Geographies of quiescence? Social movements, panoramas of struggle and Baltic austerity politics

ABSTRACT

The recent thirtieth anniversaries of restored Baltic territorial sovereignties coincide with a quandary in which the region appears “highly unequal but classless.” This article revisits the conduct of the 2008–2011 crisis management operations through the prisms of class struggle and social movements. It conceptualizes the imposition of austerity measures as a class-constituted social movement from above. I argue that the latter has to be positioned relationally against locally articulated forms of resistance from below that have so far remained insufficiently explored. Therefore, the practice of unearthing Baltic “militant particularisms” carries the potential of subverting the “absent protest thesis” in the imposition of austerity on the region’s populations.

KEYWORDS:

• Baltic states
• austerity
• class
• social movements
• resistance
• neoliberalism

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments on this article in draft and James Parisot for his kind assistance in preparing the manuscript. All remaining errors are mine.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The class positions of those households cannot be defined on the basis of levels of income even if those might be highly indicative and can be taken as a hypothesis rather than a conclusive statement. The notion of the middle class encompasses the category of wage-labourers who by their nature in the production process either exert a degree of control over the labour of others or have the capacity to control the use of their own labour within the labour process. It is conceived of the traditional petty bourgeoisie (exploiters of themselves and their family members, e.g. shop owners), “the professions” (e.g. doctors, lawyers, accountants) and the “new middle class,” which stands between capitalists and workers – embodying the aspects of both. It can undertake a managerial and supervisory role and receive wages. However, rather than being exploited it tends to benefit from exploitation of the working class by overseeing daily control of the production process. The “new middle class” also includes semi-autonomous workers (e.g. the top tier of higher education professors, “culture industry” employees or prestigious journalists) who share the same relationship towards the working class as managers and supervisors (including high remuneration) and are instead located between the working class and traditional petty bourgeoisie. This segment has the capacity to control its own work (and that of others) and to a lesser extent the nature of the final product. For the conceptualizations of the “middle class” see for instance: Davidson (2015); Szymanski (1979); Wright (1979); Callinicos (1987).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jokubas Salyga

Jokubas Salyga is Assistant Professor of Political Science in the Department of Political Science, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. His research focuses on the historical sociology of post-communist transformations in the Baltic states, labour resistance in East-Central Europe and the political economy of European integration.