very little about economics, about state finance, about legislation and about state politics and policy. Armed with their laptops and iphones they can tell you everything about Heidegger's ontic definition of being, Zizek's perverted dance, Badiou's philosophy of mathematics, or Judith Butler's performativity, and some of them can even add up C, V and S, but they are almost totally clueless about the real world of politics, and the framework within which it operates. They just "imagine" things about it. A lot will need to happen before that starts to change, I would think. In reality, America is not really in the vanguard of the world, it's just that the US bourgeoisie is very rich, the US federal government is very powerful, and Americans have been very adept at stealing information and stealing innovations from the rest of the world (although mostly the Chinese get the blame). The troubles which Americans are experiencing now, are only what many other countries already experienced decades ago. J.
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