What if the unrest and chaos in politics right now is quite simply explained by looking at the history of the struggle between elites and workers in western societies. The survival of feudal elites and their offshoots is indeed a remarkable aspect of modern western societies, but their launch of a counter-revolution against the advance of a more fair and egalitarian society is certainly NOT new.
. The reality may be that people have never been in a stronger position thanks to modern communication technology to acrually implement a fairer world. So to disrupt this advancing progress, it takes a massive effort and huge capital expenditure to disrupt, divide and conquer the citizenry. And that effort is underway from Putin to Faraget to Trump, their backers Elon Musk and myriad other billionaires who expend fortunes to distort political systems designed to rein them in.
Does history repeat, rhyme or echo? Lets go with echo. We are living through one such powerful historical echo, a period where hard-won social and economic gains for the many are being met with a fierce, accelerating counter-attack from the established elites and concentrated capital. This isn’t merely a coincidence; it’s a pattern as old as the struggle for power itself.
Consider the aftermath of the Black Death in 14th-century Europe. With up to half the population decimated, the surviving peasants found themselves in an unprecedented position of leverage. Labor was scarce, wages soared, and feudal bonds weakened. This wasn’t tolerated for long. The English Parliament’s Statutes of Labourers (1351-1352) were a brutal legislative counter-attack, attempting to force peasants back to pre-plague wage levels and restrict their mobility. It was an elite response to a sudden, dramatic shift in the balance of power.
Fast forward to the early 20th century. The decades leading up to World War I were a golden age of social progress. Workers gained unprecedented rights, trade unions achieved legal recognition, local governments empowered communities, and the franchise expanded to include poorer men and, significantly, began the push for women’s suffrage. The fabric of society seemed poised for a more equitable future. Yet, when the opportunity arose – the maelstrom of the Great War – the old elites and industrial magnates seized it. The conflict, framed as a national necessity, became a convenient mechanism to suppress dissent, discipline labor, and consolidate power, effectively rolling back many of those nascent gains before they could fully embed. The opportunity presented itself, and it was taken.
Today, we stand at a remarkably similar precipice. The past decade, culminating in the upheaval of the pandemic, again laid bare the true value creators in society. Remote work became a standard, the job market temporarily shifted in favor of employees, and a deeper understanding of economic disparities emerged. But just as these shifts began to empower workers and challenge established norms, we are witnessing an accelerating, multifaceted counter-attack. Threats of AI replacement, mass firings, and concerted efforts to undermine democratic institutions – from Brexit to the rise of populist strongmen – all serve a similar purpose: to re-discipline the workforce, dismantle recent gains, and secure the dominance of concentrated power.
This blog post will delve into these historical parallels, particularly the striking comparison between the pre-WWI era and our present moment. By understanding how past “Great Reversals” unfolded, we can better analyze the forces at play today and, perhaps, find a path to defend and embed progress against the renewed “War on Progress.”
The First Progressive Wave
The years before World War I were characterized by the rapid and successful organizing of the working class and marginalized groups, resulting in genuine shifts of power away from landed gentry and industrial barons.
- Political Franchise Expansion: A key victory was the expansion of suffrage. While full universal suffrage was still decades away, countries across Europe and North America lowered property qualifications, bringing millions of poorer men into the political process. This newly enfranchised electorate demanded—and secured—changes that benefited them directly.
- The Rise of Organized Labour: Perhaps the most potent wavelet was the legal recognition and growth of Trade Unions. Crucially, the right to strike and engage in collective bargaining was solidified. Organizations like the Labour Party in the UK gained serious political footing, positioning themselves to legislate comprehensive social programs.
- Birth of the Welfare State: These political pressures laid the groundwork for the modern social safety net. Early programs providing national insurance, health benefits, and old-age pensions—however rudimentary—began to challenge the prevailing assumption that individuals were solely responsible for their economic fate.
- Local Government Power: Alongside national reforms, power devolved locally. New municipal structures empowered local communities to address sanitation, housing, and public health, often bypassing the inertia of central, elite-dominated governments.
The Second Wave: The Modern Era (Post-2010s to Pandemic Peak)
he modern era saw a new accumulation of power, accelerated dramatically by the cultural and economic shock of the COVID-19 pandemic, which exposed deep-seated inequalities and shifted labor dynamics.
- Socio-Political Rights: The decades witnessed significant gains in social rights, particularly surrounding identity and inclusion. Movements for LGBTQ+ rights, racial justice, and gender parity achieved major legislative and cultural victories, diversifying the ranks of power and leadership.
- The Recognition of “Essential Value”: The pandemic provided a stark, public accounting of who truly runs society. “Essential workers”—from nurses and teachers to logistics and retail staff—were finally recognized as the real value-makers. This shifted the public narrative away from glorifying financial capital and towards acknowledging human capital.
- The Great Labor Re-Shuffling: This recognition, coupled with emergency savings and health fears, fueled the “Great Resignation” and created an unprecedented employee’s market. Workers demanded and received better wages, improved conditions, and, most significantly, the right to remote work for many office-based roles. This shift was a huge gain, challenging the elite’s traditional ability to mandate strict discipline through the physical workplace.
- The Remote Work Gain: The ability to work from home was more than a convenience; it was a fundamental gain in autonomy and life flexibility. It reduced commuter costs, decentralized economic power away from city centres, and allowed workers to reclaim time previously lost to the grind.
In both periods, the elites watched a fundamental power equation begin to change: The people were gaining agency, and their organizations were gaining legitimacy. This accumulation of rights and autonomy set the stage for the inevitable pushback.
The pattern is clear: periods of meaningful popular gains are inevitably met with a fierce, strategically coordinated pushback from the established order. This response is not defensive; it is a calculated offense designed to reclaim lost power and re-impose discipline. The most effective method is to leverage or manufacture a crisis that requires “unity” or “austerity,” justifying the temporary (and often permanent) suspension of the newly won rights.
The 1914 Reversal: Weaponizing War and Patriotism
The years 1914 to 1918 provided the perfect pretext and mechanism for the elite to halt the progressive wavelets.
- Suspension of Rights: In the name of national security and the war effort, democratic rights were immediately curtailed. Union organizing was often deemed unpatriotic or even treasonous. Workers were placed under rigid wartime industrial control, effectively replacing the union shop floor with military discipline. This was the rapid, brutal rollback of the right to organize and strike.
- The Profits of Conflict: While the working class fought and died, big industrialists and financiers reaped enormous benefits from massive government war contracts. The state became the single largest, most reliable customer, funneling wealth and power to a select group of capital holders, thereby consolidating their economic dominance.
- The Delaying Action: The war didn’t permanently eliminate the progressive drive, but it provided a brutal reset, successfully delaying the full maturation of social democratic structures for decades. The focus shifted from internal class struggle to external national conflict.
The Modern Reversal: Weaponizing Fear, Technology, and Political Chaos
Today, the counter-attack uses sophisticated, multi-pronged weapons that target the core gains of the second wavelet: worker autonomy and democratic faith.
A. The Economic & Technological Discipline
The current elite response directly targets the employee power and the remote work gains achieved during the pandemic.
- The AI and Firing Threat: The threat of AI replacement is heavily promoted by capital as a way to re-discipline the current workforce. It sends a chilling message: comply, work harder, and accept less autonomy, or be replaced by a machine. This narrative is reinforced by highly visible, calculated mass layoffs (even at profitable companies), shifting the job market sentiment back toward the employer’s favor.
- The ‘Return to Office’ Mandate: Mandating a swift return to the office (RTO), often with minimal strategic benefit, is primarily a reassertion of managerial control and a symbolic rollback of worker autonomy. It negates the life flexibility workers had secured, forcing them back into a commute-and-compliance structure.
B. The Political & Democratic Undermining
This strategy focuses on creating mass chaos and undermining the very institutions that could regulate capital.
- Undermining Democracy: High-profile campaigns like Brexit and the political movements surrounding Donald Trump often involve significant funding and messaging designed to fracture social unity, focus public anger on scapegoats (immigrants, cultural elites), and erode faith in democratic processes. The goal is to install political leaders or ideologies less constrained by democratic checks and more inclined to serve capital’s interests (e.g., deregulation, tax cuts for the wealthy).
- The Use of Crisis Narratives: Narratives around inflation and national debt are amplified to justify austerity measures. The blame is often placed on government spending or worker wage increases, allowing corporations to raise prices and consolidate profits while simultaneously demanding that workers “tighten their belts.” This frames social progress as fiscally irresponsible.
In both 1914 and today, the endgame is identical: to prevent the progressive gains from becoming permanently embedded in society, to break the solidarity of the working class, and to consolidate power and wealth at the very top. The crisis itself—be it war or systemic political and economic instability—is the tool of the Great Reversal.
Conclusion
The striking parallels across centuries—from the Statutes of Labourers in 1352 to the WWI-era suppression of unions and the modern RTO mandates and AI threats—reveal a fundamental, enduring truth: Progressive gains are always conditional. They are not gifts from the powerful but hard-won concessions that must be fiercely defended. The old elites and concentrated capital will utilize any crisis, whether military, plague, or political chaos, as a strategic opportunity to launch a Great Reversal before worker autonomy and social equity become permanently embedded in the legal and cultural landscape.
The crisis is no longer a world war, but a concerted, complex attack on the three pillars of modern worker power:
- Autonomy (The push back against remote work).
- Security (The fear of AI replacement and mass layoffs).
- Democracy (The undermining of institutions that regulate capital).
To view these issues in isolation—to see RTO mandates as merely “office culture,” or political chaos as simple tribalism—is to fall victim to the counter-attack’s ultimate disguise. They are all facets of a single, coordinated strategy to re-discipline the workforce and dismantle the progressive wavelets of the 21st century.
The most crucial lesson from history is that the progressive forces cannot afford to wait for the next great push; the time to solidify the gains is now.
- 1. Defend the Autonomy (Remote Work): Workers must collectively push back against arbitrary RTO mandates. Treat the right to work autonomously as a hard-won labor gain, not a corporate perk, and demand evidence-based justification for its removal.
- 2. Embed the Gains (Legislation): We must move quickly to translate hard-won autonomy into permanent legal and contractual rights. This means advocating for laws that govern the ethical use of AI in the workplace, guarantee a right to disconnect, and protect hybrid work arrangements. Make the gains irreversible.
- 3. Connect the Dots (Solidarity): Recognize that the fight against economic exploitation is inseparable from the fight to preserve democratic integrity. The defense of fair elections, the fight against corporate dark money, and the challenge to concentrated wealth are all part of the same campaign to ensure that the rules of society serve the many, not the few.
The counter-attack is fully underway. The question is not if the elite will attempt to roll back progress, but if we will recognise their strategy and mobilize in time to defend the ground we’ve gained. We must turn the current “Progressive Wave” into a permanent tide before the modern Great Reversal achieves its aim.