The first point I'd make is that the Occupation Movement (OM) has already won something very important. It has reframed the discourse from "I've got mine, aren't you envious?" to "99% v. 1%."
Since public opinion ultimately decides the course of events in the sense that coercion can prevail for only so long, the reframing of the public discourse in this way is momentous. It is one of the reasons why people are joining the OM all over the country and the world (did you hear that people in Tunisia marched two days ago in solidarity with Occupy Oakland?) and why no amount of state repression and violence can stop this outpouring: 99% is a powerful reservoir to have your back. Those who hate what's been going on for so long now no longer feel that they are a small minority. We are part of the large majority and even more important than that, we have the moral high ground, and we're not going to be quiet anymore, thank you very much.
The people who've been benefiting so obscenely from preying on the people have been freaking out about the OM because they know that once the lid is cracked open that there is no putting the genie back into the bottle. This genie's mad as hell and is gathering strength and momentum by the day.
The 1% are a tiny minority and can only stay on top of the rest of us if the rest of us are sleeping, misled, and intimidated.
Once the spell is broken, then the 1% can no longer get away with their shameful, sick, and cynical game that relies upon being unchallenged on their lies and being able to cover up their crimes and maneuvers as they chortle to themselves about being the "smartest guys in the room."
You're not so smart. You're exposed now. People hate you because you're parasites and moral idiots.
And you can unleash your dogs upon the people, those uniformed robocops with badges and guns and armored vehicles and tear gas cannisters, and you can hurt and even kill some of us, or even a lot of us, but you're not going to win. You can break the skulls of Iraq war veterans like Scott Olsen but you're not going to kill the movement. Every act of violence that you unleash upon the people is going to make more people come out of the woodwork on our side, isolate you further, and teach the people in the streets and larger society a profound lesson: the state is not our friend, public officials who order the police on the people are not our representatives, and this whole system is rotten to its core. It cannot be reformed. And if you try to refrain from using brutality our movement grows too.
So you're in a no win situation, aren't you?
You can't give the people what they need because your system depends upon sucking the people dry. You might make some small concessions to try to cool the people's ardor, but that is what they will be, small concessions. Are you going to bring jobs back to the U.S.? Are you going to stop seeking out the cheapest labor you can find on the planet's surface? Is Walmart going to start offering people living wages? Are you going to stop waging bloody and unjust wars on some of the poorest countries in the world? Are you going to stop robbing students blind with student loan debt even as you hollow out the content of education and turn it into an assembly line process where students are not actually getting the education they deserve? Are BP and the other oligopolistic oil companies going to stop drilling for oil in the oceans and fragile ecosystems everywhere? Are they going to stop their bribery, their strong-arming, their propping up of corrupt tyrants? Is Obama going stop sending drones to kill people around the world? Is he going to restore habeas corpus and end torture? Are blacks going to stop being murdered and stopped and frisked by the cops for walking around while black? Is Wall Street going to develop a social conscience?
I don't think so.
Do you?
Everyday this movement continues, more people learn more about how this system really works. You better stop those People's Universities from happening at the encampments. Because as people find out what you've been hiding from them for so long, they grow more determined and more fearless.
My title for this piece is not entirely accurate since I don't think that the OM is going to remain within the form that it presently exists indefinitely. It will coalesce and mutate into something larger that can no longer be called the OM. But what now exists as the OM are the seedlings of that future form and movement.
Scary, isn't it?
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Comments
Life's imperfect, and there's always a power elite, like in the Central Military Commission of the CCP, or the Siloviki around Putin. We have cliques of that, which is why we can be said to be freer.
What the democratic process can get you, and to me appears to be achieving, is some alleviation of economic distress, and some measures, like the waivers on student loans and on housing, that will make society more unequal. How far that goes is hard to say. There is always a reactionary element in any society that at the top will be willing to use force to preserve their power, even if sometimes the security forces might turn on then. That fact limits how far the power elite can push things onto the mass, remembering however like Pareto and Mosca, and Michels, that there is always a power elite. What Schumpeter correctly identified as to democracy's saving grace is that it allows for competing groups within the power elite to present platforms to the Mass-Many that allow for things to be made better without violence of revolution or the military. It seems to me that the Left would be wise to look at the example of Mitterand, and see that Obama has to compromise with Capital, if that's a better world from the Left's point of view than the untrammeled rule of the subset of the power elite on the Right.
And how is Obama any better than Bush was? Other than his looks and the fact that he speaks and writes better than Bush?
Thanks for your comments. Policy is directly related to and a product of the economic system that we have. How could it be otherwise, don't you think?
But while the progressive blogosphere keeps yammering about a disorganized mob in Zuccotti Park, Obama has raised a zillion dollars for his re-election campaign, and progressives have absolutely nobody to run against him in the primaries.
Often, however, even what already exists isn't being properly appraised by those who say that what already is evident and that this thing right here under our noses is the only thing that is possible.
Would anyone in the world who had said in the very earliest days of 2011 that in a few weeks Tunisia and then Egypt would rise up in revolution and topple their dictators of long-standing have been considered anything but a dreamer not living in the real world? And yet, this is precisely what happened.
Would anyone who six weeks ago had said that on September 17 when the call went out for people to gather together to occupy Wall Street that thousands would answer the call in NY and that this would spark some 1300 other occupations in the nation and spur on similar actions worldwide have been considered anything but a dreamer? And yet this too has happened and this movement is still growing.
Those who say that such and such (i.e., whatever is now obviously the situation) is the only thing that is possible are usually also saying something else: that what exists now is quite fine, thank you very much. They are expressing a value position. What is problematic about that when you're dealing with massive suffering and dangers due to the status quo is that it reflects a kind of complacency towards that suffering. It would be one thing to say: I don't think that radical or revolutionary changes are possible, but I DO agree that it would be desirable. But it's quite another to take the former position of saying, implicitly, that what passes for normality is quite alright.
If you're going to get into prognosticating, what is missing from those prognoses all too often are two elements. First, a proper appreciation for how intolerable the status quo is for so many people. And second, an understanding of what the objective conditions are for the system that is presently dominant and what options are actually available to those who are running that system. The point that I was making in brief form in my post is that the objective nature of this system is such that it is driven to exploit people more and more ruthlessly. That is going to drive people to do things that they would not otherwise do in reaction to the system. It is going and is driving people into seeking deeper understandings of why things are the way that they are and what possible alternatives exist to it. That is the direction and momentum of things and that is what someone who wants to make predictions about the future course of events needs to take into account.
Jacob: elections don't decide public policy. Many of the Occupiers get that by now. You don't yet, unfortunately.
in the first place, the economic situation is nowhere near what it was in the 30's, and that disastrous time didn't produce any fundamental change. there are not enough hungry people to stir fright in the comfortable.
repression works, as english speakers should know, if they have any history: the brit lower classes kept their heads down for 900 years, and arguably still do since the current government is filled with etonians.
'occupy' will most likely get tired and go home, except those that have no home. they may remain and make a few coins as tourist attractions.
america needs revolution, though it need not be violent. but there is no one who knows how to organize a population of apolitical consumers into (would-be) citizens.
Long time no see. Yes, some of what you say is true up to a point. What you're not taking into account, however, is the overall motion of events and the nature of the necessities that face those who rule this economy and society are operating under. Note that Obama ran (as did all of his opponents and other nominees including McCain and Palin) on a platform of change. Why? Because of the widespread revulsion towards Bush and Cheney not only their personages but especially their ruinous policies. The 2008 elections were premised on being successful in taking the wind out of the sails of the anti-war movement and the impeachment movement on promising people hope and change. What has happened to those false promises? What has happened and is happening to the views and sentiments of those who were drawn into that cynical but necessary ploy by the rulers? There is a momentous sea change in process of the social compact between the American people and its government and American big business. The New Deal is being annihilated and people are being increasingly treated in ways that they have never faced in this country's history. People should think very carefully - if you really want to know what's going on - about why the OM has taken off. I work with people like this in my job and talk with young people and not so young people all the time. This is not a flash in the pan and the exact forms the resistance is going to take is unpredictable, but it is a harbinger of what's to come. The debate within the GOP is an indicator of how extreme things have become and how ugly the measures are that our ruling parties are engaging in and contemplating and planning to carry out in the very near future. Things are not going back to normal. Even if the OM were to evaporate overnight, which it's not going to do, but if it were to evaporate, the factors that brought it into motion will reassert themselves and something like it is going to spring up again.
--upton sinclair
"One withstands the invasion of armies; one does not withstand the invasion of ideas."
--victor hugo
occupy party reaches critical mass/seismic effect--now what?