Occupy Wall St

What Is Occupy Wall Street? The History of Leaderless Movements by Heather Gautney Occupy Wall Street has arrived. Facebook is all-aflutter, and Twitter is all-atweeter, as news of “occupations” and clashes with the powers-that-be spread like wildfire around the country. Now entering its fourth week, the Wall Street occupation has become a national phenomenon. The president is interested, celebrities are popping by, and pizza shops are adding the OccuPie to their menus. There is even an Occupy video game in development. The movement has spawned hundreds of Occupy locales in a national Occupy Together network. And now there is talk of going global: Occupy the World. Inquiring minds want to know: Who are these people? What exactly are they demanding? Who is leading this thing? On these issues, the movement has been clear: This is a leaderless movement without an official set of demands. There are no projected outcomes, no bottom lines and no talking heads. In the Occupy movement, We are all leaders. This is not just a charming mess. We are all leaders represents a real praxis, and it has a real history. In the 1960s and 70s, feminists convened consciousness-raising meetings aimed at politicizing the various forms of women’s oppression that were occurring in private. Women in the ranks were tired of being excluded from the inner circles of leadership where the issues and demands were being decided. And, they were sick of the generalized hypocrisy regarding gender roles. For this reason, feminist consciousness-raising eschewed formal leadership because each woman’s experience and opinion had to be valued equally. The personal was the political. Consciousness-raising was also the heart and soul of gay rights activism. The process of sharing coming-out stories in a free environment helped others liberate themselves from the closet of ill repute. Again, these stories were told in a non-coercive, leaderless environment that empowered gay men and women to fight for their rights and leave behind a debased life of sexual secrecy. Both of these movements had enormous impacts on American life. Gay rights liberated our sexuality, and feminism fundamentally changed the way we relate to each other as men and women. All this, without a centralized leadership. Fast-forward to the late 1990s when protest networks emerged around the world in opposition to the World Bank, WTO and G-8. This time uneven development, debt and neoliberalism took center stage, alongside environmental concerns and world poverty. The protesters were “Anti” globalization as well as “Alter”: Free flows of information as opposed to patenting, free movement of people as opposed to policed immigration, and free trade as opposed to NAFTA. Alter-globalization networks created a veritable movement of movements, which was not led or controlled by any one of them. In the United States, anarchist-inspired spokescouncils convened hundreds of these groups to organize protest actions, conferences and community work. At the meetings, each group would position a single member upfront, in the inner circle, while the rest sat behind, like a human wheel with spokes. There were no leaders with long-standing assignments because every participant was, in essence, a leader. In lieu of a party line, this amalgamation of movements operated according to sets of core, procedural principles—called Principles of Unity—that reflected their anti-authoritarian, anti-discriminatory orientation. The Occupy movement operates similarly, with each locale establishing its own set of organizational practices. Locales, and the virtual Occupy communities in cyberspace, are federated according to a simple yet powerful point of unity: “The one thing we all have in common is that we are the 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%”—an obvious reference to the well-known, yet still appalling, statistic that the top 1 percent of households in the United States own somewhere between 30 to 40 percent of all privately held wealth. And counting. Occupy Wall Street’s organizational presence is the New York General Assembly or “GA,” which convenes numbers in the high hundreds at its squat-site in Zuccotti Park. Daily GA meetings are led by facilitators who rotate on a regular basis, and facilitation training is open to all. Specific issues, such as food, medical, legal, outreach, security and others are handled by working groups—also open and inclusive—that periodically report back to the GA. Instead of issuing top-down directives, Occupy groups use a consensus process in which anyone can join in the decision-making and propose an idea. Proposers must field questions, justify the hows and whys of their ideas, and engage a large-scale group discussion. Votes are then cast via an innovative system of hand signals, and proposals are revised until a nine-tenths majority approves. Of course, all this requires a degree of good faith. Embedded in consensus process is an ethical assumption that decision-making is not a competition: It is not about converting other people to one’s way of thinking. It is about compromise. For every person involved, there is a new viewpoint to consider. This can get messy, but efficiency is not the measuring stick of success here. Democracy is. Similar to the feminist and alter-globalization movements, these groups want to avoid replicating the authoritarian structures of the institutions they are opposing. This is part of what differentiates them from the Tea Party. Occupy will never become an arm of the Democratic Party because the Democratic Party is part of the problem. These protesters want to prefigure within their own organization the free society they seek to create. And they want to demonstrate against the corrupt and hypocritical culture in mainstream politics and Wall Street—by operating with integrity. The Occupy movement is a laboratory for participatory democracy. It’s a massive crash course in leadership training. Most of these activists have a particular issue, problem or political idea that is meaningful to them, on which they have developed an expert knowledge. Occupy is both a concrete and virtual space for connecting these issues and expertise without any one position or issue taking precedence. This movement is not mired in the competitive mindset of “my issue is more important than yours” that appears to be stymieing Congress as the country slowly crumbles. Implicit in this structure is also a rejection of the narcissistic, “I know what’s good for you” form of leadership, now pervasive in this country, in which lawmakers fail to consider the needs and desires of the people they claim to represent. The failure of representative democracy in the United States is perhaps one of the most serious problems of our time, and the Occupy movement is a symptom of this crisis of legitimacy. The people no longer trust their leaders and are even starting to indict the system itself. They think we can do better. We are all leaders. The Communist Party USA (CPUSA) will hold a national teleconference to discuss it: Arturo Cambron The Communist Party and the Occupy L.A. Movement Tuesday, October 11, 8 pm Eastern Teleconference number: 605-475-4850 (please note this is the corrected number. ignore previous.) Access code: 1053538# Southern California Party leader Arturo Cambron will share how the CPUSA and Young Communist League (YCL) are working in “Occupy Los Angeles.” This movement, also known as the “99% movement,” is being hailed across the country. Movements and organizations are reaching out in solidarity. The AFL-CIO is opening union halls and offering other material assistance. Ordinary people are donating food, money and materials. In many areas, the “Occupy Movement” is linking up with the National American Wants to Work Week of Actions, Oct. 10-16. No doubt the “Arab Spring” demonstrations and those that exploded in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere have inspired it. But underlying it all is the economic crisis, the massive unemployment and growing realization that nothing is getting better, and in fact we may be slipping into a “double dip” crisis. The crushing student debt and the feeling of being locked out of society with no future compound this. The movement is the newest wrinkle in the all-people’s upsurge against the banks and corporations and reflects a new level of class-consciousness. While there is a wide range of political and ideological trends, there is a consensus against corporate greed, getting money out of politics, taxing the rich and putting people before profits. A big challenge for the CPUSA and left, progressive movements is to link these demonstrations with the labor led all-people’s coalition and help deepen understanding that the path to progress must be through electoral and political action including defeating Republican Tea Party reaction in 2012. Of primary importance is linking it with the burgeoning fight for jobs and especially passage of the American Jobs Act. We can also play a role in offering more advanced programmatic ideas like nationalizing the banks and socialism. To have a positive impact, the CPUSA and YCL must be a part of the “Occupy” movement, participating at every level and building greater local support for the actions among labor and progressive forces. Lessons from History for Occupy Wall Street on How to Build a Movement By Tomiko Brown-Nagin Tomiko Brown-Nagin is T. Munford Boyd Professor of Law, Justice Thurgood Marshall Distinguished Professor of Law, and Professor of History at the University of Virginia. Crossposted at Legal History Blog. With the protests on Wall Street continuing, historians are being called on to provide perspective on the development and related matters. Gary Gerstle (Vanderbilt—history & political science) compared Occupy Wall Street to earlier social movements in a Salon.com interview, available here. Beverly Gage (Yale—history) discussed protests on Wall Street during the Gilded Age and the Great Depression on NPR. At the History News Network, Jonathan Zimmerman (NYU—history) tied the Wall Street protests to the country's revolutionary founding, Juan Cole (Michigan—history) linked the protests to the Arab Spring, and others provided informed commentary. In an interview with an NPR affililate, Steven Reich (Washington & Lee—history), Michelle Drumbl (Washington & Lee—law) and I, along with Chris Saxman (formerly of the Virginia House of Delegates), discussed political leveraging of the concept of "class warfare" in U.S. history. History shows that American political activism has never been limited to the form that it conventionally takes today—electoral politics. Citizens have historically employed an array of tools to influence public policy; non-electoral forms of political participation have been especially necessary, given restrictions imposed on so many citizens' voting rights for so much of American history. See Alexander Keyssar's magisterial treatment, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in America (Oxford, 2009), for more on the advent of universal voting rights in the United States. Far from signifying social dysfunction ("anarchy," as some commentators suggest), mass political protest is conventional. It is as old as the nation itself. Participatory democratic action of the sort seen today on Wall Street exists along a spectrum of political forms that includes boycotts, demonstrations, strikes, and town hall meetings, among myriad other ways that citizens make their voices heard in public policy debates. The country has sometimes even witnessed violent rebellion against titans of industry—real, not figurative, class warfare. Then there is the question of whether political protest is futile. History says no, or at least, not necessarily. Mass political action has given rise to momumental changes in law and society. Industrial strife and social unrest during the early twentieth century yielded legislation during the New Deal that fundamentally changed Americans' relationship to the workplace. The right to collectively bargain and the eight-hour workday, among other innovations, grew out of these protest movements. Citizen protests also produced revolutionary socio-legal changes in American race relations. Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in the wake of widespread social protest. That historical moment is now so acclaimed that the nation has seen fit to memorialize the likeness of the movement's foremost leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, on the national mall. Of course, citizen mobilization certainly can come to naught. However, the most striking feature of the American political landscape in recent decades has been the failure of citizens to even engage in sustained public protest—about anything. This is not to say that Occupy Wall Street shares very much of the lineage of either the labor or the civil rights movement, or that it even is a movement. Rather, the Wall Street protesters are employing a tactic successfully used by labor movement and civil rights movement activists in the past. Movements require structure and organization, unifying themes, concrete goals, effective symbols, tools for engagement with the public, and methods to influence policymakers. Thus far, these protesters do not appear to constitute a full-fledged movement. The target of the protesters' anger and their basic grievance are, however, perfectly clear: Wall Street bankers and the perceived unfair advantage of the wealthiest (the top 1 percent) in economic policy. It is not unusual for it to take some time for citizens' discontent to crystalize into a concrete political agenda. Going forward, one characteristic of the protesters is striking and problematic if they hope to form a credible change movement. The dearth of racial and ethnic diversity among the protesters is remarkable given their focus on economic inequality and unemployment, matters with disproportionate impact on blacks and Hispanics. In recent history, protest movements have lost credibility when their membership and leadership sent different messages than their advertised principles. If these protesters are unrepresentative of the Americans whose plight they seek to voice, they cannot expect to be taken seriously among key constituencies in the court of publilc opinion. Yes, Americans always have engaged in political protest unmediated by the state. What these particular protests will yield, if anything, is anyone's guess. The endgame here certainly is made more unpredictable because the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon is just dawning, its organizational structure is lacking, and its goals are amorphous. Even if the protesters develop a coherent agenda, organization and so forth, the resulting structure will not function like an interest group or political party—as some commentators seem to expect. By their nature, protest movements are spontaneous and unpredictable rather than poll-tested and packaged. Social movements gain leverage precisely because they are unscripted and exist outside of the normal political channels. Observe the Tea Party movement. This historical moment is pregnant with possibility. One of the most glaring problems with the supporters of Occupy Wall Street and its copycat successors is that they suffer from a woefully inadequate understanding of the capitalist social formation — its dynamics, its (spatial) globality, its (temporal) modernity. They equate anti-capitalism with simple anti-Americanism, and ignore the international basis of the capitalist world economy. To some extent, they have even reified its spatial metonym in the NYSE on Wall Street. Capitalism is an inherently global phenomenon; it does not admit of localization to any single nation, city, or financial district. Moreover, many of the more moderate protestors hold on to the erroneous belief that capitalism can be “controlled” or “corrected” through Keynesian-administrative measures: steeper taxes on the rich, more bureaucratic regulation and oversight of business practices, broader government social programs (welfare, Social Security), and projects of rebuilding infrastructure to create jobs. Moderate “progressives” dream of a return to the Clinton boom years, or better yet, a Rooseveltian new “New Deal.” All this amounts to petty reformism, which only serves to perpetuate the global capitalist order rather than to overcome it. They fail to see the same thing that the libertarians in the Tea Party are blind to: laissez-faire economics is not essential to capitalism. State-interventionist capitalism is just as capitalist as free-market capitalism. Nevertheless, though Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy [insert location here] in general still contains many problematic aspects, it nevertheless presents an opportunity for the Left to engage with some of the nascent anti-capitalist sentiment taking shape there. So far it has been successful in enlisting the support of a number of leftish celebrities, prominent unions, and young activists, and has received a lot of media coverage. Hopefully, the demonstrations will lead to a general radicalization of the participants’ politics, and a commitment to the longer-term project of social emancipation. To this end, I have written up a rather pointed Marxist analysis of the OWS movement so far that you might find interesting: When I posted my first impressions of the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon, I had been down to visit the raucous scene down at Liberty Plaza only once. On that particular occasion, I ended up staying there for barely two hours. By that point, I felt I had seen enough for one day. Many of the things I witnessed there were simply all too familiar to me. The endless beating of the drums, the pseudo-tribalistic dancing and chanting, the call-and-repeat sloganizing (“this is what democracy looks like” and other populist banalities, etc.), the predictable placards, the black-bandanaed anarchist chic — all this smacks a little too much of what has become par-for-the-course in the post-New Left political culture of orgiastic partying & protesting (it is no longer clear whether the two are separate activities). Combine this with the more generally confused hodgepodge of vaguely leftish political sentiments expressed at the demonstrations — anything from “End Corporate Greed and Corruption” to “We are Killing our Planet,” “Jobs not War,” “Endangered Species,” and “Nazi Bankers” — apparently disconnected one another as well as any broader project of social emancipation, and there you have it: Occupy Wall Street in a nutshell. As my rather caustic tone would imply, I was not very impressed with what I saw there that first day I visited. My initial write-up of the events on Wall Street reflected this skepticism. The feedback I received was, as one might have expected, almost uniformly negative. To be sure, this response was not altogether unwelcome. My post was largely intended as a provocation, a polemical volley aimed at some of the more superficial elements of the protests. In light of the overwhelmingly hostile and defensive reaction it elicited, I can safely say that it achieved this goal. Nevertheless, I realized then that to simply criticize Occupy Wall Street from the sidelines was not enough. The significance of this sudden surge of political pathos was more serious than its more superficial aspects would suggest. To simply dismiss these demonstrations out of hand — on account of their somewhat carnivalesque character — would be all too easy. Of course one cannot demand ideological purity from a nascent political phenomenon, and these are still early days. So far, the only thing uniting many of the participants in the Wall Street occupation is a generalized, intuitive discontent with the status quo. The task incumbent upon the Left (or what remains of it) must be to push these demonstrators to articulate a political vision of social emancipation, to actively engage with the protesters. We must seek to understand their reasons for being there, ask them what they hope to accomplish through their actions, and pose the broader question of where we stand in our own historical moment. When I posted my first impressions of the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon, I had been down to visit the raucous scene down at Liberty Plaza only once. On that particular occasion, I ended up staying there for barely two hours. By that point, I felt I had seen enough for one day. Many of the things I witnessed there were simply all too familiar to me. The endless beating of the drums, the pseudo-tribalistic dancing and chanting, the call-and-repeat sloganizing (“this is what democracy looks like” and other populist banalities, etc.), the predictable placards, the black-bandanaed anarchist chic — all this smacks a little too much of what has become par-for-the-course in the post-New Left political culture of orgiastic partying & protesting (it is no longer clear whether the two are separate activities). Combine this with the more generally confused hodgepodge of vaguely leftish political sentiments expressed at the demonstrations — anything from “End Corporate Greed and Corruption” to “We are Killing our Planet,” “Jobs not War,” “Endangered Species,” and “Nazi Bankers” — apparently disconnected one another as well as any broader project of social emancipation, and there you have it: Occupy Wall Street in a nutshell. As my rather caustic tone would imply, I was not very impressed with what I saw there that first day I visited. My initial write-up of the events on Wall Street reflected this skepticism. The feedback I received was, as one might have expected, almost uniformly negative. To be sure, this response was not altogether unwelcome. My post was largely intended as a provocation, a polemical volley aimed at some of the more superficial elements of the protests. In light of the overwhelmingly hostile and defensive reaction it elicited, I can safely say that it achieved this goal. Nevertheless, I realized then that to simply criticize Occupy Wall Street from the sidelines was not enough. The significance of this sudden surge of political pathos was more serious than its more superficial aspects would suggest. To simply dismiss these demonstrations out of hand — on account of their somewhat carnivalesque character — would be all too easy. Of course one cannot demand ideological purity from a nascent political phenomenon, and these are still early days. So far, the only thing uniting many of the participants in the Wall Street occupation is a generalized, intuitive discontent with the status quo. The task incumbent upon the Left (or what remains of it) must be to push these demonstrators to articulate a political vision of social emancipation, to actively engage with the protesters. We must seek to understand their reasons for being there, ask them what they hope to accomplish through their actions, and pose the broader question of where we stand in our own historical moment. Since my first trip down to the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, I have returned three separate times. Much has gone on in the interim — OWS’ endorsement by leftish celebrities such as Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, and Susan Sarandon; the alliance of various unions in support of the protests; the mass arrests that took place on the Brooklyn Bridge; and copycat occupations projected to take place in a number of cities in North America. The movement seemed to be gaining momentum, and was at the very least drawing more media coverage. This last Sunday, I joined a dozen or so members of the New York chapter of the Platypus Affiliated Society (a Marxist organization with which I identify) as part of a “coordinated intervention” into the muddled political mise-en-scène of the Occupation. Yesterday and the day before I went down on my own, equipped with a DIY placard and some free time. There I wound up bumping into a couple people visiting on behalf of the Kasama Project, one of the more thoughtful Marxist political groupings that’s cropped up in the last few years. All in all, I feel like I’ve got a better sense of what’s going on down in the heart of the financial district, having now spent more time there. In light of all the recent developments that have taken place at Occupy Wall Street, and with the added insight I feel I’ve gained through my participation in it, a follow-up piece to my original post on the demonstrations is well in order. Though I will not hesitate to criticize those elements of the protests that I continue to find problematic, this post will be more of a reflection on the movement to this point — its significance, its possibilities, its deficiencies, etc. I hope to take stock of all that’s gone on so far, situate it in terms of its greater historical context, and perhaps speculate as to what potential outcomes it might portend for emancipatory politics as a whole. I will therefore ask the broadest and most basic questions: What does Occupy Wall Street represent? What kind of possibilities does it open up? What sort of scenarios can we realistically expect to result from it? What are its greatest strengths? And by that same token, what are its most glaring weaknesses? WHAT OCCUPY WALL STREET REPRESENTS What is Occupy Wall Street? How does one classify it? Answering these questions is not as simple as it might initially appear. For the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon seems too ideologically nebulous to truly constitute a political “movement,” in the strictest sense of the term. One might argue that its status as a movement is not dependent on its having a shared platform, list of concrete demands, or clear doctrine of beliefs. Indeed, many have suggested that Occupy Wall Street’s great strength as a movement resides in its very flexibility — its all-encompassing “inclusiveness,” its ability to entertain a plurality of political positions without necessarily endorsing one over the other. But this would seem to run counter to the generally-accepted idea of a political movement, which tend to possess a unified set of tactics, a common Weltanschauung, and a more organized structure. On the other hand, labeling Occupy Wall Street merely as “demonstrations” or “protests” fails to capture its remarkable longevity, especially considering the connotations these words acquired during the anti-war years. (This despite the fact that the opposition to the United States’ overseas military adventures was never all that impressive to begin with, and has almost disappeared entirely ever since Obama took office). During this period, the idea of a “demonstration” or a “protest” was typically a quite ephemeral affair, lasting no more than a couple days. Protestors would come out to rally for the march but then go home at the end of the day. Such gatherings tended to be quite temporary in their duration. One of the most noteworthy features of Occupy Wall Street, by contrast, has been its sheer endurance over the course of more than three weeks now (and counting). Thus, the occupation would seem to defy classification as a mere “demonstration” or “protest,” at least of the variety seen in recent years. To be certain, however, some of the scenes one finds on Wall Street bear an undeniable resemblance to the kinds of antics that were witnessed at the antiwar marches of the last decade, as well as at the nearly annual anti-globalization demonstrations that have followed since Seattle 1999. Without portraying myself as some sort of seasoned, world-weary veteran of Left activism, I have no reservations pointing out some of the more clear-cut congruencies that exist between the activist milieu at Occupy Wall Street and its earlier counterparts in the antiwar and anti-globalization protests of the last ten years. One encounters many of the same things: the same catchphrases and sing-a-longs, the same Black Bloc ostentation, the same pseudo-bohemian pomp and pageantry, the same multi-generational mix of leftover hippies, blue-collar unionists, aging punk rawkers, along with the more recent horde of dissipated hipsters flowing in from Brooklyn. Apropos the various similarities shared by the post-Iraq invasion antiwar demonstrations and the current occupation of Wall Street, we might briefly highlight a rather pointed irony that exists between them. For years now, all I have been hearing at protest marches has been “End the occupation!” Now all one hears from protestors is “Occupy [insert location here]!” It’s all very confusing. (I won’t bother going into some of the quasi-imperialist overtones of the ongoing “Occupy!” phenomenon because I find this to be a somewhat vicious criticism, but still). Given all its festive features, might we perhaps classify Occupy Wall Street as a sort of quasi-political festival? The atmosphere there is largely celebratory; for some it seems like nothing more than an excuse to play dress-up or start up impromptu musical jamborees. As Ashley Weger observed in an article on the G20 protests in Toronto: “Costuming and all, modern protests feel increasingly like a less sophisticated version of live action role playing, thriving off a spectacular but imaginary conception of one’s political context, walking and talking and Molotov-cocktail throwing like a revolutionary.” To be fair, staging performances at demonstrations and political celebrations does have some revolutionary precedent. The role of festivals in the France of the First Republic has been documented by Mona Ozouf in her book, Festivals and the French Revolution. Likewise, the young Soviet avant-garde produced numerous plays and recreations in the 1920s designed to involve the masses in the building of a new, emancipated society. Compared with the pantomime of contemporary politics, however, these public displays and productions tended to be much less improvisational, less of a free-for-all — they were more organized, coordinated, and choreographed. But despite the fact that such past festivities were successful in stirring revolutionary emotion among the people, even then they had their shortcomings. As the famous 19th-century historian Hippolyte Taine described in an account of such a celebration held in 1789, these revolutionary political carnivals often amounted to nothing more than rote theatrical repetition: Whatever the imagination of the day offers [the Frenchman] to increase his emotion, all the classical, rhetorical, and dramatic material at his command, are employed for the embellishment of his festival. Already wildly enthusiastic, he is anxious to increase his enthusiasm. — At Lyons, the fifty thousand confederates from the south range themselves in line of battle around an artificial rock, fifty feet high, covered with shrubs, and surmounted by a Temple of Concord in which stands a huge statue of Liberty; the steps of the rock are decked with flags, and a solemn mass precedes the administration of the oath. — At Paris, an altar dedicated to the country is erected in the middle of the Champ de Mars, which is transformed into a colossal circus…Never was such an effort made to intoxicate the senses and strain the nerves beyond their powers of endurance! — The moral machine is made to vibrate to the same and even to a greater extent. For more than a year past, harangues, proclamations, addresses, newspapers and events have daily added one degree more to the pressure. On this occasion, thousands of speeches, multiplied by myriads of newspapers, carry the enthusiasm to the highest pitch. Declamation foams and rolls along in a steady stream of rhetoric everywhere throughout France. In this state of excitement the difference between magniloquence and sincerity, between the false and the true, between show and substance, is no longer distinguishable. The Federation becomes an opera which is seriously played in the open street — children have parts assigned them in it; it occurs to no one that they are puppets, and that the words taken for an expression of the heart are simply memorized speeches that have been put into their mouths. (Hippolyte Taine, The French Revolution, Volume 1). Pgs. 220-221. Taine was not alone in thus criticizing certain aspects of French revolutionary spectacles. Even the famed Russian anarchist Petr Kropotkin, who regarded Taine as a vulgar bourgeois historian, had to agree that these festivals had their limitations. ”Taine disparages the festivals of the Revolution, and it is true that those of 1793 and 1794 were often too theatrical,” Kropotkin conceded. (Petr Kropotkin, The Great French Revolution. Pg. 177). In contemporary cultural theory, many postmodernists glorify the creativity, spontaneity, and ironic possibilities involved in acts of political theater. Much of this sentiment is derived from the writings of the Situationists in France and the rediscovery of the works of Mikhail Bakhtin by the French avant-garde journal Tel Quel. Bakhtin, a renowned early Soviet literary theorist loosely associated with the Formalist school, was the one who perhaps articulated best the way in which the “carnivalesque” can potentially act to transform social consciousness: Negation in popular-festive imagery has never an abstract logical character. It is always something obvious, tangible. That which stands behind negation is by no means nothingness but the “other side” of that which is denied, the carnivalesque upside down. Negation reconstructs the image of the object and first of all modifies the topographical position in space of the object as a whole, as well as its parts. It transfers the object to the underworld, replaces the top by the bottom, or the front by the back, sharply exaggerating some traits at the expense of others. Negation and destruction of the object are therefore their displacement and reconstruction in space. The nonbeing of an object is its “other face,” its inside out. […] Carnival celebrates the destruction of the old and the birth of the new world — the new year, the new spring, the new kingdom. The old world that has been destroyed is offered together with the new world and is represented with it as a dying part of the dual body. This is why in carnivalesque images there is so much turnabout, so many opposite faces and intentionally upset proportions. (Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World. Pg. 410). In these passages, Bakhtin tacitly relies on a Marxist concept inherited from the Hegelian dialectical legacy — that of determinate negation. As Hegel observed: “[T]he skepticism which only ever sees pure nothingness in its result and abstracts from the fact that this nothingness is specifically the nothingness of that from which it results. For it is only when it is taken as the result of that from which it emerges, that it is, in fact, the true result; in that case it is itself a determinate nothingness, one which has a content. The skepticism that ends up with the bare abstraction of nothingness or emptiness cannot get any further from there, but must wait to see whether something new comes along and what it is, in order to throw it too into the same empty abyss. But when, on the other hand, the result is conceived as it is in truth, namely, as a determinate negation, a new form has thereby immediately arisen, and in the negation the transition is made through which the progress through the complete series of forms comes about of itself” (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit. §79, pg. 51). Hegel himself carried this notion too far in terms of what he thought was its positive speculative power. This is something Theodor Adorno picked up on: “The nonidentical is not to be obtained directly, as something positive on its part, nor is it obtainable by a negation of the negative. This negation is not an affirmation itself, as it is to Hegel” (Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialectics. Pg. 158). Nevertheless, determinate negation still underwrites the critical apprehension of the present, and opens up the possibility that a new society could be born out of its negative image. ”In its mystified form, the dialectic became the fashion in Germany, because it seemed to transfigure and glorify what exists,” Marx famously recorded in his postface to the second edition of Capital, Volume 1. ”In its rational form it is a scandal and an abomination to the bourgeoisie and its doctrinaire spokesmen, because it includes in its positive understanding of what exists a simultaneous recognition of its negation, its inevitable destruction; because it regards every historically developed form as being in a fluid state, in motion, and therefore grasps its transient aspect as well; and because it does not let itself be impressed by anything, being in its very essence critical and revolutionary” (Marx, Capital, Volume 1. Pg. 103). As I see it, the biggest problem with the rock-concert atmosphere and all the myriad performance pieces one sees down at Liberty Plaza is its quasi-Situationist character. This French group, loosely involved with the 1968 protests, argued for the subversive reappropriation of the spectacle intended to counteract the so-called “society of the spectacle.” Such an attitude, unfortunately, is quite prone to narcissism and exhibitionism. The folk essence of political carnivals staged in societies where the agrarian peasant population still predominated has been lost, along with its freshness and ingenuous naïveté, replaced by the contrived carnivalesque of hypermediated youth culture. I hate to be a buzzkill, but this atmosphere provokes my dyspeptic side. So what is it, then, if not a movement, demonstration, protest, or festival? Some have proposed the more generic catchall of “resistance” to describe the Wall Street occupation. Perhaps this might be the most fitting title for the occupation, given its own self-description as a “leaderless resistance movement.” This moniker, however, comes with its own set of problems. Ever since the close of the Second World War, the concept of “resistance” has risen to prominence within the discourse of the Left, ennobled by the French experience of La Résistance (mostly led by French communists) during the Vichy regime. Unfortunately, the teleological valorization of resistance as a sort of virtue unto itself has had a rather perverse effect on protest culture over the last several decades. Instead of calling for a broader project of social revolution, activists have substituted the notion of simply “resisting” the forces of structural domination that surrounds us. Somehow — though the precise way that this operates is never made clear — this is supposed to “subvert” or “disrupt” the powers that be. “Resistance” thus becomes fetishized as a supposedly heroic act of defiance, no matter how effective or ineffective it might ultimately be. On this point, members of Platypus have offered some analysis which is relevant to the present situation on Wall Street, especially insofar as it regards itself as a form of resistance. In a panel discussion they hosted back in 2008, on “The Three Rs: Reform, Revolution, and ‘Resistance,’” Chris Cutrone noted how “[t]he Left today almost never speaks of freedom or emancipation, but only of ‘resistance’ to the dynamics of change associated with capital and its transformations.” With respect to this linguistic shift of emphasis from questions of freedom to questions of resistance, Cutrone finds “the current self-understanding of the Left as ‘resistance’ to express despair not only at prospects for revolutionary transformation, but also for substantial institutional reforms.” Another member of Platypus, Laurie Rojas, drove this point home even further at a discussion of “The Politics of the Contemporary Student Left” that took place at the 2009 Left Forum in New York. In the following passage, Rojas was specifically addressing the reborn Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), but her observations have equal application to the self-proclaimed “leaderless resistance movement” of Occupy Wall Street: In the absence of effective leadership and long-term goals, these campaigns amount to a politics of acting out, an unreflective and compulsive desire for “agitation” and “resistance.” The new SDS [or if you prefer, Occupy Wall Street] has become nothing more than an umbrella organization for participating in activism and resistance without strategy or goals. The activism-for-its-own-sake in SDS [or at Occupy Wall Street] indicates that it “refuses to reflect upon its own impotence,” as Adorno once said of the student activism in the ’60s. If Occupy Wall Street doesn’t entirely fit into any of these readymade categories, however, then what exactly is it? The answer, I think, is that it is an amalgamation of all these things we have mentioned. It is important to recognize, as one of the observers in the Kasama Project reminded me, that this phenomenon should not be treated as a dead object, with static components that can be mechanically picked apart. Rather, it is better to conceive it as a still-evolving subject (albeit one that is in large part unconscious of its own activities and motivations). Of course, this is not to say that it defies any attempt to make sense of it. Occupy Wall Street is — at least in its present configuration — part protest, part party, some parts solidarity, other parts hangout, and so on down the line. At least tentatively, it might be most correctly termed a “sustained demonstration.” (For lack of a more accurate definition, we may still fall back on the terms that are now regularly applied to this phenomenon.) Even at this early point, though, Occupy Wall Street appears to represent the most substantial upwelling of anti-capitalist sentiment in the West that has happened in some time. What it ultimately signifies, however, remains to be seen. A related question for those on the Left might be: How can we prevent Occupy Wall Street from turning into a farcical repeat of 1968? Though the younger generation of activists might not have much in the way of an historical memory, there are those among the protestors who participated in and remember the momentous events that took place in May through June of that year. For that brief period of time, it seemed, the student and worker populations were radicalized to such an extent that it appeared that revolutionary social transformation might be imminent. Unrest in Serbia and Czechoslovakia led the latter country to proclaim its independence from the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. In the West, mass protests swiftly spread across France, Germany, Britain, Mexico, Japan, and the United States, reacting against a variety of issues — from the war in Vietnam to the greater problem of “the administrative society” of high-Fordist capitalism, with its tripartite alliance of Big Business, Big Labor, and Big Government. Of course, the Soviets ended up crushing the attempts at democratic reforms that occurred in the short-lived “Prague Spring.” Following the series of relatively spectacular protests, takeovers, walk-outs, and sit-ins that were orchestrated by members the New Left, the political turbulence that the major countries of the West were experiencing was calmed, and conditions generally stabilized. Ironically, many of those who belong to the more moderate sections of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations today dream for nothing more than a return to either the Clinton boom years or further back, to a sort of Rooseveltian new “New Deal.” They lament the systematic deregulation of business, the high wages, and the gutting of government social programs that have followed from the collapse of Fordist capitalism in the Oil Crisis of 1973 — which thus inaugurated the era of neoliberal capitalism, in which we are still currently mired. As the leftist historian William Sewell has noted, such “progressives” as exist in the Occupy Wall Street movement, who hope to reinstate Glass-Steagall and return to the prelapsarian social-democracy “lite” of pre-1973, are trying to reestablish precisely the thing that student radicals in the 1960s were trying to overturn: Sixties radicalism, especially its “countercultural” moment, must be seen as a rejection of the corporate political and cultural synthesis of “big government, big business, big labor” that became dominant in the 1950s and 1960s — what has since come to be called “Fordism.” The term Fordism designates the mode of macrosocial and macroeconomic regulation that underwrote the long postwar economic boom, which stretched from the late 1940s to the early 1970s. The Fordist package combined mass production technologies, relatively high wage levels, stable systems of collective bargaining, Keynesian management of aggregate demand, full employment strategies, welfare state institutions, and highly bureaucratized forms of both public and private management…From the perspective of the hypercompetitive, predatory, and extraordinarily inegalitarian American capitalism of the early twenty-first century, the Fordist mode of regulation may seem remarkably humane, a kind of quasi-social-democratic “world we have lost.” But from the point of view of young critics of the system in the 1960s, its benefits (for example, economic stability and steady productivity gains) were hardly noticed…Meanwhile the defects of Fordist capitalism — especially corporate conformity, bureaucratic monotony, repressive morality, and stultifying forms of mass culture — were highly visible and repugnant, at least to the youthful political intelligentsia who made up the student movement. (William Sewell, The Logics of History. Pg. 30) Let us not deceive ourselves: this is certainly one potential outcome of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. The more radical elements of the movement would be pushed to the sidelines as the Democratic Party machine assuaged the more moderate participants in the occupation. MoveOn.org already has shown some interest in “co-opting” (to use the fashionable term) the grassroots political energy on display at Wall Street. With some luck, Obama might then come down from on high offering various concessions and campaign promises — doubtless as empty as the watchwords of “hope” and “change” used in the last election — even if he talks specifics. This reassurance may be enough to calm down the vaguely left-of-center demonstrators that have been so outraged by Obama’s impotence in the face of (and indeed complicity with) the Republicans. Abandoned by the more “mainstream” constituencies of Occupy Wall Street, the anarchists and the various paleo-Marxist sects would be left to fend for themselves. The former (usually the default political orientation of young protestors) would probably soon grow bored now that no one would be paying attention to their theatrical gimmicks, while the latter (which tend to claim the allegiance of the older radicals — whether Maoist, Guevarist, or Fourth Internationalist) would pack up as soon as the media circus left town, returning to their more workaday activities of pamphleting and organizing strikes. Another possibility, unlikely though it may be, is that Obama might promise all these things and then actually deliver them in his second term in office. Let us say that Obama reinstitutes the old legislative and bureaucratic oversight and regulation of free market practices, taxes the top 1% more steeply, and funnels money into jobs programs, welfare benefits, and rebuilding infrastructure. Would the protests thus have been a success? Certainly they might seem to have been in the minds of the more moderate members of the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon. But this would be to simply replace one form of domination for another, exchange one capitalist constellation for one that is ostensibly more “humane.” One thing that moderate, left-of-center “progressives” seem to share with the libertarian ideologues of the Tea Party movement is the delusion that laissez-faire capitalism is the only “true” form of capitalism. In truth, however, state-interventionist capitalism is just as much capitalism as free-market capitalism. Only superficially are they distinct; the underlying category of society remains the same — Capital. This is, then, another potential outcome of the Occupy Wall Street protests: The occupiers choose reformism over revolution, piecemeal legislation within the bounds of the existing (national) state rather than its abolition and replacement by a new state. Such an outcome may seem preferable to some, but not to those who wish to fundamentally transform society and thereby emancipate all humanity. Palliative reforms put in place under the aegis of bourgeois society treat only the symptoms of injustice, while leaving the disease, capitalism, untouched. But what of the more leftist components of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations? What more radical alternatives might possibly result from their activities in these events In his immortal Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, Marx contrasts the political character of two separate periods of revolutionary activity, the Revolutions of 1789 and 1848. He famously remarks that “Hegel observes somewhere that all the great events and characters of world history occur twice, so to speak. He forgot to add: the first time as high tragedy, the second time as low farce. Caussidière after Danton, Louis Blanc after Robespierre, the montagne [democratic socialists] of 1848-51 after the montagne [Jacobin democrats] of 1793-5, and then the London constable [Louis Bonaparte], with a dozen of the best debt-ridden lieutenants, after the little corporal [Napoleon Bonaparte], with his roundtable of military marshals!” (Karl Marx, from Later Political Writings. Pg. 31). The trouble, as I see it, is thus: If 1968 was simply a farcical attempt to reenact (or perhaps even supersede) the tragedy of 1917, then what should we make of this latest wave of protests? For if 1968 is already a distant memory for some, then 1917 is even more remote from the public’s historical consciousness these days. Of course, the danger here is that this new round of radical activity is already modeled on a farce, and might reduplicate its slapstick and its idiocies on an even grander scale. If this proved to be the case, if we thus took 1968 the model for our action, we would thus be placing ourselves in a position twice removed from the tragic failure of 1917 — the moment at which the most concrete opportunity to realize a postcapitalist society was fatally missed. Now, it is important that I not be misunderstood on this point. I am not singling out 1968 as a total failure and exalting 1917 as a partial success. The revolutionary enterprises that were associated with both of these years were failures. (The revolution of 1917 was a failure at least by 1918-1919, when the Hungarian Soviet collapsed, and when the German revolution stalled out after Luxemburg and Leibkneckt were murdered — if not earlier, when Kautsky and the mainstream SPD voted to support buying war credits in 1914). My only contention is that 1917, and the various figures and organizations that took part in those events, illustrate the most viable approach to the accomplishment of a worldwide revolution that have been seen to date. Before someone leaps to correct me, I am fully aware that political and social conditions have changed drastically since that time. That might even be the point of my contention — that certain conditions need to be fulfilled once again in order to establish a new society in the future. One might well ask, what might be the best possible outcome we can expect from the Wall Street occupation? Any sober analyst of our current situation, who has an adequate understanding of history and society, realizes that the Occupy Wall Street movement will not lead to the immediate toppling of the U.S. financial system, or even its spatial metonym in Wall Street. From a leftist perspective, then, what might one hope for as the best-case scenario in which this could possibly play out? In my view, Occupy Wall Street at best represents an opportunity, not for the immediate overthrow of the prevailing social order, but rather for the Left to engage with those who have become dissatisfied with the status quo. The aim must be to turn this more or less intuitive sense of disenfranchisement, this generalized discontent with the capitalist social formation, and help them better understand the roots of the problem. This is not, to be sure, a one-way street, in which elite circles of leftist intellectuals, academics, and theoreticians descend from their lofty position above the mêlée and simply “educate” the social masses. In order for the inchoate anti-capitalism of Occupy Wall Street to acquire a more adequate historical and theoretical self-understanding, the Left must be responsive to the messiness of empirical reality, and sensitive to the legitimate grievances being voiced by those in Liberty Plaza. Reciprocally, this will require a willingness on the part of the public disaffected by capitalism to deepen its understanding of the problem that confronts them, and commit itself to a longer-term program of political emancipation. This means not getting impatient with the so-called “paralysis of analysis” and not simply showing up for the protests. It will, moreover, involve a dedication to the greater project of reconstituting the Left. PROBLEMS WITH OCCUPY WALL STREET What have been the shortcomings to the Occupy Wall Street movement so far? What are its most glaring deficiencies? As I see it, the most problematic aspect of the Wall Street demonstrations is its inability to adequately conceptualize the capitalist social formation. If you ask the protestors what the root of society’s woes is, one common response you will hear is “greed” or “corporate greed.” Greed, however, is hardly unique to the capitalist mode of production. Max Weber made this abundantly clear in his outstanding introduction to The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: Unlimited greed for gain is not in the least identical with capitalism, and is still less its spirit. Capitalism may even be identical with the restraint, or at least a rational tempering, of this irrational impulse. But capitalism is identical with the pursuit of profit, and forever renewed profit, by means of continuous, rational, capitalistic enterprise. For it must be so: in a wholly capitalistic order of society, an individual capitalistic enterprise which did not take advantage of its opportunities for profit-making would be doomed to extinction. (Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Pgs. xxxi-xxxii). Beyond this basic point, the problem with seeing “greed” as the root of all society’s evils is that it mistakes an epiphenomenal characteristic of capitalism for something more fundamental. As my friend Jeremy Cohan (also of Platypus) pointed out with reference to this text, it is remarkable the way that capitalism tames the traits of greed and competitiveness into our everyday patterns of behavior. Capitalism exists in such a manner that it normalizes these personality traits throughout the whole of society. Another consequence of blaming the gross disparity of wealth that exists between the highest echelons of the capitalist social order and the rest on a mere personality flaw (the poor moral constitution of the top 1%) is that it ignores the way that the capitalists themselves are implicated by the intrinsic logic of Capital. This misunderstanding ultimately amounts to what might be called the “diabolical” view of society — the idea that all of society’s ills can be traced back to some scheming cabal of businessmen conspiring over how to best fuck over the general public. (The “diabolical” view of society is not all that far removed from conspiracy theories about the “New World Order,” the Illuminati, or “International Jewry.” Indeed, it is not surprising to see that shades of anti-capitalism misrecognized as anti-semitism have cropped up amongst some pockets of Occupy Wall Street; see Moishe Postone’s excellent essay on “Anti-Semitism and National Socialism”). Capitalism is not a moral but rather a structural problem. Though he obviously enjoys the benefits that his great wealth affords him, it is not as if the capitalist acts independently of the (reified) laws of bourgeois economics. He is constantly compelled to reinvest his capital back into production in order to stay afloat. In this way, even the capitalist is made subject to forces beyond his control. The critical theorist Max Horkheimer picked up on this in a fragment from one of his early essays on “The Little Man and the Philosophy of Freedom”: The businessman is subject to laws which neither he nor anyone else nor any power with such a mandate created with purpose and deliberation. They are laws which the big capitalists and perhaps he himself skillfully make use of but whose existence must be accepted as a fact. Boom, bust, inflation, wars, and even the qualities of things and human beings the present society demands are a function of such laws, of the anonymous social reality, just as the rotation of the earth expresses the laws of dead nature. No single individual can do anything about them. (Max Horkheimer, Dawn & Decline. Pg. 50). These laws of the capitalist mode of production are regarded by bourgeois economists as natural and thus transhistorical, operative in every society past and present. This misrecognition of dynamics peculiar to capitalism as eternal laws of nature has been termed by Marx as “commodity fetishism,” and conceptualized by later Marxist theorists like Lukács as “reification.” Such mistakes bear some relation to the old notion that wealth is acquired through simple money-hoarding. Marx himself pointed out the need to dispel “the popular prejudice which confuses capitalist production with hoarding, and therefore imagines that accumulated wealth is either wealth that is rescued from destruction in its existing natural form, i.e. withdrawn from consumption, or wealth that does not enter into circulation. The exclusion of money from circulation would constitute precisely the opposite of its valorization as capital, and the accumulation of commodities in the sense of hoarding them would be sheer foolishness.” (Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I. Pg. 735.). The logic of capitalist accumulation demands that value be ceaselessly thrown back into the circuit of production and circulation. Not even the highest 1% can afford to act outside this logic. If they try to defy it, they go under, and swiftly rejoin the so-called 99%. Another deficiency I commonly see in the Occupy Wall Street movement is its narrow understanding of the problem of capitalism. Perhaps understandably, protestors often frame social inequality and class oppression within a merely national context. They talk about the various ways in which “the American dream” has been abandoned, express their disbelief at the fact that America has allowed such rampant government corruption and the infiltration of special interest lobbyists into Washington, etc. Now there is nothing wrong with such sentiments per se, but they fail to comprehend the scope of the capitalist world economy. For capitalism is fundamentally a global phenomenon; it does not admit of localization to one single nation, even when it comes to such economic powerhouses as the United States. This overly narrow understanding of the problem of capitalism is what has given rise in recent years to the equation of anti-capitalism with simple anti-Americanism. The exclusive significance of United States is absurdly overemphasized in what might almost be called an inverted “American exceptionalism,” ignoring the fact that the European Union, Russia, and China are also heavyweights within the global market, with their own imperialist interests and networks of oppression. If capitalism is to be overcome, it cannot be done on a merely national scale; it must be accomplished internationally, at least in the most advanced capitalist nations of the world (initially). For this reason, any radical political movement that aspires to take up the mantle of the Left must intersect with anti-capitalist groups overseas and around the world. Such action requires coordination, organization, and communication. Occupy Wall Street-esque gatherings may be spreading throughout North America and in Europe (where demonstrations have actually been going on independently for some time), but their focus is still too much on national reform rather than international revolution. One might object to the fact that I take issue with Occupy Wall Street on this score, especially in light of the fact that these protests were closely modeled on recent events that have transpired in Egypt and Greece. To be fair, there is some inkling of international solidarity at least in this respect. But the unique circumstances of the Greek and Egyptian protests (not to mention the armed rebellion in Libya) are all-too-often overlooked. One cannot simply transpose the tactics employed in one national situation and expect them to produce the same results in another. The claim that some overzealous protestors have hastily made is that Occupy Wall Street is “America’s version of the Arab Spring,” a delusion if ever there was one. In truth, the demonstrations on Wall Street have much more in common with the protests and uprisings that we have seen in Spain and Greece than it has with any of the nations of the Arab Spring. For the nations of the recent “Arab Spring” — Tunisia (oft-forgotten), Egypt, Libya, and Syria — the primary issue at stake has been of an almost entirely political nature. That is to say, the grievances of the public in these countries had mostly to do with the suffocating and backwards dictatorships that had held sway in the region for so long. The protests in Egypt, Tunisia, and Syria along with the bitterly violent struggle in Libya have all aimed to overthrow their existing governments, to redraft new political constitutions. (It is important to remember that the success of the “Arab Spring” remains incomplete. Dictators have been removed in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya, but the Ba’athist regime in Syria continues to hold a deathgrip on power). Occupy Wall Street, though it patterns itself after the Egyptian experience, concerns primarily socioeconomic grievances. Very few of the protestors down at Liberty Plaza seem to be calling for the dissolution of the existing state apparatus; all they want to do is clean out the corruption so endemic to the system. Likewise, in Greece and Spain — which are in far more dire straits economically than the U.S. — the demonstrations have been mostly the result of rampant unemployment, decreasing wages, and austerity measures that have been put in place. Youth unemployment in Spain and Greece is approaching an astonishing 50%. To continue in this vein, it is interesting to note the Wall Street occupation’s selective use of examples to be followed in their demonstrations. Now I understand that the tactic of principled and categorical non-violence and civil disobedience is contentious among certain elements of the occupation, but the overwhelming attention paid to the example of Egypt is telling in this regard. In Egypt, of course, non-violent demonstrations were successful in ousting the country’s longtime president and dictator Hosni Mubarak, this being accomplished in a relatively short period of time. By contrast, similar measures proved completely ineffectual in Libya, where the Gaddafi regime violently suppressed peaceful demonstrations. The Libyan people were forced to resort to armed conflict in order to carry out their political revolution. In Syria, non-violent protesting has so far failed to overturn the ruling Ba’ath Party regime. Passive resistance and peaceful protesting hardly produce uniform results. To be clear, I am not interested in empty militant posturing on the part of the protestors. At this point, there are neither the means nor the ammunition to seize power in some sort of violent overthrow. Still, I find the blind adherence to the pacifist principles of Tolstoi, Gandhi, and King to be very problematic. In connection with this, I feel I must touch on a problem associated with one of these celebrated figures — Gandhi. To be more specific, the issue I have concerns a motto attributed to him that has since become so ubiquitously quoted amongst “progressives” that it has almost been reduced to a mere bumper sticker: “Be the change you want to see in the world.” At the one General Assembly meeting I attended at Wall Street, this phrase was almost immediately trotted out, which instantly set off alarms in my head. For while (on the surface of things) this phrase may seem unobjectionable, the thinking behind it and the ideology it gives rise to is actually quite pernicious. What I am referring to is what has been termed by many on the Left as prefigurative utopianism. In other words, what this phrase implies is that one must accept the various evils of the world, understanding that one individual alone cannot change them. But at the same time, it suggests that if everyone simply lived their own life the way they would if they lived in a perfect world, that perfect world might somehow be realized. The concept of prefigurative utopianism is thus closely linked with the phenomenon of lifestyle politics. This mentality is captured by the line — so often delivered by pontificating Hollywood celebrities — that “it all begins with YOU.” As Chris Cutrone has noted in an article on “Adorno’s Leninism”: Mahatma Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” This ethic of “pre-figuration,” the attempt to personally embody the principles of an emancipated world, was the classic expression of the moral problem of politics in service of radical social change in the 20th century. During the mid-20th century Cold War between the “liberal-democratic” West led by the United States and the Soviet Union, otherwise known as the Union of Workers’ Councils Socialist Republics, the contrasting examples of Gandhi, leader of non-violent resistance to British colonialism in India, and Lenin, leader of the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and of the international Communist movement inspired by it, were widely used to pose two very different models for understanding the politics of emancipation. One was seen as ethical, remaining true to its intentions, while the other was not. Why would…[a] Marxist [choose] Lenin over Gandhi? [A Marxist's] understanding of capitalism, what constituted it and what allowed it to reproduce itself as a social form, informed what he thought would be necessary, in theory and practice, to actually overcome it, in freedom. Another fallacy I have noticed among many of the Wall Street occupiers is their rather bizarre fetishization of the notion of “direct democracy.” For them, direct democracy is the undistilled expression of what Rousseau would have called the general will, bypassing the vaunted republican practicalities of representation in favor of the mass caucus (at Occupy Wall Street, this is embodied by the nightly meetings of the General Assembly). The chaos, disorder, and confusion (and consequent inefficacy) one witnesses at these conventions even on the small scale of several hundred protestors makes one rightly wonder how such a political practice could ever become effectively generalized throughout the total population of a country, state, or even a single city. This doctrinaire non-hierarchical stance, and the amorphous political form that results from it, severely inhibits the potential for the Occupy Wall Street movement to formulate specific demands, coordinate decisive actions (beyond marches), and articulate a broader program of social change. In the general atmosphere of ahistoricism that permeates the demonstrations on Wall Street, people seem to forget that the only historical instance of any political organization that even resembled a direct democracy was in the ancient Greek polis of Athens, and that even on that limited scale it proved a failure (not to mention condemned Socrates to death). This brings me to my final point of criticism of the Occupy Wall Street protests. One of the most pervasive problems that is encountered amongst the activists on Wall Street is the stunning lack of any greater historical perspective on what is going on there. This is perhaps symptomatic of cultural post-modernism, with its short memory and seeming obliviousness to any knowledge of the past. An understanding of history is vital to any emancipatory politics, not in order to resurrect past slogans or party platforms, but to understand where we stand in terms of the sequence of events that has led up to our present moment. One of the most stimulating discussions I had at Occupy Wall-Street was with a member of the Kasama Project, over the role of intellectuals and the Left with respect to spontaneous political formations like the protests at Liberty Plaza: We went over the nuances of the famous Russian term that Lenin used to describe the position of the party in relation to the masses in What is to be Done?: “авангард” (which can be variously translated as either “vanguard” or “avant-garde”). The member of the Kasama Project pointed out the useful distinction between these two terms that exists in English, as a political “vanguard” standing immanently at the forefront of the mass movement versus an artistic “avant-garde,” which seems to stand outside of the mainstream and tries to influence it from without. This all led to an important historical revelation for me: When Lenin spoke of a revolutionary party standing as a vanguard to mass political movements, he was referring to a very concrete object — the international anti-capitalist workers’ movement, which had been building and amassing support continuously for nearly seven decades. Today, we can speak of no equivalent movement that has either such continuity or consistency as the workers’ movement of Lenin’s day. Paleo-Marxist groups might still cling dearly to the notion that their organization must act as a vanguard to mass political movements, but the question is: What mass political movement? What exactly is there that one can be a vanguard of? The historical recognition of the extent to which the conditions necessary to foment social revolution have disappeared over the course of the last century is vital to any emancipatory political project in the present. It indicates to us that there is much work that remains to be done, in order to sow the seeds of social consciousness that might lead to a more sustained opposition to the capitalist social order. To be most optimistic, we might speculate that Occupy Wall Street and the other demonstrations it has inspired might portend a reawakening of the political Left from its decades-long torpor, a revivification of anti-capitalist sentiment in social consciousness that has for some time now been all but comatose. The cultivation and elaboration of an historical understanding of our present moment, and the possibilities that the future might hold, is vital if Occupy Wall Street wants to be anything more than a fleeting glimmer of political radicalism that is then harmlessly reintegrated into “business as usual.” Share this: TwitterDiggFacebookRedditStumbleUpon Like this:Like2 bloggers like this post. ~ by Ross Wolfe on October 5, 2011. Posted in Adorno, capitalism, history, Lenin, Luxemburg, Moishe Postone, Political Marxism, politics Tags: activism, anarchism, demonstrations, Liberty Plaza, Marxism, movement, Occupy Wall St, Occupy Wall Street, OccupyWallStreet, Platypus, police, politics, protests, reform, resistance, revolution, the Left, Zuccoti Park 68 Responses to “Reflections on Occupy Wall Street: What it Represents, Its Prospects, and Its Deficiencies” [...] essay also appears on the author’s the charnel-house [...] A Platypus at Wall Street Occupation: Moving beyond the merely negative « Kasama said this on October 6, 2011 at 12:35 pm | Reply “My post was largely intended as a provocation, a polemical volley aimed at some of the more superficial elements of the protests. In light of the overwhelmingly hostile and defensive reaction it elicited, I can safely say that it achieved this goal.” This part almost made me shit myself. As an original OWSer, your past article had nothing to do with eliciting a a reaction which achieved your “goal”. Rather than trying to cover up your tracks just admit you’ve changed your views about OWS and move on. Chris said this on October 6, 2011 at 12:58 pm | Reply I congratulate you on being one of the early birds to the demonstrations, though I can’t say that this impresses me in and of itself. Though I’m not sure where you’re getting the idea that I didn’t “elicit a reaction” from the OWS participants — my first article on the subject received 50 posts (at least 30 of which were by visitors to the blog). Also, how am I covering up my tracks? If you read the article, I clearly remain critical of many aspects of OWS, even if I believe that the Left has something to gain by actively engaging it and helping to give it shape. Ross Wolfe said this on October 6, 2011 at 2:02 pm | Reply “For years now, all I have been hearing at protest marches has been “End the occupation!” Now all one hears from protestors is “Occupy [insert location here]!” It’s all very confusing. (I won’t bother going into some of the quasi-imperialist overtones of the ongoing “Occupy!” phenomenon because I find this to be a somewhat vicious criticism, but still).” This is just silliness. The word “occupy” belongs to imperialism as much as the words “hope” and “change” belong to Obama. Take the language back! Occupy the English Language! Chris said this on October 6, 2011 at 1:08 pm | Reply I’m not a huge fan of anti-imperialist leftism to begin with, and I believe that I clearly qualified that I found this particular line of criticism somewhat captious. I don’t really see why you would take issue with this. Ross Wolfe said this on October 6, 2011 at 1:56 pm | Reply Oh yes, and OccupyBaghdad!!! while you’re at it. Wait… Ross Wolfe said this on October 7, 2011 at 5:47 pm | Reply The most informative account of OWS I’ve read yet. Thanks for the analysis. However, could you explain a bit what are your thoughts on the parallels/connections between the protests we’ve seen this past year in Europe and North Africa and those of 1968. Are you suggesting that capital is undergoing a transformation like we witnessed in the New Left period? al said this on October 6, 2011 at 1:20 pm | Reply Thank you. In terms of parallels with 1968, there are a few. But most of these are to be found in the kinds of activism and the tactics that have followed in the demonstrations, not in the conditions that gave rise to them. Occupations (“sit-ins”), walk-outs, festive rallies, and periodic marches have all appeared as part of the OWS phenomenon, along with the general “counterculture” vibe that one gets in visiting the protests. These were all salient features of the 1968 uprisings. In terms of the actual root causes of these two respective phenomena, there are many differences. We are still embroiled in wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq, but this fact isn’t nearly as important to the outpouring of public outrage as the Vietnam War was to the protestors of 1968. However, we are in the midst of a very serious global economic crisis, whereas in the late 1960s conditions were relatively stable (though the protestors felt this as a palpable sense of stagnation). I would say that broader issues of social inequality and the increasing disparity in wealth between the highest classes of society and the rest are more of the primary concerns of protestors today. The political models on which the activities of 1968 and OWS 2011 have been based is also different. In 1968, there were two main sets of examples relied upon by those attempting to create social change: 1. the recent experience of civil disobedience and passive resistance from the Civil Rights movement, and 2. the Cuban Revolution of 1959-1960 and the ongoing Cultural Revolution in China being orchestrated by Mao. Today, the main political model that is being presented is that of Egypt and to some extent Greece, though I find that the protestors have ignored the example of armed revolution in Libya and the failure of peaceful protests in Syria. In terms of transformations in the surface configuration of capital, I believe that we still inhabit the neoliberal moment. The resilience of free-market, deregulationist ideology exhibited by groups like the Tea Party in the face of the economic crisis has genuinely surprised me. OWS may indicate that the tide is turning back in the other direction, however. The moderates in OWS seem to be calling for a neo-Fordist regime. Ross Wolfe said this on October 6, 2011 at 2:21 pm | Reply I see. As you outlined, there are significant manifest differences between the ongoing ‘occupation’ protests in the U.S and those in Greece and Spain, the former primarily political the latter more socioeconomic. I’m just wondering how do we think through these upsurges in terms of the global crisis of capital. Of course events are playing out differently in these countries, but should attention be brought to the demands eg: neo-fordism, return to more laisse-faire capitalism etc, as possibly signifying a general shift in capital? I agree that economic neoliberalism won’t be going any time soon, so I guess I’m grappling with how do we identify the economic and ideological implications in this moment of capital? Can we separate the two? al said this on October 7, 2011 at 12:03 am | Reply Jean Paul Sartre made an effort to combat what you call the “diabolical worldview”, the diabolical worldview being a worldview that blames a nations problems on a diabolical elite. Jean Paul Sartre placed emphasis on the notion of personal responsibility and he promoted the idea that people are free to make their own choices. The occupy wall street protests are not only the result of a passion to change society but they are also the result of people desiring to come together and socialize with eachother outdoors on the street. People have a inner passion to gather with one another. These protests in some ways remind me of Mardi Gras. Throughout history people have always reasons to dress up in costumes and play music and frolic through the street. In San Francisco permission to dress in costumes and frolic in the street is granted to people for political reasons. But often times the political concerns are merely excuses to engage in those sorts of behaviors that are ancient to humanity. seedofjapheth said this on October 7, 2011 at 2:41 am | Reply I’d like to offer another perspective. Occupy Wall Street is an invitation for this tract of people to get out of our head [fear] and into our heart [love]. New edge science reveals that everything is driven by its potential, which is Universal harmony. Occupy Wall Street people are the first One to shine Light of new awareness, to heal the past and restore harmony. Our race did not speak up after horrendous disasters that touched all of our lives, with or without awareness. Earthquake in Haiti, Gulf oil leak, nuclear explosions at Fukishima, Japan [impact silenced], crisis in the Horn of Africa and others. This tract of humanity now face our own extinction. A monetary system that requires ongoing debt to survive, and which places profit before people, nature and our precious Earth is no longer sustainable. EveryONE owns the dark matrix created by our ego, which is not what we are. Beyond subtlety of ego finessing separation between Creator and human, good and evil, right and wrong, light and dark, Heaven and Earth – perceiving One Divine while not the other – lies Oneness and freedom beyond perceived limitations of physical reality. I perceive the Divine cause of Occupy Wall Street, is for us to open minds and open hearts to heal the past, hold hands and walk out of darkness into Light of expanded consciousness, in a new unified world. Here is an excerpt written by Bruce Lipton Ph. D., eminent cellular biologist, research scientist, Professor, award winning lecturer and international co-author of ‘Spontaneous EVOLution’, Our Positive Future and a way to get there from here. I interviewed Dr. Bruce on my radio show along with other EVOLutionaries, for people to awaken inside out and set themselves free. http://blogtalkradio.com/align-shine-prosper “New science revises four fundamental beliefs that shape civilization. These flawed assumptions include: 1) The Newtonian vision of the primacy of a physical, mechanical Universe; 2) Genes control biology; 3) Evolution resulted from random genetic mutations; and 4) Evolution is driven by a struggle for the survival-of-the-fittest. These failed beliefs represent the “Four Assumptions of the Apocalypse,” for they are driving human civilization to the brink of extinction. Modern science is predicated on “truths” verified through accurate observation and measurements of physical world phenomena. Science ignores the spiritual realm because it is not amenable to scientific analysis. As importantly, the predictive success of Newtonian theory, emphasizing the primacy of a physical Universe, made the existence of spirit and God an extraneous hypothesis that offered no explanatory principles needed by science. In the wake of Newtonian theory, with the Hand of God out of the way, society has been preoccupied with dominating and controlling Nature. Darwin’s theory further exacerbates the situation by suggesting that humans evolved through the happenstance of random genetic mutations. Accordingly, we evolved by pure “chance,” which by extension means: without an underlying purpose for our existence. Darwinian theory removed the last link between God, spirit and the human experience. Additionally, Darwinism emphasizes that evolution is based on “the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence.” For science, the end of the evolution struggle is simply represented by “survival.” As for the means to that end, apparently anything goes. Darwinism leaves humanity without a moral compass. A mechanical Newtonian Universe in combination with Darwin’s theory of random evolution disconnects us from Nature and spirit, while legitimizing the exploitation and degradation of our fellow humans and the environment. Modern science has led the world to shift from spiritual aspirations to a war for material accumulation. In addition to terrorizing the world’s human population, scientific “progress” has terrorized Mother Nature herself. Our credo, “Better Living Through Chemistry,” has led to our efforts to control Nature with toxic petrochemicals. As a result, we have polluted the environment, undermined the harmony of the biosphere and are rapidly driving ourselves toward extinction. All is not lost. Advances from science’s frontier offer new insights that provide a bright Light at the end of this dark tunnel. Firstly, in contrast to the emphasis on the Newtonian material realm, the newer science of quantum mechanics reveals that the Universe and all of its physical matter are actually made out of immaterial energy. Atoms are not physical particles; they are made of energy vortices resembling nano-tornadoes. Quantum physics stresses that the invisible energy realm, collectively referred to as the field, is the primary governing force of the material realm. It is more than interesting that the term field is defined as “invisible moving forces that influence the physical realm,” for the same definition is used to describe spirit. The new physics provides a modern version of ancient spirituality. In a Universe made out of energy, everything is entangled, everything is one.” http://ervinlaszlo.com/forum/2011/05/30/role-of-spirituality-in-worldshift In closing, new edge science reveals that we create outer reality from the inside out. Every belief, thought, word, action, feeling is energy magnetizing an identical energetic response from a fundamental electromagnetic quantum ‘Field’, God, Consciousness, Light, Allah, Yahweh, other Name, which responds unconditionally. The more positive people are within, the more outer reality is experienced like heaven. The more negative people are within, the more outer reality is experienced like hell. Universal Power is within each of us. The way out of the dark matrix is to response-able. Accept that we all created IT [inner truth] and together create another reality, by replacing negativity and fear, with positivity and love, the only true Power to set us free. Doreen Agostino said this on October 7, 2011 at 9:05 am | Reply Um…ok? To be quite frank, I have no idea what I just read. I am in disbelief. Without wanting to insult you too much, I think that you are confusing “new edge” science with “New Age” science. This combines various positivistic, quasi-scientific research with vague concepts of “harmony,” “love,” “light,” and other spiritualistic platitudes in order to present a sort of feel-good way forward. Ross Wolfe said this on October 8, 2011 at 9:48 am | Reply Back in the day, we just took acid for that experience. Today you need to buy the crystals do the chants burn the incense etc ad infinitum. ( Its become a cottage Industry of sorts.) Glenn Klotz said this on October 12, 2011 at 11:51 am I posted earlier today, I can’t find it now. France 1968 state power in France was in peril. Large numbers of soldiers supported the demonstrations. My group in Minneapolis, attended the initial meetings. We made an impact on their statement of purpose. I’m opposed to consensus voting. Anything but 50% + 1, is undemocratic. There are leaders opposed leaders, unelected and unaccountable, who make decisions, for all. The sects are involved in deep entrism. We openly hand out leaflets and sell our paper. Trumka again gave an opening to militant unionists. This movement has limited legs. Many our involved in politics for the first time. Why give them over to Rand Paul or Obama? I don’t like your sign. You make positive demands. BTW at the AFLCIO Youth Convention last week, we confronted Trumka about the labor party issue. We made tons of contacts. Sold openly socialist materials. Renegade Eye said this on October 7, 2011 at 10:01 pm | Reply Thanks for reading and the feedback, Ren. I agree with you about consensus voting and the absurdly anti-hierarchical model of “direct democracy.” Largely I believe that this is result of the temperamental anarchism that is so largely embraced by youth activists. Also, you are absolutely correct to point out that the protests of 1968 represented a far more significant challenge to the capitalist social order than what we are witnessing today. Obviously, the OWS phenomenon is still going on, and so we don’t entirely know how far they might take things, but so far it’s nowhere close to the scale of 1968. I say this even though I find 1968 deeply problematic. I am glad to hear that your group was able to get in on the demonstrations in Minneapolis early, and hopefully steer them in the right direction. I’m unsure what you mean by “You make positive demands.” I think it’s just an ambiguity the way you wrote it. It’s unclear whether: 1. I did make positive demands, when I shouldn’t have; or 2. I should make positive demands, and the problem is that I haven’t. The Platypus slogan “The Left is dead! Long live the Left!” is a play on the old saying from the times of the French and British monarchies: “The King is dead! Long live the King!” (you probably knew this already). Our point — though it’s perhaps not entirely self-evident — is that from an historical perspective, the Left has largely suffered an almost century-long regression from the years leading up to World War I, when Kautsky and German Social-Democracy sold out to the Prussian imperial state. Since then, though there have been periodic signs of life, the Left has mostly undergone a series of fragmentations, defeats, and degenerations which has resulted in the collapse of a viable international socialist (anti-capitalist) movement. Still, what Platypus contends is that the Left, and more specifically Marxism, is still the only path through which society might emancipate itself from its bondage to capital. Therefore, despite the fact that the Left is in many respects “dead” (or comatose) at the present time, it must be reconstituted in order to overcome capitalism. For those to whom our slogan remains opaque (or who don’t get the historical reference), it remains effective as almost a Dadaist provocation — given its seemingly paradoxical character. People are curious to learn more about our perspective. So far Platypus’ message at the demonstrations has tried to focus on two fairly simple points: 1. Why is Marxism still relevant today for any truly radical politics?; and 2. How can we keep this from being just a farcical repeat of 1968? Or worse yet, of Seattle 1999? Ross Wolfe said this on October 8, 2011 at 9:35 am | Reply Ross, the problem is you will always have a Poliburo. The select few. Then you have your workers. Marxism is an economic and social system based upon the political and economic theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. While it would take veritably volumes to explain the full implications and ramifications of the Marxist social and economic ideology, Marxism is summed up in the Encarta Reference Library as “a theory in which class struggle is a central element in the analysis of social change in Western societies.” Marxism is the antithesis of capitalism which is defined by Encarta as “an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and distribution of goods, characterized by a free competitive market and motivation by profit.” Marxism is the system of socialism of which the dominant feature is public ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange. Under capitalism, the proletariat, the working class or “the people,” own only their capacity to work; they have the ability only to sell their own labor. According to Marx a class is defined by the relations of its members to the means of production. He proclaimed that history is the chronology of class struggles, wars, and uprisings. Under capitalism, Marx continues, the workers, in order to support their families are paid a bare minimum wage or salary. The worker is alienated because he has no control over the labor or product which he produces. The capitalists sell the products produced by the workers at a proportional value as related to the labor involved. Surplus value is the difference between what the worker is paid and the price for which the product is sold. An increasing immiseration of the proletariat occurs as the result of economic recessions; these recessions result because the working class is unable to buy the full product of their labors and the ruling capitalists do not consume all of the surplus value. A proletariat or socialist revolution must occur, according to Marx, where the state (the means by which the ruling class forcibly maintains rule over the other classes) is a dictatorship of the proletariat. Communism evolves from socialism out of this progression: the socialist slogan is “From each according to his ability, to each according to his work.” The communist slogan varies thusly: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” What were the Marxist views of religion? Because the worker under the capitalist regimes was miserable and alienated, religious beliefs were sustained. Religion, according to Marx was the response to the pain of being alive, the response to earthly suffering. In Towards a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1844), Marx wrote, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the feeling of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless circumstances.” Marx indicated in this writing that the working class, the proletariat was a true revolutionary class, universal in character and acquainted with universal suffering. This provided the need for religion. http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/what-is-marxism-faq.htm http://openlibrary.org/books/OL788185M/The_failure_of_Marxism steve http://fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com/ Steve said this on October 8, 2011 at 12:50 pm “temperamental anarchism that is so largely embraced by youth activists.” I think this exactly what were seeing with #OWS. I’d add to that a great deal of anger and frustration with leadership in general in our society these days and certainly not without justification. Obama’s betrayal of the young in particular is now coming back to haunt him and the Dems. Glenn Klotz said this on October 12, 2011 at 12:00 pm A little thing (I have no idea how much you care about this sort of stuff), but you spelled Cornel West’s first name incorrectly. George Coolney said this on October 8, 2011 at 12:36 am | Reply Ross, Though the protesters have some / many valid grievances, The problem is Marxism. In short it does not work, will never work, and History is strewn with hundreds of Millions of Bodies trying to make it work. Can you name one place where this Marxist Utopia has worked. Steve Steve said this on October 8, 2011 at 9:21 am | Reply This is a point that has been made many times, but in short: Marx’s vision of social emancipation has never been realized in history. 1917 probably came the closest to this, but the problem is that it failed to spread to the more advanced capitalist countries of Western Europe — like Germany, France, or England. Marx, Lenin, and Trotskii were all clear that revolution had to be achieved in the most developed nations of the world, on an explicitly internationalist basis, in order to be viable. Because of Russia’s backwardness and consequent isolation, the political involutions in the Soviet Union led to the rise of Stalin, who betrayed the Marxist program of worldwide revolution in favor of “socialism in one country.” Since nearly all the various “communist” states that were established after this point were so definitively shaped by the Stalinist precedent, they all repeated his error and copied the brutalities, idiocies, and inhumanities of his regime. The so-called “Marxist” states that have existed in history do not reflect Marx’s understanding of a postcapitalist society in the least. Ross Wolfe said this on October 8, 2011 at 9:43 am | Reply I stopped reading at the pompous cheap-shot at anarchists. How very typical, how very en vogue. Ben Fenton said this on October 8, 2011 at 12:30 pm | Reply Funny. Most thinking anarchists (and there are quite a few) tend to be sympathetic to such criticisms of the more superficial, fashionable elements of their movement. Ross Wolfe said this on October 8, 2011 at 1:06 pm | Reply Remember, all anarchists are thinking, because all anarchists are people. Just, like every other group, there are some people concerned with theory and some with practice, some with both and some with neither (those that lose the battle with capitalist States and give up.) Just because someone dons a bandana doesn’t make them an unthinking idiot. It’s easy to assume something based on appearances, and anarchists make easy targets in this regard. As I wrote in response on my own blog, I’d like to continue this when I get a chance. It’s been good talking. Ben Fenton said this on October 8, 2011 at 1:26 pm True, all people are thinking in the Cartesian sense of Cogito, ergo sum. I realize that some of my presumptions about people may be a bit hasty, and that appearance isn’t everything. I’m interested to see what you think. Ross Wolfe said this on October 8, 2011 at 1:59 pm Thank you for leaving a comment on my blog directing me here. I would enjoy discussing these issues further. You are obviously a well-educated and analytical person. You seem very concerned with naming and categorizing the Occupy movement, indeed with directing it to your worldview. I suppose we all do such things. I imagine the occupiers are not thinking of overthrowing the government because “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know.” Revolutions, as you know, do not always turn out well for the people. What the Occupiers want at this stage is to live-to have some kind of hope for a decent life. Indeed, if they think they have achieved that, they will go home. Most people do not care about theoretical international solutions for everything-they just want to live. jeczaja said this on October 8, 2011 at 12:46 pm | Reply To be sure, attempted revolutions have often proved disastrous. Nevertheless, if there is to be any hope of realizing an emancipated society, I feel this is a risk that humanity must be willing to take. Ross Wolfe said this on October 8, 2011 at 1:07 pm | Reply Ross — I want to thank you for commenting on my blog site with such insight. I’ll share you post here through my twitter account, for what that is worth. In the meantime, I’ve posted another commentary on Obama’s misreading of the Occupy movement. http://mediapoliticsinperspective.wordpress.com/2011/10/08/obama-misunderstands-the-wall-street-movement/ John F. Kirch said this on October 8, 2011 at 2:59 pm | Reply Hi Ross this is Jim from http://www.achargingelephant.com I didn’t know this was your site and I stumbled on it early this morning. Please feel free to take anything from my site and use as you see fit. I like a link back. this was a great read. Too bad these little darlings will have to find work some day. Who do they think made their IPhone, Power Macs, lap tops and their little IMac Tablets? I also write at http://www.dumptherino.com and dangersofallah.com what you find, and your readers find, it’s theirs. We are all in this together. My best JC dancingczars said this on October 8, 2011 at 3:52 pm | Reply “..the first time as high tragedy, the second time as low farce” Ross, do you possess sufficient self awareness to realize that you are the second (times 10,000) farcical ‘ascended master’ Marxist theorist ? TrueBee said this on October 8, 2011 at 10:47 pm | Reply I don’t recall anywhere claiming that I was such an “ascendant master” of Marxist theory, so I’m not really sure what you’re driving at. Ross Wolfe said this on October 9, 2011 at 12:09 am | Reply Ross, You should consider the possibility that the adherence to non-violence is less a reflection of a doctrinaire attachment to Ghandi than a conscious strategic decision to make the movement open to participation by everyone. Likewise the nonhierarchical nature of the organizing. It’s absolutely true that there is a frustrating lack of organization. It’s also true that the movement has grown with a speed that I wouldn’t have imagined possible. Otherwise, I agree with much of what you have to say, but don’t at all identify with the affect you bring to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the people drawn to the occupation movement are politically naive and a lot of incoherent ideas are circulating. There is a lamentable nostalgia for a “good” capitalism. If you can’t deal with people like that, then you basically have to give up on politics. Uncross your arms and jump in the mix, son. Andrew Betterton said this on October 9, 2011 at 1:42 am | Reply Okay Ross, so far I’m down to your quote from Weber. I have to get schoolwork done, so I’m putting it on pause. I like what I’ve read so far and agree with your analysis for the most part. I especially agree when you said, “…the most problematic aspect of the Wall Street demonstrations is its inability to adequately conceptualize the capitalist social formation.” As you note here, one of the biggest problems with OWS and even worse with the newer Occupy instances is that they have a, to put it lightly, really shitty class analysis. For instance, more than 1% of the population constitute the people we should be rising up against. If I remember correctly, the top 5% of the population own somewhere in the 90 percentile of all wealth and resources of the U.S. That’s just a simple example of the inanity of the “99%” analysis–if one could call it an “analysis” at all. This is not to mention the ridiculous proposition that “the cops are 99 percenters too!” No. The cops are class traitors. They serve the State, and the State serves capitalism. Now we see more and more everyday OWS and the new Occupy movements (Chicago, Cleveland an hour from where I live, my hometown Portland, and so on) inviting politicians as guest speakers. Are not politicians some of the most heinous hucksters of capitalist Statism? Revolutionaries are not looked kindly upon at these gatherings. I wonder how the revolutionary Marxists have been treated? Anarchists are being kicked out or silenced at marches/gatherings, according to report backs in every city but Boston so far. The response to a teach-in for anarchists to share ideas and our history in the “safe spaces” of OWS has been a screaming, “NO!” So far we have seen that only a weak strain of liberal, non-resistance to capitalism is welcome at OWS. What has been your experience? Ben Fenton said this on October 10, 2011 at 10:00 am | Reply BTW forgive some of my grammatical crap-outs in this comment. I was in a rush. Ben Fenton said this on October 10, 2011 at 10:02 am | Reply My experience is that the language of “revolution” is bandied about rather carelessly at the protests, deemed “acceptable” — though very few people seem to have any idea what that would entail. The paleo-Marxist groups there have been tolerated so far, but all they have really been doing is drumming up the old slogans and distributing their newspapers and literature from their canonical figures (whether they are Guevarist, Maoist, or Fourth Internationalist). Some anarchist ideals actually command some respect among the general protestors, but most OWSers stop listening as soon as any of the anarchists start seriously discussing the subject of revolution. In terms of radical thought, “progressives” are neither interested in the socialist writings of Marx, Lenin, Luxemburg, or Trotskii nor the anarchist tracts of Proudhon, Steiner, Bakunin, Kropotkin, or Nechaev (nor those who were somewhat on the fence between anarchism and Marxism — Georges Sorel and Victor Serge). In the profoundly ahistorical atmosphere of OWS, no one seems to have any knowledge of 1789, 1848, 1871, 1917, Spain 1936, or even 1968. This is sometimes true even amongst self-proclaimed “Marxists” and “anarchists.” It saddened me when I tried to talk to some anarchists about the anti-fascist Marxist and anarchist forces that fought in Spain in the 1930s and Makhno’s Ukrainian uprising in 1918 and no one knew what I was even talking about. In terms of the cops, I agree that they are presently part of the armature of the State, which as Marx said (contra Hegel) has always been the organ of ruling class domination. Still, a vital part of most successful revolutions of the past has been the spread of leftist-revolutionary sentiments among the military and sections of the police forces. Historically throughout the world, the military has been much more receptive to leftist ideas than the police of any given nation, who tend to be more conservative. Part of the turning point in most revolutionary struggles of the past has been the defection of large sections of the army to the side of the revolting masses, the masses’ seizure of weapons stockpiles, and the forcible overthrow of the apparatus of the existing state. The talks my group have hosted have been fairly well-received, though to be fair, we have only been trying to pose the question of: What would be the conditions necessary to successfully stage a revolution, to overcome capitalism? Where do we stand in our historical moment? We have not been making immediate revolutionary demands, because we feel that the quasi-objective state of social consciousness at present has largely lost the ability to imagine a society other than the one that we live in. They cannot envision anything other than a sort of modified, perhaps more inclusive, capitalism. Part of our project is to hopefully reawaken that consciousness throughout society and reconstitute a unified international, anti-capitalist Left. Ross Wolfe said this on October 10, 2011 at 12:52 pm | Reply Did you write this for tenure? You want to know what’s really wrong with OWS? The fact that they’re actually doing something, but that so many, like yourself, sit back and wx philosophic, thinking that writing things like this actually constitutes something in itself. It doesn’t. If you actually wanted to help, rather than pad your resume and get buzz for yourself, you’d be out there doing something helpful – even if it was intellectual. OWS could certainly use as many intellectuals (and other people) as they can find, but the last thing they need is this distant and detached attitude, which in itself is part of the problem. Frank Talk said this on October 10, 2011 at 1:16 pm | Reply If you actually read even just the beginning of what I wrote in this entry, you would see that I have been down to Occupy Wall Street multiple times, for quite a few hours each time. I’ve been talking to people, trying to pose political questions, and find out what is going on. Ross Wolfe said this on October 10, 2011 at 1:51 pm | Reply I did read – I’m not critiquing you for not going down, I’m critiquing you for your attitude towards them. The fact of the matter is this – OWS has potential. Perhaps it will fizzle, perhaps not, but the question for interested parties should only be: how can we help? Honestly, don’t you find it problematic that your final critique is that OWS lacks historical perspective? I mean, you’d think you needed a PhD in labor history to protest capitalism. But, it seems, that maybe you don’t, and that a PhD in history might, in some ways, be counterproductive. Once again, I’m not attacking you’re “street cred” for going down there – but only that it’s obvious your ability to imagine yourself as a part of OWS keeps you at a “comfortable” critical distance. So, even when there, are you really a part? Frank Talk said this on October 10, 2011 at 2:08 pm | Reply I don’t think that one needs to be thoroughly educated in the history of labor struggles or revolutionary politics to protest capitalism; obviously most people who protest capitalism today and even historically have had an inadequate understanding of what capitalism is. My point is that anti-capitalist politics is more effective, even in spontaneous mass uprisings, when its participants have a better sense of what they’re up against. Nevertheless, I realized then that to simply criticize Occupy Wall Street from the sidelines was not enough. The significance of this sudden surge of political pathos was more serious than its more superficial aspects would suggest. To simply dismiss these demonstrations out of hand — on account of their somewhat carnivalesque character — would be all too easy. Of course one cannot demand ideological purity from a nascent political phenomenon, and these are still early days. So far, the only thing uniting many of the participants in the Wall Street occupation is a generalized, intuitive discontent with the status quo. The task incumbent upon the Left (or what remains of it) must be to push these demonstrators to articulate a political vision of social emancipation, to actively engage with the protesters. We must seek to understand their reasons for being there, ask them what they hope to accomplish through their actions, and pose the broader question of where we stand in our own historical moment. As you can see, I never denied that OWS has potential. In fact, I explicitly affirmed that it did. I said outright that the movement represents an opportunity. As I wrote: In my view, Occupy Wall Street at best represents an opportunity, not for the immediate overthrow of the prevailing social order, but rather for the Left to engage with those who have become dissatisfied with the status quo. The aim must be to turn this more or less intuitive sense of disenfranchisement, this generalized discontent with the capitalist social formation, and help them better understand the roots of the problem. This is not, to be sure, a one-way street, in which elite circles of leftist intellectuals, academics, and theoreticians descend from their lofty position above the mêlée and simply “educate” the social masses. In order for the inchoate anti-capitalism of Occupy Wall Street to acquire a more adequate historical and theoretical self-understanding, the Left must be responsive to the messiness of empirical reality, and sensitive to the legitimate grievances being voiced by those in Liberty Plaza. Reciprocally, this will require a willingness on the part of the public disaffected by capitalism to deepen its understanding of the problem that confronts them, and commit itself to a longer-term program of political emancipation. This means not getting impatient with the so-called “paralysis of analysis” and not simply showing up for the protests. It will, moreover, involve a dedication to the greater project of reconstituting the Left. Again, I even stated that the Left needs to engage with the protestors in order to help deepen their historical and theoretical understanding of the situation. This doesn’t mean that your average activist needs to become a Marx scholar, but a little better knowledge and historical awareness can go a long way in forging more radical, consistent political action. However, I don’t feel any obligation to thoughtlessly or unreflectively lend my support to OWS in toto. As hackneyed as this phrase might be, I would characterize my position as one of “critical solidarity” with the OWS demonstrations. I feel that myself and the group I belong to are in the movement, but not wholly of the movement. Ross Wolfe said this on October 10, 2011 at 2:22 pm | Reply Did I say thoughtlessly or unreflectively? But being thoughtful and reflective doesn’t necessarily entail the implicit elitism of your piece. You spend many words discussing how OWS needs you, but very little time, if any, discussing how the real problem is that you need them. If you realized that, then maybe you’d be able to temper your writing with a little humility and respect, rather than treating all of those quite wonderful people as objects incomplete without your theorization. Frank Talk said this on October 10, 2011 at 2:32 pm | Reply Marx, Engels, Lenin, and others within the tradition of political Marxism never hesitated to criticize the shortcomings of the workers’ movement, the reformist tendencies of the unions, the opportunism of certain members of the Left. If the Left still has any shred of integrity after all these years of degeneration, it is its ability to ruthlessly criticize itself. In keeping with this spirit of autocriticism, however, I will concede to you that perhaps my tone was a little off-putting. However, the Left doesn’t need OWS per se — that is, in the particular way it has manifested itself so far — but it needs some sort of mass movement in which it can successfully operate and begin to reawaken anti-capitalist consciousness. OWS certainly is the biggest thing to come along in this vein for a long time, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t stand in need of theoretical clarification. Sometimes bad practice is worse than no practice at all. This has been one of the problems of recent Left activism: it tends to be action-for-its-own-sake, rather than with a determinate end in mind. I sincerely hope OWS might signal a turning point in the Left’s century-long history of decline. Ross Wolfe said this on October 10, 2011 at 2:56 pm | Reply So now you’re comparing yourself to Marx, Engels and Lenin? You’re not helping your cause. Nor does it help when you equate yourself with the left, as if you get to speak with the voice of the left. In other words, who are you to pronounce what the left needs? That authority is not yours to usurp, but it’s yet another demonstration of your elitism. You don’t get to lecture OWS, and to the extent that you do, you’re part of the problem. But, perhaps the problem, if I see it correctly, is that you’re a Leninist? I should have seen that sooner. Perhaps I’m wrong, but if I’m right, it all makes a little more sense. And I probably shouldn’t have wasted my time trying to talk to you – it’s been my experience that words don’t go as far as brute exercises of power with disciples of Lenin. Frank Talk said this on October 10, 2011 at 3:50 pm | Reply I would not say that I am a “Leninist” in the sense that this term usually takes on amongst sectarian Marxist groups. “Marxism-Leninism” as a sort of unquestionable dogma was a Stalinist invention, something I consider perverse. Still, I believe that Lenin perhaps posed the question of politics most effectively of all the Marxist revolutionaries. Besides him, I also am influenced by Luxemburg and Trotskii. By making the observation that Marx, Engels, and Lenin were unsparingly critical, I was not thereby comparing myself to them in terms of intellect or stature or anything of the sort. All I meant by that was that, insofar as I consider the precedent they established to have been one that should be followed, I choose to follow their example. Similarly, I do not presume to speak for the Left as a whole, but as part of the Left, to be sure. The term, as you probably know, originated during the French Revolution, and encompasses a variety of radical positions. Ross Wolfe said this on October 10, 2011 at 4:23 pm | Reply The clarification wasn’t necessary – I think I see clearly what it is you’re saying. And I could recount all the books I’ve read too, a list that surely includes many works by Lenin himself, but I’ll resist that temptation (beyond that one mention). I’m reminded of the difference between the wise son and the evil son from the Passover Haggadah. Or, perhaps, as MLK put it, Where do we go from here? But, it sounds like you know where they should go. If only they would ask. But why doesn’t that instill confidence in me? Frank Talk said this on October 10, 2011 at 4:40 pm | Reply Yes, you’re right — by merely mentioning that Lenin is an influence on me, all I was really trying to do was show off how many books I’ve read. I’m beginning to think that you deliberately misread me, desperately hoping for some sort of “gotcha” moment. I’m not a big fan of Martin Luther King (or any religious political figure, for that matter), but at least he was asking that question. That is more than can be said for many on Occupy Wall Street, as well-intentioned as they might be. Such are the real questions of politics. Ross Wolfe said this on October 10, 2011 at 4:50 pm | Reply Are you Sarah Palin all of a sudden? Worried about “gotcha” journalism? And by showing off, I meant that every one of your posts seems to entail you lecturing to me, from up on high, just as you seem to want to lecture OWS. Which gets back to my original point: if you had any respect for the people to whom you talk, you’d talk differently. Case in point, your comment about MLK. What does your not being a fan of his have to do with the conversation at hand. I was making a point, perhaps not clearly enough, that in phrasing the question “Where do WE go from here?” he was implicitly including himself in the group of which he was a part. And I find that sense of inclusion sorely lacking in the way you write. But instead of addressing my repeated statement of that fact, demonstrated by way of several different examples, you instead choose to let us know that you’re not a big fan of his – a point entirely irrelevant – but relevant insofar as it’s another demonstration of how highly you value your own judgment. So, not only can OWS learn a thing or two from you, but if only MLK were alive, you’d have a thing or two to say to him too. I’m sure he’d appreciate it. PS When you conclude you’re last remark with “Such are the REAL questions of politics” that doesn’t strike you as proof of what I’m saying? Once again, you’re not saying that that you think a certain type of problem is really important and needs to be thought about, you’re making an unequivocal judgment about what valid political questions are, and what invalid questions are. I know that graduate school is partially about teaching students how to adopt this feigned position of authority, but it’s ironic that it should be so pronounced in the case of someone who’s ostensible aims seems to be self-criticism. Frank Talk said this on October 10, 2011 at 5:25 pm | Reply I’m not obligated to identify fully with any movement about which I have reservations. And while I do broadly support Occupy Wall Street insofar as it expresses legitimate social grievances, I hesitate to endorse any movement that seems to be so ideologically incoherent at this point. This does not mean that I will stop trying to intervene where I can and help contribute to the discussion. Also, with a phenomenon as disorganized and inchoate as OWS, I would never dare presume to speak on behalf of the other participants by writing from the position of the imperial “we.” Frankly, I have no idea how close OWS is to my own politics — mostly because OWS has no recognizable ideology to speak of. It’s strange, because you chided me for identifying with the Left, as if I were somehow its personal embodiment (I still don’t know where you’re getting that from). And yet you implore me to identify with OWS, by writing as if I were part of the largely amorphous “we” that constitutes the movement. At least the Left historically stands for a set of determinate political ambitions and a program of social emancipation. I have no idea what OWS stands for, specifically. Ross Wolfe said this on October 10, 2011 at 8:55 pm | Reply Thank you for leaving a link to this piece on my blog post about Ayn Rand and the Chicago Occupation. I thoroughly enjoyed reading your perspective, which is complex but in the good way. You and I have some minor points of disagreement but I suspect, since we have each taken the time to find out more about the movements in our cities, that we each know that something historically significant might be forming under our very noses. Here’s the link to my Ayn Rand piece, which grew out of a clever protest sign that I saw at Occupy Chicago this past Friday: http://debutopia.blogspot.com/2011/10/ayn-rand-occupies-chicago.html Deb (@Debutopia) said this on October 10, 2011 at 9:11 pm | Reply I did my Master’s at the University of Chicago. I love the city. Say hello to the Windy City for me. I wish you the best of luck in your adventures at Occupy Chicago. Keep a lookout for members from the organization to which I belong, the Platypus Affiliated Society. They have a very strong presence in Chicago, where the group was founded. Ross Wolfe said this on October 10, 2011 at 9:33 pm | Reply Thanks for sharing your article, I really appreciate some of the points you make, and the conversations you’ve helped to start. I think where I most concur with you is in the hopefulness you express about what the events of Occupy Wall Street and related demonstrations may potential lead to, which is a feeling I also share. The reason I have been excited about the movement is that, while I certainly feel there is need for reflection, criticism and alteration, I also feel that though Occupy X may be a small step towards the larger and more grounded changes many of us hope for, it is a step in the right direction. Political “movements” in recent years which have been dependent on corporate funding and have put more focus on supporting legislation and political candidates than on militant and vocal advocacy for oppressed communities have made me rather depressed. I am thrilled to see even the potential for a movement which draws links between multiple struggles for justice, and does so through occupation, claiming public space, and physically interrupting the flow of big-business-as-usual. I hear your comments and respect your perspective, and think that we should all remember as we continue working at better organizing and imagining our movements that European philosophers are far from the only people to have lived with, grappled with, resisted, critiqued and challenged global capitalism. We, in the broadest sense of the term, are all witnesses to the destructive economic order in which we are the captive participants, and I think the most radical thing we can do is to trust in our own ability to understand it, call it out, and work collectively to imagine both its downfall and the more just systems we envision replacing it. You call the Occupy X demonstrations taking place around the country “copycats” of the original Occupy Wall Street. I have some questions for you here: Doesn’t a larger movement to occupy multiple spaces show that we understand the reach of these oppressive organizations to extend beyond simply lower Manhattan–to indeed by a national and ultimately global phenomenon? Even if we are calling out specific organizations and not the entire economic order, is that on okay place to start? How do we expect to build a movement if we call the people who join in with us copycats? radfag said this on October 10, 2011 at 11:36 pm | Reply Thank you for your comment and appreciation. I am glad that there are others who share my perspective. I understand that to call them “copycat” movements sounds a bit dismissive. Of course certain tactics should be adopted and implemented more generally, on a wider scale. It would be just as unfair for me to dismiss the Bavarian and Hungarian workers’ councils that sprouted up in 1918 for “copying” the example of the Petrograd Soviet (and other Russian Soviets). So your point is well-taken. Ross Wolfe said this on October 10, 2011 at 11:44 pm | Reply You’re very confident of your opinion. Frank Talk said this on October 11, 2011 at 1:52 pm | Reply What’s wrong with that? I prefer not to advance timid, tenuous arguments. I write with confidence. Ross Wolfe said this on October 11, 2011 at 2:10 pm | Reply For one thing, it helps prevent recognizing when you’re wrong. But more to the point, certainty (or a lack of humility) and politics are dangerous bedfellows. Frank Talk said this on October 11, 2011 at 2:18 pm | Reply I may write confidently, but that by no means should imply that am I unwilling (or unable) to admit when I am wrong. If I feel that I’ve thought something through fairly thoroughly I won’t hesitate to assert my opinion. Should facts come to light that attenuate my position, or should someone find some sort of logical inconsistency in my arguments, I will happily admit that I was wrong. Ross Wolfe said this on October 11, 2011 at 2:46 pm | Reply [...] Photo by Ross Wolfe About Tina DupuyTina is a nationally syndicated political columnist, investigative journalist, award-winning writer, stand-up comic and wedge issue fan. [...] Willful Deafness to Occupy Wall Street said this on October 11, 2011 at 2:21 pm | Reply Huh? Could you speak up? Just kidding – My mind is blown!!! Lol. Frank Talk said this on October 11, 2011 at 3:00 pm | Reply Only time will tell when it comes to the actual results of the OWS phenomenon. In terms of producing immediate social transformation and emancipation, I am skeptical. In terms of promoting a longer-term project of anti-capitalist political consciousness, I am more hopeful. If I turn out to be wrong, then so be it. Either way, I will probably head down there again tonight. Maybe I’ll run into you. Ross Wolfe said this on October 11, 2011 at 4:56 pm | Reply [...] And the same is true in this era. The emergence of a global youth counterculture should be be seen as a powerful complement to, if not an actual component of, a global movement for freedom, democracy, and economic justice. Mark Naison Mark Naison is a Professor of African-American Studies and History at Fordham University and Director of Fordham’s Urban Studies Program. He is the author of three books and over 100 articles on African-American History, urban history, and the history of sports. His most recent book, White Boy: A Memoir, was published in the spring of 2002. Republished with permission from History News Network. Photo by Ross Wolfe [...] Occupy Wall Street Heralds a Global Counterculture | LA Progressive said this on October 11, 2011 at 3:06 pm | Reply I see you have discovered the correct method for a REVOLUTIONARY intervention into these protests. We all need to just sit alone looking sullen and holding a sign with an obscure slogan no one else will understand. This strategy has clearly come from MARX. As soon as we have an army of sad looking bastards repeating unintelligible slogans the revolution shall be nigh. Good work comrade… Seriously though you need to try and smile. Olly said this on October 12, 2011 at 5:50 am | Reply Haha, well, if you look at the other picture with the larger banner bearing the same slogan, you’ll see that I’m not alone in this venture. It’s intended as a provocation. Either way, pretty funny comment. I will try to look more chipper for future photo-opps. Ross Wolfe said this on October 12, 2011 at 8:14 am | Reply “But this would seem to run counter to the generally-accepted idea of a political movement, which tend to possess a unified set of tactics, a common Weltanschauung, and a more organized structure.” Yeah, because you’ve been so successful. You’re doing an awful lot of criticizing, but what I find interesting about reading you is that while you stride all over history, you barely mention anything that has been going on in our neo-liberal financialized recent past. In fact, I stopped reading you word for word and started skimming you when you cited that old liberal saw of Hofstadter’s about conspiracy theories. (Apparently shedding one’s ideological purity and making nice with bourgeois parliament is A-okay when it suits one’s purposes). Frankly, I think if you paid more attention to the recent past, you would discover that much of the intensification in capitalist exploitation comes under the aegis of a group of international finance institutions that capture local governments. (In the US, of course, we don’t need “international finance” because much of it originates right here). The OWS invocation of the 1% is pretty accurate with respect to this more recent development. (Certainly, the percentage is higher if you include their armies of enablers). http://rosswolfe.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/reflections-on-occupy-wall-street-what-it-represents-its-prospects-and-its-deficiencies/ Maybe you want to go read some Michael Hudson and bring yourself up to date. No doubt you will respond that you have nothing to learn from Michael Hudson, but you haven’t incorporated it into your analysis. Until you do, you have no grounds for pretending to educate OWS. If anything, your commentary smacks of being over-educated, and not in a good way, if it means you continually miss the point. Finally, given the historical moment, if the D-Party fails in co-opting it to “get out the vote” as it’s already planning to do, it seems likely OWS will be soon be the front line in the US version of the Athens anti-austerity protests. If you’re not interested in that because it’s too mainstream and insufficiently subversive, fine. (Must be nice to be so pure). You don’t need to answer me, because I’m not going to be hanging around. Just my first impression. JTFaraday said this on October 12, 2011 at 10:19 am | Reply In the US, of course, we don’t need “international finance” because much of it originates right here. I do wonder how you’d explain our current debt crisis, then. Many of the U.S. government’s budgetary programs have been facilitated (that is, financed) by accumulating debt to foreign countries. Who owns most of the debt that the OWS protestors have been clamoring to forgive? The answer: China. It’s no wonder their government has been watching these demonstrations so closely. In terms of your apologium for conspiracy theories, I must say that you’re much more optimistic than me. If it’s just a problem of a bunch of mean-natured bastards who have somehow arrived at the top, then they can be brought down and replaced by those who are more “pure of heart.” Of course, if it’s a structural and not a moral problem, as I contend, which particular special interests are in charge will not make an ounce of difference. This is the problem with seeing the inequality within society as the fault of just a few individuals; if anything, the problem is systemic. Ross Wolfe said this on October 12, 2011 at 12:33 pm | Reply In short, you can’t ignore the past 20-30, if not 40 years of history and expect to have any kind of credibility whatever. I think it is telling that you are as fixated on 1968 as most academics–across the ideological spectrum, as it turns out. It’s one of the tip offs that you are “over-educated,” and not in a good way. What is this? Some kind of end point in human history? JTFaraday said this on October 12, 2011 at 10:39 am | Reply Thanks for the great analysis and conversation! Keep it going we all need more historical perspective as this movement/protest/rebellion whatever it is develops. Glenn Klotz said this on October 12, 2011 at 12:29 pm | Reply Thanks for the compliment! I fully agree with you about the need for some more historical consciousness. Ross Wolfe said this on October 12, 2011 at 1:49 pm | Reply Occupy Ross Wolfe! Frank Talk said this on October 12, 2011 at 1:16 pm | Reply I knew it would eventually come to that. Ross Wolfe said this on October 12, 2011 at 1:47 pm | Reply Of course you did. Frank Talk said this on October 12, 2011 at 2:33 pm | Reply Leave a Reply Cancel reply Where did the “Occupy Wall Street” Protesters Learn Marxism? Submitted by may on October 4, 2011 - 11:41pm It has become apparent that the “Occupy Wall Street” agenda is Marxist. It’s purpose supports the reelection of Barack Obama, follows the tenants of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, and has demands that are eerily similar to the demands of the Black Panthers. What we see in the streets of New York City, and now other cities, are protesters who are Obama’s reelection base. They leave their garbage on the streets, block traffic, and destroy both public property and the property of others. These protests are a foretaste of Obama’s election plans for 2012, with the ongoing isolation and demonization of prosperity and achievement. The “Occupy Wall Street” protesters are supported by George Soros and increasingly also by unions. The protests are spreading to other cities as the enthusiasm spreads throughout Obama’s political base. The question is how much energy can be generated and sustained for the 2012 General Election? As Investor’s Business Daily pointed out, this is Obama’s political machine and the teaching of Saul Alinsky at work. At first glance, the latest protests staged by Left-wing rent-a-mobs in New York, Washington, Los Angeles and elsewhere don't look terribly different from the World Trade Organization and global debt-amnesty spectaculars of a decade ago. Radicals swarm against some hated totem, chant, break a few Starbucks windows and leave scads of garbage for someone else to clean up. But the "Occupy Wall Street" mob that shut down the Brooklyn Bridge last weekend and drew 700 arrests bears all the earmarks of a professional political machine effort to keep Obama in the White House. This time, banks were the target, as mobs bore down on Wall Street and posted demands on their Twitter feed to tax and arrest bankers. They knew a soft spot when they saw one. Polls show the public continues to blame banks instead of administration policies for the economic downturn and widespread joblessness. Singling out banks is a tactic torn right from the playbook of Obama's political mentor, Chicago community organizer Saul Alinsky. "The goal," wrote David Horowitz's DiscoverTheNetworks.com of Alinsky, "is to foment enough public discontent, moral confusion and outright chaos to spark the social upheaval that Marx, Engels and Lenin predicted — a revolution whose foot soldiers view the status quo as fatally flawed and unworthy of salvation." "The key to radical social change," wrote Stanley Kurtz in his Alinsky biography "Radical-in-Chief," "was to turn the wrath of America's middle class against large corporations." To some, it may be a stretch to see the hand of the Obama political machine in what is claimed to be a grass-roots effort. But the facts on the ground point to it. The “Proposed List Of Demands For Occupy Wall St Movement!” are clearly Marxist and could not be accepted by rational people. They were originally posted more than a week ago, Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending "Freetrade" by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr. Demand two: Institute a universal single payer healthcare system. To do this all private insurers must be banned from the healthcare market as their only effect on the health of patients is to take money away from doctors, nurses and hospitals preventing them from doing their jobs and hand that money to wall st. investors. Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment. Demand four: Free college education. Demand five: Begin a fast track process to bring the fossil fuel economy to an end while at the same bringing the alternative energy economy up to energy demand. Demand six: One trillion dollars in infrastructure (Water, Sewer, Rail, Roads and Bridges and Electrical Grid) spending now. Demand seven: One trillion dollars in ecological restoration planting forests, reestablishing wetlands and the natural flow of river systems and decommissioning of all of America's nuclear power plants. Demand eight: Racial and gender equal rights amendment. Demand nine: Open borders migration. anyone can travel anywhere to work and live. Demand ten: Bring American elections up to international standards of a paper ballot precinct counted and recounted in front of an independent and party observers system. Demand eleven: Immediate across the board debt forgiveness for all. Debt forgiveness of sovereign debt, commercial loans, home mortgages, home equity loans, credit card debt, student loans and personal loans now! All debt must be stricken from the "Books." World Bank Loans to all Nations, Bank to Bank Debt and all Bonds and Margin Call Debt in the stock market including all Derivatives or Credit Default Swaps, all 65 trillion dollars of them must also be stricken from the "Books." And I don't mean debt that is in default, I mean all debt on the entire planet period. Demand twelve: Outlaw all credit reporting agencies. Demand thirteen: Allow all workers to sign a ballot at any time during a union organizing campaign or at any time that represents their yeah or nay to having a union represent them in collective bargaining or to form a union. These demands will create so many jobs it will be completely impossible to fill them without an open borders policy. If everyone were guaranteed a “living wage” without the need for work, why would anyone want to go to college or to work? If a Radical Left that had gained political power ever instituted such demands, civilization would collapse and society would instantly descend into anarchy and darkness. Where do people learn to think like the protesters and other members of Obama’s base think? Education is a big source of such indoctrination. Most students are poorly educated and with poor abilities to critically think when they enter colleges and universities, where they become the prey of Far Left instructors and professors. We have been under attack from within. Until recently, few have realized the enormity of damage our nation has already sustained. Tuesday, October 4, 2011 Impressions from Occupy Wall Street By Alex Steiner Oct 6, 2011 Wall Street in downtown Manhattan is pregnant with the history of the United States. Although today Wall St. is known as the financial heart of American capitalism, it began as a fortified wall, the Northern boundary of the original Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam. The young protesters who are now in the third week of their occupation of Zuccotti Park chose their encampment well. Barely three blocks from their tent city stands the grounds of that symbol of American capitalism, the New York Stock Exchange. Diagonally across the street from the marble columns of the Stock Exchange is a giant statue of the founder of the American Republic, George Washington. He is standing on the steps of Federal Hall, the site where he was sworn in as the first President of this Republic. Another founding father lies buried even closer to the site of the protesters camp - Alexander Hamilton, architect of the United States first National Bank, is resting in the churchyard of Trinity Church. Another block or so down the street and around the corner from the Stock Exchange stands the massive fortified walls of the New York Federal Reserve, home of what is perhaps the largest hoard of gold bullion in the world, approximately 7000 tons worth. More to the point, this is where much of the economic policy of the United States is implemented, from the setting of exchange rates with foreign currencies to the transfer of trillions of dollars between banks on a daily basis. The building also hosted, along with the Treasury Department in Washington, some of the meetings that brought together the heads of the Fed and the Treasury with the CEO's of the largest banks in the country to work out the terms of what eventually became the TARP bailout of the banks following the crisis precipitated by the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008. This takes us back to a consideration of what is going on at Zuccotti Park. Several thousand protesters are saying that they have had enough. They are tired of seeing trillions of dollars being used to bail out the banks whose fraudulent practices in the preceding years left them holding massive assets whose value suddenly went to zero. The other side of the bank bailout by both the Bush and Obama Administrations has been the impoverishment of tens of millions of people, particularly young people. My impression as a result of talking with some of the protesters and hearing them interviewed is that the vast majority of those occupying Wall Street do not see any future for themselves under this economic system known as capitalism. I was also struck by the inventiveness and fighting spirit of these young people. They have, against great odds, been able to maintain a tent city in the middle of Manhattan, in an inhospitable "park" that is actually a concrete plaza with little in the way of amenities such as grass and trees and no public bathrooms or water fountains. What it does have are some tables and chairs that are normally occupied by office workers sipping their morning coffee or chess players taking on Wall Street tycoons for quarters. Somehow this group has managed to feed itself, with the help of neighbors donating food. They managed to keep dry in the face of New York's relentless autumn rains thanks to some tarps (no pun intended) they sequestered from somewhere. Without electricity they have managed to create a communications center, powered by a portable generator, where several people are busy on lap tops round the clock, rain or shine, spreading their message to social network sites all over the globe. They have created committees in charge of making posters, printing a satirical version of the Wall Street Journal, and organizing their marches and acts of civil disobedience. There is a constant thump of drums and other instruments in one corner where you can find revelers transfixed by the rhythmic sounds. There is even a free library stocked with donated books, available for anyone who wants to read them. The highlight of each evening is what they call a "General Assembly" an experiment in participatory democracy wherein everyone who wishes to can speak and contribute to the discussion. Decisions are arrived at through a torturous consensus process. The police have banned the use of megaphones or other audio equipment making it extremely difficult to hold meetings in the open air. But the protesters have once again found an ingenious way to get around this legal obstacle to participatory democracy. One person speaks who is in turn closely surrounded by hundreds of facilitators. The facilitators then echo back in one voice the words of the speaker so that the huge crowd surrounding them can hear the proceedings. The proceedings reminded me of the brilliant movie by Truffaut, Fahrenheit 451, (based on an equally brilliant story by Ray Bradbury) where in a future when the reading or printing of books are banned, a core group of people dedicate themselves to preserving literature by memorizing entire books that can no longer be printed or accessed physically. They have become living books just as the facilitators at Occupy Wall Street have become living megaphones. The politics of the protesters, insofar as they articulate one, is certainly naive and contradictory. I saw signs that at once sounded very radical, calling for an end to the plutocracy that runs this country, along with other signs ("Pass the F____ Jobs Bill Already") indicating that the honeymoon with Obama that many young people had in 2008, although badly bruised, may not be entirely over for some. The OWS protesters have emphasized that they are contemptuous of the political process and have deliberately avoided putting forward a set of demands. They have clearly been inspired by the example of the massive demonstrations in Tahrir Square in Cairo earlier this year and Syntagma Square in Athens. They see their action as the spark of the American Revolution. This is not a revolution at this point but it is impossible to predict how this movement will play itself out. There are signs that the protesters have tapped into a vein of anger against the inequities of life in 21st century America that has been simmering for years. Their actions have already inspired other protests in other cities. We saw a preview of this action in the sit-ins in Madison, Wisconsin earlier this year. Unfortunately that movement was sidetracked by the labor bureaucracy and the Democratic Party into abandoning their protests and putting their energy into a worthless recall campaign. The OWS protesters will not be so easily sidetracked. But their rejection of political action is both their strength and their weakness. What is considered normal politics in this country, support for one or the other of the two bourgeois parties, certainly deserves a heady dose of contempt. But that by itself does little to bring about the kind of just society the protesters envision. It can in fact serve as an invitation for demagogues and opportunists of various stripes to come in and fill the vacuum. And though I saw little evidence of the usual confluence of left groups at the encampment, their presence swells each time there is a protest march or some other action. The neo-Stalinist Workers World Party has been in evidence as has the International Socialist Organization (ISO). There was much excitement today at the anticipation of representatives from the unions coming tomorrow to show their support. Of course, the flacks from the trade union bureaucracy who will join the march tomorrow will be there to try to channel this movement back into the safety of harmless protests and support for the Democratic Party. The naiveté evidenced by the protesters, that they would expect anything else from the trade union bureaucracy, is hardly surprising. They come from a generation almost completely devoid of any political culture or historical education. What politics they have come into contact with has been largely the protest movements of the last decade, the anti-war movement, the global justice movement, etc. They have picked up an education largely on their own, thanks to the social networking sites on the Internet and the example of Egypt and Greece. Whatever their background, be it working class or middle class, they have now come to the same juncture in this third year of the greatest economic crisis of the capitalist system since the Great Depression. They are largely unemployed or underemployed and see no future for themselves in a society that has bombarded them from birth with images of a consumer utopia of Iphones and home entertainment centers. The American dream has for them become a nightmare. They have resurrected many of the symbols and images of the 1960s counter culture and protest movement. This is obvious to any visitor to Zuccotti Park who is old enough to remember the aesthetics of the hippies and the slogans of the 1960s radicals. This borrowing of the imagery of another era was practically inevitable given that the 1960s represented the last great period of political turmoil in this country. Nevertheless, this is a very a different movement than the 1960s counter culture. They are not so much protesting the injustice that our country inflicts on others in foreign lands - although that is not absent either - but their primary target is the injustice inflicted on them and their friends and family. They are not the sons and daughters of the affluent middle class alienated from the culture of bourgeois banality. They are people who see no future for themselves without a fundamental change in society and they are willing to put their lives on the line to make that happen. This past Saturday 700 of them were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge after walking into a trap set by the New York City Police. (The police actually led them on their march on the bridge, did not tell them they were walking into a restricted traffic area, and then when they were 1/3 of the way over the bridge they were surrounded, trapped by nets and arrested.) The mass arrests have done little to dampen their spirits. ******************************************************************************** Update: I wrote the above impressions a couple of days ago but as the situation on Wall Street is extremely dynamic and changes daily I wanted to add a few thoughts on the events up to today (Oct. 6). The march to Foley Square on Wednesday, Oct 5, was massive and brought out large number of workers and students in support of the protesters. Some estimates had the crowd at 20,000 or more. As predicted, the trade union bureaucracy came out and stood with Democratic Party politicians in a pathetic attempt to channel the fury of the marchers back to support for Obama and the Democratic Party. From what I could observe later that evening, a large majority of the protesters will have none of it. Their attitude could be summed up by one of the placards I saw in Zuccotti Park that evening: "Class War Ahead". The weakness of the protesters was also in evidence that evening. A group of anarchists suddenly announced that they were going to march to the famous statue of the Wall Street bull and stop traffic in the process. Several hundred young people took off through the narrow streets of the financial district looking for the bull. At least as many police followed them. When we finally got to the bull, it was closed off by police barricades on all sides and several police officers were assigned to stand inside the barricades and protect the bull at all costs as if the fate of Western Civilization depended on them and their ability to guard the bull from harm. This was certainly one of the more amusing episodes of the day. After a couple of the more outspoken members of the group marching toward the bull got themselves arrested the action such as it was ran out of steam and everyone headed back to Zuccotti Park. However that same evening another group of protesters demonstrated more of the remarkable ingenuity that has marked this occupation from the beginning. A projector located somewhere in Zuccotti Park (I could not find the exact location) was beamed diagonally against a tall building across the street that was devoid of windows, a feature common to many commercial buildings built during the 1960s and 1970s in Manhattan. This attribute turned the wall of this building into a perfect screen for a giant advertisement. What were the words flashed on this improvised billboard? BREAK THE LAW OF VALUE ABOLISH CAPITALISM So it seems that the man most reviled and feared by the capitalist class, whose theories were thought to be obsolete and could never gain a foothold on the un-philosophical soil of America - Karl Marx - has returned and has something to say to the youth and workers of this country. I do not want to make more of this one incident than is warranted. There is still a long way to go on the road from repeating a few words of Marx to assimilating the full implications of his work. But it does indicate that there is perhaps now a receptivity to the ideas of this man, more so than at any time in our recent history. The ironic quality of this development can only be appreciated if we consider the reaction to the Wall Street events of some of our radical bloggers, a subject I will get to shortly. We are in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street protesters. Their spirit and creativity is to be admired and we share their aims. But we would fail our responsibility as Marxists and revolutionaries if we did not warn them of the dangers of ignoring the political struggle and the history and theoretical heritage of those who preceded them in the struggle for socialism. I note that a number of radical bloggers have taken exactly the opposite tack. They are falling over themselves with words of adulation for the protesters and damning anyone who introduces even the mildest, well-intentioned criticism. For instance, one radical blogger launched into a sharp criticism of the ISO for merely mentioning that the protesters have some lessons to learn. He wrote, "...there is a real disconnect between young activists who are seeking fundamental social change and groups like the ISO that see themselves as somehow better qualified to lead such struggles because they have achieved some kind of superior understanding of Marxism or because they are consciously following the example of Lenin or Trotsky rather than the stumbling and tentative experiments of the young people in Liberty Park." While we do not think the ISO will be able to educate this movement, we certainly think that they can use an education and Marx's analysis of the crisis of capitalism and an assimilation of the work of Lenin and Trotsky is at least a beginning. The demagogy in this blogger's comment consists in his counterpoising an education in the history and theory of Marxism to the natural creativity and spontaneity of the mass movement. But this is fallacious reasoning. We expect that even with an education in Marxism, the revolution will still face stumbles and missteps and its participants will learn from their experiences. But not all missteps are necessary and not all stumbles have a salutary effect on their participants. Sometimes such missteps have disastrous consequences. Those who go into a situation blind and bereft of theory or history will inevitably fall by the wayside despite their courage and inventiveness. This has been the experience of every previous revolution and we do not expect it to be any different in the 21st century. The critical question is how to reach these people. It will not be done by those claiming to be Marxists lecturing at people or telling them that they "must" join this party or read this web site. Such efforts will be laughed off and given the rebuke they properly deserve. Here are some ideas for the protestors to consider: 1. “Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor” – that's a widely popular way of characterizing the Wall Street bailout by BushObama while tens of millions of workers and middle class people have been foreclosed on, lost jobs or can't find work. But it makes you wonder: if socialism is good for the rich, why not have it for everyone? 2.You need to know where you're going if you're ever going to get there. Movements without a goal have no direction, and become easy to sidetrack or coopt. 3.Don't believe anyone who tells you the system can be fixed and the politicians can be pressured to do the right thing. Nothing is more dangerous in a crisis than wishful thinking. Read what Wall Street reads and you'll quickly see that the best case scenario is for a decade of economic slump and austerity, assuming there isn't an all-out crash. A decade! For young people this means being condemned to blighted lives – to never having a chance at a career, a steady job, a decent place to live. We have no stake in this system. We have nothing to lose – and everything to gain – by getting rid of it. 4.Don't believe those who have stakes in the system, especially Democratic politicians and business union leaders. The only people we can trust are those on the same side of the economic divide as ourselves – the working class. 5. We need to be organized. Our enemies are. Organization is not the enemy of democracy. On the contrary, democracy without organization means that the energy of the movement gets dissipated, reduced to a lowest common denominator. It means the movement will never pose a serious challenge to the system, will never get beyond being a political sideshow. #OccupyWallStreet is a church of dissent not a protest Matt Stoller, naked capitalism Last weekend, I spent a few days with the protesters downtown near Wall Street, and it was an eye-opening experience. The people there want something, but it’s not a list of demands, and it is entirely overlooked by the media and most commentators on the protest. If all you read are news stories and twitter feeds about #OccupyWallStreet, the most trenchant imagery that will stick in your mind is that of police brutality, and the politics of Wall Street greed. The debate seems to be organized around whether the protest will be “successful” or not, how the protesters are stupid or a new American Tahrir Square, or rhetoric designed in a media sphere that maximizes attention. Glenn Greenwald suitably demolishes the sneering commentariat. But I think there’s something to add about what exactly this protest is, what it is doing, and most of all, what the people there “want”. They don’t have a formal list of demands. And it’s obvious that this isn’t just about Wall Street, nor is it really a battle of any sort. There are political signs there attacking Fox News, expressing anger about Troy Davis, supporting the Iranian revolution, urging the Federal Reserve be reigned in, and demanding rich people pay their taxes. There are personal signs about debt, war, and medical problems. And people are dressed in costume, carrying lightsabers, and some guys are driving around a truck with a “Top Secret Wikileaks” sign on the side. I asked if they were affiliated with the site, and one of them responded with “That’s what the Secret Service asked”. Most of all, people there are having fun. What these people are doing is building, for lack of a better word, a church of dissent. It’s not a march, though marches are spinning off of the campground. It’s not even a protest, really. It is a group of people, gathered together, to create a public space seeking meaning in their culture. They are asserting, together, to each other and to themselves, “we matter”. Meaning is a fundamental human need. The act of politicization, of building any movement, is based on individual, and then group self-confidence. As Daniel Ellsberg said, “courage is contagious”. I’m reminded of how Howard Dean campaign worker and current law professor Zephyr Teachout characterized the early antiwar blogosphere and then-radical campaign of Dean, as church-like in their community-building elements. That’s what #OccupyWallStreet reminded me of. Even the general assemblies, where people would speak, and others would respond, had a rhythmic quality to them, similar to churches or synagogues I’ve attended. By Matt Stoller, the former Senior Policy Advisor to Rep. Alan Grayson and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. You can reach him at stoller (at) gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at @matthewstoller. (29 September 2011) Gandhi goes to Wall Street Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, Washington Post Protestors carry signs that say, “Bring Down the Wall, but this is not Berlin in 1989, it is New York’s financial district in 2011. They carry signs that say “Love, Compassion, Awareness, Understanding,” but this not Selma in 1965, it is Wall Street in 2011. The #occupywallstreet protests in New York’s Wall Street district exhibit all the dynamics of the non-violent direct action movements of the 20th century as seen in the work of Mohandas K. Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the April 6 movement in Egypt that so symbolizes the “Arab Spring.” These are the young Egyptians chanting “peaceful, peaceful” only this time while crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, not on a street in Cairo, or in front of a wall in East Berlin. And like in Cairo and Selma and East Germany, they are met with force, sometimes even with brutality. The police response follows Gandhi’s prescription for why non-violence is so effective; non-violent protest exposes the underlying violence of unjust systems, and the dilemma that non-violence poses to armed authority. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, Professor, Chicago Theological Seminary. Former president of Chicago Theological Seminary (1998-2008), Thistlethwaite is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.? (3 ctober 2011) Don't Feed the Zombies: The Problem of Protesting the Thing You Depend On Sharon Astyk, Casaubon's Book A number of readers have asked me what I think about the Wall Street protests. In general I think public protest is usually a good thing, and I'm pleased to see demonstrations in favor of good things like corporate accountability and against bad things like climate change. I think there are plenty of reasons for political activism in our country, and am always pleased by it. On the other hand, do I think that this is the beginning of something profound and important? I can't say for sure, but I would guess not. Protesting Wall Street isn't a bad idea - but there's a fundamental problem in marching and demonstrating against something you are wholly dependent upon. The college students who are admirably taking the lead depend for their educations on investments and growth - private savings invested to enable them to go to college by parents, but also government subsidies and loans that must be supported by economic growth in order to continue. The very act of taking out a loan to support your education implies a presumption of growth - the idea that your earnings will grow in order for you to pay it back with interest. Standing against Wall Street and calling them out to justify their implication in the political process and in issues like climate change is great - except that Wall Street gets its money in large part from, well, us. An economy that depends for 70% of its worth on consumer spending is not one in which one can look entirely to the powerful abstract evil of "corporations" but to the specific evil of that fact that all of us depend for food, clothing and shelter on those institutions we claim to deplore. This is the same problem that leads those who protest middle-eastern oil wars to drive their cars to the demonstrations, to those who protest coal plants writing their angry blog posts on grid, coal powered laptops, and any number of other hypocrisies. Now hypocrisy itself is not evil, and it is generally inevitable - none of us can live here without implication in a larger economic system - all of us are complicit. That said, however, the disconnect between personal action and political action, carefully fostered by a society that believes that personal choice is personal choice and has little to do with your political convictions, constantly undermines real political action. Yes, deplore Wall Street. Remember when you do so that while large corporations (or polluters or whatever) would prefer, ideally that you both love them and give them great big wads of cash, given a choice, all such institutions prefer the cash to our love. It is a very good thing to remind them that they are zombie institutions, but it helps not to feed the zombies your money - and that involves a radical reinvention of lifestyle. None of us trust a politician who depends on the campaign dollars of those who oppose their fundamental values. Why should we trust ourselves to depend for food, shelter and our basic way of life on institutions that are also destroying that way of life? While recognizing that the Thoreau-model of perfect disconnection is not open to most of us, should we not hold ourselves to at least the same standard we hold public officials to - asking that we disconnect economically from the structures that warm the world, deplete its resources, etc... and that we participate as little as we can (and that means we are critical of our own excuses) in that degradation? None of us will ever get this perfect - we live in our interconnected, oil fueled, coal warmed, economically messy society. Perfection is not the goal - but it does not take a vast contraction of earnings to send a much more impressive message than public protest can provide alone - if you want to change the world, stop feeding the zombies. (3 October 2011) Encounters with Occupy Wall Street Louis Proyect, The Unrepentant Marxist These are some very provisional thoughts on Occupy Wall Street, which is showing signs already of having a rippling effect across America. With recognition by both the protesters and commentators sympathetic and hostile that the Arab Spring has inspired the movement, we are dealing once again with the phenomenon of movements that cross borders, and that can even become global. This is not just something that the Internet has spawned. Back in 1968, when I was about the age of the people occupying Liberty Park, the May-June events in France were midwifed by the American antiwar movement and eventually served as a model for the movement for a “red university” in Yugoslavia. The most notable aspect of this movement is that is the first to confront the new realities of the economic crisis and to articulate the grievances of the American people without being subject to the constraints of a reformist leadership. Obviously Wisconsin erupted over the same sense of economic resentment but the movement suffered from being under the control largely of the trade union bureaucracy and local Democratic Party officials. Instead of taking on the system full-bore, activists were diverted into a sterile recall campaign. As the activist I interviewed in the video that accompanies this article stated, he is not that interested in “politics”. I had asked him what his political experience amounted to before coming down to Wall Street, assuming that he would talk about Amnesty International or Greenpeace. It turned out that he understood “politics” to refer to ringing doorbells for candidates and he was not having any of that. The intuition that the activists of Liberty Park had that they were speaking for the “99 percent” of Americans has resonated with the working class in a way that the organized left has never achieved. Starting with the traditionally left-of-center TWU leadership, the OSW activists are on the verge of winning over the heavy battalions of organized labor to their side. This is not because they have any special skills at winning over workers to their side. Rather it is because their action has resonated with deep grievances among working people. ... There is a very strong possibility that over the next five years or so the mass movement that is taking shape today might take on epic proportions and mount a serious challenge to the powers-that-be. It will be absolutely incumbent upon Marxists to figure out a way to relate to that movement not as learned professors chiding it from above but as dedicated participants whose loyalties are to the movement rather than their own group. If they can meet that challenge, the movement will be all the more powerful as a result. If they function in a narrow and self-interested manner, they will have nothing to offer. (2 October 2011) Understanding the Theory Behind Occupy Wall Street’s Approach Mike Konczal, Rortybomb The Occupy Wall Street protests have been collecting demands from people in order to create their own list. In their words, their demands are “a process” intended to allow people to “talk to each other in various physical gatherings and virtual people’s assemblies … [and] zero in on what our one demand will be, a demand that awakens the imagination.” I contributed the three demands I think they should consider focusing on over at Good Magazine here. Here’s a really moving We Are the 99 Tumblr where people across the country are writing their stories on a sheet of paper and sharing them. This recession has scarred generations of Americans for the foreseeable future and yet few in power are really rattled about it. There’s been a lot of back and forth, especially from liberals, about what the protestors are trying to do in their occupation. Where are their finely-tuned lists of concrete demands? What are the action items, spokespeople and who are the key influencers they need to reach? ... There’s a conscious focus on the methodology to create an explicit space of real, direct democracy. The main concern is the methods used for the expressing the actions of the community. To me, with all due respect, the lazer-focus on the explicitly proper methods to the exclusion of all else reminds me a bit of cartoony High Liberalism Theory. The kind of theory where the point is to obsess on the proper type of auction for buckets of goods on the deserted island so wine snobs, beach bums and the hard-working shoemakers all are equally well off, instead of confronting the vicious, feudal hierarchies of power that actually exist. But it isn’t just both the methods and the focus on methods that is unique. There’s an actual occupation going on in the park. And, as Stoller pointed out, it is designed to be fun. Is there something deeper about both the communal and festival spirit of the protests? It can be read as a reaction against the atomized, privatized forms of capitalism as it evolved into modernity. All around the world attention has been drawn to the occupation of Wall Street. The protest has captured the imagination of thousands and inspired new occupations which are spreading across the U.S. The police crackdown last Saturday, intended entirely to intimidate this movement, completely failed to break our spirit. Now the youth in particular are more determined than ever to fight. Inspired by the revolutionary upheavals in Egypt and across North Africa, as well as the mass youth occupations of central plazas in Spain and Greece, protestors have taken to the streets of New York to stand up to the domination of Wall Street and Big Business over our lives. Below the surface there is deep anger in U.S. society which only seemed to be getting a twisted expression in the right-wing lunatics of the Tea Party. But the mass movement in Wisconsin this spring, and now the youth occupation of Wall Street provide a glimpse of the enormous potential to turn that anger into a progressive social movement. How can we take the struggle forward? Many are occupying to “liberate space” in order to build a new, more equal and just community, hoping it will inspire others to follow. While the occupation is a certain example of a community based on democracy, cooperation and solidarity, unfortunately, the occupation alone will not be enough to build a mass movement capable of changing society. Many have alluded to Egypt saying that a growing occupation with one basic demand is how the dictator was overthrown. But in fact, the situation was more complicated than that. In the week before Egypt’s dictator Mubarak was ousted, the working class entered the scene with decisive industrial strike action paralyzing key parts of the economy. This is what really scared the ruling elite. The occupations in Spain and Greece have been much bigger than Wall Street, but they, too, need the more powerful forces of the working class to move into action in order to win. In Wisconsin, a huge occupation of the Capitol lasted for over 3 weeks that was at the center of mass demonstrations of the workers and youth. They could have won if that movement had moved toward a general strike of workers to shut the state economy down. Instead the Wisconsin battle was consciously derailed by the Democratic party and the top union leadership behind a campaign to recall the Republicans from power to elect Democrats in their place. However, the Democrats, like the Republicans, are a party of Wall Street and Big Business, and they offer no solutions. We need an independent struggle which seeks to draw in the widest layers of workers and youth. United we have the power to withdraw our labor, stop "business as usual," and hit the banks, corporations and ruling elite where it counts. We need to build up the confidence to take such bold measures. That’s why Occupy Wall Street should call for mass demonstrations around key demands that address the burning issues that working people and youth face like jobs, education, healthcare and so on. The youth have a vital role to play. In Britain, Chile and Wisconsin, and other struggles it was the youth coming into the streets first and taking action that emboldened people, opening the door for much wider struggle of the working class. The 99% occupy Wall Street Friday, October 7, 2011 By Pham Bihn, New York Inspired by the Arab Spring and Spain's movement of The Indignants (which began occupying city squares to build a citizens' movement for real democracy and against austerity), the Occupy Wall Street movement began taking to the streets in September in the famous financial district in New York. Brutal repression by police helped fuel support for those camping at Liberty Plaza (as Zuccotti Park has been renamed by the occupiers). Increasing support has come from trade unions — including a union-organised march in New York of tens of thousands of people in solidarity with OWS. The movement has also spread rapidly across the United States. The IBTimes said on October 6: “More than 100 cities have clocked in under the 'Occupy' moniker, with more names appearing on the movement's unofficial cyber bulletin board, occupytogether.orgoccupytogether.org, every few digital minutes.” That day, WorkersCompas.org reported that the Occupy Portland movement began with a protest involving tens of thousands of people. See also: Occupy Wall Street statement: 'All wronged by corporate forces are our allies' United States: 'We are the 99%' testimonies Occupy Wall Street spreads to Australia -- 'Occupy' gatherings for major cities on October 15 Below, Pham Bihn, a participant in OWS, provides an eyewitness account of this dramatic movement. * * * The entrapment and arrest of 700 peaceful Occupy Wall Street (OWS) activists on the Brooklyn Bridge on October 1 has created a huge wave of support for their movement. The number of daytime occupants in Liberty Plaza (as Zuccotti Park in New York has been renamed by the occupiers) doubled or tripled from 100 the week before to 200-300 on October 3 and 4. See also: Occupy Wall Street statement: 'All wronged by corporate forces are our allies' Occupy Wall Street spreads to Australia -- 'Occupy' gatherings for major cities on October 15 These people are the core who maintain the occupation of the plaza, making it possible for several hundreds and sometimes thousands to hold rallies in the late afternoon, and participate in the open mic speakouts and General Assembly meetings in the evening. Life at Occupy Wall Street camp at Liberty Plaza on day five of the occupation (September 21). The mood of the crowd is defiant and determined. Quite a few people were still unsure of how exactly they had been trapped by the New York Police Department (NYPD), but that did not matter. What mattered was that OWS made front page news in papers around the world along with its official list of grievances, undercutting naysayers who pretended it was a bunch of ignorant jobless kids without a clue as to what they want. What mattered was that Transit Workers Union Local 100 backed up its solidarity speeches on September 30 with action by filing an injunction against the city for ordering their drivers to take arrested protesters to jail. The drivers cooperated with the orders, but only because armed high-ranking NYPD officers told them to do so. Who can blame the drivers? You never know which officer might be the next Anthony Bologna (the NYPD officer filmed pepper spraying OWS activists in an unprovoked attack). On October 5, a brave soul named Steve from the 1% came to talk to the people in the park. He claimed to work for a nearby investment firm, and he certainly dressed, spoke and acted the part. Many of the activists questioned him and tried to debate him, but he gave them mostly suave evasions, which generated a lot of frustration among the crowd of five-10 that gathered around him. A white Vietnam veteran and hospice nurse (I never saw an old woman with a purple heart until then) asked Steve why should Medicare or Social Security be privatised using a voucher system? Why should the elderly and sick be forced to do with less during these hard times? Steve replied that he does not support these moves and believed in a “strong social safety net” (a direct quote). Next, a middle-aged black guy named Keith Thomas (who later turned out to be a transit worker injured on the job) asked Steve whether or not Wall Street firms had any type of moral obligation to their employees. (Thomas was laid off from a Wall Street firm prior to his job in the transit system.) Steve agreed they have a moral obligation, but added that no entity, whether it was a corporation or government, had obligations that were set in stone. When I heard this, I could not keep my mouth shut any more and interjected: “So what about Medicare and Social Security? Those are obligations, right? And you said you supported them.” I pointed out that “too big to fail” banks enjoy a government guarantee that they would get bailed out again as in 2008. Not surprisingly, Steve did not take well to my line of questioning and left soon after. The crowd thanked him for having the dialogue, as did I, and we asked him to come again. I doubt he will. In the course of the exchange, some things became clear. First, Wall Street and corporate America will try to deflect responsibility for what OWS is upset about in the hopes that it falls for the Tea Party mantra that “government is the problem”. When Steve said we should be protesting in Washington DC, demonstrators said Wall Street owns the government. Some even went so far to say that Wall Street is the government. Second, OWS has become what can only be described as a people’s movement. When you go into the park, it really is the 99% that you find there. Thomas later told me he felt like this was “just like 1968” (when large popular revolts shook the world from the United States, to western Europe, and to Czechoslovakia in the Soviet bloc). He said it evoked feelings in him he had not felt for a long time. There is a feeling of empowerment, like justice is on our side, of good will, and of seriousness of purpose in the air that is very difficult to capture with mere words. Even pictures and video footage, worth many millions of words, cannot convey it. You have to come to Liberty Park to experience it. And once you experience it, you cannot stop the inner urge you feel to fight and win, against all odds. It is this feeling that is propelling the movement into the most unlikely of places, like Mobile, Alabama. I am not old enough to remember 1968, but I imagine this is what it was like. The occupation in the past few days has become much more multiracial than in the first and second weeks. I saw ageing Vietnam veterans (some of them homeless), union workers, high schoolers, journalists from the corporate media, progressive journalist Laura Flanders, Oscar award-wining filmmaker Michael Moore, Hispanic and African immigrants, low-wage workers who work nearby, retirees, people with disabilities, and college students. The class and racial breakdown of the occupants looks much more like that of a rush hour subway car in midtown Manhattan than an alternative music concert as it did previously. If you hear otherwise, you are hearing lies. The only people missing are the the Steves of the city — the 1%. They are asking their friends in the corporate media, “is this Occupy Wall Street thing a big deal? … Is this going to turn into a personal safety problem?” Wall Street is worried about what this means. And they are right to be. We are onto them. The occupy movement is growing roots in all communities among all age groups and races. Everyone is bringing their issue to the table and receiving nothing but 100% support. There is not a progressive cause OWS will not get behind, nor an injustice that it will not try to address in some way. Union members from New York City’s largest municipal workers union, DC37, held a rally at OWS on October 3, as did the Teamsters who have been locked out by 1% auction dealer Sotheby’s for months. There were quite a few members of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) there as well (their headquarters is two blocks away). All the middle-aged union members I saw were grinning from ear to ear, cheered by the defiant and militant spirit that was once the calling card of the US labour movement. Speaking of which, I ran into a young man at the occupation on October 3 who said he was a descendant of the Molly Maguires (a secret organisation of Irish-American coalminers who fought for workers’ rights in the 19th century). I never expected to hear that name at a protest in this day and age (they were framed and executed in the 1870s using the same methods the state of Georgia used last month to kill Troy Davis because they sought to organise Irish immigrant workers in Pennsylvania’s coal fields). This young man, Mark Purcell, traveled from central Pennsylvania to OWS and said he planned to get involved in whatever occupation happens in Philadelphia. Mark told me he realised the system was totally corrupt when he worked at an Allentown warehouse as a temporary worker. He said the companies took advantage of undocumented immigrants since they have no legal rights or protections. The minute he complained about working conditions, the company he worked for told him to talk to the temp agency that was technically his employer, and the temp agency fired him. He was pissed off that companies outsource labour to these agencies and use that to dodge responsibility for working conditions. “It’s bullshit,” he said. Amen. The spirit of the Molly Maguires lives on at OWS. On October 5, National Nurses United, 1199SEIU, SEIU Local 32BJ, the New York AFL-CIO, the UFT, Communications Workers, Professional Staff Congress-CUNY, the NY Central Labor Council mobilised to rally and march to join OWS. Some reports say as many as 30,000 people joined the march. October 5 union march in support of 'Occupy Wall Street'. In addition to the alphabet soup of unions mobilising, student activists are organising walkouts from Hunter College, the New School (where professors issued a statement supporting their students’ walkout), and even New York University. Even the children of the 1% support OWS. The last time the unions mobilised was in May, when the UFT brought out more than 10,000 people during its contract negotiations with Mayor Micharl Bloomberg. The proceedings were tightly controlled and the messages carefully managed from above by union leaders. This time, things will be different. The turnout will surprise everyone, and the message will not be handed down to the city’s workers and students from on high. “Students and labour can shut the city down,” we shouted at the rallies on September 30 against police brutality. Perhaps we were prescient. Occupy Wall Street rediscovers the radical imaginationThe young people protesting in Wall Street and beyond reject this vain economic order. They have come to reclaim the future Why are people occupying Wall Street? Why has the occupation – despite the latest police crackdown – sent out sparks across America, within days, inspiring hundreds of people to send pizzas, money, equipment and, now, to start their own movements called OccupyChicago, OccupyFlorida, in OccupyDenver or OccupyLA? There are obvious reasons. We are watching the beginnings of the defiant self-assertion of a new generation of Americans, a generation who are looking forward to finishing their education with no jobs, no future, but still saddled with enormous and unforgivable debt. Most, I found, were of working-class or otherwise modest backgrounds, kids who did exactly what they were told they should: studied, got into college, and are now not just being punished for it, but humiliated – faced with a life of being treated as deadbeats, moral reprobates. Is it really surprising they would like to have a word with the financial magnates who stole their future? Just as in Europe, we are seeing the results of colossal social failure. The occupiers are the very sort of people, brimming with ideas, whose energies a healthy society would be marshaling to improve life for everyone. Instead, they are using it to envision ways to bring the whole system down. But the ultimate failure here is of imagination. What we are witnessing can also be seen as a demand to finally have a conversation we were all supposed to have back in 2008. There was a moment, after the near-collapse of the world's financial architecture, when anything seemed possible. Everything we'd been told for the last decade turned out to be a lie. Markets did not run themselves; creators of financial instruments were not infallible geniuses; and debts did not really need to be repaid – in fact, money itself was revealed to be a political instrument, trillions of dollars of which could be whisked in or out of existence overnight if governments or central banks required it. Even the Economist was running headlines like "Capitalism: Was it a Good Idea?" It seemed the time had come to rethink everything: the very nature of markets, money, debt; to ask what an "economy" is actually for. This lasted perhaps two weeks. Then, in one of the most colossal failures of nerve in history, we all collectively clapped our hands over our ears and tried to put things back as close as possible to the way they'd been before. Perhaps, it's not surprising. It's becoming increasingly obvious that the real priority of those running the world for the last few decades has not been creating a viable form of capitalism, but rather, convincing us all that the current form of capitalism is the only conceivable economic system, so its flaws are irrelevant. As a result, we're all sitting around dumbfounded as the whole apparatus falls apart. What we've learned now is that the economic crisis of the 1970s never really went away. It was fobbed off by cheap credit at home and massive plunder abroad – the latter, in the name of the "third world debt crisis". But the global south fought back. The "alter-globalisation movement", was in the end, successful: the IMF has been driven out of East Asia and Latin America, just as it is now being driven from the Middle East. As a result, the debt crisis has come home to Europe and North America, replete with the exact same approach: declare a financial crisis, appoint supposedly neutral technocrats to manage it, and then engage in an orgy of plunder in the name of "austerity". The form of resistance that has emerged looks remarkably similar to the old global justice movement, too: we see the rejection of old-fashioned party politics, the same embrace of radical diversity, the same emphasis on inventing new forms of democracy from below. What's different is largely the target: where in 2000, it was directed at the power of unprecedented new planetary bureaucracies (the WTO, IMF, World Bank, Nafta), institutions with no democratic accountability, which existed only to serve the interests of transnational capital; now, it is at the entire political classes of countries like Greece, Spain and, now, the US – for exactly the same reason. This is why protesters are often hesitant even to issue formal demands, since that might imply recognising the legitimacy of the politicians against whom they are ranged. When the history is finally written, though, it's likely all of this tumult – beginning with the Arab Spring – will be remembered as the opening salvo in a wave of negotiations over the dissolution of the American Empire. Thirty years of relentless prioritising of propaganda over substance, and snuffing out anything that might look like a political basis for opposition, might make the prospects for the young protesters look bleak; and it's clear that the rich are determined to seize as large a share of the spoils as remain, tossing a whole generation of young people to the wolves in order to do so. But history is not on their side. We might do well to consider the collapse of the European colonial empires. It certainly did not lead to the rich successfully grabbing all the cookies, but to the creation of the modern welfare state. We don't know precisely what will come out of this round. But if the occupiers finally manage to break the 30-year stranglehold that has been placed on the human imagination, as in those first weeks after September 2008, everything will once again be on the table – and the occupiers of Wall Street and other cities around the US will have done us the greatest favour anyone possibly can. Alter-globalization (also known as alternative globalization, alter-mundialization — from the French "altermondialisme" — or the global justice movement) is the name of a social movement that supports global cooperation and interaction, but which opposes the negative effects of economic globalization, feeling that it often works to the detriment of, or does not adequately promote, human values such as environmental and climate protection, economic justice, labor protection, protection of indigenous cultures and human rights. The name may have been derived from a popular slogan of the movement: 'Another world is possible', which came out of the World Social Forum.[1] "The alter-globalization movement is a cooperative movement designed to protest the direction and perceived negative economic, political, social, cultural and ecological consequences of neoliberal globalization".[2] Many alter-globalists, unlike anti-globalists, seek to avoid the "disestablishment of local economies and disastrous humanitarian consequences". Most members of this movement shun the label "anti-globalization" as pejorative and incorrect since they actively support human activity on a global scale and do not oppose economic globalization per se. Instead they see their movement as an alternative to what they term neo-liberal globalization in which international institutions (World Trade Organisation, World Bank, International Monetary Fund etc.) and major corporations devote themselves to enriching the developed world while giving little or no attention to the detrimental effects of their actions on the people and environments of less developed countries, countries whose governments are often too weak or too corrupt to resist or regulate them. This is not to be confused with proletarian internationalism as put forth by communists in that alter-globalists do not necessarily oppose the free market, but a subset of free-market practices characterized by certain business attitudes and political policies that often lead to violations of human rights. Contents 1 Etymology 2 History 2.1 Factors historically provoking economic integration and resistance 2.1.1 The period of European colonialism 2.1.2 The post World War II era 2.1.3 The 1970s and Southern resistance 3 Preconditions for Alter-Globalization 4 Alter-Globalization as a Social Movement 4.1 Examples of Alter-Globalization as a Movement 4.2 Groups 4.3 World Social Forum 5 See also 6 References 7 External links [edit] EtymologyThe term was coined against accusations of nationalism by neoliberal proponents of globalization, meaning a support of both humanism and universal values but a rejection of the Washington consensus and similar neoliberal policies. The "alter-globalization" French movement was thus opposed to the "Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe" on the grounds that it only advanced neoliberalism and an Anglo-Saxon economic model. Originally developed in French as altermondialisme, it has been borrowed into English in the form of altermondialism or altermondialization. It defines the stance of movements opposed to a neoliberal globalization, but favorable to a globalization respectful of human rights, the environment, national sovereignty, and cultural diversity. Following the French usage of the word altermondialist, the English counterpart alter-globalist may have been coined. The term alter-globalization is derived from the term anti-globalization, which journalists and others have used to describe the movement. Many French journalists, in particular, have since ceased using the term anti-globalization in favor of alter-globalization. It is supposed to distinguish proponents of alter-globalization from different "anti-globalization" activists (those who are against any kind of globalization: nationalists, protectionists, communitarians, etc.). [edit] HistoryEconomic integration via trade, financial flows, and investments had been occurring for many years, but the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference of 1999 protest activity) in 1999, brought significant attention to the outcry for such integration through vast media outlets, support groups and activists. Though this opposition first became highly popularized in 1999, it can be traced back prior to the 1980s when the Washington Consensus became a dominant development in thinking and policy-making.[3] [edit] Factors historically provoking economic integration and resistanceThe Great Depression The period of European colonialism The early post World War II period The 1970s, when Southern governments banded together to pose alternative rules and institutions and when popular resistance to different aspects of economic integration spread in many nations[3] [edit] The period of European colonialismDuring the late 15th century most regions of the world were self-sufficient; although this led to much starvation and famine. As nations grew in power, sought to expand, and increased their wealth they forged on a mission to gain new lands. The central driving force of these nations was colonialism. Once in power in these new territories, colonists began to change the face of the economy in the area which provided them with motivation to sustain their efforts. Since they no longer had to solely rely on their own lands to produce goods, some nations began global commerce after establishing colonies in continents like Africa, Asia, the Pacific and the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean. Once lands were conquered the native inhabitants or others brought along as slaves grew rebellious towards their captors. This is evident in a number of slave rebellions, such as Harper's Ferry, Stono, and the New York Burning, and Native American attacks on European colonists on the North American continent. Over time these skirmishes gave way to social movements aimed at eliminating international trade in goods and labor, an example of which is the attempt to abolish the slave trade and the establishment of the First International Workingmen's Association (IWA).[3] [edit] The post World War II eraThe global economic state of post World War II called for the creation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The International Monetary Fund's purpose was to supervise the exchange rate system whereas the World Bank’s goals were aimed at creating long term/low interest loans that aided in the 'reconstruction' of Europe and the 'development' of independent Third World countries. GATT originated from a perceived need to "oversee the reduction of tariff barriers to trade in manufactured goods".[3] These financial institutions allowed for the development of global private corporations as administration over trade fell. Free market systems began to grow in popularity as developing countries were required to globalize their economies instead of concentrating on creating jobs and stimulating economic growth. This allowed for private corporations to expand globally, without regard to central issues facing the home country like the environment, social structure or culture.[3] [edit] The 1970s and Southern resistanceThe 1970s saw resistance to global expansion by both government and non-government parties. Senator Frank Church was concerned with the role multinational corporations were beginning to play and created a subcommittee that reviewed corporate practices to see if they were advancing U.S. interests or not (i.e. exporting jobs that could be kept within the United States). It was through these public revelations that Southern nations around the world wanted rules to govern the global economy. More specifically, these Southern nations (ranging from Tanzania to the Philippines) wanted to raise/ stabilize raw material prices, and to increase Southern exports.[3] These nations began their movement not only with central goals but with codes of conduct as well (though non-enforceable). Thus two manifestations, one individual, and the other collective, amongst Southern nation-states, existed in their attempts to generate reform. [edit] Preconditions for Alter-GlobalizationIt is suggested by some scholars, such as Iagin Russia, that the effects and growth of alter-globalization can be felt worldwide due to progress made as a result of the Internet. The Internet provides easy, free-flowing and mobile information/network organization that is in its very nature democratic; knowledge is for everyone and is perceived to be needed for further development of our modern world. Furthermore, Internet access creates the fast and easy spread of, and communication of, an organization's principles, progress, growth, opposition and development. Therefore in order to allot for the distribution of alter-globalization, the Internet has provided a means of communication that stretches beyond the limits of distance, time and space so new ideas may not only be generated but implemented as well.[4] [edit] Alter-Globalization as a Social MovementAlter-globalization can be characterized as a social movement based on Charles Tilly’s WUNC displays. WUNC is an acronym for W-Worthiness, U-Unity, N-Numbers and C-Commitment. Alter-globalization is seen as a worthy cause because its goals aim to sustain those being afflicted by the selfish acts of global corporations and their negative effect on human value, the environment, and social justices. It also serves to unite various people around the world for a good cause: to fight for better treatment of Third World countries and their economies, workers rights, fair/equal human rights. Many are committed to the goals set forth by alter-globalization groups because of the perceived negative effects globalization is creating around the world. Examples include: the exploitation of labor, outsourcing of jobs to foreign nations (though some argue this is a nationalistic rather than alter-globalist motive), pollution of local environments, and harm to foreign cultures to which jobs are outsourced. Alter-globalization can be viewed as being purposeful and creating solidarity, which are two of the three incentives posited by the rational choice theory proposed by Dennis Chong. Rational choice theory focuses on the incentives of activism, stating that activism follows when the benefits to protesting outweigh the costs. Alter-globalization allows one the opportunity to see the difference they are working towards by eliminating the negative side effects already affecting our world (i.e. environmental pollution). It also calls for solidarity amongst peer/community relations that can only be experienced by being a part of the system that causes change. Another type of social movement that applies to alter-globalization and our understanding of how it relates is found in collective action frames. Collective action frames provide a schemata of interpretation that allows for organization of experience into guided action. Action frames are perceived as powerful because they draw from people’s emotions, re-enforce the collective identity of the group, and create a statement from the groups' collective beliefs. Frame analysis is helpful to alter-globalization because it calls for activists to learn through their socialization and interactions with others. One of the key tasks of action frames is generating agency, or a plausible story that indicates the ability of the activists to create change. With alter-globalization every aspect of the movement suggests this ability because the goals affect the economies, environments and human relations of various countries around the world. [edit] Examples of Alter-Globalization as a Movement1.Attempts at an alter-globalization movement to reform policies and processes of the WTO include: "alternative principles of public accountability, the rights of people and the protection of the environment" through the theoretical framework of Robert Cox.[5] 2.Labor movement and trade union initiatives have begun to respond to economic and political globalisation by extending their cooperation and initiatives to the transnational level.[6] 3.Fair trade initiatives, corporate codes of conduct, and social clauses as well as a return to local markets instead of relying too heavily on global markets.[7] 4."Alter-globalization activists have promoted alternative water governance models through North-South red-green alliances between organized labor, environmental groups, women's groups, and indigenous groups..." (spoken in response to the increase in privatization of the global water supply).[8] 5."The first current of the alter-globalization movement) considers that instead of getting involved in a global movement and international forums, the path to social change lies through giving life to horizontal, participatory, convivial and sustainable values in daily practices, personal life and local spaces. Many urban activists cite the way that, for example, the Zapatistas in Mexico and other Latin American indigenous movements now focus on developing communities' local autonomy via participatory self-government, autonomous education systems and improving the quality of life. They appreciate too, the convivial aspect of local initiatives and their promise of small but real alternatives to corporate globalization and mass consumption."[9] [edit] GroupsAdvocates of alter-globalization have set up an online global news network, the Independent Media Center, to report on developments pertinent to the movement. Groups in favor of alter-globalization include ATTAC, an international trade reform network headquartered in France. [edit] World Social Forum Opening walk of 2002 World Social Forum, held by participants in the movementThe largest forum for alter-globalization activity is the annual World Social Forum. The World Social Forum is intended as a democratic space organized in terms of the movement's values. Solidarity with Occupy Wall Street Solidarity Political Committee Occupy Wall Street is just about the best thing that’s happened to America since the economic crisis first broke. Occupation is spreading. We’re standing up and fighting back. And we’re showing that another way of living together is possible. We’re a movement of the underdogs. We embrace the unemployed, the homeless, the ex-offenders, the down-and-out and the downtrodden. We welcome those who are discriminated against, those who are outcast. That’s what democracy is all about. And we’re building an independent movement fighting for democracy. Inside The “99%” * In July, the official unemployment rate was 8.2% for whites— but 16.8% for Blacks and 11.3% for Latinos * In 2009, the median household net worth was $113,149 for whites—and $5,677 for Blacks, and $6,325 for Latinos * In 2009, 15% of white households had zero or negative wealth—but so did 35% of Black households and 31% of Latino households * Black men make up less than 10% of the U.S. population—but make up 35.4% of the overall prison population We have all sorts of folks here, people from every race, from all religions, men and women, LGBT and straight, people of all ages coming together to build a powerful force to oppose the greed and corruption of Wall Street and Washington. We didn’t start yesterday. Earlier union and community protests and occupations like Bloombergville fell on deaf ears. Now we’re getting stronger every day. The whole world is watching: and the unions and social justice organizations of New York City have arrived. We invite everyone marching today to occupy or return when you can. We know that today the banks and corporations dominate America. We know that corporate CEOs and financial insiders collude with the Republicans and Democrats to determine the national agenda. Together they make the rules—and they make the profit. We pay the price. It’s time to stop it. We need a new distribution of wealth in this country. We need to provide jobs for all at living wages. We need free education and health care for all. And it can be done too. We need to start by ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, bringing all the troops home, and closing the hundreds of U.S. military bases around the world. Most importantly: we have to change the system. The Declaration of the Occupation of New York City adopted on September 30 indicts corporations as responsible for joblessness, homelessness, environmental destruction, and imperialism. The Declaration describes the damage done by the capitalist system in the US and the rest of the world. Wall Street is the nerve center of global capitalism. We are here staring the spider in the eye, but we know the problem is not the spider—it’s the web. Right now, we’re symbolically striking at the system’s heart here on Wall Street. In the days that come, we need to go on to build a movement that can transform this system into one based on true equality and democracy. Everyone in our country—and in the world for that matter—deserves a decent life. Standing in the way of that possibility are the financial institutions clustered here on Wall Street. Standing in the way is the web: capitalism. We need to strengthen our movement. The power of this movement is not just the individuals participating, but ties to our families and friends, to our communities and workplaces, to our unions, schools, and religious congregations. We need to bring these groups together as a social force and a political movement based on solidarity between the working class and oppressed. Not their politics. Not the bankers or bosses. Not Democrats and Republicans. Our politics are the politics of people who recognize that something has to change. Our movement is made up of youth without jobs who can’t afford school. It has to be a movement of working people who’ve lost their jobs, families who’ve lost their homes, and of people of color who never fully shared in opportunity. We are working together to build the power to create a new democratic system and bring justice to our society. How amazing and exciting that we’re here. We have to learn from the Egyptians in Tahrir Square, the indignados in the plazas of Spain, and the workers of Wisconsin. Occupy Wall Street has led to Occupy movements throughout the country. We’re part of an international movement for democracy and social justice around the world. We’re part of a new movement that can change history and the direction the world’s headed. A movement that can save the planet and its people by bringing about a different system. 5 October 2011 First published on the Solidarity website More Observations from Occupy Wall St Stephanie Luce It was a strange feeling to be in Zuccotti Park (once called Liberty Plaza Park), right next to Ground Zero. I was with thousands of people listening to speeches through the “people’s microphone.” The crowd looked so similar to those of the late 1990s/early 2000s “anti-globalization” movement - and we used that method for communicating then too. Things had gone poorly in April 2000, when most of the big unions decided to lobby at the Capitol against Permanent Normal Trade Relation (PNTR) status for China, while on the other end of the mall thousands of young people were blocking streets attempting to stop the IMF and World Bank meeting. Despite some common ground built in Seattle, we were a ways off from a real alliance between the labor movement and the other burgeoning environmental, student, anti-imperialist movements It seemed like things were beginning to change, however. In the summer of 2001 the AFL-CIO put someone on staff for several months to build labor participation for the coming IMF/World Bank meetings to take place that fall. People were mobilizing around the country, and the world, to build a common movement against neoliberalism and “structural adjustment.” The weekend of September 6-9, 2001, over 1000 labor and community activists convened in Cleveland for the Jobs with Justice conference. Spirits were high, and there was a real sense that the world was about to change. Little did we know how it would change. Only two days later were the 9/11 attacks. And suddenly the movement we had been building collapsed. It has taken ten years, but the scene at Occupy Wall Street (OWS) seems to suggest we’ve rebuilt what we had been building then. OWS was started by a group of mostly young people, seemingly unfocused, seemingly mostly white, seemingly not very strategic. But whatever they were they created a space that was flexible enough to allow others in. That hasn’t happened smoothly in all cases, and certainly is not yet enough, but anyone who goes to Zuccotti Park seems to feel the same thing. A sense of exhilaration at the audacity, the feeling of freedom and possibility. TWU Local 100 was the first union to endorse Occupy Wall Street. Individual members had already been participating in events at Zuccotti Park, but the unions were absent. Local 100 took a bold move to come out early in support of a movement that was still hardly covered by the media, and mostly denounced as a fringe circus. Once Local 100 endorsed, the flood gates opened and unions and community groups jumped on board. Many have endorsed a large community/labor march in New York. Others not based in New York have expressed general support for the Occupation (such as the Steelworkers). Quickly the Beyond May12 coalition helped pull together a labor/community march in support of the Occupation, and with less than a week’s notice, got most of the city’s largest unions on board, and pulled off one of the largest marches we’ve seen in the city for some time. Where did this come from? Some writers have suggested that OWS sprang from nowhere, completely spontaneously. That is somewhat true, but misleading. As I said, the movement is in some ways picking up from where we left off before 9/11. But in other ways, this is just one moment in a series of fightbacks that has been going on for awhile, particularly since the economic recession hit. You wouldn’t know it from mainstream media sources, but there have been an incredible number of protests over the past few years, involving large numbers of people. Of course there was Wisconsin, but there have also been large scale strikes (e.g., Verizon, nurses, longshore), hunger strikes and prison organizing (e.g. Pelican Bay, Georgia), environmental justice protests (e.g Tar Sands), foreclosure fightbacks, bank protests (New Bottom Line), economic justice rallies (One Nation), immigrant rights campaigns (the DREAM Act) the US Social Forum, which had 15,000 people plus numerous large scale marches, and more. Then there are the international protests - the Arab Spring, Greece, Portugal, Spain, China, London, South Africa, Benin, Brazil, and more. While the US is often US-focused there is no doubt that protests elsewhere have inspired and motivated many here. The idea that resistance is possible, and that fightbacks can win, helps put more people into motion. As social movement scholars show, we don’t know which of these protests will be the one to spark a larger movement. We try and try, and lose a lot, until one time it sticks. Occupy Wall Street is clearly building off the momentum of resistance seen around the country and world over the last few years, and tapping into the memory of where we were ten years ago. We are all Troy Davis; We are all Sean Bell Occupy Wall Street started out small and got little attention. It is possible it would have fizzled out as people went home. But four days into the occupation, Troy Davis was executed by the state of Georgia. This provoked outrage across the country, including among many at OWS, who joined in with others out to protest the execution. This brought new energy, as many people were feeling outraged and disempowered by a racist legal system. The connection was strong in New York, where protestors have long pushed around by the police. Anyone who has been to a march in this city knows that at least since 9/11, but perhaps since Seattle, the NYPD has used aggressive tactics to keep control over protests. Barricades are used to channel people into narrow spaces, separating marchers from supporters, and often breaking marches into pieces. I’ve been in that situation a lot. In 2002 we were protesting the World Economic Forum meeting in New York. The police continuously stepped into the line of the march with barricades, breaking us into pieces, and pushing us around. At one point they barricaded us from both ends of a block and began pushing. I was in the front, and suddenly a line of NYPD were shoving barricades into my stomach. When I tried to attend the massive anti-war protest on the eve of the Iraq War, I and thousands of others never made it to the actual march because police would not let us enter the street where the march took place. They had cordoned off major parts of the city, giving protestors confusing and sometimes incorrect information about how to enter. These tactics are alienating and disempowering, and seem a complete violation of our Constitutional rights, but of course are nothing in comparison to the daily harassment of people of color in this city. That ranges from the infamous “stop and frisk” to violent arrests and sometimes death. There are already groups fighting police brutality in New York, and in the early days of OWS and after Troy Davis was executed, some OWS protestors marched through streets chanting, “We are all Sean Bell, NYPD go to hell.” Saturday, September 24, the forces merged in a spontaneous march, and this is when the NYPD took action, beating and arresting people. When the news broke about the police attacks on peaceful protestors, a lot more people started paying attention to OWS. A large spark that moved the OWS from a small protest-as-usual into this larger phenomenon was this intersection. The Troy Davis execution made clear to many of us just how powerless we are. But what are the demands? Many on the left have expressed frustration at the lack of concrete demands coming out of OWS. This surprises me a bit, because it is one of the things I find so liberating. Often, when we make demands in our struggles they immediately limit us to the short-term and winnable. Our demands certainly tend toward the least common-denominator and the pragmatic. I understand why that is the case: it builds a broader base and it puts in place something we might win. But it limits us. Some people point out that the uprising in Egypt started with a concrete demand. That is true. But the demand that “Mubarak must go” is so much less than the demand “Change the system.” I’m not suggesting that “Mubarak must go” was the wrong demand for the time and place, and the victory of this was incredible. But here we have a moment to dream big. Even in Wisconsin, much of the demand got framed as “reasonable.” We’ll agree to your concessions if you let us maintain collective bargaining. This “message” polled well, but again, it limited our imagination. The effects of capitalism, racism, patriarchy, and imperialism go wide and deep. They interfere with just about every aspect of our lives: the way we work, the way the economy runs, how families are structured, citizenship and rights, police brutality, environmental destruction, the human life span, what we eat. Occupy Wall Street has left open a space for us all to feel we are a part of the movement. If the demands were already set many of us might feel outside - that there wasn’t a place for us, that we couldn’t dream about our issue, that we had to stay “on message.” Our fightbacks are so often balkanized and diffuse. Occupy Wall Street feels exciting in part because it doesn’t force us to choose, to prioritize. We have a few weeks when we don’t have to reduce our dreams to a slogan on a flyer. Where else do we get to chant “We are all Sean Bell,” “Tax the rich,” “End foreclosure,” “Democracy now!” and “We got sold out, Banks got bailed out” all in the same afternoon? In the meantime, we push the organizations we belong to clarify and step up their demands. Just about all of them tie into the spirit of OWS, and there is no reason why we can’t continue to push in those arenas where we all work on a regular basis. OWS allows us to be more bold and militant in our demands that we are already working on, whether that is student loan forgiveness, a millionaire’s tax, single payer health care, ending the wars, ending the death penality, expanding immigrant rights and protecting the rights of workers to organize. True: we don’t have real forces pushing for greater change: public ownership and democratic accountability of the Federal Reserve; federal jobs programs to hire more teachers and health care workers; repeal of NAFTA and other trade agreements; and serious reforms to the political system. We need those. Hopefully Occupy Wall Street will finally create some political space to grow the organizations required to build the real alternatives. 7 October 2011 First published on the Solidarity website.