Group items tagged

humiliated – faced with a life of being treated as deadbeats, moral reprobates

colossal social failure

demand to finally have a conversation we were all supposed to have back in 2008

There was a moment, after the near-collapse of the world's financial architecture, when anything seemed possible.

Everything we'd been told for the last decade turned out to be a lie. Markets did not run themselves; creators of financial instruments were not infallible geniuses; and debts did not really need to be repaid – in fact, money itself was revealed to be a political instrument

t seemed the time had come to rethink everything: the very nature of markets, money, debt; to ask what an "economy" is actually for

Then, in one of the most colossal failures of nerve in history, we all collectively clapped our hands over our ears and tried to put things back as close as possible to the way they'd been before.

real priority of those running the world for the last few decades has not been creating a viable form of capitalism

flaws are irrelevant

economic crisis of the 1970s never really went away

exact same approach: declare a financial crisis, appoint supposedly neutral technocrats to manage it, and then engage in an orgy of plunder in the name of "austerity"

rejection of old-fashioned party politics, the same embrace of radical diversity, the same emphasis on inventing new forms of democracy from below

entire political classes

target

This is why protesters are often hesitant even to issue formal demands, since that might imply recognising the legitimacy of the politicians against whom they are ranged

beginning with the Arab Spring

opening salvo in a wave of negotiations over the dissolution of the American Empire

consider the collapse of the European colonial empires

creation of the modern welfare state

But if the occupiers finally manage to break the 30-year stranglehold that has been placed on the human imagination, as in those first weeks after September 2008, everything will once again be on the table – and the occupiers of Wall Street and other cities around the US will have done us the greatest favour anyone possibly can.

Even if some occupations have released lists of demands, the entire question is bitterly contested in New York

lack of demands reflects the weak ideological core of the movement

should be grounded in a long-term view of the political goals of the movement, a view that is currently lacking

First, demands are said to be potentially divisive as they may alienate those who disagree with them and discourage newcomers from a variety of backgrounds from joining it

insofar as Occupy aspires to be a movement that expresses the views and interests of the vast majority of the social body, every attempt to define it through a politics of demands entails a reduction of this potentiality

movement should focus on “autonomous solutions” rather than demands

Some counteract this third objection with the idea of releasing “impossible demands,” i.e. demands that cannot be met without igniting a radical transformation of the system

rebuffed

assumption

designation of an existing sociopolitical entity that would define itself in opposition to the 1 percent

never the right time for demands. Demands always and necessarily activate a state apparatus apart from and over and against society

anarchists and libertarians in the movement have repeatedly blocked proposals for introducing taxes on financial transactions and stronger oversight of the banking sector on the grounds that such proposals would expand the size of the government and the scope of its intervention

refusal or inability to make an honest assessment of the social composition of the movement

emphasis on consensus, the refusal of demands, and the refusal of representation may well have served the purpose of inciting political desire and expanding the social base of the movement in its first phase

demands are divisive

The autonomist approach, then, emphasizes the creation of autonomous structures and new political organizations and practices

demands

autonomist objection overlooks economic ones

anti-representational objection ignores political differences

full-time

activities of logistical support

require interaction with dominant arrangements of power

economic position doesn’t give them the time that the practice of permanent occupation demands

process through which a common will is produced out of previously divergent positions

truth of the co-optation objection is its recognition of antagonism and division

fear of co-optation posits that the strength of the movement comes from a kind of unity of anger and dissatisfaction that will dissipate in the face of any particular success

co-optation objection obscures actual and potential connections among different proposals

For autonomists (and anarchists), the practice of occupation and the very mode of existence of the movement are themselves prefigurative of a new, more democratic and more egalitarian world

It thus reinforces, in the attempt of preventing it, the very fragmentation that has long plagued the contemporary Left

Commentators have been nearly hysterical in their demand for demands: somebody has got to say what Occupy Wall Street wants!

demands

strategically

three common objections

demands reduce the autonomy of the movement insofar as they endow an external agent—notably, the government or some other authority—with the task of solving problems the movement cannot solve for itself

by meeting some demands the government would be able to divide and integrate (parts of) the movement into the existing political landscape, thus undermining the movement’s very reason for being

pragmatists who argue that if demands are to be issued they should focus on attainable objectives so as to show that the movement can achieve concrete and measurable changes

movement is an organic and undifferentiated bloc comprised of people from all walks of life, and all racial, cultural, religious, and socioeconomic backgrounds

anti-representational objection

too early for demands

Introducing demands now would hinder the organic unfolding of a collective discussion whereby the movement can articulate its own interests and desires

99 percent is not an actual social bloc

serious blindspot

direct vital energies away from building new forms of collectivity ourselves

practice of occupation

Both the anti-representational and the autonomist objections fail to recognize two key features of demands. First, we can make demands on ourselves. Second, demands are means not ends

problem

movement’s inability to deal with antagonism

In order to metamorphose from a protest movement into a revolutionary movement, Occupy will have to acknowledge division, build alternative practices and organizations, and assert a commonality

The finitude of the commons enables us to address social inequality and environmental limits to capitalist development in their dialectical unity

idea of the commons asserts the primacy of collectivity and the general interest

contemporary theorists

Aristotle’s emphasis on the common good

commons does not exist. Destroyed and privatized by over two centuries of capitalist enclosure and “accumulation by dispossession,”1 what Elinor Ostrom calls “common-pool resources”2 have been reduced to tiny pockets of the world economy

first question that stems from a radical politics of the commons is “how can truly anti-capitalist commons be created, recreated, and expanded”?

centrality of private property to capitalist accumulation

Weary of the historical failure of actually existing socialism—and lacking large-scale models of alternative development—most Occupiers seem to content themselves with a neo-Keynesian politics that begins and often ends with demands for fiscal reform and government investment in strategic sectors such as infrastructure, green technologies, education, and health care

vast majority of the resources managed by the movement are produced and distributed according to capitalist logic

while neo-Keynesian and socialist positions downplay and overlook existing processes of self-organization, the autonomist perspective cannot address the issue of the long-term sustainability of the movement insofar as it fails to recognize that the massive accumulation of wealth in the private sector is a major obstacle for an expansive politics of the commons

autonomous organization of the movement and a politics based on radical demands have to go hand in hand if durable transformations are to be achieved

Once an expansive politics of the commons is adopted as the centerpiece of the movement’s strategy, demands become tactical devices in the service of such strategy rather than floating signifiers power can use to divide and conquer

tactical use of demands creates opportunities for testing and learning from experiments in managing the commons

manage these resources not as commodities but as goods whose mode of disposition and usage is determined by the community of their users and producers

commons not as a one-size-fit-all solution but as a mobile concept that can and should operate at different levels of granularity and on different plateaus

1) the management of land and natural resources; 2) the production and reproduction of social life (including care work, housing, education, and labor); 3) the production and allocation of energy, knowledge, and information

understanding that the commons is a finite resource that can not only be extracted but needs to be actively reproduced

marks a decisive break with the capitalist system of production

This system has been thriving by constantly overcoming the limits to its own expansion—with the result of producing an unprecedented demographic explosion while bringing the life support systems to the brink of total collapse. The Occupy movement is an extraordinary opportunity to rethink this model

movement has to dispel the illusion that all proposals and visions are equivalent as long as they are democratically discussed, and begin to set priorities on the road to a truly transformative and visionary politics

99% should be seen as a rhetorical strategy and not as an existing social bloc

ambiguous

gap between the rich and poor

couldn’t identify with the rich

preventing them from identifying with the poor

Rather than see the rise of the richest and the misfortunes of the poorest as a product of a larger system that treats people differently – unfairly – five years ago, the Canadians in our focus groups saw the problem of systemic poverty from an individualistic standpoint

struggles of the middle class trying to keep afloat

talking about it in terms of the rich and the poor was an unconscious form of ‘othering’

And so we shifted the frame, focusing the lens on the gap between the rich and the rest of us

systemic problem of poverty

show how much the majority of Canadians have in common when it comes to income inequality – that it’s a systemic problem which affects us all

inequality heightens social tensions and threatens the health and vibrancy of our democracy

Five years and a worldwide recession later (a recession caused by irresponsible financial schemes hatched by a handful of bankers and traders on Wall Street), social unrest has been slowly unfolding

Arab Spring

G20 protests

Occupy Wall Street

fed up with a system that has wildly rewarded the richest one per cent while 99 per cent of Americans grapple with a Great Recession whose impact doesn’t seem to be letting up

They are showing us they are ready to stare down powerful corporate interests that prevent America from dealing with its serious fiscal and social issues.

large groups of citizens taking to the street

viewed by the establishment as anarchy

threat to rule of law or radical

hard limits of the kind of post-9/11 authoritarian constraints on perfectly law-abiding citizens who simply demand their right to be seen and heard. The 99 per cent, the new income inequality frame, has been ignored by governments of all levels, in far too many countries, for far too long.

The Wall Street occupants are showing us that when the system isn’t working for the 99 per cent, something is dangerously wrong with our democracy

new frame with which to view income inequality in North America: it is about the 99 per cent. It isn’t about individuals or individual failure. It’s about a system that’s failing the vast majority of citizens who believe things can be better than this.