Understanding OWS: the meta-thread

[bks]

Beyond "very exciting", this thread asks: how do you understand OWS?

Obviously what OWS is in large part what OWS becomes, I get that, but I'm interested in what people think are the features of the thing that make it different from other mass actions [failed mass actions in particular] to move society in one direction or another. I also get that those features could be things that will evolve or change, which would mean that the features are merely manifestations of deeper, core features of the thing that allows for evolution, etc.

Just as obviously, the remarks I'll make about OWS don't refer to every person that's part of the OWS action. I'd rather refer to the 'spirit' of the thing [and so it therefore makes sense to refer to OWS as an 'it' or an 'organism' rather than a 'they'] .Of course others may see this all differently, but that's why I'm wanting to start this.

A lot of this may be rehash and synthesis of stuff discussed elsewhere [I haven't read through all of the other thread], but I thought it would be useful to have this meta-discussion in one place.

Some opening remarks:

ON THE MEDIA RESPONSE: Big media wants to frame OWS for its viewers. That's what media does.

And so we get the framings. MSNBC framing, Fox News framing. Network framing.

What I find most interesting about OWS is its unwillingness, its failure to cooperate with, the media effort to frame OWS in ANY way. All protest groups want to resist being framed, but OWS's strategy to resist framing seems to be to be completely uncooperative with the media process of framing. Reminiscent of what Baudrillard might call "object resistance" {I say 'might' because who the fuck knows exactly what are meant be some of those sentences?]. The media want to position OWS and other protest groups as "subjects", which must implicitly answer "the question": "WHAT DO YOU WANT?" OWS seems not to want to answer that, which is worth exploring further. Object resistance refuses that attempt at positioning as subject as a strategy [IIRC].

That takes us to another point.

ON THE REFUSAL TO DEMAND: OWS seems to understands that if you make a set of demands, you signal a willingness to enter into a kind of discourse that OWS seems not to want to enter into. If you say what your demands are, that's the first step in not having them met, of course. 'You asked for this, we'll negotiate, you'll get less than that or seem unreasonable."

By NOT asking, OWS seems to be saying that it understands that they cannot win by "making demands". By "not making demands" they show an principled unwillingness to accept the legitimacy of the 'protestors complain, the powerful listen, reforms are considered and either made or not made' frame.

SO OWS says, "no". We reject the this framing, because we see the operation of power in this society as fundamentally illegitimate. Not necessarily that any exercise of state power is illegitimate [though there may be many within OWS with that point of view], but that power as it is expressed in this set of circumstances is fundamentally illegitimate. And further: any appeals to that fundamentally illegitimate power to fix itself or to even make structural, deep reforms would be to legitimate that power in a fashion OWS fundamentally does not want to do.

. . .more later as I think about it some more. Thoughts?

[American Dream]

The Fantastic Success of Occupy Wall Street

October 19, 2011

By Immanuel Wallerstein
Source: www.Iwallerstein.com


The Occupy Wall Street movement – for now it is a movement – is the most important political happening in the United States since the uprisings in 1968, whose direct descendant or continuation it is.

Why it started in the United States when it did – and not three days, three months, three years earlier or later – we’ll never know for sure. The conditions were there: acutely increasing economic pain not only for the truly poverty-stricken but for an ever-growing segment of the working poor (otherwise known as the “middle class”); incredible exaggeration (exploitation, greed) of the wealthiest 1% of the U.S. population (“Wall Street”); the example of angry upsurges around the world (the “Arab spring,” the Spanish indignados, the Chilean students, the Wisconsin trade unions, and a long list of others). It doesn’t really matter what the spark was that ignited the fire. It started.

In Stage one – the first few days – the movement was a handful of audacious, mostly young, persons who were trying to demonstrate. The press ignored them totally. Then some stupid police captains thought that a bit of brutality would end the demonstrations. They were caught on film and the film went viral on YouTube.

That brought us to Stage two – publicity. The press could no longer ignore the demonstrators entirely. So the press tried condescension. What did these foolish, ignorant youth (and a few elderly women) know about the economy? Did they have any positive program? Were they “disciplined”? The demonstrations, we were told, would soon fizzle. What the press and the powers that be didn’t count on (they never seem to learn) is that the theme of the protest resonated widely and quickly caught on. In city after city, similar “occupations” began. Unemployed 50-year-olds started to join in. So did celebrities. So did trade-unions, including none less than the president of the AFL-CIO. The press outside the United States now began to follow the events. Asked what they wanted, the demonstrators replied “justice.” This began to seem like a meaningful answer to more and more people.

This brought us to Stage three – legitimacy. Academics of a certain repute began to suggest that the attack on “Wall Street” had some justification. All of a sudden, the main voice of centrist respectability, The New York Times, ran an editorial on October 8 in which they said that the protestors did indeed have “a clear message and specific policy prescriptions” and that the movement was “more than a youth uprising.” The Times went on: “Extreme inequality is the hallmark of a dysfunctional economy, dominated by a financial sector that is driven as much by speculation, gouging and government backing as by productive investment.” Strong language for the Times. And then the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee started circulating a petition asking party supporters to declare “I stand with the Occupy Wall Street protests.”

The movement had become respectable. And with respectability came danger – Stage four. A major protest movement that has caught on usually faces two major threats. One is the organization of a significant right-wing counterdemonstration in the streets. Eric Cantor, the hardline (and quite astute) Republican congressional leader, has already called for that in effect. These counterdemonstrations can be quite ferocious. The Occupy Wall Street movement needs to be prepared for this and think through how it intends to handle or contain it.

But the second and bigger threat comes from the very success of the movement. As it attracts more support, it increases the diversity of views among the active protestors. The problem here is, as it always is, how to avoid the Scylla of being a tight cult that would lose because it is too narrowly based, and the Charybdis of no longer having a political coherence because it is too broad. There is no simple formula of how to manage avoiding going to either extreme. It is difficult.

As to the future, it could be that the movement goes from strength to strength. It might be able to do two things: force short-term restructuring of what the government will actually do to minimize the pain that people are obviously feeling acutely; and bring about long-term transformation of how large segments of the American population think about the realities of the structural crisis of capitalism and the major geopolitical transformations that are occurring because we are now living in a multipolar world.

Even if the Occupy Wall Street movement were to begin to peter out because of exhaustion or repression, it has already succeeded and will leave a lasting legacy, just as the uprisings of 1968 did. The United States will have changed, and in a positive direction. As the saying goes, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” A new and better world-system, a new and better United States, is a task that requires repeated effort by repeated generations. But another world is indeed possible (albeit not inevitable). And we can make a difference. Occupy Wall Street is making a difference, a big difference.

From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
URL: http://www.zcommunications.org/the-fant ... allerstein

[Bruce Dazzling]

OWS is the alchemic crucible, and we are the base metal.

Just like alchemy, nobody seems to know how the fuck this OWS works, or even if it's going to work at all, but any attempt at such an earth-shattering process of change requires unprecedented faith, no?

I believe that it will work, and by work, I mean that it will fundamentally change the way the great majority of people on this planet view their relationship to one another, and that they will in turn band together in order to demand a better existence for all.

I've seen so many people walk past the crucible (Zuccotti Park) and get sucked into life-altering conversations. It's happening multiple times every single day, and then those people have life-altering conversations with others, and so on, and so on.

Often times the conversations are about very gauzy topics such as the unsustainability of infinite growth economies, and sometimes they're about very particular issues such as unprosecuted fraud, six wars all based on lies, or the burgeoning police state, but the point is that the conversations are happening where only 6 weeks ago they were not.

Right now, OWS isn't about specific changes. Instead, it's about creating a bridge to the moment where we're all ready to demand specific changes.

[seemslikeadream]

Just like the earthquake in Japan, OWS is happening almost to the day on the Mayan Calandar...we are moving very fast into a whole new world...this is only the very beginning... it is exciting



I wonder what the banksters will be up to when they finally realize game's over...


AP Photo 17 minutes ago

A cyclist passes by a burning kiosk near the Finance Ministry during clashes in Athens on Wednesday Oct. 19, 2011. A two-day general strike that unions vow will be the largest in years grounded flights, disrupted public transport and shut down everything from shops to schools in Greece on Wednesday, as protesters converged in central Athens. All sectors, from dentists, state hospital doctors and lawyers to shop owners, tax office workers, pharmacists, teachers and dock workers walked off the job ahead of a Parliamentary vote Thursday on new austerity measures.

May 9-11, 2009
As the established international monetary system collapses in the sixth night things can go essentially in either of two directions. It will go either in the direction of a grass roots organization of a new economy without banks, interests or growth serving to create a world without dominance. A collapse of the international monetary system, especially if it is linked to a moratorium of all debts, holds the potential of paving the way to a world that is truly egalitarian, based on willful cooperation and where greed will not destroy the world. This of course precludes the existence of a banking and monetary system organized in the interest of a minority and driven by the craving for abstract values rather than human needs.

TOKYO, March 9 (Reuters)Strong quake hits N. Japan, tsunami warning issued

[brainpanhandler]

To compare with the mass actions in Wisconsin this past spring I would say that the one obvious difference between OWS and Wisconsin's upheaval is that the Wisconsin protests were spurred by a particular political event; namely, the soon to be ex-governor Walker's rescinding of the state workers' right to collective bargaining. That one act was not a shot across the bow of labor, but a full on frontal assault. It was obvious and clear and brought the class struggle into sharp focus for people even of they didn't think of it as a class struggle. The state of Wisconsin is one of the largest employers in the state and so the diversity of people negatively effected created an instant response which drew significant numbers of people from diverse backgrounds to the protests. Let's face it... numbers count. Feet on the street count.

By way of contrast OWS was less of a response to a particular precipitating event. OWS is not as much of a reaction as it is a general recognition that the current system is rotten and corrupt and inimicable to freedom and justice and even life itself.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both.

Interestingly the visible, feet on the street response in Madison to OWS has been modest by comparison to other cities and by comparison to the protests this past spring. I think this is largely attributable to the fact that many of us are engaged in the recall of Walker. There's only so much time in the day. Getting rid of Walker will be an enormous accomplishment and it cannot fail. We cannot fail in that. Anything which detracts from that effort has to get second billing. And therein lies one or two of the disadvantages of the circumstances which created the Wisconsin protests. It's a zero sum game within the existing political bounds which has everything hanging on one outcome. OWS by comparison has no such make or break goals and demands. It's less focused but more likely lasting as a result. I mean let's suppose the reviled governor of Wisconsin is successfully ousted. What then? Problem solved and many go home feeling justice has been won and the former status quo reestablished? Or alternatively Walker somehow retains power and bitter cynicism sets in and people turn their backs on activism? Neither is a desired outcome.

OWS is not bounded by such limitations, not least of which is because it's goals, amorphous and multivaried as they are, are nothing less than the overthrow and complete reformation of the way we govern ourselves and really, in the end the goal is to save the planet and ourselves from ourselves. Once that is accomplished... a brave new world will open up and the goals of mankind become what they ought to be, creation. We are creators.

Which makes me think of Marx as Marx defined our "essence" in the philosophical manuscripts as creators. And that is what defines us.



Two Months of Red Splendor:
The Paris Commune and Marx' Theory of Revolution
By Paul Dorn


Over the course of his active life, Karl Marx' thinking about the revolutionary process naturally evolved and developed. His work must therefore be considered in its entirety to adequately understand his perceptions. It would be inaccurate to characterize Marx' analysis of the revolutionary process strictly on the basis of his early writing - such works as The German Ideology (1845-46) and the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844). A better understanding requires examining how the theoretical premises suggested by these introductory works evolved when tested in revolutionary practice. As a scientific thinker, Marx understood that the ultimate test of any theory is practice. The location for testing his ideas regarding class struggle - his laboratory - was the labor movement. How did the experiences of the two great revolutionary periods in Marx' life - the revolutions of 1848-49 and the Paris Commune of 1871 - change his thinking?

The two crucial texts to understanding Marx's thinking about revolution are The Communist Manifesto and The Civil War in France. Of these, The Civil War in France is perhaps more important since it represents a mature statement of Marx' revolutionary theory. Written in the period prior to the great revolutions of 1848-49, The Communist Manifesto is primarily a theoretical anticipation - quite accurately expressed - of future revolutionary developments based upon historical research. However, The Civil War in France was written after the class struggle developed to the point that it introduced a new institution: the commune. No astute theoretician - neither utopian dreamer nor even a great materialist thinker like Marx - had imagined the commune. In fact, this new state form - the world's first workers' government - developed in spite of the influence of Blanquist conspiratorial theories and Proudhonist anti-statist anarchist ideas. The Paris Commune developed spontaneously from the process of class struggle: the need for a new political form arose and the commune was created to address it.

In their 1872 introduction to The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels acknowledged the important influence of the Paris Commune on their thinking:

In view of the gigantic strides of Modern Industry since 1848, and of the accompanying improved and extended organization of the working class, in view of the practical experience gained, first in the February Revolution, and then, still more, in the Paris Commune, where the proletariat for the first time held political power for two whole months, this programme has in some details been antiquated. One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that "the working class cannot simply lay hold of ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes." (See The Civil War in France: Address of the General Council of the International Working Men's Association, 1871, where this point is further developed.)[1]

In addition, Engels would later cite the Paris Commune as an example of the dictatorship of the proletariat:

Of late, the Social-Democratic philistine has once more been filled with wholesome terror at the words: Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. [2]

Marx once wrote that among his most important contributions was his identification of "the dictatorship of the proletariat" - the working class organized as the ruling class - as the key to the transition to socialism. [3] Should it be any surprise that Marx was tremendously inspired by the Paris Commune? Calling it "a new point of departure of world-historic importance," Marx recognized that the commune represented the first concrete manifestation of the dictatorship of the proletariat. [4] The experience of the Paris Commune provided practical answers to the theoretical questions only hinted at in The Communist Manifesto. What would a workers' government look like? How would it use state power to further the development of socialism? How would other classes respond to this worker's state? Why had previous revolutions failed?

The Paris Commune is the key to understanding Karl Marx' theory of revolution.


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Any analysis of the revolutionary theory of Karl Marx should begin with the thinker himself. A materialist approach, understanding that ideas and theories don't just pop out of thin air, would start with biographical details - with the historical context and the social movements effecting the thinker. Examining these factors informs our understanding of theories and gives a truer sense of their importance. The best evidence of a person's ideas may not necessarily be what they put down on paper. Actions often provide a better gauge than rhetoric of the importance a person attaches to a particular set of ideas: How did that person act to realize their conceptions?

In examining Marx' life, we see that he was a devoted husband and father; an admirer of Shakespeare and classical Greek drama; a one-time romantic poet who was especially contemptuous of - among others - the superficial popular poet Martin Tupper [5] ; an impoverished radical journalist, chess player and social scientist. Above all else, however, Karl Marx was a revolutionary. No ivory-tower intellectual, working in an isolated and sterile environment proposing abstract theorems of no real consequence, Marx was an active participant in building the revolutionary movement. Marx was a revolutionary.

Marx was involved in the working-class movement across the entire continent of Europe. He was the editor of the Left Hegelian opposition newspaper Rheinische Zeitung; and for 11 tumultuous months in 1848-49 he edited the revived Neue Rheinische Zeitung. He was a contributor to numerous journals. A leading member of the Communist League, Marx was the primary author of its legendary manifesto. He corresponded frequently with working class activists in Europe, Russia and the United States, exchanging ideas and arguing vociferously about tactics and strategies. Marx was often called upon to conduct workshops, classes and training sessions for workers in Belgium, France and England. He addressed rallies and meetings of working class organizations. He helped to form the International Working Men's Association, served on its General Council and wrote many of its important tracts. From his exile in England he carefully observed the development of workers' parties in Europe, and intervened to correct their activities, such as his critique of the Gotha program of the German party. In short, Marx was a revolutionary activist. [6]

At the same time, Marx was also committed to theoretical analysis. At all times Marx demonstrated a combination of theory and practice, with more stress on one side or the other as events demanded. In the revolutionary upsurge prior to the events of 1848, the youthful Marx was actively involved in creating links among workers across Europe through the Communist League. During this period he continued his theoretical explorations, as demonstrated by writings such as The Poverty of Philosophy, Wage Labour and Capital and The Holy Family. After the failure of the revolutions of 1848-49, Marx recognized - and was one of few among the Communist League to admit so - that the prospect of immediate revolution was off the agenda. He turned to more intensive research, spending hours in the British Museum attempting to gain a greater understanding of the capitalist system. Yet even while pursuing this theoretical work - which would lead, among other things, to the first volume of Capital - Marx continued to correspond with other revolutionaries, address labor meetings and write polemical articles.

After more than a decade of emphasizing theoretical work, Marx was inspired by events in Italy, Poland and elsewhere in Europe, especially the response of the English proletariat to the US Civil War. Seeing the possibility of a renewed working class movement, Marx was instrumental in the 1864 founding of the International Working Men's Association (IWMA), an activist grouping of revolutionaries from Europe and North America. The period of Marx' activity with the IWMA was perhaps the most combative, prolific and eventful of his life. The IWMA had some, though limited and inconsistent, influence in the European workers' movement. The Paris Commune of 1871 marked the high point for the IWMA, with Marx vigorously defending the communards on behalf of the organization.

Marx' revived political activism meant that much of his most important theoretical work - including Theories of Surplus Value, The Grundrisse and the additional planned five volumes of Capital - was suspended. It was left to Engels and others to prepare Marx' last works for publication after his death in 1883. Clearly, when faced with a choice between revolutionary activism or theoretical deliberations, Marx chose the former. Above all else, Marx was a revolutionary.



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What lessons, then, did Marx the revolutionary draw from the experience of the Paris Commune?

The Paris Commune represented a new form of government, never before seen or imagined. In its brief existence, the commune was never avowedly socialist. Yet Marx suggested that events would force it to act in a socialist manner.

The multiplicity of interpretation to which the Commune has been subjected, and the multiplicity of interests which construed it in their favour, show that it was a thoroughly expansive political form, while all previous forms of government had been emphatically repressive. Its true secret was this: It was essentially a working class government, the produce of the struggle of the producing against the appropriating class, the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economical emancipation of labour.

Except on this last condition, the Communal Constitution would have been an impossibility and a delusion. The political rule of the producer cannot co-exist with the perpetuation of his social slavery. The Commune was therefore to serve as a lever for uprooting the economical foundation upon which rests the existence of classes, and therefore of class rule. With labor emancipated, every man becomes a working man, and productive labor ceases to be a class attribute. [7]

With its expansive political form, the Paris Commune indicated how a workers' government could negate the political functionaries and the bureaucratic layers that had blocked revolutionary efforts in the past:

The Commune was formed of the municipal councilors, chosen by universal suffrage in the various wards of the town, responsible and revocable at short terms. The majority of its members were naturally working men, or acknowledged representatives of the working class. The Commune was to be a working, not a parliamentary body, executive and legislative at the same time. Instead of continuing to be the agent of the Central Government, the police was at once stripped of its political attributes, and turned into the responsible, and at all times revocable, agent of the Commune. So were the officials of all other branches of the administration. From the members of the Commune downwards, the public service had to be done at workman's wage. The vested interests and the representation allowances of the high dignitaries of state disappeared along with the high dignitaries themselves. Public functions ceased to be the private property of the tools of the Central Government. Not only municipal administration, but the whole initiative hitherto exercised by the state was laid into the hands of the Commune. [8]

Using state power, the working class through the commune would uproot the means by which the bourgeoisie had maintained its dictatorship: repression and ideology.

The first decree of the Commune, therefore, was the suppression of the standing army, and the substitution for it of the armed people.

Having once got rid of the standing army and the police - the physical force elements of the old government - the Commune was anxious to break the spiritual force of repression, the "parson-power", by the disestablishment and disendowment of all churches as proprietary bodies. The priests were sent back to the recesses of private life, there to feed upon the alms of the faithful in imitation of their predecessors, the apostles. The whole of the educational institutions were opened to the people gratuitously, and at the same time cleared of all interference of church and state. Thus, not only was education made accessible to all, but science itself freed from the fetters which class prejudice and governmental force had imposed upon it. [9]

In a country in which the majority of citizens were peasants, how would a proletarian government win the support of rural residents? How would it gain the support of the other urban classes, such as the sizable middle class (petit bourgeois) of shopkeepers, professionals, tradesmen, etc.? The Paris Commune took several steps to win broader support and protect itself. Perhaps most attractive was the commune itself; the most democratic type of government ever seen.

The Paris Commune was, of course, to serve as a model to all the great industrial centres of France. The communal regime once established in Paris and the secondary centres, the old centralized government would in the provinces, too, have to give way to the self-government of the producers.

In a rough sketch of national organization, which the Commune had no time to develop, it states clearly that the Commune was to be the political form of even the smallest country hamlet, and that in the rural districts the standing army was to be replaced by a national militia, with an extremely short term of service. The rural communities of every district were to administer their common affairs by an assembly of delegates in the central town, and these district assemblies were again to send deputies to the National Delegation in Paris, each delegate to be at any time revocable and bound by the mandat imperatif (formal instructions) of his constituents. The few but important functions which would still remain for a central government were not to be suppressed, as has been intentionally misstated, but were to be discharged by Communal and thereafter responsible agents. [10]

The highly democratic nature of the commune form of government would make it extremely efficient at performing necessary social tasks. The working class would run the "state," rather than the reverse. Without the need to repress the majority in the interests of a minority, the "state" would assume a different character, have greater legitimacy in the public perception. The commune would win middle class support by providing "good government."

The Communal Constitution would have restored to the social body all the forces hitherto absorbed by the state parasite feeding upon, and clogging the free movement of, society. By this one act, it would have initiated the regeneration of France. [11]

The Commune would have delivered the peasant of the blood tax - would have given him a cheap government - transformed his present blood-suckers, the notary, advocate, executor, and other judicial vampires, into salaried communal agents, elected by, and responsible to, himself. It would have freed him of the tyranny of the garde champetre, the gendarme, and the prefect; would have put enlightenment by the schoolmaster in the place of stultification by the priest. And the French peasant is, above all, a man [sic] of reckoning. He would find it extremely reasonable that the pay of the priest, instead of being extorted by the tax-gatherer, should only depend upon the spontaneous action of the parishioners' religious instinct. Such were the great immediate boons which the rule of the Commune - and that rule alone - held out to the French peasantry. [12]

With parts of their city occupied by Prussian soldiers, the Paris Commune would need the support of the international working class to survive.

If the Commune was thus the true representative of all the healthy elements of French society, and therefore the truly national government, it was, at the same time, as a working men's [sic] government, as the bold champion of the emancipation of labor, emphatically international. Within sight of that Prussian army, that had annexed to Germany two French provinces, the Commune annexed to France the working people all over the world. [13]

The Commune admitted all foreigners to the honor of dying for an immortal cause. Between the foreign war lost by their treason, and the civil war fomented by their conspiracy with the foreign invader, the bourgeoisie had found the time to display their patriotism by organizing police hunts upon the Germans in France. The Commune made a German working man its Minister of Labor. Thiers, the bourgeoisie, the Second Empire, had continually deluded Poland by loud professions of sympathy, while in reality betraying her to, and doing the dirty work of, Russia. The Commune honored the heroic sons of Poland by placing them at the head of the defenders of Paris. And, to broadly mark the new era of history it was conscious of initiating, under the eyes of the conquering Prussians on one side, and the Bonapartist army, led by Bonapartist generals, on the other, the Commune pulled down that colossal symbol of martial glory, the Vendome Column. [14]

The Paris Commune also began to erode the traditional patriarchal structure of French society, allowing women greater social involvement. It was the activity of women that had launched the commune:

On March 18th, the soldiers were ordered by M. Thiers, the head of the reactionary government, to transport the cannon of Paris to Versailles. The milkmaids, who were on the streets before dawn, saw what was afoot and thwarted the treacherous plans of the reactionary government. They surrounded the soldiers and prevented them from carrying out Theirs' orders. Although the men had not yet come into the streets on this early morning, and although the women were not armed, they held their own. As in every real peoples' revolution, new strata of the population were awakened. This time it was the women who were to act first. When reveille was sounded, all of Paris was in the streets. Theirs' spies barely escaped with the information that it was impossible to inform on who the leaders of the uprising were, since the entire population was involved. [15]

On the first day of the Commune, 18 March, women played a crucial role in neutralizing the troops sent by Theirs to seize the cannons of the National Guard. At Montmartre General Lecomte gave the order to fire. At this the women spoke to the soldiers: "Will you fire upon us? On your brothers? Our husbands? Our children?" Faced with this unexpected intervention, the soldiers hesitated. A warrant officer stood in front of his company and shouted: "Mutiny!" Thereupon the 88th battalion fraternized with the crowd. The soldiers arrested their general. [16]

The commune introduced measures to better the lot of women:

The Commune also saw the first growing shoots of a new sexual morality and women's emancipation. Marriage came in for strong condemnation. The Commune decreed on 10 April a pension for widows and children of `all citizens killed defending the rights of the people', whether the children were legitimate or not. This in effect meant putting the free unions common among the working-class population of Paris on an equal footing with marriage. `This decree,' said Arnould afterwards and rather hopefully, `delivered a mortal blow to the religio-monarchical institution of marriage as we see it functioning in modern society.' [17]

In the defense of the Paris Commune during the bourgeoisie's final assault, women showed exceptional courage. They fought on the barricades alongside the men, and were particularly effective incendiaries. Marx exclaimed about these brave Communards:

The real women of Paris showed again at the surface - heroic, noble, and devoted, like the women of antiquity. Working, thinking fighting, bleeding Paris - almost forgetful, in its incubation of a new society, of the Cannibals at its gates - radiant in the enthusiasm of its historic initiative! [18]

These were some of the positive lessons drawn by Marx from the experience of the Paris Commune. The commune demonstrated many of the steps any workers' state would have to undertake in order to protect itself: the elimination of the police and army; the undermining of the bureaucracy; the appeal to other classes and the international working class; the activation of formerly marginalized sections of the populace such as women and national minorities. However, despite a heroic struggle, the Paris Commune was eventually crushed. While never hesitating to praise the positive impact the Paris Commune had on the international working class movement, Marx also drew lessons from the negative aspects.

The most important failure of the Paris Commune was its lack of relentless and decisive action against the bourgeoisie. The very magnanimity and humanity of the commune proved fatal. Only reluctantly did it use force, take hostages or keep the prisoners it captured. It had many opportunities to eliminate the threat posed by the weakened Versailles government of Thiers. The commune's hesitation allowed the bourgeoisie time to regroup, gather an army and arrange a deal with the Prussians. The commune's moderation left the way open for the vicious, vengeful retaliation the Versailles government inflicted on the workers of Paris. Marx suggested what the Communards should have done:

In their reluctance to continue the civil war opened by Theirs' burglarious attempt on Montmartre, the Central Committee [of the Paris Commune] made themselves, this time, guilty of a decisive mistake in not at once marching upon Versailles, then completely helpless, and thus putting an end to the conspiracies of Thiers and his Rurals. [19]

If they [the Communards] are defeated only their "good nature" will be to blame. They should have marched at once on Versailles, after first Vinoy and then the reactionary section of the Paris National Guard had themselves retreated. The right moment was missed because of conscientious scruples. They did not want to start the civil war, as if that mischievous abortion Thiers had not already started the civil war with his attempt to disarm Paris. [20]

Writing his stirring address to the IWMA mere days after the event, Marx overlooked another troublesome aspect of the Paris Commune. Alex Callinicos, a leading British Marxist, writes:

Marx did not recognize the second weakness of the Commune. It was elected by all the male citizens of Paris, divided into separate wards. The exclusion of women, which is especially striking in the light of the magnificent role played by the working women of Paris under the Commune, was a reflection of the influence of Jacobinism on the French labour movement. Moreover, the election of representatives on a territorial basis meant that the Commune was chosen by members of all classes. Just as in bourgeois elections, all citizens were treated as equal irrespective of their class position. Normally, this formal equality conceals the real inequalities of wealth and power which undermine bourgeois democracy. In Paris under the Commune, this method of election did not have such harmful effects because most of the bourgeoisie had fled the city. [21]


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The Paris Commune was the closest thing to a socialist revolution Marx witnessed. Why wasn't there a successful socialist revolution during Marx' life? The material conditions, the objective circumstances, were certainly favorable. Commenting on the Paris Commune with the same acuity he brought to so many political situations, Leon Trotsky wrote:

The proletariat grows and gathers strength together with the growth of capitalism. In this sense the development of capitalism is the development of the proletariat toward dictatorship. But the day and the hour when power goes over into the hands of the working class depends immediately not on the level of the productive forces, but on the relations of the class struggle, on the international situation, and finally, on a series of subjective factors: tradition, initiative, readiness for struggle.

In a country which is economically more backward, the proletariat can come to power sooner that in an advanced capitalist country. In 1871 it consciously "took into its own hands the direction of public affairs" in petty-bourgeois Paris - to be sure, only for two months, but it did not take power even for an hour in the large-scale capitalist centers of England and the United States. The idea that the proletarian dictatorship is somehow automatically dependent on the technical forces and means of the country represents a prejudice of an extremely simplified "economic" materialism. Such a viewpoint has nothing in common with Marxism. [22]

Perhaps the most important lesson of the Paris Commune was suggest by Marx and developed further by later revolutionaries such as Lenin, Luxembourg and Trotsky. Marx described the problem both in his criticism of the leadership of the commune and in the following:

In every revolution there intrude, at the side of its true agents, men of different stamp; some of them survivors of and devotees to past revolutions, without insight into the present movement, but preserving popular influence by their known honesty and courage, or by the sheer force of tradition; others mere brawlers who, by dint of repeating year after year the same set of stereotyped declarations against the government of the day, have sneaked into the reputation of revolutionists of the first water. After March 18, some such men did also turn up, and in some cases contrived to play pre-eminent parts. As far as their power went, they hampered the real action of the working class, exactly as men of that sort have hampered the full development of every previous revolution. They are an unavoidable evil: with time they are shaken off; but time was not allowed to the Commune. [23]

In short, the political immaturity of the working class prevented a successful revolution in the 19th century. The proletariat hadn't - and hasn't yet - created the political leadership needed for a successful worker's revolution. Creating such a political leadership was the project Marx pursued throughout his life, both as an activist and as a theoretician. Objective conditions frequently present revolutionary opportunities. Yet without political leadership that advocates socialism, that instills class consciousness, that understands the history of political struggle and the necessity for decisive action (including revolutionary terror) against the bourgeoisie, any revolutionary movement will fail to create socialism. [24] Historically the most important missing element of socialist revolution has been the subjective factor: the revolutionary socialist party. While it had some members in key positions of the Paris Commune, the International Working Men's Association was not yet the revolutionary party needed for a successful transition to socialism. It lacked the theoretical clarity, critical mass and organic connection to the working class necessary to lead events.

A revolutionary party cannot be created in the midst of civil war, armed occupation, social chaos, economic disruption. Long before a revolutionary situation arises, the party needs to develop its theory, test it in practice and gain credibility among the working class. When it begins to fight against the bosses, the working class looks for ideas to advance its struggle. Without a legitimate revolutionary working class party, these workers will often be tempted to follow the well-meaning, charlatan "[people] of a different stamp" Marx described above. However, if a revolutionary party has established itself in advance of the struggle, gaining sufficient size and the respect of workers, it can lead the fight to a successful conclusion: socialism.

Leon Trotsky elaborated on this lesson from the experience of the Paris Commune:


The proletariat of Paris did not have such a party. The bourgeois socialists with whom the Commune swarmed, raised their eyes to heaven, waited for a miracle or else a prophetic word, hesitated, and during that time the masses groped about and lost their heads because of the indecision of some and the fantasy of others. The result was that the revolution broke out in their midst, too late, and Paris was encircled. Six months elapsed before the proletariat had reestablished in its memory the lessons of past revolutions, of battles of yore, of the reiterated betrayals of democracy - and it seized power.

These six months proved to be an irreparable loss. If the centralized party of revolutionary action had been found at the head of the proletariat of France in September 1870, the whole history of France and with it the whole history of humanity would have taken another direction. [25]

Marx' theory of revolution was derived from this understanding. The demise of capitalism is inevitable, but there is no certainty as to when. Capitalism has been able to hobble along only because of the political immaturity of its future gravediggers. The one consistent feature of Marx' life, from the time before The Communist Manifesto until his death, was his attempt both theoretically and practically - as a person of thought and a person of action - to hasten the political development of the proletariat.

http://www.runmuki.com/paul/writing/marx.html

[seemslikeadream]

Leaked Memo: The Corporate Board Rooms Fear the Occupy Movement Occupying their Board Rooms Targeting Individual Executives

By Kevin Zeese - Posted on 19 October 2011

Below is a memorandum leaked to the Freedom Plaza occupation of Washignton, DC that comes from a corporate consultant and shows the fear they are developing of the occupy movement. The memorandum from Fay Feeney a member of the National Association of Corporate Directors describes how corporations should prepare to combat the Occupation Movement.

Corporations fear their leaders being held personally accountable for the actions of concentrated corporate interests. They especially fear their names, addresses being known and their board rooms being invaded by OccupyTheBoardroom.org.

Feeney suggests: "suggests that board members and corporate counsels prepare themselves for a bumpy ride by future-proofing their companies." Among the steps taken to protect themsevles is to use social networks to gather intelligence so "board chairs and CEOs should always remain one step ahead in protecting their boardroom."

These executives should be afraid. There is a legitimate anger at the unfairness of the economy. Where the 400 wealthiest Americans have wealth equal to 154 Americans, while paying an average of 17.4% in federal taxes. Many working Americans pay double that rate. The unfairness in the economy and economic insecurity of Americans is energizing this movement and people will want those who collapsed the economy for their personal and corporate profits to be held accountable.

Kevin Zeese



I’ve been watching the Occupy Wall Street for implications on the boardroom.
This weekend a site was launched called Occupy the Boardroom. I’m sending
you a recent article from Corporate Secretary Magazine that contains guidance
on this issue. I’ll be keeping an eye on this movement at www.riskforgood.com/blog.

Occupy Wall Street Moves to The Boardroom

Here’s what corporate counsels, board chairs and CEOs should know.

As the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protesters are hitting the streets worldwide,
another movement is quietly unfolding online: OccupyTheBoardroom.org (OTB).

The new coalition surfaced on Saturday with the intention of delivering the
messages of those who were hurt by the recession to the CEOs of top financial
institutions such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo. There are
currently over 200 CEOs listed on the website, including Lloyd Blankfein, chief
executive of Goldman Sachs, Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citigroup, and Mukesh
Ambani, a Bank of America board member.

‘The 1 percent have addresses. The 99 percent have messages,’ the website says.
The idea is the ‘1 percent’ reflects board members while the 99 percent are those
willing to have their voices heard. Users can access a list of CEOs and share their
stories regarding bankruptcy, job losses and unfair treatment. According to OTB
(which claims it has the contact information for all members listed), prizes will
be awarded to ‘the best, funniest and most revelatory interactions.’

Moreover, the website promises to ‘hand-deliver’ the stories to the executive
selected by a user. All messages, videos and images will be publicly viewable.

The coterie has already received close to 2,300 tweets and 5,000 ‘likes’ on Facebook.

‘The anger, frustration and collective voice is too large to ignore,’ says Fay Feeney,
a corporate board consultant who provides board chairs with advice on ways to
improve boardroom performance. ‘This [OTB website] is personal and targeted to
what you earn (along with power and influence) [and] banks are among the first
businesses to be called out, occupied and disrupted.’

As the OWS protests continues to morph into a massive movement, Feeney
suggests that board members and corporate counsels prepare themselves for a
bumpy ride by future-proofing their companies:

i. Get your crisis communication plan ready – protect your reputation and brand

ii. Get OWS on your risk map and board agenda. Evaluate the business opportunity
and assess the impact on your business strategy, competitors, clients, employees
and on your CEO and directors.

iii. Take action now! It is not too early to begin counteracting the impact this
movement could have on your business.

iv. Listen: By using social media, you can begin to gather business intelligence
specific to your business.

Protests can spin out of control, and with real time data processing from Twitter,
Facebook and other social networking sites, getting a message across is now faster
than ever. Governance professionals, board chairs and CEOs should always remain
one step ahead in protecting their boardroom, Feeney says.

[Wombaticus Rex]

My take: http://www.skilluminati.com/research/en ... py_itself/

I like General Assemblies, it's therapy. Going to another one tonight.

[Saurian Tail]

[undead]

All I can say is that hopefully the people involved will continue to try to do something to change the collective situation in the United States once they inevitably become tired of sleeping in the street. At this point in the United States most people are so stupefied, complacent, apathetic, and generally fucked up that they are simply incapable of doing what it takes to turn the country around. I'm not trying to beat up on people who live in the United States but that is the evident truth, because the situation continues to worsen and we are still only doing damage control. People are not channeling their collective energies because they are divided for various reasons, and this is a good way to get people to experience the power of collective action. It is encouraging that so many people are getting involved.

The best thing to come out of this would be the inspiration to continue to do something productive. It is impossible to keep track of everything that will result. Besides the inspiration, which is the necessary first step, hopefully people will remain focused on the problem of the monetary system and the people who control it. So the end goal should be to address that issue from every single possible angle, depending on who you are and what you can do. And with the extra inspiration hopefully people will find a way to do more, and not rest on their laurels.

So people will probably get tired but hopefully enough people will get involved so that this thing can be kept going in shifts indefinitely. '

Beyond that, an entirely new alternative economy and infrastructure needs to be created because there are many people in the current system who will not give up their ill gotten gains until the people pry them from their cold dead fingers, so to speak. I think most people involved in this do not completely understand the tall order of changing this system, as if the prosecution of the most recent set of exceptionally bold crooks will do anything to correct capitalism as a whole. They will find new ways to pull the same tricks, and if there isn't an alternative to being dependent on them, then this movement literally has no legs to stand on.

I hope this thing becomes permanent. That is the best outcome I can think of. If it does, it would be a extremely novel phenomenon, and we are literally incapable of imagining what would be possible.

[Saurian Tail]

This is Nassim Taleb, Professor of Risk Engineering at NYU and author of the books The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness. If you can get past the first minute or two on this video it is really good.

I've watched it a couple times and here are his basic points:

He starts off saying that you have to "preempt" OWS before it gets totally out of hand. But you have to hang in there and hear what constitutes preemption. He says that what needs to be done is to break up the bank cartel and that everyone would be happy except the bankers.

He goes on to say that talking about bank earnings and revenues is a waste of time and that the only useful information you get from bank earnings is compensation ... how much the bankers pay themselves. Why? Because banking today is basically a "compensation scheme"!

Taleb then says to let the investment bankers go play with their hedge funds ... but that regular banking should be a utility and executives should be compensated like a civil servant of equivalent rank. He concludes by talking about Hammurabi's Code as the basis for morality in situations like this.

This seems really helpful to have a semi-insider telling the real insiders that there is a real problem and that they better get their shit together before the shit really hits the fan.

[Searcher08]

Looks superb, ST - one of the things I think that happened was trading started making so much money that traders were given more and more leeway, resulting in more and more abstraction and less and less ethics - and further and further distancing from the real world - reaching a point where many of the players in investment banking see it purely as a wheeze to help them hoover as much money as quickly as possible as quickly as possible (before they burn out), with trading taking place over shorter and shorter cycle times - and iatrogenic effects happening more and more.....

[DrVolin]

bks, wicked post.

I find he comparisons to 68 interesting. 68 was an uprising of the self-interested upper middle class. It was largely a bunch of college kids demonstrating against the vietnam era draft. By the early 70s, the hated lottery had ended. Their primary object accomplished, the demonstrators went back to being upper middle class grown ups, nearly unchanged by their marching and sitting-in interlude. For a half decade moment, they used the rhetoric of the civil rights movement and the justificatory apparatus of the downtrodden, but their goals were narrow, and their perspective narrower. A few of the die hards became college professors and even now talk about the good old days of the struggle while denying its very essence in their everyday actions and decisions. Many of them are the senior leadership at which OWS is aimed, and the bulk are the critical old fogies who condemn OWS as a bunch of self-pitying, strung out entitlement junkies.

There is just the outside possibility that this round is a genuine uprising of the oppressed. At the very least, OWS is the overt grumbling of the disposessed by the shareholders who ship jobs overseas, the screwed-over by the bankers who use debt slavery like a milking cow, and the perpetually conned by the tame and deferentially complicit politicians who enjoy the perks of smiling in plastic frozen felicity while lying to the expectant and willing to believe masses on behalf of their wealthy masters. Most of all, it is the cry of those who finally stop denying that all three processes are related and that together they represent the looting of the once prosperous US for the increasing benefit of the increasingly few.

Awareness is dawning on the OWS protestors that the industrialists, bankers, and politicians have given up entirely on the idea of sustainable extortion, and have started openly pillaging for keeps rather than simply skiming off the top. The mass of cooperators apparently don't mind feeding discrete leeches, but they balk at being driven into certain misery by the repeated predatory defections of cynical and suddenly desperate super-rich. The parasite has suddenly mutated into a deadly virus.

What ties the OWS protestors and their oppressors is a new and organic fear of the immediate future. What separates them is the method they use to confront it.

[Nordic]

What ties the OWS protestors and their oppressors is a new and organic fear of the immediate future. What separates them is the method they use to confront it.

Well that's certainly food for thought.

I've always felt as if the oppressors were grabbing everything they could, the last few years, because they knew the ship was sinking. Kind of like a middle-class guy stocking up on guns, ammo, and canned goods, the Masters of the Universe were stocking up on billions of dollars because they knew the shit-hitting-the-fan moment was coming and that a wheelbarrow full of $100's might not be worth that much down the road, but it was better than the alternative.

I mean, it's like they were looting, deliberately, overtly, without any thought to the type of accountability that would come their way in a civilized, law-ruled society.

And OWS is a reaction to that.

It seems that yes, people tolerate a certain skimming off the top from those who are in a position to do so. LIke in the movie "The Grifters", where the gangsters confronts Anjelica Huston's character, and she admits that of course, she skims a bit off the top, everybody does, and it would be suspicious if she didn't.

But when it becomes out of control, overt, and completely unhinged, as it is now, people go "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait just a second".

I can't help but think that it's the Perfect Storm of so many things -- climate change, Peak Oil, the fiat currency crisis, pretty much everything, leading to a desperate free-for-all. And those of us who actually are rational, and who give a shit about the world, and care about the future, and those of us who haven't given up on humanity because we still have these things called SOULS, are trying to put the brakes on it.

We're brave enough to face the shit. They are not.

[vanlose kid]

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bks: one thing is noticed in the media attempts to understand is the question: "if they want to abolish capitalism, what do they want to replace it with?" that's as you say framing the "what are your demands?" discourse.

earlier on in barracuda's "political slogans" thread i posted some saying things like "why ask for anything...?" they weren't any good as slogans but they kind of expressed my hope that the OWS folks would not raise demands. the fact that they still refuse to, to me, is a positive sign.

and like brainpanhandler says, it seems OWS is not so much a movement as it is an awakening. because the asking/demanding/voting/lobbying for change game is played out and more and more people are realizing this. it's been a long time coming, and in a way it had to come. it goes with the "evolution" of the system to which it is opposed.

i disagree with DrVolin re: "What ties the OWS protestors and their oppressors is a new and organic fear of the immediate future. What separates them is the method they use to confront it." i think it's the other way around and that the no-demands/GAs, let's figure out how we get to where we want to be without having to ask for permission to go there attitude, is a sign that fear is not running OWS. it's fear that drives you to the voting booth, or the court to petition the king. once the fear is gone you start figuring out how to get things done and damn the king.

it's not about opting-out either. as i see it, the protests are not, at least they should not be, about asking Wall Street to change but spreading the message that we don't need Wall Street to begin with. why ask it to change when we can, collectively, make it obsolete.

the Arab Spring was all about people giving up fear and taking it to the streets. about people no longer speaking down the funnel of power and beginning to speak to each other. back then i said that Tahrir square was the solution. they had it all right there. asking for a change of government with interim this, a fall vote and constitution, electoral process etc. was to lose it. the egyptians are beginning to realize that, so too, it seems, are the tunisians.

the attempts at ridicule, of co-opting and framing etc. are the soft touches, the preliminary reactions on the part of power. things are bound to get worse in all kinds of ways. the "economic crisis" is far from over. as most of us know, it isn't even a crisis. and if the OWS is not placated or co-opted or bought with hope and change, then Wall Street will ramp up their reaction. it's built in. where things go from there? who knows?

it's not about nation states either (apropos the Marine who faced down cops, and i do like the fact that he stood up, but some of what he said...). it's about people. what we need is a rolling occupation across the globe. and if the talking spreads and continues to grow while we still can access each other through the net etc., then once they shut that down (and they will) and turn on the one channel for all, it's the seeds of samizdat talking that'll make the difference. this is the last call.

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[vanlose kid]

*

ps: jeff just posted this in the OWS thread.

viewtopic.php?p=430967#p430967

the Tea Partier's make demands. that's the difference.

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