Occupy Wall Street and the Left

Here is a draft of the talk I gave at the James Connolly Forum in Albany last Friday night. I say draft because I penciled in some revisions that I don't have time to put it right now.  Download The Meaning of Occupy Wall Street for the Left

Excerpt:

Occupy Wall Street, for all its talk of horizontality, autonomy, and decentralized process, is recentering the economy, engaging in class warfare without naming the working class as one of two great hostile forces but instead by presenting capitalism as a wrong against the people. It’s putting capitalism back at center of left politics—no wonder, then, that it has opened up a new sense of possibility for so many of us: it has reignited political will. In a way, it’s returning to the left its missing core or soul, what has been displaced or denied since we turned our back on the communist horizon. It’s reactivating the Marxist insight that class struggle is a political struggle. As I mentioned before, a new Pew poll finds a nineteen percentage point increase since 2009 of the number of Americans who believe there are strong or very strong conflicts between the rich and poor. Two thirds perceive this conflict—and perceive it as more intense than divisions of race and immigration status (African Americans see class conflict as more significant than white people do).

My claim, then, is that when occupy wall street speaks the language of capitalism and the “no left,” when it disavows representation, exclusion, dogmatism, and utopianism, it’s at its weakest; it’s no different from the left we’ve had from the last thirty years or from its larger setting in communicative capitalism. But, when it re-centers the economy and class struggle, when it focuses on capitalism—Wall Street—on opposition, on collectivism, and on walking new paths, creating new practices, opening up new common modes of producing and distributing, that’s its heart, that’s what brings it to life.

How Occupy Wall Street is re-centering the economy is an open, fluid, changing, and intensely debated question.  It’s not a traditional movement of the working class organized in trade unions or targeting work places, although it is a movement of class struggle (especially when we recognize with Marx and Engels that the working class is not a fixed, empirical class but a fluid, changing class of those who have to sell their labor power in order to survive). Occupy’s use of strikes and occupations targets the capitalist system more broadly, shutting down ports and stock exchanges (I think of the initial shut downs in Oakland and on Wall Street as proof of concepts, proof that it can be done). People aren’t being mobilized as workers; they are being mobilized as people, as everybody else, as the rest of us, as the majority—99%--who are being thoroughly screwed by the top one percent in multiple parts of our lives: education, health, food, the environment, housing, and work. Capitalism in the US has sold itself as freedom—but increasing numbers of us feel trapped, practically enslaved. It used to be that people went to college to get a good job, so they wouldn’t be stuck flipping burgers and waiting tables. Now people go to college and are told they have to work without pay in order to get a good job—so they flip burgers and wait tables to try to pay their college debts while working for free as interns.

Because people aren’t mobilized primarily as workers but as those who are proletarianized and exploited in every aspect of our lives—at risk of foreclosure and unemployment, diminishing futures, increasing debts, shrunken space of freedom, accelerated dependence on a system that is rapidly failing (I’m thinking here of the ways corporations file for bankruptcy and thus shed their obligations to pay people their earned and expected pensions as well as the ongoing threats to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid)—because people are mobilized as the 99%, the attack on capitalism takes different forms, forms loosely associated with the ideological span of the contemporary left.

1.  Progressive/left-liberal Democrat:  constitutional reform, legislative goals (abolish corporate personhood; money out of politics); locate problem in political process.

2.  Left Keynesian: jobs for all demand, tax the rich; locate problem in the economy

3.  Anarchists—see the state as well as hierarchical and centralized power as the primary problem (capitalism depends on the state); solution is to constitute alternative practices, alongside or outside the mainstream; a politics of refusal and creative production; any attempt to seize the state will just reproduce the structures of power and patterns of behavior in which we are caught.

4.  Communists/ revolutionary socialists—see the economy as the primary problem (state as instrument of class power); goal is over-throwing capitalism and establishing communism. Rather than emphasizing specific local practices, more interested in general strike, growing the movement, questions of strategy. To be frank: finding themselves in the position of not having been able to achieve in the contemporary US—mass mobilization—when the anarchists, with their emphases on autonomy, horizontality, inclusion, and consensus have. This is occasioning a great deal of though and reflection among socialists. Some are concerned with positioning themselves in the vanguard of the movement. Others, rightly, recognize that the movement is itself the vanguard; the movement is itself ushering in something beyond capitalism, even as it isn’t sure what this is (indeed the movement’s very multiplicity makes this sentence pretty awkward and misleading; the movement isn’t singular, it’s divided in itself).

At the same time, faced with multiple evictions (according to Firedog Lake there are 62 remaining encampments in the US), the Occupy movement itself is reflecting, thinking on what has worked, what hasn’t, what’s next for the movement. A number of people, groups, and occupations are addressing problems with the General Assembly structure and consensus. Many GAs have become dysfunctional; attendance is declining. Or, the combination of working groups and GAs is so demanding that the very people for whom the movement is fighting can’t participate—they got a day job and a night job or two or three.  A currently circulating memo from a member of the Tech Ops and Outreach groups of OWS highlights the ways this nominally inclusive movement has actually produced barriers to involvement—it’s hard for people to know how to get more involved.

Anyway, back to the different ideological strands: it doesn’t make sense to think of these as a coalition. Rather, the movement is a convergence of the people who bring with them ideas and suppositions that loosely fit under one or two of the four categories. Some are experienced activists with movement and party experience; others have inclinations and intuitions. What unites them right now is the sense that capitalism is not working—but some think it can and should be fixed and others don’t. And this means that there is a primary division at the heart of the movement. 

It might be that this division is generative—enabling a division of labor and an attack on our current political and economic system at multiple levels. Yet, it could also be the case that working for some goals precludes working for other goals, not only taking away energy and focus but actually buttressing institutions and practices that some of us should be destroyed and replaced. 

Comments

[Alain]

I just read the excerpt and really like it. I think you are right that OWS is better understood as a loosely associated convergence of people with some common interests and sensibilities. And the divisions among the participants are real - I saw that here in Minneapolis the few times I attended general assemblies. What I find encouraging is that even though it is winter, and in places like Minnesota, the movement is now less "visible," people are still engaged in the process and even regular folks know that it is still out there, that something different has begun and the fight has been joined by the rest of us. I am glad folks like yourself are taking this seriously and trying to contribute theoretically, because the OWS needs every tool available at its disposal. Resist and Occupy - long live the occupation!

[Rballen422]

There is a fifth category active in OWS, though not of the Left: the category of disoriented right wing populists who thrive on antigovernment conspiracy theory but who are influenced by leftist ideas such as environmentalism and free education. In other words, their populist rightism is held loosely and not well understood even by themselves.
I have been fighting a non-enthusiasm for OWS because of this and its Ghandian-Gene Sharpian focus which I misunderstood from the outset. I got involved with the nuts and bolts, literally, and found myself working side by side with Ron Paulists who are definitely, thankfully, not a cohesive coherent body politic. A liberal/Catholic Worker leadership crafted a stunningly successful media campaign out of OWS around the Iowa caucuses in terms of what we set out to do, manipulate a fickle, at times hostile media, international in scope. I have some great video of us annoying the hell out of, and scaring politicians half to death. Yet it seems a pyhrric victory because poll numbers have dropped significantly since the crackdowns and Oakland. What to think of a movement that lives and dies by media, and wont commit to anicapitalism let alone socialism?
That wants to move the middle class, by showcasing hippies playing games with the cops, in honor of Tahir Square and Ghandi, while most schmucks are chained to their McJobs and "have to follow the rules"? It seems a recipe for non winning, I fear. On the other hand there is much to be optimistic about: we've learned much in the short time we've been at this and have mechanisms in place to do much more,and those disoriented folks will keep learning in struggle or drop out as the anticapitalist nature of OWS comes clearer (unless some bad guys win and this never does come clear). But if the goal is to move the middle class left, we're failing.

[rjs]

reading Rballen422 now, i can confirm a lot of cross support from those for Ron Paul...of the dozen strong OWS supporters among my regular correspondents, three are active supporters of RP, two such that they remail his missives...it's not unusual for me to see OWS & ron paul support expressed in the same email thread...

[Ginger Caudill]

I found your essay thought-provoking. I am largely ignorant of the workings of economics but I was able to follow your points.

I did wonder what word you left out in the very last sentence. Feel? Believe? Know? I believe in a metaphysical sense that by leaving out that word, you've called attention to the actual point of the essay. It just depends on how strongly the corporate "us" feels/believes/knows about it.

Anyway, thank you for sharing this with the world.

[John Wojcik]

"memo from a member of the Tech Ops and Outreach groups of OWS"

what is this memo? can you please post a copy here?

John

[Jodi Dean]

thanks, folks, for your comments

John: I posted a link with this post: http://jdeanicite.typepad.com/i_cite/2012/01/three-complaints-about-ows-technology-operations-group.html

Bob: yeah, I think of those folks as not on the left; I've been really struggling with what it means for the movement to proceed as if a convergence between communists and libertarians makes sense. Since they are not anti-capitalist, I don't think so. But I wonder if I am missing an opportunity for changing the minds of working class (potential) allies. What do you think?

[David Jackmanson]

Another group that got heavily involved in Occupy Brisbane (Australia) was the Zeitgeist movement, which overlaps with the antigovernment conspiracists mentioned by Rballen422.

Given the relatively much better economic conditions in Australia than the USA right now, the Occupy groups were smaller and more susceptible to takeover by organised groups - although in Brisbane the consensus-based GA structure was a big help in avoiding co-option at critical times.

Occupy Brisbane was started early by some quite undemocratic right-wing people, who rejected the right of GAs to make crucial decisions and really believed in magical thinking. For instance, one of the main people in that group insisted that discussing possible tactics if an eviction happened was likely, in itself, to make an eviction more likely.

It's difficult to see what all the groups in such a convergence can agree on - quite limited tactical alliances seem to the most an Occupation as a whole could agree on. But I suppose the point of a convergence is not an entirely united front, but rather working out who you want to unite with in serious work.

[Jodi Dean]

what is the Zeitgeist movement? is it specific to Australia?

[Robert Allen]

Zeitgeist is yet another vaguely rightist conspiracy theory movement which emphasizes 0/11 truth, international bankers, etc. It has a documentary associated with it, it is vaguely atheistic, "Jesus is a myth" etc.

I think there is an opportunity to change people's minds; the "libertarians" do not have a well thought out political line except for the diehard Paulbots who've got Paul's liberal policies ready to copy and paste in each Facebook thread where the subject comes up. But there is a false equivalency I notice, and a real equivalency at once: Socialist or Marxian theory seems as remote and alien, even though it is based on fact and real material conditions, as the Zietgiest and Ron Paul malarkey seems, that is, the Bilderbergers and Illuminati based anti semitic bunk from the fifties competes and wins against the communist hypothesis but it's not much of a victory: while Paul continues to do fairly well, one cannot imagine, for example, the wider electorate not rolling its eyes at mention of the secret society controlling everything behind the scenes. In other words, it is almost a good thing the conspiracy theory stuff only catches on with a certain layer of would be John Galts. The bad news is how the movement has edged out, or marginalized, Marxism or the socialist groups themselves have abstained from OWS for the reasons you've mentioned, to the point where conspiracy nonsense holds sway in discourse, or at least background chatter, where the questioning of capitalism itself should be being discussed. In some ways, Paul's "liberal" foriegn policy has become just another liberal bullet point like all the others in a movement driven by a loose sense of petty bourgeois discontent-- I wonder sometimes why I support a movement that includes, or I should use prison slang and say I don't want to "get in the car with", Ron Paulites, Gene Sharp and Silicon Valley "entrepreneuers", as with the SOPA/PIPA business, i.e. the spectacle of incredibly two faced libertarians who don't mind stealing unless it is done to them.
A good friend from California warned me, a mid westerner who heretofore knew few liberals, that if I ever found a clique of actual liberals, I might recoil from them after seeing them in action and now I see what he meant, kind of.