On the Occupy Movement

Occupy Wall Street and the Occupy Movement are two separate phenomena; the later is the outcrop of the former.  Occupy Wall Street was a rallying cry, and it was brilliant.  It struck at Wall Street, the symbol of the cancer of America and, for that matter, the world: liberal international competitive capitalism.  However, the movement seems not to take ownership of it.  

Here's the problem: Wall Street is but a display of the power of the wealthy class, as is a corporation's display of its accumulation of wealth.  The liberal internationalist political economist Peter Drucker explains it quite accurately: "Accumulation of wealth is only a symptom of an underlying process that is itself highly politicized.  In other words, it is an expression, not a source, of corporate power."(1)  Herein lies the rub: the Occupy Movement, and to a much larger extent, Occupy Wall Street, is largely ambivalent toward political economy, theory or science, because so many of the movement's participants have labeled all pre-existing theories and knowledge as passe, or a precursor to repeating the past.  Many of those, whom I have met, most closely engaged in the Occupy Movement are dismissive of critical systemic analyses that do not originate from their own tent [pun intended].

There are many theories floating around about why so many occupiers are hostile toward outside help from the political sciences and the like, but none will suffice to explain the philosophical positions of every occupier.  As someone who has been deep within the communication lines of many Occupy and un-affiliated organizing groups, I feel that I can somewhat accurately state that there is a general lack of desire for outside philosophical or otherwise contribution of any kind that is not in one of three forms: money and supplies, publicity (preferably by a famous name), or ideas and theories not borne from pre-existing theoretical bases.  That last bit is problematic.

"Men make their own history, but they do not 

make it just as they please; they do not make it under 

circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances 

directly encountered, given, and transmitted 

from the past." - Karl Marx (2)

In today's underground radical progressive culture, particularly among the young neo-anarchists who make up some of the front line of many of the largest occupations, there has been a bit of a backlash against the natural historical approach to building a revolution.  If Marx was right, in that circumstances are "transmitted from the past," this backlash is dangerous.  We all know this deep down, but we have been systematically propagandized in commercial America to be distrustful of frames of thought that challenge the logic of liberal competitive capitalism.  The logic of neoliberal economics is spoon fed to every American, every minute through advertising, cable news, the Internet, and any number of more subliminal formats.  If the Occupy Movement is not open to re-examining older theories, as well as the many theories that got overlooked during the past 30 years of neoliberal economic hegemony; theories like dependency theory, postcolonial theory, environmental political theory, primitivist theory, and world systems analysis.  Many of those theories were developed by political scientists and economists between the late 1950s and 1970s, with dependency and dependencia theory emerging from Latin America.  None of the eminently relevant work in these theoretical traditions are offered attention in the intellectual framework of the Occupy Movement.  The question is not why?, because reasons abound for why Americans know not of current theoretical trends in political science and economics.  The question is how to change this.  How can the movement grow from being one relatively antagonistic toward what has historically been called the intellectual elite, the intelligencia, the academy, academia, and a long list of less applicable names, to one that is, by design, all inclusive?  How do we go even further than that, toward a movement that can efficiently sift through the collective knowledge found within the movement, ultimately constructing the theoretical, philosophic, and economic framework of a new, more sustainable movement.  

Perhaps as a response to the relative lack of access to the Occupy Movement for those theoretically and/or academically motivated, many small spinoff groups have come into being; some from a place of frustration with the movement, some in opposition, and some sympathetic to the movement, but seeing it as more of a spoke in the revolutionary wheel.  We are a young country, and we are growing up in a political, economic, and social paradigm that is unique, from a historical perspective.  It is easy to decide, under these pre-existing conditions, to run away from history for fear of repeating it, but we must all stop and think deeply.  If we want to dismantle the system and rebuild it, something I am very much a proponent of, we must posses enough collective critical knowledge about the system to know which parts to keep, which to throw away, and which can be perhaps refurbished.  

The new revolution should be sustainable, lazer-focussed, and contain within it people and collectives who are prepared on all levels to take the reigns of government when the time comes.  We are up against a counter-revolutionary force that is unprecedented, both philosophically and financially.  The best weapons we have at our disposal are ideas.  Nothing, no matter how sophisticated and brutal, can stop the exponential growth an idea that is right for the time.

As for the Occupy Movement, I wish it well.  I will always offer up my thoughts and research, but for now, I will most likely not be spending much time inside the movement.  But I will not be gone.  I'll be in one of those small, committed groups that Margaret Meade warned us about.

- Christopher Cox








(1) Sagafi-Nejad, Tagi (2008) The UN and Transnational Corporations: From Code of Conduct to Global Compact. Indiana: Indiana University Press
(2) Marx & Engels: Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy, ed. Lewis S. Feuer (New York: Anchor Books, 1959), 329

On the People's Occupation Movement and the Dangers of Co-optation

A Brief Interpretive History

There is a genuine energy of justifiably impatient revolutionary zeal in the air, and it's been a long time coming.  The revolutionary conversations people are having together in the public squares, addressing subject matter that has been all but barred from public discussion for decades it seems, are all colliding to create the kind of social, cultural, and political shift that America and the world has been waiting on for a very long time.

As we all bask in the glow of our recently relocated courage to question authority, we must remember one stubborn thing: That this movement, however one chooses to identify it, is a people's movement; a movement spawned not, as some would have you believe, by Adbusters, George Soros, and especially not by Move On or any other front group for the Democratic Party, nor was it completely spontaneous for that matter.  It was brought up from the depths by a small group of people who have strategically worked for many months behind the scenes to develop the concepts that ultimately led to the movement we are now witnessing in its infancy.  Only when thousands of people decided to join these activists and organizers, I being one of them, in realizing their planned occupations that you witnessed the birth of what can only be called the Occupation Movement.

Regardless of what is reported in the American press, and for that matter, of what is being said by the protesters themselves at the various occupations around the country, the larger movement - beyond simply that of the Occupation Movement - has been in the making for a while.  There has been a long list of intense underground fights against our corrupt government ever since the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota in 2008.  Just look at the battles of the RNC 8 or all the activists from Minnesota's Anti-War Committee being strategically targeted by the FBI, which brought about a very strong Twin Cities based movement against FBI repression in the form of the Committee to Stop FBI Repression.  A very long list could be made of all the various grievances that have been increasingly attended to by affected American citizens, clearly leading up to this movement, which I would argue addresses many of those grievances, if not directly, indirectly.  What is truly spontaneous about this moment in history is the overwhelming convergence of interests that have coalesced around the occupations taking place across the country.

Another example of how this movement is not entirely one developed by those who coined the term Occupy Wall Street is that of the organization that called itself the October 2011 Movement, the organizers behind Stop the Machine! Create a New World!, which was a massive occupation of Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC beginning on October 6, 2011, which continues today.  In the interest of full disclosure, I was on, and continue to be on the steering committee for the October 2011 Movement, sometimes also referred to as the Stop the Machine Movement.  As was accurately reported on Truthout: "The October 2011 Movement - planned six months ago - is separate from, but wholly synergistic with the "Occupy Washington" movement in nearby McPherson Park."  Indeed, several months into our work organizing the occupation (a term we were using all along) of Freedom Plaza, the amazing uprisings in New York's Zuccotti Park started.  We felt from the beginning that the timing could have not been better.  Numbers is what we needed, and numbers we got, thanks in large part to the increasing presence of Occupy Wall Street.

On our first day at Freedom Plaza, there were well over 2000 people, and it was electrifying.  It was also completely non-violent, and we kept the door open for all the folks over in McPherson Park to come and join us, with the hope that our people could go join them too.  In fact, our only two real caveats were that we were not interested in "black shirts" or other groups who were more interested in sewing violence as a means of gathering attention than strategic organizing and civil resistance, and that there was to be no space given for the Democratic Party on our platform; this was to be completely by the people, of the people, and for the people.

As it turned out, Occupy DC became increasingly uninterested in working with the October 2011 Movement because, get this, they were thinking we were backed up by the Democratic Party, George Soros, Move On, etc.  In reality, one of our main pillars is that we refuse to be co-opted by the Democratic Party or any Democratic Party front group, like Move On.  And that is where we stand today, at least in regard to the Occupy Movement and the October 2011 Movement.

The Danger of Co-optation


Moving forward into the current conditions of the occupations and uprisings across the country, one thing is clear to me: that this movement is still a people's movement.  It is not owned by the Occupy Wall Street brand (I use that term on purpose), nor can they (whomever they are) claim to be the originators of the movement to take back this country from the oligarchic corporatocracy that we are all engaged in, regardless of what groups individual people choose to align with.  October 2011 does not claim to be the organizational leader of the movement either.  There is no one ideological, nor political theoretic basis that every participant in the occupation movement agrees upon.  There are socialists, anarchists, anarcho-syndicalists, libertarians, democratic socialists, and socialist democrats.  Therefore, it would be utterly naive for one particular wing of this new revolutionary movement to claim ownership, and even more naive to make the decision to coalesce under a "big tent" or to converge on the national level as a party apparatus in challenge to the Democrats and Republicans.  The system as we know it would never allow for that, unless of course the system - which in this case could be read to be the Democratic Party - were to take up public agreement and maybe even leadership of the Occupy Movement, something they are already clearly trying to do.  Articles abound on the Internet about the Democratic Party's public backing of the Occupy Movement.  According to Kevin Zeese, a core organizer with the October 2011 Movement:

"The Occupy Movement will only be effective if it remains independent of the two corporate-dominated parties.  We need to build an independent movement that pushes both parties for transformative change.  The tinkering that the best Democrats offer is insufficient.  The country needs much more.  We cannot allow oursevles to be co-opted by Democratic Party groups like MoveOn, Rebuild the Dream, Campaign for American's Future, Democracy For America and others.  We need an independent movement supported by independent media and if that is insufficient, than independent electoral organizations.  We must rely on the people not deeply corrupted political parties and their front groups."  

Perhaps fortunately, the October 2011 Movement has beaten the Democratic Party and its various assimilation droids back enough to not be publicly approached, and we want to keep it that way.

This is a critical time in the early development of a revolutionary movement in America.  The Occupy Movement and the October 2011 Movement, along with dozens of other movements worthy of being noted, must all be seen as the growing branches of the newly planted tree of revolution in America; a revolutionary movement against corporate control of our economy and our political apparatus.  If the Democratic Party, or any of its front groups manage to gain control or financial vestment in our movement, we might as well call it dead, or co-opted by the very machine we are strategically trying to stop.

The Democratic Party is No Longer Relevant: What Now?

In the past year, the last several months of which I have been taking a break from writing, it has become blatantly clear that the Democratic Party is not, nor has it been since JFK in my opinion, the party that represents the center and center-left of the voting public.  Quite obviously it has never been the party that represents the actual left, those of us who follow and to some degree adhere to economic and otherwise philosophies that are in direct contrast to free market capitalism and the survival of the fittest mentality it fosters.  The question remains, who does the Democratic Party represent?

The question I pose is fairly complex to answer, if indeed you are willing to consider "centrism" as a general political or philosophical operating assumption.  I do not.  In the immortal words of Jim Hightower, "There's nothing in the middle of the road but dead armadillos."  I can in no way, as a degree-holding political scientist, for what that's worth, support any theory that is based on "centrism".  Here's where the complexity comes in?  If the Democratic Party only represents the "centrists", that means two things: One, the party represents just as many (per capita) center right constituents as it does center left.  And two, it therefore defacto doesn't represent the true left (whatever that is) and the true right (whatever that is).  Well, we do know that many on the "true right" support the corporations that support the most anti-humanitarian policies known to man.  Hmm.  Can you see how complex this is?

I'm going to simplify it right now.  If the Democratic Party is focussed solely upon representing the "center", or the "middle" of the American voting public, it represents such a minority of the actual population, it is worthless.  We are lucky (or unlucky, depending on how you look at it) to have a general election where more than 50% show up to vote, so already, everyone who is elected is elected by a minority of the public for whom they will work.  Add to that the ridiculous first-past-the-post voting system we have and it immediately becomes clear that the Democratic Party is essentially a worthless, unfocused, money-poisoned interest group.  And that is to say nothing of the overly simplified access of the rich to the party apparatus.

All said, I think it is objectively obvious that the Democratic Party holds no relevance at all for those of us engaged in the struggle to build a needed revolution in America.  At best, it holds monetary relevance to the worldview of democratic free-market capitalists, who are themselves the cultish minority.  And for the rich, the Democratic Party holds great relevance, for they are in it for the money; the same money those in the halls of Congress are after, and in most cases already posses.  

As for me personally, I will be in Washington, DC occupying Freedom Plaza on October 6th to demand an end to corporate greed and a government intent on supporting human needs.  And while I am there, communing with thousands of non-violent, like-minded revolutionaries, I will be debating this question of political relevance in the American party system with some of the greatest minds around.  You should come too.  In fact, take the pledge: http://october2011.org/pledge This is the beginning.  

The People Versus the Government?

What is more important, personal rights and freedoms, or how the least fortunate among us are treated? I am of course asking this question in the context of government. That is, since it has become blatantly clear as of late that there is a very large portion of the American population that simply do not trust government, one cannot escape the question: If you don't trust government, who do you trust? Yourself? Are you, in your lonesomeness, the only person who can responsibly handle life on this planet? By responsibly, I do mean that all so unpopular concept in America that individuals - even in America - do have some kind of responsibility to attend to the betterment of human kind, to justice, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and so on. So here's my question couched differently: If you are one of those people, perhaps even a Tea Party Patriot, who claims that government is basically nothing more than a noose around the neck of an otherwise productive, smart, responsible, caring people, do you feel that real self-reliance is what you want? If so, what does it look like? Does government have a role at all?

I have heard many people, and some very eloquently, argue that government has never done the people any real good. One could probably make a good argument outlining how exactly the government, particularly in America, has really never done anything but make things worse over the long haul. After all, is has never been the American people who started offensive wars in the Middle East, put people in prison for stupid reasons, went against the Constitution in order to take rights away from people who otherwise had them, or lowered the tax on the rich to the lowest it has ever been. All those things, as examples, have been done by the elected - and sometimes appointed - government of the United States of America. The people, by and large, didn't really have a role in those decisions. Or did they?

Sure, government passed those often crazy laws that clearly benefit the rich over the poor, the White over the brown or black, the man over the woman, and the hard lined capitalist over the democratic socialist. But, it is the people who favor the skinny over the fat, the college educated over the poor high school graduates, the money makers over the laborers, the fashionable over the unique, and so on as it goes down the line. The point I am making here is that most of the social decisions that marginalize people who are otherwise equals, have been made as a society. Racism, sexism, elitism, ageism, and all the other "isms" have never really been mandated by the government, yet it is the government that seems to be getting blamed here.

Now, I come back to my question: What is more important to you, your personal freedoms and rights, or making sure the personal freedoms and rights of everyone around you are also had? What if they are brown? What if they are Muslim? What if they are fat? What if they are women instead of men? What if they are really smart but didn't get a college degree? What if they did get a college degree but you didn't? What if they are not as mentally or physically able as you to live a life free of the help of government or some such entity to help?

I'm not going to say I have the answer. To the contrary, there is a piece of me that agrees with both the anarchist and the socialist. I believe there is a role for the government, and it is to do one thing: Work toward the equality of life opportunities for the citizens who elected it, and to not ruin the environment, ecosystems, or foreign people's ways of life in the process. But therein lies the rub, as Shakespeare would say.

I, like so many left wingers and right wingers, have real doubts about the American government every getting it right. Obama is clearly a stooge of the Federal Reserve and the corporations that really run the country, just like every President in history, with the possible exception of John F. Kennedy, who I would argue was assassinated simply because he decided to really govern, to lead the country, as opposed to do the work of his corporate bosses. Our silly voting system makes it all but impossible to have a real debate in this country about truly important issues, and with all the private money involved in elections it's really a miracle that we don't actually get self-admitted Fascists in the White House. And in general, the people of this country feel entirely powerless against the seemingly endless power of the political and corporate elites.

With all that in mind, it is hard for me, as just one radical revolutionary guy, to be optimistic enough to think that Obama or anyone else is ever really going to do what is necessary to take our country back from the corporate oligarchs, unless the people give the leadership a deal it can't refuse. Follow me? Here's the problem though: Most of the people who are out there now, fully ready to engage in revolutionary rebellion; to actually take on the government and make a true statement against how it is run; to break down the machine as we know it, are all right wing extremists who think that we should go back to some kind of law of nature, where everyone just fends for him or herself. I'm not into that. But, I'm not into the status quo either.

In conclusion, let me say that I, like so many, am thoroughly confused, angry, and in need of direction. Who should I be talking to? Are there revolutionaries out there who are NOT right wing corporate sycophants? Are there revolutionaries out there who are willing to die not for their country but for their dignity as human beings? Where is the revolutionary push toward a society that honors freedom and individuality, but ALSO love for one another, acceptance of our differences, and that is as concerned for the least among us as for those who have made it to the proverbial top?

I don't think I'm advocating anything here, but let me just say that a civil war of epic proportions would make more sense, historically and idealistically speaking, than yet another voting cycle of choosing between two really weak, corporately controlled Presidential candidates next time around. Maybe the United States needs to be broken up, I don't know. Maybe we need to usher in the biggest societal breakdown in the history of man, so that we can rebuild ourselves.

Whatever happens, consider me an ally, as long as we are fighting against corporate, capitalistic, religious, or any other form of fascism. It's not about guns. It's not about color. It's not about taxes. It's about human decency, respect for one another, and the idea that we are the only ones who can fix things. There is no President who can do this for us, nor any government. Hmm, maybe I am leaning toward an anti-government stance, at least until we can take down this one and build a better, more just one.