Occupy Wall Street: Where do we go from here?

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Where do we go from here?

Since September 17, 2011, an ever-growing number of people have been camped out in downtown New York City, with the stated intention of “Occupying Wall Street.” From this have come several marches and demonstrations, which have often been met with heavy police repression. To say that these actions so far pale in comparison to the mass assemblies, strikes and other social explosions that have rocked places like Greece, Egypt, Chile, Spain, Tunisia, and even Madison, Wisconsin, in recent months would be an understatement. Still, they have resonated widely throughout a population racked by unemployment, underemployment, eviction and hopelessness in the midst of the greatest crisis since the Great Depression.

But several questions remain. What exactly is this movement? What is its purpose? Where is it headed? The resolution of these questions will determine everything.

These actions lack official leadership. They run on an open consensus basis. This has allowed the events so far to remain free from the realm of “acceptable” politics, in all its manifestations, and resist the attempts by the professional outfits big and small to reign in the actions and divert them into whatever avenue they prescribe. But there must be some direction.

On the “unofficial de facto” website www.occupywallst.org (http://www.occupywallst.org), the about section states: “The participation of every person, and every organization, that has an interest in returning the US back into the hands of it's individual citizens is required.”

But the United States has always been firmly in the hands of the ruling class. That was the case when the European powers first staked their claims to the land that makes up the country today. That was the case when the local rulers broke from Britain in the Revolutionary War. It was also the case when President George Washington headed a militia created to smash the farmers' Whiskey Rebellion only a few years later. It was the case during the genocidal removal of the indigenous people and the importation of enslaved African people. It was the case when the southern slavocracy launched the reactionary rebellion that sparked the Civil War, and it was also the case when the victorious northern rulers sold out the freed slaves and rolled back every gain made through Reconstruction soon after. It was the case when scores of working people were drown in blood in the Great Railroad Strike, the Pullman Strike, the Homestead Strike, the Ludlow Massacre, the Battle of Blair Mountain, and all other such outbreaks of open class warfare. It was the case when Kennedy and company authorized the invasion of Vietnam and when the Nixon administration brought it to an end. It was the case when the Reagan regime smashed the PATCO strike, and when the Clinton regime ended “welfare as we know it.” It was certainly the case when 'left liberal' President Barack Obama bailed out the faltering banks and corporations, boasting that “You would be hard-pressed to identify a piece of legislation that we have proposed out there that, net, is not good for businesses.” There is no question that it was the case when New York police officers rounded up 700 'Occupy Wall Street' demonstrators on the Brooklyn Bridge only days after brutalizing other participants.

There are no “better days” to return to. American Democracy is and always has been nothing more than a form of class rule that changes with the needs of the rulers. We need to move forward, not backward. We need to imagine new ways of doing things instead of fantasizing about things that never were.

It is promising that many participants have rejected 'demands,' which they see as requests aimed at influencing the rulers, in favor of 'goals,' which they wish to achieve directly. Various lists and proposals have been floating around, with general themes predominating.

They oppose corporate greed. What is the basis of business, from the smallest to the largest? It is surely not the satisfaction of human requirements. It is one thing and one thing only: profit! That's why there are millions of homeless people around the world. They need a home, and the materials and forces exist to construct homes for them all, but they can't afford to pay; so they sleep in the gutters. That's why there are millions of starving people around the world. They need food, and the materials and forces exist to feed them; but they can't afford to pay, so they starve. Nothing short of the abolition of private enterprise, and its replacement by public control of all tools and materials, utilized to satisfy human needs and desires, can shake the profit-seeking parasites from the back of humanity.

They oppose corporate control of the media. In a society when the means of producing everything are private property to be sold to the highest bidder, what else can be expected? When the news is “brought to you by” Coca-Cola, Verizon, GE Capital and the rest, how can the truth about the corporations, about the capitalist system as a whole, be broadcast? Nothing short of the public seizure of the media, from the newspapers up to the television networks and cable/broadband/telephone providers, abolition of advertising, and full public access will eliminate monopoly control over what we see, hear and read.

They oppose foreclosures and evictions that have driven people from their homes. Why are these foreclosures taking place? In this system housing is a commodity. Businesses aren't in the habit of giving away commodities. No money? No access. Nothing short of the dismantling of the banks, public seizure of all vacant homes, and their redistribution according to need can put an end to this practice once and for all.

They oppose mass unemployment. Why are masses of people unable to find work? Businesses only hire workers when they are necessary for the creation of profits. Despite a general fall in the pay and living standards of working people for several decades, business simply has no needs for millions of people around the world. Despite the monumental tasks faced by humanity, private enterprise is simply unable to utilize the huge numbers of people willing and able to undertake them. What better argument then can there be for the abolition of business? The public seizure of the means of producing the things we want and need, with their modern levels of efficiency, and the abolition of all the unnecessary industries (like finance, insurance and real estate), would free up massive productive potential, allowing us to divide the socially necessary labor up among everyone – simultaneously providing everything we as people need while at creating the space for each person to develop to their full potential.

They oppose cutbacks on education and increases in college tuition. Why are these cutbacks occurring? Is it just bad decision making or poor planning? No! The big expansion in public education in the United States came along with the growth of industry, when businesses needed huge numbers of people to work the factories and other large operations, and a smaller percentage of overseers well versed in business operations. The factory floor workers needed a basic education to utilize the productive machinery and handle their tasks. Business was happy to supply money for public education, as an investment in their future employees. The managers were equipped with business training in colleges. Today the factories are fewer, despite an increase in the overall level of production. The machinery has become so efficient that very few workers are needed. The plants that produce the beer you drink and even the toys your children play with are near to completely automated. Now job openings come in the retail and service sector, with positions like cashier, fry cook and stocker, that require little to no education. So business is no longer willing to pay for education. Instead, it pushes for cuts in public schools and the creation of a small number of charter schools – themselves run as profitable businesses – able to prepare the few who can look forward to specialized jobs at places like Microsoft for the future while the rest are abandoned. At the same time, attempts are being made to continue to transform universities into profitable enterprises, along with hospitals, public transportation systems, and even roads. As the systematic crisis continues, business strives to squeeze profits from every corner of society. Nothing short of the abolition of private education, charter schools, superintendents, executives, boards and the like, and the complete transformation of education into a real process of learning, based in the real lives of people, can allow human beings to truly develop to their full potential.

They oppose police brutality. But what are the police? They are the armed enforcers of the rulers, the defenders of the tiny possessing elite everything against the rest of us. What do they deal in? Brutality. It is their force, or the threat of their force, that is used to keep the rest of us in line. Who would obey the commands of the police had they not weapons, special training, and an army of other police, special forces, courts and prisons behind them? Who would willingly accept invasions of their privacy and agree to being pulled over, questioned, patted down, strip searched, told where to protest, told where and how to picket, etc., if they were not coerced into doing so? After decades of lawsuits, “community oversight,” “diversity in the police force,” and other such nonsense, we can see that the police continue to be what they always have been and do what they always have. Nothing short of the abolition of the police, which itself would require moving beyond a society where armed forces are needed to defend the haves against the have-nots, can eliminate police brutality.

They oppose the bailouts of big banks and corporations. They oppose corruption and big business influence over politics. In a society where the state (made up the government, the courts, the police, the prisons, the military, etc.) is organized to serve the tiny capitalist fraction that owns and controls all the tools, technology and machinery used to provide human beings with the things they want and need; where elections are won by the candidate that raises the most money (allowing this tiny capitalist fraction to 'vote with its dollars'), what else can be expected? As long as the capitalists exist as a class, as long as they maintain their private ownership over the means of producing and providing, as long as their state continues to exist and defend their rule, this will be the case. Nothing short of the abolition of the capitalist state, public seizure of the means of producing and providing, and creation of a new, higher form of social organization, based on the participation of each individual in the process of running things can allow us to advance out of the muck and mire of this rotten society.

And in this exists the resolution of all of these issues and more. The answer to any one of these goals is the answer to all of them: the abolition of capital, of capitalism and of the capitalist state. The end of national and class division, which serve only to pit us against ourselves to the benefit of the parasites. The unleashing of true human potential, the development of genuine human beings and the foundation of a real human community worthy of us all.

Now is the time to discuss these matters and this orientation. Now is the time to continue on this path toward the inevitable conflict with those who exploit and oppress. Now is the time to push to develop the balance of forces that will allow the majority to do away with the tyranny of a filthy-rich, parasitic minority in a revolutionary wave, carrying out the concrete actions that will liberate humanity.

Don't occupy Wall Street, abolish it! Don't seek a return to an idealized past, forge a new future!

[DaringMehring]

Good article, may distribute it.

The one thing that strikes my ear as off is " The unleashing of true human potential, the development of genuine human beings and the foundation of a real human community worthy of us all." Are we not genuine human beings? Are exploited proletarians some how not genuine human beings? I understand your point, but this seems like problematic phrasing.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Feel free to change it however you'd like.

I think it's clear (or should be) that our development as individuals and as a species is greatly restricted by the conditions we find ourselves in.

Of course we're all human beings. But what exactly it means to be a human being at any particular time varies. I think those who are born into a real human community will look back at us and those who came before us as we look back on primitive people. I think they will be genuine in the sense that will be able to freely develop without constriction by exploitation, oppression, competition and the like.

[RedTrackWorker]

NHIA, I think this is a well-written leaflet that in the main explains in a popular way how certain demands issues the protests have raised can only be met by the abolition of capitalism.

I will leave aside anything that's come up in your critique of the LRP statement thread (http://www.revleft.com/vb/occupy-wall-street-t162169/index.html) to ask two questions:

1) You write:
"Nothing short of the dismantling of the banks"
"Don't occupy Wall Street, abolish it!"

Can you explain to me (or refer me to) why you don't think the demand is to take over and amalgamate all the banks as part of a useful social function of accounting and control and instead call for abolishing them?

2) You write:
"abolition of the police" and
"the answer to all of them: the abolition of capital, of capitalism and of the capitalist state."

Why is everything raised in the passive form of "abolition" without addressing the question of who does the abolishing (the working class) and how (revolution) through what (a workers' state, per Marx's Critique of the Gotha Program)?

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Unfortunately, I think the tone of the article is far too idealistic, utopian and ambitious, to be honest.

Can anybody see the OWS movement bringing revolution to America? Probably not. It could, however, spawn a genuinely Socialist mass party, left-of-democrat, that abided by the rules of individualism (that most American of values), working class participation (As opposed to corporate rule) and a new slant on many supposedly American issues, such as the free market, healthcare, foreign policy, education and so on.

Perhaps i'm a hypocrite, because if a British person, talking about Britain, wrote the above paragraph i'd savage them for it, but, as the article says, America has had a brutalised history of ruling class rule only, and so it probably will need to go through a democratic mini-revolution (think European Social Democracy but with a bottom-up, individualist slant) before the mass of the population can be won round to more revolutionary ideas, such as abolition of Capitalism.

This is crucial for the long-run strategy of the left in America. Let's not forget that America is on its own, geographically big enough, and culturally, politically and socio-economically diverse enough to be a continent. One movement - though it has spawned replicas - cannot, therefore, claim its goal to be revolution, nation-wide or international even! I appreciate the subtle move from 'demands' to 'goals', but the content thereof is just as important. The goal must be to assert some sort of bottom-up power upon the political process and the economy, to reign in corporate America and to force the event to such a stage that the left is recognised on the national political scale. Only then can we work to revolution (well, you work to revolution!).

Sorry if that's all a bit confused, i've literally just been typing as i've been thinking and perhaps i'm wrong, I can't profess to be an expert on this movement!

[Threetune]

Well, this is livelier than the dreary dry academic pretend revolutionary ‘programs’ (transitional or otherwise) that are being punted around by the ‘lefts’ and I suspect the author is far more capable of understanding any criticisms and responding to them than has been the case with the ‘lefts’ who admit that there ‘demands’ are “inadequate” but insist on making them anyway.


So what are the problems with this speech?

Firstly, it can’t be an accident that there is no reference to the ‘working class’ but instead just two mentions of “working people”. In fact this whole speech is an appeal to “each individual” and not a class at all. Having begun correctly with a criticism of the “unofficial de facto” website www.occupywallst.org (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.occupywallst.org), which states:

“The participation of every person, and every organization, that has an interest in returning the US back into the hands of it's individual citizens is required.”

The author ends his speech with “…and creation of a new, higher form of social organization, based on the participation of each individual in the process of running things can allow us to advance out of the muck and mire of this rotten society.”

The only real difference, on this question, is that the Park People look back to a nonexistent ‘individual as primary’ history, while the author looks forward to a nonexistent ‘individual as primary’ future.


All this will be very comforting to our ruling class who also never tire of talking about “working people” and not the working class, they also constantly bang on about “public control”, “public access” and even “public seizure” of vacant property etc as the author does. And the reason is, it is all just opportunist popularism and of no threat to the power of the state and capitalist class interests.


“…Nothing short of the abolition of the police, which itself would require moving beyond a society where armed forces are needed to defend the haves against the have-nots, can eliminate police brutality.”

Not a word about how we “.. move beyond a society where armed forces are needed…”



But wait, what’s this?


“… Nothing short of the abolition of the capitalist state, public seizure of the means of producing and providing, and creation of a new, higher form of social organization, based on the participation of each individual in the process of running things can allow us to advance out of the muck and mire of this rotten society.”

Still no answer to how this might be accomplished. Oh, hang on………..


“…The answer to any one of these goals is the answer to all of them: the abolition of capital, of capitalism and of the capitalist state. The end of national and class division, which serve only to pit us against ourselves to the benefit of the parasites. The unleashing of true human potential, the development of genuine human beings and the foundation of a real human community worthy of us all.”

Fine words, but how do you propos it be done without a working class state?
http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2256029&postcount=11 (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2256029&postcount=11)

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Unfortunately, you've linked to a post of yours that contains a Marx quote where he talks about Paris and 'peoples' revolution on the continent.'

The problem with the USA, as I elucidated above, is that there is really no sense of non-corporate culture. For their entire history, from European imperialists to the current day rule of the bourgeois class, any traditional leftist issue - even something Social Democratic such as nationalised health care - has been sidelined as anti-American.

I fear that the problem with America is that many on the left do not 'get it'. You cannot prescribe a general antidote for a specific problem. The US, aside from being Capitalist like many European countries, actually has a problem that many of those who are critical of modern-day Capitalism seem to (as was said in Nothing....s OP) hark back to a better age in history that simply didn't exist.

So really, any movement of the left in the US needs to be very specifically American, and needs to understand that you cannot Marx-quote your way to revolution in the US.

[Threetune]

"... One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that 'the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes'...."[1] (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch03.htm#fw01)
The authors took the words that are in single quotation marks in this passage from Marx's book, The Civil War in France.

Is that better?

[Threetune]

Unfortunately, you've linked to a post of yours that contains a Marx quote where he talks about Paris and 'peoples' revolution on the continent.'

The problem with the USA, as I elucidated above, is that there is really no sense of non-corporate culture. For their entire history, from European imperialists to the current day rule of the bourgeois class, any traditional leftist issue - even something Social Democratic such as nationalised health care - has been sidelined as anti-American.

I fear that the problem with America is that many on the left do not 'get it'. You cannot prescribe a general antidote for a specific problem. The US, aside from being Capitalist like many European countries, actually has a problem that many of those who are critical of modern-day Capitalism seem to (as was said in Nothing....s OP) hark back to a better age in history that simply didn't exist.

So really, any movement of the left in the US needs to be very specifically American, and needs to understand that you cannot Marx-quote your way to revolution in the US.

Well unlike you, I’m not fretting about the working class of the US. This capitalist collapse, the attacks of the state and genuine communist theoretical leadership is going to help shatter the bourgeois concocted illusions some may have. The spontaneous response of workers is going to draw them into realms of understanding about the world they live in and the place they occupy that will make all previous revolutionary upheavals seem irrelevant anyway.

The question is not only what some US workers might or might not think, but how do you think the US revolution will develop without Marxism/ Leninism?

[Die Neue Zeit]

It could, however, spawn a genuinely Socialist mass party, left-of-democrat, that abided by the rules of individualism (that most American of values), working class participation (As opposed to corporate rule) and a new slant on many supposedly American issues, such as the free market, healthcare, foreign policy, education and so on.

Perhaps i'm a hypocrite, because if a British person, talking about Britain, wrote the above paragraph i'd savage them for it, but, as the article says, America has had a brutalised history of ruling class rule only, and so it probably will need to go through a democratic mini-revolution (think European Social Democracy but with a bottom-up, individualist slant) before the mass of the population can be won round to more revolutionary ideas, such as abolition of Capitalism.


The US, aside from being Capitalist like many European countries, actually has a problem that many of those who are critical of modern-day Capitalism seem to (as was said in Nothing....s OP) hark back to a better age in history that simply didn't exist.

Are you suggesting that, instead of New Deal nostalgia, the US left goes back to updating the American Radical Republicanism of the post-Lincoln era (http://www.wcrforum.com/archive/index.php/thread-251.html)?

[coda]

With the least bit of tweaking this document should surely be passed around the Occupy events.

I would begin it from "The United States has always been in the hands of the ruling class..." and excise everything above that --a firm statement of true conviction.

Glad to see you got rid of the 'community service' part which was tangential.

Otherwise, no further critiquing from here.

We should all print out as many as we can and pass it around our local area Occupy --- with NHIA's express consent,of course.



Crimethinc (yeah, crimethic! as one of the first left groups to address the situation (statement posted on the Occupy website http://occupywallst.org/) turned their statement into a pdf flier to be folded lengthwise. very nice job....

http://cloudfront.crimethinc.com/images/occupy/dearoccupierspamph.pdf

original version: http://cloudfront.crimethinc.com/images/occupy/dearoccupiers.pdf

[coda]

One last comment:

one thing I do like about the crimethinc flier is that they address the occupation directly. They are speaking directly to the protesters and acknowledge they are part of it too... i.e. "let's" and "We".. etc. Way important!!!

In the same respect for the above documents... all the "theys" should become "We"... if only for the reason that We do oppose those things too! and they are us and we are them.

anyhow.. I am inspired by the this brilliant piece, which would make a great speech at the people's mic. Especially the part noting all the previous strikes and uprisings the ruling class violently repressed.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

We should all print out as many as we can and pass it around our local area Occupy --- with NHIA's express consent,of course.

Anything I ever write, make, or whatever can be used by anyone, however they see fit. Feel free to modify it, redistribute it, and give me no credit. I'm going to make a PDF of this particular document sometime today, though in its present state it's fine for transmitting online to whoever you think may be interested.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Here is a PDF of the document. There have been a few minor adjustments for style.

[coda]

really nice.

[RED DAVE]

Here is a PDF of the document. There have been a few minor adjustments for style.This is a good agitational document with an analysis of the purpose of institutions under capitalism that is fine. And at the end it calls for an ongoing discussion and the abolition of Wall Street.

All cool. But what is the immediate strategy? What is a set of immediate demands that can be raised at union meetings, political meetings, at the Occupations themselves to give them a focus?

This is, I believe, what Leftists have to move towards ASAP: demands that can move people now. Otherwise, the Occupations will collapse into debating fora. That 's cool but not enough. And the cold weather is coming.

RED DAVE

[coda]

One demand for certain, upon ourselves and eachother should be we keep meeting publically, keep agitating and organizing ourselves.. even after the snow has dropped.

The left should drop thousands of pieces of organizing literature into these areas to attain some kind of class conscious consensus. Right now, at this point, there appears to be every demand, from universal health care, to legalize marijuana, to lower mortgage rates and tuition. And what they subconsciously are asking for is a left revolution but just don't know how to articulate or go about it. This is probably where a decentralized left vanguard comes into realistic play.

(or I'm just dreaming... )

[S.Artesian]

1) You write:
"Nothing short of the dismantling of the banks"
"Don't occupy Wall Street, abolish it!"

Can you explain to me (or refer me to) why you don't think the demand is to take over and amalgamate all the banks as part of a useful social function of accounting and control and instead call for abolishing them?

First, because banks have absolutely no role to play in SOCIAL accounting. Banks are not instruments of accounting. They are institutions for securing the wealth aggrandized by the ruling class, and for centralizing, consolidating, concentrating that alienated wealth. You do away with the class structure, with the ruling class, what's the point of banks.

This notion of banks serving a "useful" role, have a useful function, is one of the most acute, basic, painful confusions of usefulness and exchange value out there. Think about it. It's like saying, actually not LIKE, it is saying, "We have to keep exchange value, we have to keep a system where labor exchanges its time for the means of subsistence so we can "account" for the social effort necessary in production."

Uh.. no we don't. We can measure it any number of ways without introducing or preserving the aggrandizement of labor-power, without preserving wage-labor, without reproducing, or mimicking the accumulation of capital.

Money is not a form of accounting. It is not a measure of usefulness. It is a measure of the private aggrandizement of social labor. The proletariat does not require it once it consciously takes hold of the means of social reproduction and begins to do away with itself as the proletariat.

[RedTrackWorker]

Money is not a form of accounting. It is not a measure of usefulness. It is a measure of the private aggrandizement of social labor. The proletariat does not require it once it consciously takes hold of the means of social reproduction and begins to do away with itself as the proletariat.

To be clear, you're saying as soon as the proletariat takes power and just begins to abolish class society--it can do away with money and the banks?

If you're saying after the proletariat does away with itself as proletariat, banks and money aren't necessary, I'm not going to argue. Otherwise, I'd like to see this explained further.

[S.Artesian]

I'm saying beginning to abolish class society requires doing away with money and banks.

The proletariat cannot do away with itself as the proletariat as long as society is reproducing the separation of social labor from the products of social labor-- which is exactly maintains money... and banks.

Banks have nothing to do with accounting, measuring efficiency... etc. You might as well argue that the proletariat will maintain profit, measures of profitability, because that's the basis for accounting; or that we will exchange commodities in proportion to the time necessary for their reproduction after a revolution.

If you mimic that role in establishing a state bank, in using money as your measure-- what are you measuring if not transformation of labor into value? You will really get to that state of mimicking capitalism.

So yeah, from the getgo-- workers seize the banks, liquidate the accumulated "image" of wealth of the bourgeoisie captured in the paper, the securities, the "titles;" dispossess the bourgeoisie directly of its property, reorganize the economy on the basis of social need, where the workers do the accounting directly without the mediation of money or banks.

Hard to imagine? Hey, that's because it takes the class as a whole to make that real; to find those new methods. And that's where art, poetry and imagination are supposed to fuse with revolution.

We are talking about not just taking over society, but over-throwing the social relations of production embodied in capital. You cannot do that and maintain banks and money as the circulating medium.

[ericksolvi]

Good article, may distribute it.

The one thing that strikes my ear as off is " The unleashing of true human potential, the development of genuine human beings and the foundation of a real human community worthy of us all." Are we not genuine human beings? Are exploited proletarians some how not genuine human beings? I understand your point, but this seems like problematic phrasing.

The exploited proletarians are not the true of highest form of human being. How could they be? Oppressed, forced to work long hard hours, always struggling for financial survival. We live in a Panopticon, a prison that is built to hide those who do the imprisoning. We are manipulated by the interests of the elitists, the capitalists. You may believe that in rejecting the capitalist system you have become free, but that is a fallshood.
True freedom is not a simple matter. To an extent we make our own prisons. Your fears, desires, beliefs are all part of a cage you make for yourself, just as real as the cage made for you by the Capitalist system. I may be revealing a slight affinity for Nietzsche.
The idea of a revolution is without merit, if all it seeks to accomplish is placing the working class in charge. The revolution must seek to dissolve the financial classes, creating a post class system. People who are free, secure, and equal, can then put more of their efforts into bettering themselves. Yes I feel people could, and should, be better then they are now.
The system as it stands forces people to expend their energy in exploitative ways (Jobs). With the old system gone one would hope people would choose enriching alternative ways to expend their energy. Art, science, philosophy, history, all very enriching pass times.

[RedTrackWorker]

So yeah, from the getgo-- workers seize the banks, liquidate the accumulated "image" of wealth of the bourgeoisie captured in the paper, the securities, the "titles;" dispossess the bourgeoisie directly of its property, reorganize the economy on the basis of social need, where the workers do the accounting directly without the mediation of money or banks.

Perhaps I'm being slow, but you think that in Russia, on Nov 8th/Oct 26th 1917, the soviet should have and could have done the above?

[S.Artesian]

Perhaps I'm being slow, but you think that in Russia, on Nov 8th/Oct 26th 1917, the soviet should have and could have done the above?


You know, as great an event as the Russian Revolution was, it was circumscribed by the very conditions that spawned it-- that is to say uneven and combined development, where capitalism existed in an "enclave" condition and the "normal" local development of capitalism had been stunted as a direct result of the international growth of capitalism.

So.... so what the soviets did or did not do has to be examined in its historically materialist context.

We are not living in Russia in 1917, with inadequate means of communication, transportation, circulatin, distribution; with agriculture of low, and declining, productivity.

So.... so if you want to repeat the experience of 1917, in all its aspects, then you're only showing how little you understand of Marx's historical materialism. If you want to repeat some of the aspects of 1917, again you have to look at the historical context. And if you do that, then we might be able to move beyond ridiculous appeals to icons.

[RedTrackWorker]

You know, as great an event as the Russian Revolution was, it was circumscribed by the very conditions that spawned it-- that is to say uneven and combined development, where capitalism existed in an "enclave" condition and the "normal" local development of capitalism had been stunted as a direct result of the international growth of capitalism.

So.... so what the soviets did or did not do has to be examined in its historically materialist context.

We are not living in Russia in 1917, with inadequate means of communication, transportation, circulatin, distribution; with agriculture of low, and declining, productivity.

So.... so if you want to repeat the experience of 1917, in all its aspects, then you're only showing how little you understand of Marx's historical materialism. If you want to repeat some of the aspects of 1917, again you have to look at the historical context. And if you do that, then we might be able to move beyond ridiculous appeals to icons.

You did not phrase your claim based on particular aspects of today's situation but just said when the proletariat begins to abolish itself. I did not say "because they did it in Russia, we have to do it for all time"--I was trying to clarify what you were claiming.

And who is "we" in this "historically materialist context"--if the workers take power in Tunisia and Egypt, can they just abolish money? When you say something like the proletariat will take power and get rid of banks and money, am I supposed to just assume you're only talking about U.S. workers or what?

I'm not convinced it would be so simple in this context--in Egypt or the U.S.--to do away with money right away, but if you're not putting it forward as a formal claim that in each and every situation they must, but that it depends on certain concrete factors--that's a whole nother discussion.

[S.Artesian]

You did not phrase your claim based on particular aspects of today's situation but just said when the proletariat begins to abolish itself. I did not say "because they did it in Russia, we have to do it for all time"--I was trying to clarify what you were claiming.

And who is "we" in this "historically materialist context"--if the workers take power in Tunisia and Egypt, can they just abolish money? When you say something like the proletariat will take power and get rid of banks and money, am I supposed to just assume you're only talking about U.S. workers or what?

I'm not convinced it would be so simple in this context--in Egypt or the U.S.--to do away with money right away, but if you're not putting it forward as a formal claim that in each and every situation they must, but that it depends on certain concrete factors--that's a whole nother discussion.


I'm sorry, I based my "claim" on the topic of the thread, which was occupy Wall Street. Last time I checked, Wall Street was in NYC; NYC in the USA [as much as certain other sections of the USA wish that it weren't] and the OWS movement was taking place in 2011, not 1917.

Simple? Nothing's simple. But everything in a revolution requires a bit of audacity, you know? What was it Marx said quoting Danton-- "audace, audace, encore l'audace"? Or was that Engels quoting Danton? No matter, you don't get the point, and you should. Timidity, conservatism are not revolutionary virtues.

You want to conserve the banks on the grounds that they play a social role in "accounting" and organizing an economy, while at that same time you completely abstract those roles from the class relations of the economy that give the banks those functions and powers. That's not Marxism, comrade. That's social-democracy.

As for Egypt and Tunisia-- uhh.... can proletarian revolution in those countries move to socialism without an international revolution?

What would Trotsky say about this inability of Trotskyists to grasp the content of uneven and combined development?

[S.Artesian]

But you know what? We're a bunch of idiots. All of us. And I include myself as a prime example.

The city is going to disperse the OWS site, sooner rather than later. If we wanted to be "concrete" we should be concretely developing a network to defend the protests-- we should be talking to those workers who went to the demonstrations about actions to be taken when Bloomberg moves at the behest of the banks.

We should be agitating for student walkouts, moving the protests directly to City Hall, supporting actions by healthcare workers, teachers, etc.

That's what needs to be done.

[Jose Gracchus]

SA is right on top of things. That is the level of the concrete, how to expand the occupation movement outside its limited 'symbolic' zone, which means reaching out to workers and involving them thoroughly in the greater social space where these occupations continue. Necessarily in the process will be a supercession of the petty-bourgeois liberal/empty-activist 'tyranny of structurelessness' leadership and organizational model, and practical plans of defense against repressions and cops.

[aristos]

As for Egypt and Tunisia-- uhh.... can proletarian revolution in those countries move to socialism without an international revolution?


A bit off-topic, but yes, it could. Provided it spread out to the whole North Africa and Arabian Peninsula initially, and expanded further some time later (particularly to Sub-Saharan Africa).

Of course as we know, no proletarian revolution occurred this time in either Egypt or Tunisia.

[blake 3:17]

Contacts for actions in Canada here: http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/krystalline-kraus/2011/09/activist-communiqu%C3%A9-occupy-canada-movement

[RedTrackWorker]

SA is right on top of things. That is the level of the concrete, how to expand the occupation movement outside its limited 'symbolic' zone, which means reaching out to workers and involving them thoroughly in the greater social space where these occupations continue. Necessarily in the process will be a supercession of the petty-bourgeois liberal/empty-activist 'tyranny of structurelessness' leadership and organizational model, and practical plans of defense against repressions and cops.

I was just down there. It's hard for me to image effectively bringing workers into the space as it is at this point. If there is an escalation, a march of 100,000+ or even the tiniest related strike, sure, that could change fast. Perhaps--hopefully but doubtfully--the situation will be different in other cities. There's also the chance that some strike that would've been pitifully and bureaucratically isolated happens in the next short period of time in some city and hooks up with some youth sleeping outside somewhere and galvanizes things, or some other unforeseeable configuration.

But as it is now? I've talked to several workers who've stopped by and heard stories of many more, etc.. Interest, yes. Enough of them and enough motivation and cohesiveness to have an impact on the space as it exists in NYC? Not seeing it.

Preparing the ground for supporting a defensive action in the event of an eviction--important yes. But any news that they're preparing one soon? I thought they might try to let winter do some of the work for them first and had seen no particular news that plans were in the works to move soon.

On the particulars SA proposes, is there some reason they haven't expanded to City Hall Park yet? They were going to attempt to expand to Washington Sq Park, if only to relieve crowding but pulled back. Haven't got the story yet but partly it may be because it has a curfew which Zucotti doesn't and hence more legal pretext for eviction. I don't know if City Hall Park has a curfew too.

Pending eviction or not, the question of how to take the movement forward is a key one. Baring some kind of escalation that we can't really plan for or predict, I think the most plausible measure is to work for a bigger march, as in the 200,000+ like they hoped for the first day. I think it is possible to get there, and that opens up all kinds of doors (going toward a kind of workers' organization, not this tyranny of structurelessness anti-accountable organization, making much more plausible calls for strike action/workplace occupation which have to sound a bit wishful thinking to most workers right now when many of them were wishing it anyway). Plausible...but not easy.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Zucotti is a private park, so the parks department has no jurisdiction over it. If they move to a city park like Washington Square, they have to deal with closing time, city laws about sleeping in parks, the parks department and its officers, etc.

[S.Artesian]

As NHIA has so eloquently, and correctly, pointed, agitation works better without copyrighting. So in that spirit... do what you want with this:


WHEN PUSH COMES TO SHOVE


Third in a series, meant to be freely copied, printed, distributed. No credit required. Plagiarism greatly appreciated.

Push always comes to shove when the issues are power, property and the continued flow of the mean green that produces the bulge in a banker's pants that says both that he's happy to see you and he has a gun in his pocket.


So first the whining, sniveling billionaire mayor of New York [an imposter, imported from Boston as if the disaster of the 2004 American League Championship Series wasn't enough punishment for the errors of our ways in tolerating the Steinbrenners for 30 years] announces that the OWS protests are not "productive" as they threaten two of the three pillars of NYC's pre-apocalyptic economy-- banking and tourism. The other pillar, as yet unthreatened by those camped out in lower Manhattan, is real estate.


In a bit of psychotic doublespeak worthy of the idiot-hero of capitalists everywhere, Ronald Reagan, the mayor states: "The protestors that are trying to destroy the jobs of working people in the city aren't productive."

What a man of the common people, what a fighter for the working stiff our mayor is, as long as the stiff is taking down a seven figure income, utilizes limousines, and subscribes to the Bloomberg news feeds.

When in 2008, the men and women working at the Stella D'oro bakery in the Bronx went on strike against that company's attempt to cut wages and benefits, the mayor wasn't making pronouncements about the "unproductive" attitude of the owners, Brynwood Partners. The mayor wasn't complaining about the fact that between 1991 and 2008, the various owners-- Nabisco, Kraft, Brynwood had reduced employment 80 percent, destroying some 400 jobs of working people in New York.

When the NLRB found that the company had improperly refused to bargain with the workers' union, our mayor didn't send in the police to restrain the Brynwood Partners, to teach them a lesson at the end of a cop's baton. He didn't express his outrage that these owners, these outside agitators based in Greenwich, Ct. could so trample on the image of this wonderful city.

When Brynwood Partners announced, directly after the workers had won the strike, that it would be closing the Bronx factory, destroying 134 jobs, did the mayor take a time out to denounce that unproductive action of the owners? Why even ask?


In the "recession" that "ended" [!] in June 2009, over 8 million jobs were lost. Since the start of the recession more than 2 million homes have been foreclosed upon or are in the foreclosure process. Housing construction and related services which accounted for 1/6 of the US GDP prior to the contraction is now at 13% of GDP. Poverty rates are increasing and one-fifth, 20% of the children in the United States are born into poverty.

So...who's destroying whom? Who's zoomin' who around here, and around the world?

We know that every time Bloomberg opens his mouth he's speaking as the representative of that billionaires boy's club. And we know that behind, or now as push comes to shove, in front of that boy's club stand the ranks of the cops with their billy clubs.

While the bankers go home to their gated communities, their spokesman turns NYC into a "penned-in" community.

The police will be ordered to move against the OWS demonstrators, and we must move to counter the police.

Our response requires students across the city, in high schools, colleges, universities to walk out of their classes.

That their teachers walk out.

That transit workers refuse to handle vehicles commandeered for and by the police.
That teamsters hot cargo deliveries to all city agencies except hospitals, fire departments, libraries, and the various welfare agencies.

Our response requires that the working people organize themselves against this government of, by, and for financiers.

The Wolf Report (http://thewolfatthedoor.blogspot.com)

[MarxSchmarx]

Are you suggesting that, instead of New Deal nostalgia, the US left goes back to updating the American Radical Republicanism of the post-Lincoln era (http://www.wcrforum.com/archive//thread-251.html)?

i got a 404 on that link do i need to be signed up to read it?

[Die Neue Zeit]

No. It was archived. I don't know why it doesn't work.

Anyway, you should have my paper on Economic Republicanism / Ricardian Socialism / Real, Radical Bourgeois Socialism (either old e-mails or just now). A brief allusion to this can be found here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/mere-democracy-economic-t120765/index.html

[Rocky Rococo]

Tonight from Boston to Seattle, the police were ordered to move against the Occupiers. There was no infrastructure of solidarity and support to shelter them from the storm. The only good news is that at the helm of every single one of these police riots is a Democratic mayor.