Understanding OWS: the meta-thread

[crikkett]

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 protests are spreading the message that we don't need Wall Street to begin with. We can collectively make it obsolete.

Yes, I think that's it.

[psynapz]

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.

So what's your (everybody's) take on the constitutional amendment proposals?

MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan has the "get money out" proposal to create a separation of business and state on the level of the separation of church and state, to end the influence of money on government.

Current's Cenk Uygur has the "Wolf PAC" proposal to end corporate personhood.

I've also seen plenty of signs calling for the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall.

Are these all just petitioning the king, thereby implying undue legitimacy? Or is this something worth getting behind, in your (anybody's) opinion?

[Luposapien]

...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.

This is very much how I see it as well. People are starting to snap out of the trance, and realizing that many of these institutions that we've been programmed to think are indispensable to civilization are actually irrelevant and/or detrimental to society at large (though they are very efficient at creating a system of privilege for the few based on the labor of the majority). Like others upthread have pointed out, I think that most decent people are willing to tolerate a certain amount of inequality in a system, which I'm sure is a consequence of humanity's evolution on a planet that doesn't, naturally, portion everything out in equal shares to every individual. Most people are perfectly content to live out their lives, without worrying too much about their relative share of the pie. This may seem counter-intuitive in our current culture, as there are a number of mechanisms in place designed specifically to foster a sense of discontentment (content people don't buy lots of shit they don't need), but I really don't believe this is a natural state of being for most people. However, people, rightly so, are generally not willing to voluntarily sit back and watch a relatively small section of the population gorge themselves while they and their loved ones starve. Once a certain threshold has been crossed, "eating the rich" makes the jump from gallows humor to survival instinct.

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.

Yes! The true opting-out is epitomized by the current system in which most people have had an incredibly shallow view of politics (I know I certainly did until around 2000 or so, when I really started to question things), and civic life consists primarily in voting once every few years for "representatives" who make all the decisions for us, and cheering for one team or another. To me, the most exciting prospect of the OWS movement is the introduction of a horizontally organized system of direct democracy.

[vanlose kid]

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.

So what's your (everybody's) take on the constitutional amendment proposals?

MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan has the "get money out" proposal to create a separation of business and state on the level of the separation of church and state, to end the influence of money on government.

Current's Cenk Uygur has the "Wolf PAC" proposal to end corporate personhood.

I've also seen plenty of signs calling for the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall.

Are these all just petitioning the king, thereby implying undue legitimacy? Or is this something worth getting behind, in your (anybody's) opinion?

–– starting with Glass-Steagal, what problem is it meant to address and how does that problem arise, i.e. within what kind of system? and if, hypothetically, you abolish the system, what need would you have for Glass-Steagal? e.g. if usury and speculation is outlawed, most of these problem would not be problems.

–– how do you amend the constitution? who has to pass it into law? what is still in place? what has changed? and the same goes for laws meant to separate business and state.

-- why not write a new constitution and new laws? mint a new coin? build a new system? instead of trying to rectify the old one? define what counts as a person in the new constitution exclusive of corporations?

just questions. but why not?

*

[Simulist]

Hmm. For us — the 99% — "the system" seems to have died, really and truly.

Trying to revive that system, by amending the Constitution (or some other such fantasy that honestly never will happen), seems a little like granting a divorce to a corpse.

[Searcher08]

One of the things which Catherine Fitts from Solari found was that 'localisation' through providing goods and services to the community BY the community creates an OCEAN of wealth - money CIRCULATES MANY TIMES rather than is EXTRACTED (al la Walmart). We need to have local government which is visible, we need to MAP these flows. We need LOCAL banking which re-engineers our money flows INTO our communities, NOT into Wall Street / The City. We NEED to understand how LOCAL money works and RE-ENGINEER IT TO WHAT WE NEED.

[Hammer of Los]

How about we all create functioning self sustaining networks without the help of governments and corporations, whilst simultaneously and non confrontationally withdrawing our support as far as possible from those institutions.

Then we might have that silent, invisible, irresistible and peaceful revolution from below.

My God, I gotta go occupy somewhere.

I've been thinking up some slogans, not terribly exciting but to the point;

END THE WARS!
FUND PUBLIC SERVICES AND INFRASTRUCTURE!
PROTECT PUBLIC SECTOR JOBS!
MAKE BANKS AND CORPORATIONS ACCOUNTABLE!

But you know, I am not sure the PTB, the 1%, the Controllers, will change anything unless they have no choice. I don't think we can expect them to change the systems that they have developed over many years to control us, except in order to maintain their control.

I suspect the better course of action is to try and make them irrelevant, obsolete, whilst at the same time reducing insofar as possible their ability to hurt or affect our lives.

Can we do that?

Just thinkin' aloud, I hope you guys don't mind me rambling. You must be used to it by now.

[Nordic]

-- why not write a new constitution and new laws? mint a new coin? build a new system? instead of trying to rectify the old one? define what counts as a person in the new constitution exclusive of corporations?

just questions. but why not?

*

Well I think that's the goal of the movement, and that's why I'm so excited about it. This is EXACTLY what has been needed for a good long time now.

The system cannot be reformed from within. It's just not gonna happen.

A new system shall be formed, allowing the old one to wither and die.

And what's so cool is that somebody finally figured out that we have a Constitutionally guaranteed right to do exactly that.

http://www.businessinsider.com/occupy-w ... z1azMrTrTh

Here are the steps:

1. The Occupy Wall Street movement, through the local general assembly, should elect an executive committee comprised of 11 people or some other odd number of people that is manageable for meetings. Ideally this committee should represent each city in the U.S. that is being occupied.

2. The executive committee will then attend to local issues such as obtaining permits, paying for public sanitation and dealing with the media. More important, the executive committee shall plan and organize the election of the 870 delegates to a National General Assembly between now and July 4, 2012.

3. As stated in the 99% declaration, each of the 435 congressional districts will form an election committee to prepare ballots and invite citizens in those districts to run as delegates to a National General Assembly in Philadelphia beginning on July 4, 2012 and convening until October 2012.

4. Each of the 435 congressional districts will elect one man and one woman to attend the National General Assembly. The vote will be by direct democratic ballot regardless of voter registration status as long as the voter has reached the age of 18 and is a US citizen. This is not a sexist provision. Women are dramatically under-represented in politics even though they comprise more than 50% of the U.S. population.

5. The executive committee will act as a central point to solve problems, raise money to pay for the expenses of the election of the National General Assembly and make sure all 870 delegates are elected prior to the meeting on July 4th.

6. The executive committee would also arrange a venue in Philadelphia to accommodate the delegates attending the National General Assembly where the declaration of values, petition of grievances and platform would be proposed, debated, voted on and approved. The delegates would also elect a chair from their own ranks to run the meetings of the congress and break any tie votes. We will also need the expertise of a gifted parliamentarian to keep the meetings moving smoothly and efficiently.

7. The final declaration, platform and petition of grievances, after being voted upon by the 870 delegates to the National General Assembly would be formally presented by the 870 delegates to all three branches of government and all candidates running for federal public office in November 2012. Thus, the delegates would meet from July 4, 2012 to sometime in early to late October 2012.

8. The delegates to the National General Assembly would then vote on a time period, presently suggested as one year, to give the newly elected government in November an opportunity to redress the petition of grievances. This is our right as a People under the First Amendment.

9. If the government fails to redress the petition of grievances and drastically change the path this country is on, the delegates will demand the resignation and recall of all members of congress, the president and even the Supreme Court and call for new elections by, of and for the PEOPLE with 99 days of the resignation demand.

10. There will NEVER be any call for violence by the delegates even if the government refuses to redress the grievances and new elections are called for by the delegates. Nor will any delegate agree to take any money, job promise, or gifts from corporations, unions or any other private source. Any money donated or raised by the executive committee may only be used for publicizing the vote, the National General Assembly, and for travel expenses and accommodation at the National General Assembly ONLY. All books and records will be published openly online so that everyone may see how much money is raised and how the money is spent each month. There will be no money allowed to "purchase" delegate votes as we have in the current government. No corporate "sponsorship".


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/occupy-w ... z1bPJFiTPg

Here's a piece on getting a New National Convention:

Article V of the current US Constitution:


"The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate."

To summarize: a constitutional convention MUST be called by Congress when two-thirds of the state legislatures apply to (petition) the US Congress for a convention. Some read this to imply that the legislatures must sponsor a specific amendment. Since Article V says "shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments" (note the plural "Amendments"), I read this to mean that two-thirds of the state legislatures (34 or more, currently) must simply request a convention to consider any and all proposed amendments.

As a practical matter, it is unlikely that a state legislature would petition for a convention without a considered reason - a specific amendment, not a general "we need to fix the Constitution" concept. However, once the convention is called, whatever brought the state to the meeting must be considered by the group.

How would such a convention be organized? This is not at all clear. Most probably like the original convention - each state would send a team of representatives to be certain that their reason for being at the meeting was handled appropriately. I view this to imply that the states' representatives would prepare a set of proposed amendments which would be presented to each of the states. If three-fourths of the state legislatures (or - if Congress decides as provided by Article V - conventions from within the states convened for the purpose of reviewing the proposals) approve the proposed amendment, it becomes part of the Constitution.



Read more: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_could_a_n ... z1bPLSu2dU

So when the petition is ignored by the current government, and the demands for new elections is rejected, the pressure from the people to have their demands met will hopefully be strong enough that the states can then take the steps to convene and amend the Constitution. In this case, it could be amended from top to bottom.

[tazmic]

Vatican Calls for ‘Global Public Authority’ and ‘Central World Bank’

"The document from the Vatican’s Justice and Peace department should please the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrators and similar movements around the world who have protested against the economic downturn."

"Of course, this transformation will be made at the cost of a gradual, balanced transfer of a part of each nation's powers to a world authority and to regional authorities, but this is necessary at a time when the dynamism of human society and the economy and the progress of technology are transcending borders, which are in fact already very eroded in a globalised world."

from cryptogon

[Wombaticus Rex]

Curious to see how it unfolds, but my gut tells me that making #Occupy into a national political movement will be a great way to divert that energy into an egotrip clusterfuck dead end. Since I don't have a viable alternative aside from "stay the course" though -- I'll wait and see.

General Assemblies are beautiful things, but they're really not very good for decision making. Been to close to a dozen now locally and there's a whole lot of spinning of wheels and redundant conversations. The fluctuating cast of characters means there's often little awareness of precedent (ie -- "Daug, we covered that shit already two meetings ago") and people who are familiar and comfortable with the group will constantly speak out of line, which renders the hand signals into more of a frustrating moral stance than an actual tool for communication and running a meeting.

Arf.

[Plutonia]

Glenn Greenwald contributes:

"It’s not that Americans suddenly woke up one day and decided that substantial income and wealth inequality are themselves unfair or intolerable. What changed was the perception of how that wealth was gotten and so of the ensuing inequality as legitimate. ... While the founders accepted outcome inequality, they emphasised - over and over - that its legitimacy hinged on subjecting everyone to the law’s mandates on an equal basis."

Immunity and impunity in elite America

The top one per cent of US society is enjoying a two-tiered system of justice and politics.

Glenn Greenwald Last Modified: 27 Oct 2011 16:08

As intense protests spawned by Occupy Wall Street continue to grow, it is worth asking: Why now? The answer is not obvious. After all, severe income and wealth inequality have long plagued the United States. In fact, it could reasonably be claimed that this form of inequality is part of the design of the American foundation - indeed, an integral part of it.

Income inequality has worsened over the past several years and is at its highest level since the Great Depression. This is not, however, a new trend. Income inequality has been growing at rapid rates for three decades. As journalist Tim Noah described the process: "During the late 1980s and the late 1990s, the United States experienced two unprecedentedly long periods of sustained economic growth - the ‘seven fat years’ and the ‘long boom’. Yet from 1980 to 2005, more than 80 per cent of total increase in Americans' income went to the top one per cent. Economic growth was more sluggish in the aughts [the first decade of the new century], but the decade saw productivity increase by about 20 per cent. Yet virtually none of the increase translated into wage growth at middle and lower incomes, an outcome that left many economists scratching their heads."

The 2008 financial crisis exacerbated the trend, but not radically: the top one per cent of earners in the US have been feeding ever more greedily at the trough for decades.

Inferiors and superiors

In addition, substantial wealth inequality is so embedded in US political culture that, standing alone, it would not be sufficient to trigger citizen rage of the type we are finally witnessing. The American founders were clear that they viewed inequality in wealth, power, and prestige as not merely inevitable, but desirable and, for some, even divinely ordained. Jefferson praised "the natural aristocracy" as "the most precious gift of nature" for the "government of society". John Adams concurred: "It already appears, that there must be in every society of men superiors and inferiors, because God has laid in the… course of nature the foundation of the distinction."

Not only have the overwhelming majority of those in the US long acquiesced to vast income and wealth disparities, but some of those most oppressed by these outcomes have cheered it loudly. Americans have been inculcated not only to accept, but to revere those who are the greatest beneficiaries of this inequality.

In the 1980s, this paradox - whereby even those most trampled upon come to cheer those responsible for their state - became more firmly entrenched. That's because it found a folksy, friendly face. Ronald Reagan, adept at feeding the populace a slew of Orwellian clichés that induced them to defend the interests of the wealthiest. "A rising tide," as one former US president put it, "lifts all boats". The sum of his wisdom being: It is in your interest when the rich get richer.

Implicit in this framework was the claim that inequality was justified and legitimate. The core propagandistic premise was that the rich were rich because they deserved to be. They innovated in industry, invented technologies, discovered cures, created jobs, took risks, and boldly found ways to improve our lives. In other words, they deserved to be enriched. Indeed, it was in our common interest to allow them to fly as high as possible, because that would increase their motivation to produce more, bestowing on us ever greater life-improving gifts.

Gratefulness for the leadership

We should not, so the thinking went, begrudge the multimillionaire living behind his 15-foot walls for his success; we should admire him. Corporate bosses deserved not our resentment but our gratitude. It was in our own interest not to demand more in taxes from the wealthiest but less, as their enhanced wealth - their pocket change - would trickle down in various ways to all of us.

This is the mentality that enabled massive growth in income and wealth inequality over the past several decades without much at all in the way of citizen protest. And yet something has indeed changed. It’s not that Americans suddenly woke up one day and decided that substantial income and wealth inequality are themselves unfair or intolerable. What changed was the perception of how that wealth was gotten and so of the ensuing inequality as legitimate.

Many Americans who once accepted or even cheered such inequality now see the gains of the richest as ill-gotten, as undeserved, as cheating. Most of all, the legal system that once served as the legitimising anchor for outcome inequality, the rule of law - that most basic of American ideals, that a common set of rules are equally applied to all - has now become irrevocably corrupted and is seen as such.

While the founders accepted outcome inequality, they emphasised - over and over - that its legitimacy hinged on subjecting everyone to the law’s mandates on an equal basis. Jefferson wrote that the essence of America would be that "the poorest labourer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest millionaire, and generally on a more favoured one whenever their rights seem to jar". Benjamin Franklin warned that creating a privileged legal class would produce "total separation of affections, interests, political obligations, and all manner of connections" between the rulers and those they ruled. Tom Paine repeatedly railed against "counterfeit nobles", those whose superior status was grounded not in merit but in unearned legal privilege.

Definition of tyranny

After all, one of their principal grievances against the British king was his power to exempt his cronies from legal obligations. Almost every founder repeatedly warned that a failure to apply the law equally to the politically powerful and the rich would ensure a warped and unjust society. In many ways, that was their definition of tyranny.

Americans understand this implicitly. If you watch a competition among sprinters, you can accept that whoever crosses the finish line first is the superior runner. But only if all the competitors are bound by the same rules: everyone begins at the same starting line, is penalised for invading the lane of another runner, is barred from making physical contact or using performance-enhancing substances, and so on.

If some of the runners start ahead of others and have relationships with the judges that enable them to receive dispensation for violating the rules as they wish, then viewers understand that the outcome can no longer be considered legitimate. Once the process is seen as not only unfair but utterly corrupted, once it’s obvious that a common set of rules no longer binds all the competitors, the winner will be resented, not heralded.

That catches the mood of the US in 2011. It may not explain the Occupy Wall Street movement, but it helps explain why it has spread like wildfire and why so many Americans seem instantly to accept and support it. As was not true in recent decades, the American relationship with wealth inequality is in a state of rapid transformation.

It is now clearly understood that, rather than apply the law equally to all, Wall Street tycoons have engaged in egregious criminality - acts which destroyed the economic security of millions of people around the world - without experiencing the slightest legal repercussions. Giant financial institutions were caught red-handed engaging in massive, systematic fraud to foreclose on people’s homes and the reaction of the political class, led by the Obama administration, was to shield them from meaningful consequences. Rather than submit on an equal basis to the rules, through an oligarchical, democracy-subverting control of the political process, they now control the process of writing those rules and how they are applied.

Writing laws

Today, it is glaringly obvious to a wide range of those in the US that the wealth of the top one per cent is the byproduct not of risk-taking entrepreneurship, but of corrupted control of our legal and political systems. Thanks to this control, they can write laws that have no purpose than to abolish the few limits that still constrain them, as happened during the Wall Street deregulation orgy of the 1990s. They can retroactively immunise themselves for crimes they deliberately committed for profit, as happened when the 2008 Congress shielded the nation’s telecom giants for their role in Bush’s domestic warrantless eavesdropping programme.

It is equally obvious that they are using that power not to lift the boats of ordinary Americans, but to sink them. In short, Americans are now well aware of what the second-highest-ranking Democrat in the Senate, Illinois’s Dick Durbin, blurted out in 2009 about the body in which he serves: the banks "frankly own the place".

If you were to assess the state of the union in 2011, you might sum it up this way: rather than being subjected to the rule of law, the nation’s most powerful oligarchs control the law and are so exempt from it; and increasing numbers of Americans understand that and are outraged. At exactly the same time that the nation’s elites enjoy legal immunity even for egregious crimes, ordinary Americans are being subjected to the world's largest and one of its harshest penal states, under which they are unable to secure competent legal counsel and are harshly punished with lengthy prison terms for even trivial infractions.

‘Two-tiered justice system’

In lieu of the rule of law - the equal application of rules to everyone - what we have now is a two-tiered justice system in which the powerful are immunised, while the powerless are punished with increasing mercilessness. As a guarantor of outcomes, the law has, by now, been so completely perverted that it is an incomparably potent weapon for entrenching inequality further, controlling the powerless, and ensuring corrupted outcomes.

The tide that was supposed to lift all ships has, in fact, left startling numbers of Americans underwater. In the process, we lost any sense that a common set of rules applies to everyone, and so there is no longer a legitimising anchor for the vast income and wealth inequalities that plague the nation.

That is what has changed, and a growing recognition of what it means is fuelling rising citizen anger and protest. The inequality under which so many suffer is not only vast, but illegitimate, rooted as it is in lawlessness and corruption. Obscuring that fact has long been the linchpin for inducing Americans to accept vast and growing inequalities. That fact is now too glaring to obscure any longer.

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/op ... 67970.html

[Wombaticus Rex]

I liked this:
http://wagingnonviolence.org/2011/10/wh ... ll-street/

Those who extoll the importance of total nonviolent discipline—as Lakey eloquently goes on to do—might be disappointed to learn that Occupy Wall Street has made “diversity of tactics” its official modus operandi. However, the way that the occupiers have carried out this policy might actually lead us to think of its meaning and implications in a more compelling way.

Since the early stages of the movement, it is true, those taking part have been in a deadlock on the question of making a commitment to nonviolence. At a planning meeting in Tompkins Square Park prior to September 17, I recall one young man in dark sunglasses saying, knowingly, “There is a danger of fetishizing nonviolence to the point that it becomes a dogma.” In response, a woman added a “point of information,” despite being in contradiction to what Gandhi or King might say: “Nonviolence just means not initiating violence.” The question of nonviolence was ultimately tabled that night and thereafter. “This discussion is a complete waste of time,” someone concluded.

Property damage and self-defense, therefore, have remained on the table. The main points of the march guidelines subsequently promulgated by the occupation’s Direct Action Committee are these:

Stay together and KEEP MOVING!
Don’t instigate cops or pedestrians with physical violence.
Use basic hand signals.
Empowered pace keeps at the front, back and middle of every march. These folks are empowered to make directional decisions and guide the march.
We respect diversity of tactics, but consider how our actions may affect the entire group.
In practice, however, the occupiers have kept nonviolent discipline quite well, even if they don’t entirely preach it. Their self-defense against police violence has been mainly with cameras, not physical force. (In fact, they have often responded to intimidation by chanting, “This! Is! A Nonviolent Protest!&rdqo;) There have been no cases of intentional property destruction that I know of. One reason for this is surely common sense; when facing an essentially paramilitary institution like the NYPD, there’s little hope that a few hundred or a few thousand protesters could stand much of a chance with violence. Another reason is the point made in the second clause of guideline 5, qualifying the “diversity of tactics”: an act of violence, the occupiers realize, would reflect on everyone in the movement, the vast majority of whose participants would not condone it.

So far, at least, what “diversity of tactics” has meant to the occupiers is not simply openness to violence but actually a richer interpretation of the phrase—indeed, a whole philosophy of direct action that comes out of anarchist thought.

Lots more, all quite tasty brainfood.

[vanlose kid]

Class Rules Everything Around Me / WOT, NO DEMANDS?
tags:

UK
Deterritorial Support Group
capitalism
class struggle
crisis
Occupy Wall Street



DSG briefly outline the break from the 'We Are All in This Together" rhetoric in regards to the economic crisis and how new forms of class struggle may start to emerge.

A 1% shift can have massive repercussions in a global economy- a 1% shift in the TED spread signifies a looming disaster for liquidity, a 1% rise in interest rates can shut down SME’s across continents. The same holds for the economy of rhetoric. Last year, when the British government started the implementation of “Austerity Measures” with the comprehensive spending review, the justifying refrain that rang throughout the media was one of shared sacrifice- “We Are All In This Together”. One year on from the CSR and the media is alive with a new mantra- “We Are The 99%”. A 1% shift in the social cohesion markets signifies a significant shift in the dissent markets.

The metaphor might be stretched, but it illustrates an important point about the #Occupy movement, for whom “We Are The 99%” is about the only point of unity at the moment. Whilst those involved in organised politics worry or mock the movement for lacking a political programme, that very political naivete is indicative of the depth of the crisis. #Occupy is a result of a growth in widespread, popular dissent, incapable of finding expression in existing political modes, and the “1%” slogan is a highly significant breaking of the “All In This Together” rhetoric and the conception of a popular class narrative to the economic and social crisis.

In recent articles both Paul Mason and Andreas Whittam Smith have touched upon this uncertain new landscape. In his recent blogpost “‘Occupy’ is a response to economic permafrost” Mason highlights this diversity, and the rejection of a lobbyist-rich parliamentary system, noting that “they have no intention of “raising demands” on Labour in opposition.” He also picks up on the memetic nature of the idea of the occupation of public space, as we focused on during the wave of Indignados occupations earlier in the year. But Whittam-Smith picks up on a much wider historical point about the haphazard nature of protests that can arise before major insurrections and periods of heated class struggle, claiming “At some point, this excessive difference [of income disparity] is going to cause trouble. Has that moment come?”. The current movement of Capital- hoarding, stabilisation, reorganisation– by a campaign of austerity that secures money markets at the expense of working-class lives can lead only to what we might call “growth in the class-struggle demographic” in the ideology markets.


"If you buy coffee you can't protest" - Louise Mensch annihilated on Have I Got News For You

The growth in public opposition to austerity was demonstrated pretty neatly by the short-shrift Louise Mensch received on “Have I Got News For You” last weekend. Trotting out some easy jibes against “anti-capitalist” protest, she demonstrated just how out of touch Westminster is with even mainstream sentiments. Mensch missed the nerve that #Occupy touches- that the “austerity” rhetoric is a sham, and that there is a developing popular critique of capital, more than “no to Starbucks”, which is outstripping the political critique offered by parliamentary parties in the marketplace of ideas.

Mensch attempts an effective, if crude, discrediting trick– to attribute to people beliefs and values they don’t actually have, then chide them for failing to live up to them. Her perpetuation of the stereotype of capitalism as a “thing” one can opt in or out of fell flat on its face. As if we, the working-class, were not the very thing that makes capitalism work– as if it were not the value we produce and the demand we produce that sustains capital– as if capital were not a zombie feeding off living labour.

We are not “outside” capitalism and neither are our struggles and demands- but our demands can be realised as more than consumer or parliamentary demands. Class power can produce class demands, demands that force capital to move- the motor of innovation that capital must react to in ever more creative and damaging ways in order to continue exploitation. Class innovates, capital reacts, whether it’s through concessions such as the welfare state, or aggressive reorganisation of labour, as in the globalisation of capital and introduction of easy consumer credit as a replacement for wages since the 1970′s. 1919-21, 1944, 1968, 1977– these were not the actions of an oppressed class pushed to the edge, but an innovative class power pushing capitalism so close to the brink it had react with militarisation, state violence and savage economic restructuring.

As Whittam-Smith postulates, at the moment we find ourselves in a moment of reconfiguration of class power- an in-between phase, a “permafrost” where our class is beginning the formulation of new demands and new struggle. It is economically impossible to return to either the neo-liberal social form, predicated as it is on cheap credit, or the social-democratic form, predicated on the organised labour of the mass-worker. Class struggle can only perpetuate for the foreseeable future. To believe that the urban poor (pushed onto workfare slavery, lacking education opportunity and facing rising food and consumer prices) or the under-employed graduate class (with no hope of cheap credit, lacking stable or even paid employment and ever-rising rent) are just going to “settle down” and contribute seems like a utopianism of astounding naiveté that can be believed by few outside Westminster and its assorted lobbyists and think-tanks.


Wage as % of GDP (with shortfall made up by growth of cheap credit)

Meanwhile, the public sector is heading the same way as the Miners, a victim of capital’s curious blend of ideology and ruthless pragmatism. As the Miner’s Strike was symbolic of the necessary destruction of class power in the form of organised labour, so the destruction of the NHS (made infinitely easier by the absence of any meaningful trade union militancy) marks capital’s victory over that working-class concessionary demand, the welfare state. Make no bones about it– the social-democratic model which bought the working-class such gains, and represented a genuine and meaningful victory for our class, simply does not and cannot stand up as an organising model against the complex and diverse properties and models of 21st century, globalised, neo-liberal model of post-fordist capitalism.

New forms of class power must, and are, emerging but will, and are, blindsiding us who so vainly search for an emergent model which mirrors the ones we inherited. Andreas Whittam Smith and Paul Mason detect this current and struggle to name it. We too have no prediction as to its shape. But it looms, silently growing, over our heads, like Marx’s great spectre. DSG, for one, welcome our new overlords of class power.


Occupy Oakland video: Riot police fire tear gas, flashbang grenades

It is within this reformulation that we must contextualise #Occupy. #Occupy is not a mass movement, but it is an arrow in a quiver that is rapidly filling; a quiver of class antagonism. At a time when the class is beginning a reassertion after 15 years of capitalist realism, to attack an undeniable pole of attraction for many working-class people seems churlish in the extreme, and somehow missing the point. Bringing the crisis home– that is, agitating the class and breaking the “all in this together” rhetoric of parliament– will involve a massive plurality of struggles, and #Occupy serves that end well. Misgivings over “fluffy” politics are understandable, but it is through experience that political thought develops, and state violence is rapidly radicalising the #Occupy grassroots, with #OccupyOakland today passing a motion for a citywide General Strike following the state crackdown earlier in the week. Combined with a growing street presence, escalating industrial action and a general sense of unrest over rent, debt and fuel poverty, working-class people in Britain too are reasserting class in the struggle with capital.

Class struggle is a lived experience, a practice, not a series of treatises; it is a fight, and fights are reactions to events, not a choreographed, preplanned dance. Events like #Occupy are the start of a new explicit antagonism towards capital for many people- like all good political experiences, it is a set of questions as much as a book of answers.

DSG EDITORIAL

Originally posted: October 27, 2011 at Deterritorial Support Group


http://libcom.org/library/class-rules-e ... no-demands

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[Wombaticus Rex]

Great read from a good friend: http://www.urbeingrecorded.com/news/201 ... gineering/

[wintler2]

I love the Occupy movement, but i despair of its naivety. Yes, Wall St is an epicentre of casino capitalism, economic rationalism on coke, and it needs to be stopped dead in its tracks. But that wont solve our problems. Yes, getting corporations (elite wealth) out of politics would be good, and may even resuscitate the decomposing corpse of democracy. But that wont solve our problems either.

This is because our problems are not limited to unequal distribution of the pie, as ugly as that is. The pie itself is the problem - it is literally shrinking, its creation is incredibly violent and radically unsustainable, and there are many new (yellow & brown) people rich enough to demand a bigger piece than those (white/pink) people who were raised to believe they were entitled to a goodly chunk.

Any movement or agenda that doesn't recognise these basic facts renders itself mostly trivial, mere squabbling over seating on the titanic.

Its not an attractive message, which is probably why those involved who know this are not publicising it, same as Green Party people who know it don't talk about it very much. But it is still true and tremendously significant, and no really useful lasting reform can be implemented until people grow up and face it. Until then, OWS is just privilege bargaining between alpha's and beta's.

The exception is for those who physically/materially (not symbolically, as we are now) participate, because they get to experience other ways of being, relating, and co-creating, and those experiences are great practice for the unravelling and reweaving to come.