A Movement Without Demands? | Possible Futures - 0 views
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Commentators and protesters alike thus give the impression that the movement’s inability to agree upon demands and a shared political line is a conscious choice
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absence of demands as a benefit, a strength
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having done the impossible in creating a new political force
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Even if some occupations have released lists of demands, the entire question is bitterly contested in New York
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lack of demands reflects the weak ideological core of the movement
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should be grounded in a long-term view of the political goals of the movement, a view that is currently lacking
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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
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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
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anti-representational objection
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movement should focus on “autonomous solutions” rather than demands
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autonomist objection
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second
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third
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cooptation objection
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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
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rebuffed
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anti-representational objection
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assumption
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designation of an existing sociopolitical entity that would define itself in opposition to the 1 percent
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never the right time for demands. Demands always and necessarily activate a state apparatus apart from and over and against society
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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
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refusal or inability to make an honest assessment of the social composition of the movement
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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
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demands are divisive
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be the change they want to see in the world
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The autonomist approach, then, emphasizes the creation of autonomous structures and new political organizations and practices
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demands
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autonomist objection overlooks economic ones
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anti-representational objection ignores political differences
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full-time
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activities of logistical support
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require interaction with dominant arrangements of power
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economic position doesn’t give them the time that the practice of permanent occupation demands
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process through which a common will is produced out of previously divergent positions
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truth of the co-optation objection is its recognition of antagonism and division
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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
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co-optation objection obscures actual and potential connections among different proposals
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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
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It thus reinforces, in the attempt of preventing it, the very fragmentation that has long plagued the contemporary Left
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Commentators have been nearly hysterical in their demand for demands: somebody has got to say what Occupy Wall Street wants!
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demands
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strategically
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politics of the commons
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three common objections
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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
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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
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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
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anti-representational objection
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anti-representational objection
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anti-representational objection
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anti-representational objection
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anti-representational objection
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anti-representational objection
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movement is an organic and undifferentiated bloc comprised of people from all walks of life, and all racial, cultural, religious, and socioeconomic backgrounds
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anti-representational objection
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We are the 99 percent
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too early for demands
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Introducing demands now would hinder the organic unfolding of a collective discussion whereby the movement can articulate its own interests and desires
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99 percent is not an actual social bloc
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serious blindspot
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direct vital energies away from building new forms of collectivity ourselves
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practice of occupation
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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
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problem
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movement’s inability to deal with antagonism
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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
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The finitude of the commons enables us to address social inequality and environmental limits to capitalist development in their dialectical unity
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notion of the commons
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idea of the commons asserts the primacy of collectivity and the general interest
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contemporary theorists
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Aristotle’s emphasis on the common good
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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
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first question that stems from a radical politics of the commons is “how can truly anti-capitalist commons be created, recreated, and expanded”?
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centrality of private property to capitalist accumulation
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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
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vast majority of the resources managed by the movement are produced and distributed according to capitalist logic
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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
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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
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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
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tactical use of demands creates opportunities for testing and learning from experiments in managing the commons
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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
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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
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politics of the commons should operate on three levels
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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
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understanding that the commons is a finite resource that can not only be extracted but needs to be actively reproduced
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marks a decisive break with the capitalist system of production
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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
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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
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99% should be seen as a rhetorical strategy and not as an existing social bloc
