Is debt the connective thread for OWS?

Is debt the red thread that connects (and can reconnect) the seemingly unraveled strands of OWS? Significant work is being done in this direction. Below the excerpt I raise some questions.

Excerpt from a piece by Yates McKee:

If debt is a gateway into a radical conversation about the capitalist system itself, strategic and analytical questions arise about the role of the state — questions that have always haunted OWS as a movement grounded in anarchist principles. What can we learn from the debt cancellation forced upon the Icelandic government by citizens earlier this year? How do we connect the dots between “personal” debt and the public debt of municipalities and governments subjected to corporate bondholders and credit-rating agencies? How do we link struggles against budgetary austerity with the grievances of the indebted? In the words of Andrew Ross, “How might debt be rethought as something socially productive and collectively managed, rather than as an engine of predatory profiteering for the 1 percent?” Can we think beyond existing models of public finance, planning, and infrastructure toward something closer to the ideal of “the commons”? As activist and New York University professor Nick Mirzoeff has asked, in a speculative vein, if “slavery” to debt were abolished, what would a subsequent “Reconstruction” process look like? For ordinary people to delve into these questions is empowering in its own right, and for OWS they will continue to be explored through public assembly and direct action of the sort that began at Liberty Square 10 months ago.

An emphasis on debt could be politically promising -- particularly as it helps people understand the trap of capitalism, the way the system feeds off them, the way it relies on debt at multiple levels and establishes terms of credit and debit for the benefit of the capitalist class. A politics of debt seems especially posed to reach a middle class that compensated for its declining income with credit (that said, household indebtedness has declined since the beginning of the great recession even as part of that decline can be attributed to mortgage defaults). 

At the same time, there seem to be some challenges or potential drawbacks to a political strategy based on debt:

1.  It is difficult to overcome the individual dimension of debt: the individual quality of debt (credit card, mortgage, student loan) presents a collective action problem. How can we insure that everyone who agrees to default (one of the versions of the student loan debt campaign) actually will default? And why should we think this is a viable political strategy given that people are already defaulting,  banks are already defaulting, countries are nearly at the point of defaulting and still the system keeps on going. Defaulting is essentially invisible to others; it is born by the individual as their credit rating. Now, this is not an insurmountable problem--second wave feminism was born out of the idea that the personal is political and that problems that were hidden in the domestic arena could become public ones. What would the analogous move look like with respect to debt? Refusing to use credit cards and get mortgages seems like living in separatist communes and refusing heterosexual marriage. These can be effective, but don't tend to become mainstream or large-scale solutions.

2.  Focusing on student loan debt too easily slides into the language of attacking higher education already prominent on the right. It seems almost to concede that mass education is too expensive for contemporary or future society. A language of education as a public good, even a common good that belongs to everyone seems to me to be a more promising alternative. It places the burden on those who would treat education as something to be purchased, something out of reach for some, something private. It begins from the idea that knowledge, culture, and language are already all of ours. 

3.  The construction of debt as a problem can easily elide with right-wing attacks on deficits, the national debt, too much government spending, etc. The mistake is to treat government debt as the same thing as individual and household debt, and vice versa. 

4.  Why not begin from concerns that affect people collectively as collectivities? Stop-and-frisk and incarceration issues have already mobilized large groups, groups that could be knit together into anti-capitalist movement as the economic function of the prison-industrial complex is highlighted (in California spending on incarceration increased as spending on education decreased, a clear indication that education was seen less and less as a public good and more as a private means of advancement), as emphases on policing areas so that they are safe for the one percent are critically explored, etc. Similarly, increases in college tuition, cuts to city budgets, cuts to teachers salaries, attacks on public sector unions -- all these issues begin from people as collectives facing common problems. The contrast becomes clearer when we contrast debtors with proletarians: the former consume, the latter produce. Admittedly, in the face of CDOs, debts become a kind of production--but it's fake, empty, a ponzi scheme, production without production. 

5.  The most pressing common issue in the present is climate change. This affects everyone. The rich are currently dispossessing the people of our collective wealth, positioning themselves so that they are mobile, comfortable, defended, impermeable.  The rest of us will face the ravages of weather, drought, flood, famine, shortages, disease. The only way to deal with any of this is collectively -- beginning from the premise that food, shelter, health, and knowledge belong to all in common. Anyone who thwarts this is an enemy of the people.

6.  A politics that focuses on debt seems to treat people as failed capitalists -- even if debtors are not shopaholics or spendthrifts, that is, even if debt is a matter of self-investment, or purchasing in order to benefit one's self, children, household, the model seems too close to the one that treats people as human capital, the homo economicus of liberal and neoliberal theory. The indebted consumed in order to succeed under the unfair terms of the capitalist economy. The system is rigged against them, so they failed and they are in a situation from which there is no escape. The politics here doesn't move forward. It only moves against. It only negates -- and this is another symptom of its beginnings in individualism. A class politics sees in the working class those who are already collectively building the world. All they have to do is shake off the chains of private property that expropriate their common work into the wealth of the few.

Overall, my concern is that debt is too individualized, too tied to our consumer economy, too entrenched with moralizing language of restraint and indulgence (and so here suspectible to individual treatment via lessons in personal finance).  Yates McKee (the author of the piece excerpted above) makes the analogy between burning draft cards and burning debt statements. I kept thinking about the guys who were arrested, who fled to Canada and couldn't return, who went underground -- they made public statements but faced private burdens for their courage. Also, these days burning a piece of paper is pretty irrelvant --it's all in the cloud anyway (which suggests that even the awesome solution from the end of Fight Club is no longer the option it used to be). 

My prediction (and I could be wrong -- it would be great if I am) is that a politics focused on debt won't be able to produce effective large scale demonstrations because it's too hard to focus or target them. It will likely continue to produce thoughtful discussions and small demonstrations. It could produce some really terrific and interesting specific policy recommendations and campaigns for them (change bankruptcy laws again, better regulation of credit card companies and credit ratings agencies, a few more consumer rights claims, limit to increase in interest rate on student loans -- a cool suggestion here would be that student loans have a zero interest rate, or one no higher than the interbank lending rate). And, the best way in which I could be wrong is if consciousness-raising around debt led people to a clear, strong, courageous class consciousness.

Comments

[Jordycummings]

I posted this on Corey Robin's FB wall - a series of comments -any thoughts?

Debt has been the animating issue in perhaps the most dynamic and important struggle in North America right now, the ongoing student uprising in Quebec which brought the entire province - and certainly the city of Montreal - to a standstill and has resonated with the working class as a whole. I don't think that's what Jodi Dean meant - and perhaps she's right in regards to Occupy, keeping in mind the class consciousness of Quebec's political culture. But to deny that debt has been a galvanizing force is to ignore the meaning of the Red Square emblem of the movement in Quebec - "squarely in the red" or "Carrement Dans le Rouge"..(in debt).. And indeed it has helped build the left by directly aligning with the working class as a whole, as shown in the "Casseroles" pot-banging nights in working class neighborhoods across Quebec and increasingly elsewhere in Canada. And indeeed, CLASSE, the leading student union umbrella body has explicitly called for a plan to phase in free post-secondary education, so it does not at all fall into some trap of neoliberal discourse of attacking education. If anything, it is affirming the collective commons of education and thus moving towards decommodification.

Concretely speaking, people organizing around the basis of student debt have built a combative and structured movement that isn't repeating the mistakes of Occupy (IE they are building structures and making demands). We can talk all we want about what we think is the 'right issue' but the comrades in Quebec have actually built something in North America that has actually affected business as usual. And it will likely spread. So whatever someone may think is the right or wrong issue is immaterial. What is happening in Quebec - what has been happening in already legendary battles as in Victoriaville, disproves the point in actuality.

[KevinCarson1]

I think you're neglecting the extent -- something Graeber made a case for -- to which debt is structurally central to capitalism as a system of power. That *is* something affecting us as a collectivity, as opposed to individually.

Your argument strikes me a bit like someone in medieval times making a case against focusing on landlordism and rent as a strategic mistake.

[Rohan Kalyan]

Hi Jodi, thanks for the thoughtful post. Really got me thinking...

When it comes to issues of debt, finance and investment, I think you are absolutely right that we often experience these forces in individualized terms (credit scores being the most institutionalized dimension of this). I've often thought (as a recently finished grad student) that there is no lonelier feeling than being in debt (in the financial sense).

But I can see some possibilities for collective action, and possibly of the radical, creative and imaginative variety. Being in debt is never a static thing. In fact, what is so powerful about financial capitalism is that it locks people into a constricted temporality, a time-line of repayment with interest. Interest is, after all, nothing but the deferral of the present for a future repayment. What debt does is not just discipline your present, but colonize your future. I have idealistic friends who went into law school thinking they would go on to do progressive work for the poor, pro bono, immigrant-rights, etc., only to graduate with more than a 100k in debt and basically forced to take whatever high paying job they can find in order to relieve the debt pressure. By the time the loan is repaid, it may be too late to go back to the idealistic things that got them into law in the first place. The same thing might go for doctors as well, and other professions in which taking on massive debt is simply a part of the game.

Having said that, what the critical political focus on debt might be able to do is re-open the question of the future and push people to think of economic relations in more open-ended, relational terms. What might it mean to escape the temporality of repayment and interest? What new forms of collectivity might emerge when we think of debt in social terms, rather than individual?

Just a few scattered thoughts...Thanks again for the enlightening post.

[Jordycummings]

I think one can be critical of Graber's Smithian understanding of debt as distinct from surplus value generation and still understand the centrality of debt to value production right now.

[Abetterworldisprobable.wordpress.com]

I've tried very hard to organize around debt, and it's a strange phenomenon. On the one hand, it's hard to find a center or a location to organize debtors around (especially in the case of student debt -- which is what I focused on). Students currently going to school see it as a far off thing -- they're anxious about it, but don't see it as a real or immediate threat, yet. On the other hand, people who've graduated are scattered, they're not located anyplace centrally to organize them. At Occupy Detroit we tried organizing a march to cancel student debt. It got tons of vocal support and had a (and this is never a *good* measure to rely on) ton of RSVPs on Facebook (maybe around 250 - 300). But when the time came, maybe a dozen people showed up -- most of them were the usual suspects.

IMO, the problem could be solved by finding a way to, 1) demand that education be regarded as a right guaranteed to everyone from birth until death, 2) cancel all student loan debt, 3) find a way of centralizing and organizing people who are mired in debt after they graduate. I think the third point would require the building, 1) of student unions (a la ASSE in Quebec) which keep alumni and former students on as members (like unions *used* to do, back in the day), and 2) the rebuilding of a labor movement, to organize workers (who are also, most of the time, debtors) at the point of production.

Yeah, I know. The third point is like a tired, boring, old song, but there might be a good reason for singing that tune over and over again. Where can you find debtors? Well, you could run around town, running up to everyone randomly, asking them to take your leaflet or flyer or come to this or that march, and that works in a limited way. You could run to the bar, late at night, and hand everyone there a flyer and talk to them about turning out to a march (I've done this before, it works poorly). Or, ideally, we'd have organizations at work. People spend almost almost a third of their lives at work. Most of the time, people's reason for *wanting* to come to something, but not being able to is, "Shit, I would, but I gotta work." If we could rebuild the ability for people to organize, agitate and take political action at the work place, this would be, it should go without saying, a huge victory for the Left in terms of being a boon for our organizing potential and capacity, and I think, would really solve a lot of problems for organizing and building a successful movement around debt. Not because we would, say, have strikes around debt right away or anything, but workplace organizations could at least mobilize workers to marches, other forms of political action, etc.

[Abetterworldisprobable.wordpress.com]

One last point, re: California and prison spending. Michigan has long been one of the few states in the U.S. that spend more on prisons and incarceration than on higher education. This is a useful point to raise *as long as the emphasis is placed on reducing spending on prisons by releasing nonviolent prisoners.* The right has latched on to this spending priority issue and used it to argue for privatizing prisons, prison services, and cutting the quality of life for prisoners. Furthermore, at one protest against tuition hikes here at Wayne State in Detroit, students made speeches that were incredibly anti-prisoner, saying things like, "the state is spending more to feed and house murderers than they're spending on students," etc. Everyone struggling for a radical solution to the debt problem needs to stand in unshakable solidarity with the victims of the prison system, not attack them. This kind of talk, no doubt, has the negative impact to alienate everyone who has a friend or family member in the prison system, who is wholly familiar with how shitty the prisons treat the incarcerated, which means (statistically) alienating tons of Blacks, Latinos, and poor whites...

[Jodi Dean]

Abetterworld -- thanks for your points. I had neglected the right-wing variation on the prison-spending issue. I fully agree with you on the solidarity with victims of the system, absolutely. I also agree with you with your emphasis on workers. And this makes me wonders, if the effort is going to organize people at their workplaces, is debt the issue on which to do so? Why wouldn't the issue be wages, unions, benefits, hours, pensions?

Rohan--thanks for your comment. It could be that thinking through debt can allow questions of collectivity to be explored in new ways that could be useful. I haven't come across anything like this yet, but I am going to keep looking--maybe the idea of education as a common and/or public good grows directly out of it (esp student debt), maybe the idea of one bank of the commons whose role is to allocate money fairly at no/low interest might be another (like, an entity formed that is the product of a massive number of consolidated debts, so new entity would be the people's bank, and as an entity comprised of all the debts, it has power vis a vis credit card companies etc...).

Kevin -- I suggest you read the post.

Jordy--my comments here are about Occupy, not Montreal. From what I can gather, Montreal is the most exciting thing going on in North America (the journal I edit is publishing a special issue on it, co-edited by Darin Barney and Brian Massumi). The organizational discipline of the students is really impressive. It's interesting to me that the CLASSE manifesto uses the language of people and the commons; it doesn't appeal to debt.

http://www.thepaltrysapien.com/2012/07/which-people-what-democracy-why-the-classe-manifesto-matters-outside-quebec/

[Jordycummings]

Fair enough but it took the issue of debt to move towards the language of commons. Take a look at CLASSE's literature from earlier in the strike.

[Abetterworldisprobable.wordpress.com]

Jodi -- I had neglected the right-wing framing of the prison spending issue too until I saw it. It certainly caught me and my comrades off guard. My thoughts on unions/labor/class & debt, are more or less really disjointed. Of course organizing people in their workplaces will likely start off with wages, benefits, job security, etc. as an issue (but we don't want it to stop there, of course -- political demands, including ones around debt, should be put on the agenda ASAP). And this seems to be more of what I was trying to get at, not that the labor movement immediately needs to agitate for workplace strikes against debt, but that, a rebuild and radicalized labor movement could place this sort of thing on the agenda...but that should be obvious to any socialist, really...

And after trying to sort my own thoughts out (here: http://abetterworldisprobable.wordpress.com/2012/07/16/organizing-around-student-debt/) I realized that I had been treating labor as almost a kind of panacea for organizing around debt. Really organized labor in general is important as a foundation for building any powerful social movements, period, so it doesn't make sense to treat it as an important factor just for building a successful movement around debt. Of course, rebuilding the labor movement is like, the Ultimate Question, right? So, what now?

It can't be as simple as "rebuilding the labor movement," of course. I think, that as far as the question of debt is concerned, trying to find constructive ways to build coalitions with unions, etc. right now, in building a movement against student debt, etc. through organizing, mobilizations, protests, etc. seems useful (so, on the one hand, not neglecting the immediate need to organize around debt however we can, or anything like that, nor reducing the issue of debt to being an issue that's only resolved by organizing in the workplaces, which it can't be right now).

So clearly my thoughts around this are flakey and disjointed. And now that I think about it, perhaps it's hard to formulate an answer to the question because of the way the question feels like it's being asked..."How do we solve the debt crisis?" Rather, maybe it should be, "How do we solve the problem of a society which produces debt crises?"

Also, it may be hard to formulate an answer because I haven't had any coffee yet.