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Published: 12 January, 2012
by DAN CARRIER

It was a momentous year. Our fragile planet made headlines with chilling examples of humanity's defencelessness against  nature’s wrath bringing  images of misery.

And then there is the man-made crisis in the shape of the perfect storm that has continued to race through global capitalism.

The crisis of 2008 has developed into a worldwide Depression, and prompted the type of social upheaval not seen for a generation.

Last year’s Arab Spring has seen entrenched regimes topple. The credit crunch has prompted navel-gazing in the West, with new, grassroots movements usurping the traditional Left, countered by a retrenchment of neo-liberalism as the wealthy blame the social welfare settlements of the recent past for the downturn.

It is a lot to take on board, and it is a task the BBC economics editor Paul Mason has done so in his new book, Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere.

Mason has had a ringside seat to some of the biggest news events of 2011. He has listened to the protesters in Tahrir Square. He followed Greek workers marching through Athens. He has travelled through America, watched first hand the collapse of blue-collar employment and the death of the dream of home ownership.

And he has seen the way people have responded to this uncertainty by using new forms of communication.

“We are in the middle of a revolution caused by the near collapse of free-market capitalism combined with an upswing in technical innovation, a surge in desire for individual freedom and a change in human consciousness about what freedom means,” he writes. “An economic crisis is making the powerful look powerless, while the powerless are forced to adopt tactics that were once the preserve of niche protest groups.”

By trying to write a contemporary critique of why it is all “kicking off everywhere”, Mason has bitten off more than a mouthful: it is such a vast question with a multitude of causes.

However, his lucid linking of such events as the August riots to the rise of Twitter, the reality of daily life as a Filipino slum dweller to the Occupy movement finds common ground.

To help us understand his arguments, he puts  events into a historical context. For example, he points out that before the French Revolution, food prices rocketed. Mason finds the same happened in Egypt before Mubarak was overthrown, caused by a policy of quantitive easing.

“In Egypt food prices rose 19 per cent in the year to February 2011. Over the same period in Syria, the price of dairy products and cooking oil went up 27 per cent. Commodity price infla­tion hammers the poor.”

He goes on to compare the 1848 revolutions that swept Europe with what is happening today.

“As with 2011, it was preceded by an economic crisis,” he writes.

“And as today, 1848 was preceded by a communications revolution: the telegraph, the railway and the steamboat formed part of an emerging transport and communications network clustered around cities that became centres of the social revolution.”

He warns that in 1848 the revolution in social life and politics did not end well.

“By 1851 the revolutionary wave was over, its leaders exiled or dead,” he states.

Yet he finds hope in today’s upheavals: he paints a black picture, then offers an antidote.

“The present system cannot guarantee the existence of seven billion people on this planet,” he states. “It cannot even recognise their basic humanity.”

Yet he believes people are waking up to this, pushed by the stresses caused not only by the economic crisis but by climate change, energy depletion and population stress.

“The events of 2011 showed that ordinary people – the 99 per cent – have the ability to reshape their circumstances to achieve in a day what normal progress achieves in years.

“The plebian groups that kicked things off – from Iran in 2009 to Egypt, Libya and Chile in 2011 – possess, in fact, a surplus of the most valuable properties on earth: skill, ingenuity and intelligence. Info-capitalism has educated them; social media is allowing them to swap experiences beyond borders. But there is a dangerous disconnect between the mass of people, especially the young, and the political structures and systems in place.”

This book not only reads as an in-depth consideration of global politics today, but offers a personal memoir from a man who has had a ringside seat.

We are blessed that the BBC, for all the criticisms, still employs journalists whose logic and unfailing inquisitiveness brings us such analysis.

Mason takes us through the stress points of 2011.

He is aware of how lucky he is to have a job that has given him the chance to bear witness to a global revolution whose end game is far from clear.

Like those who were on the Paris barricades of 1968, saw the 10 days that shook the world in 1917, or watched police shoot students in Berkeley, he has seen the moments that will define a generation.

And in this he finds hope: referring to the student movements of the 1960s, he says: “You may have thought such days were gone – such idealism, such eloquence, such creativity and hope. Well, they’re back.”

• Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions. By Paul Mason. Verso £12.99