JOHN SARGIS
Introduction
The
revolts in Tunisia and Egypt and the destruction of Libya[1]
by the transnational elite (through NATO and its “rebels”
and various mercenaries under the auspices of the UN and the
Arab League), labeled the “Arab Spring”, did NOT teach the
world about democracy. In fact it taught the world that the
transnational elite do not care a whit for democracy,
self-determination or autonomy for any individual, group or
state. The US has never supported genuine revolution in
Tunisia or Egypt, but supported a handover of power that
would replace the autocrats in each country with a puppet
caretaker government.
Although the US is dissatisfied with the Egyptian military
for recently shutting down Egyptian civil society groups and
three American (financed by the Democratic and Republican
parties) NGOs, this action will neither jeopardize the over
billion dollars of military hardware yearly the US transfers
to the Egyptian military, nor endanger US control over the
military. The bigger problem for the US is the Islamists
(especially those in the “Left” of the Muslim Brotherhood,
the Salafists). This is why the US elite is courting with
the mild Islamists of the Brotherhood who would now control
Parliament and with whom the US elite would like to create a
kind of ‘Turkish’ balance between the army and the
Islamists. On the other hand, the American-funded NGOs in
Egypt could play the role of checking this balance and
encouraging a greater degree of integration of the country
into neoliberal globalization and its ideology.[2]
Barack Obama, through his press secretary, citing the recent
deaths of protesters, recommends that the military junta set
in motion “the
full transfer of power to a civilian government…as soon as
possible.”[3]
Egypt, Tunisia and Libya
are in the process of being fully integrated into the
internationalized market economy and some form of
representative “democracy”. However, along with a host of
reliant and repressive Middle East sheikdoms favorable to
the US, the monarchy of Bahrain which brutally put down a
rebellion with US weapons and the Saudi Arabian military,
and Saudi Arabia, the classic theocratic monarchy, are
issued just friendly reminders from the transnational elite
that they should implement mild reforms in the near future.
Is it
not surprising that war criminal Hillary Clinton, an early
ardent behind the scene backer and fomenter (using State
Department proxies to supply the “revolutionaries” training
on using social networks to quickly spread “democracy”) of
Arab Spring, has not spoken in support or favor of #Occupy
Wall Street (#OWS) as being on the right side of history in
its struggle for the re-distribution of economic power in
the US? Will Hillary court #OWS and defend its right to free
speech and peaceful assembly? Will Hillary greet #OWS as the
victims of the vast financial inequality in the US where 11%
of the population has accumulated more wealth than 89% of
the population? Has Hillary “Tweeted” #OWS in her support
for them to overthrow the elite?
Revolt and Repression
The
uprising in the US known as #Occupy Wall Street[4]
having more than half of all Americans supporting it, has
been continually on the receiving end of police repression.
The US police state has repeatedly attacked, arrested, and
evicted peaceful #OWSers around the country.
So the US, (in other words, the
US elite) just as it did in the North Africa Arab Spring,
will not support a movement that questions the unequal
distribution of wealth, let alone any movement that will
even vaguely
aim
to replace the capitalist
system and re-build a new society. The US elite will not
allow this to happen no matter how unjust, unequal or
undemocratic the system is, because their fundamental aim is
that the concentration of political and economic power
should remain in the hands of the political and economic
elites, who would never give up their power willingly, and
as a matter of fact it is they who initiate systemic
violence.
#OWS
is to be complimented for refocusing the American crisis
from Congress’ overly pathetic concern about the US deficit
to the gaping financial inequality revealed by the financial
crisis whose problems cannot be solved by the corrupted
system. Thus #OWS has brought national attention to the
fiscal disparity and inequality created in the US. The
people who protest, identify and support #OWS are the
victims of the vast concentration of economic wealth gained
at the expense of the rest of the population. Current census
statistics show that poverty increased markedly in the past
few years. At present, 16% of Americans, 49 million people,
live in poverty, and some 15 million children go to sleep
hungry. Soon the ranks of the poor will grow, when Congress
axes more social programs demanded by spending cuts. In view
of the fact that the super committee failed to come to
agreement by the designated time, automatic and more painful
cutbacks will take effect.[5]
The African-American and Latino communities are being hit
much harder with poverty rates of 25% and 28% respectively.[6]
#OWS will look like child’s play to the unrest and social
decay that will grow with the fuel of 10 million more people
thrust into poverty in the next few years.[7]
Many
hundreds of cities in the US and around the world have
Occupations. In the US the repressive arm of the state was
doing what it was supposed to do—beat, gas, pepper spray,
arrest- any person they deem a threat to their power. US
state terror directed against its own peaceful protesters
was what propelled #OWS onto the world’s stage. The NYPD
fascists illegally raided, beat, pepper sprayed, arrested,
destroyed and removed the #OWS encampment at Liberty Park on
16 November. Lawyers for #OWS acquired a judicial injunction
at about 7am to keep Liberty Park open and allow protesters
to have tents, etc. Billionaire Mayor Bloomberg, who has
said repeatedly that the protesters are not above the law,
not only promptly put himself above the law and ignored the
injunction, but also he and his paramilitary forces would
not allow the protesters back into the park until he could
find a puppet judge to supersede the injunction and rule
that the protesters can go into the park, but without
camping essentials. Almost twelve hours later the protesters
were allowed back in. Neither Bloomberg nor his Gestapo
troopers were held in contempt of the court order. They are
accountable to no one and change the rules as they please.
So, there are two justices in America. There is one justice
for the rich and powerful who can do as they like and
another justice for the poor who are the victims of unequal
justice, just as America is divided, with the shrinking of
the middle-class, into rich and poor. The right to
peacefully assemble around the country is under attack, as
has been said many times in this Journal. Furthermore and
very troubling is the disclosure that Mayor Quan, the lackey
of Oakland, participated in a conference call with mayors of
eighteen #OWS cities discussing when chronological invasions
against peacefully assembled people would take place. What
is even more disturbing is that the training for the
invasions of the public space by the riot police was
coordinated at the Federal level with Homeland Security and
the FBI who gave “tactical and planning advice” for the
massive invasions to come. The press was not allowed to
cover the Liberty Park invasion. There was a no fly zone
declared in the air space above Liberty Square so news
helicopters were grounded, even police-credentialed
reporters were arrested, subway stops were closed, elected
officials arrested, rubber bullets and teargas canisters
were fired into crowds of peaceful demonstrators, even the
elderly were pepper sprayed at close range, wheelchair bound
people were arrested, and police barricaded a one block area
around the park. This is the same treatment of the free
press as the Pentagon uses — no free press![8]
This aggressive, belligerent and violent behavior is beyond
corruption and bullying. It is state sponsored terror, and
the premier state sponsor of terror is the US. Steve Best
accurately lays out the relation of the “perfect
dialectic of capitalism and repression, repression and
capitalism, whereby cops and security forces (including the
rent-a-mercenaries from of security firms) not only protect
capitalism, but turn fascism and repression into a highly
profitable business, which of course is partnered along with
the privatized cops and security forces and
prison-for-profit industry”.[9]
Lobbyists who perceive #OWS as a
threat to business as usual have ramped up their efforts.
For example,
a Washington lobbying firm with direct links to Speaker
Boehner, and with links to the financial industry has
proposed an $850,000 plan to vilify #OWS and the politicians
who support it in the hope to undermine it.[10]
Yet
Obama[11]
did not have any qualms in getting into the act of
appropriating the Occupy rhetoric in order to strike a death
blow into irrelevancy. The financial crisis was created he
says, “with the breathtaking greed of a few with
irresponsibility across the system…and ever since it has
sparked protests…by people occupying the streets of New York
and other cities.” “I believe”, he says, “that this country
succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does
their fair share, when everyone plays by the same rules.” By
adopting #OWS themes in his recent speeches, Obama has
effectively consigned #OWS into irrelevancy.
Reform and the Degenerate “Left”
#OWS
in some ways resembles the poor people’s campaign planned by
Martin Luther King, but it lacks the grassroots and
organizational structure and strategy. In other words, #OWS
does not have a political project (i.e. an analysis of the
causes of the present crisis, the aims that a future society
has to achieve and the transitional strategy for the move
from here to there) which is necessary to secure the
participation of more and more people .If #OWS is an
opposition movement against the system, as it heralds itself
to be, it has neither provided a manifesto for revolution
nor an anti-systemic project to build a new autonomous
society.[12]
Clearly, the overthrow of the System and re-making society
is not its aim, although some participants may have been
thinking along these terms.
The NYC #OWS general assembly declaration taken on 29
September 2011 reads like a Chomskyite list of reformist
grievances from the “bottom” that demands change from the
top, “our system must protect our rights”[13]
It is as if all the problems of the world are caused by some
bad corporations or corrupt politicians and no mention at
all is made that they are created by the capitalist system
of the market economy of which they are the natural
outgrowth! Supposed radicals and their ilk completely
disorient and attempt to reduce the Occupy movement to a set
of demands to improve the functioning of corporations and
representative "democracy" by creating some smiley, green
and responsible capitalism!!!
#OWS has not identified the System it rages against in where
it erroneously claims 99% of the population is imprisoned.
Although #OWS blames corrupt banksters and their evil
institutions as the criminals who created the financial
crisis and whose corporate ideology and their minions in
Congress have taken over the US government and created acute
economic inequality and injustice, the #OWS declaration of
occupation is only a list of grievances against corrupt
financial enablers who fill capitalist institutions.
However, the crisis extends way beyond greedy or corrupt
financiers and their institutions to the capitalist System
of the market economy and its political complement
representative “democracy” itself which concentrates
political and economic power into fewer hands.
Movements are tolerable only to the extent that they are not
an irritant to the elite. #OWS promotes the idea of
“nonviolent” and “democratic” change, with no anti-systemic
project, but only some minor demands or at most
anti-capitalist slogans with no comprehensive program behind
them. The same happened with the Spanish and Greek
indignados.
However, lacking any anti-systemic analysis or project #OWS
is equivalent with being a reformist movement. Indeed, the
problem with capitalism according to #OWS is that is it the
greedy capitalists who corrupted the economy and who now run
the government which exacerbated the financial crisis. As a
protest movement against economic inequality and Wall Street
greed #OWS subscribes to a utopia—capitalist economic
democracy—which is neither feasible nor desirable. It is
not feasible because democracy and capitalism are
antithetical, and not desirable because of systemic class
divisions caused by political and economic inequality, and
the inherent injustices it produces.
#OWS is far from a
revolutionary project, because it not only wants the market
pie cut equitably, but it also does not question the unequal
power distribution, the entrenched class relations based on
power divisions of the System itself, nor of course it
questions its legitimacy. The system is a failure for them
because it has not provided for the financial well-being of
its citizens. Economic democracy that #OWS is fighting for
is an impossibility under the System of the market economy
and representative “democracy”. #OWS and the groups and
unions that support it effectively disorient the movement
into creating forms of ‘direct democracy’ to fight the
greedy banks and corporations which supposedly created the
present capitalist crisis and not the internationalized
capitalist market economy!
At the
same time, veteran American political activists from the
reformist Left, progressive organizations, unions,
alliances, and newcomers have taken up the #OWS struggle as
#OWS is the most radical movement in decades. It therefore
supports and coordinates with these individuals and groups.
Yet, for all this, reformism rules. For example, Cornel West
says on Democracy Now, “if
in fact we continue to have this kind of magnificent
movement here and around the world, we want to be able to
connect the corporate greed not just on Wall Street, but in
the military-industrial complex, the prison-industrial
complex, and the corporate-media multiplex, so that we have
an inclusive, systemic analysis…” A pro-systemic analysis
can only provide for reforms while keeping the system
intact. West is not even thinking anti-systemic! He too
identifies the cause of inequality in America as being one
of corruption. So, West’s systemic analysis that the cause
of the multidimensional crisis is greed and corruption is
ludicrous. Greed is appropriated and exploited by the system
through competition. Greed is not the cause of the crisis!
After stating that
the Occupy movement has exposed “the ways in which both
parties are tied to oligarchic rule, both parties are tied
to big money…”, Dr. West steps back and says, “we’ve got
some real possibilities”.[14]
Instead of taking the initiative to call for an overthrow of
the system, he said he would work with Democrats and
Republicans who fight against corporate greed. In addition
he perpetuates the myth that “Tunisia, Egypt, northern
Africa had to teach the world some democratic lessons”![15]
And Michael Moore agreeing with and
taking up West’s argument about demands wants to get the
Democrats
to promise “not to take any
money from Wall Street or the banks” and calling for Obama
to represent the working people by taxing the rich including
derivatives and financial transactions, bringing back Glass-Steagall,
taking money out of politics, etc. However, these
initiatives are purely reformist and take for granted the
System of the market economy and representative “democracy”.
Alternatively, ID proposes a
moneyless marketless society where power cannot be
accumulated or concentrated in a few hands.[16]
Michael Albert
attending a conference in London recently was asked about
#OWS.[17]
He sounded like a pitch man for the System. He made a call
for #OWS to “come up with demands”. Demanding rights (an
impolite form of prostrating) from the elite who can at some
other time readily take them away is reformist ideology.
Albert though provides a deceptive sleight of hand by saying
the assembly can also take up other policies, actions,
programs “that can be taken without demands”. Yes you may
freely re-make society. Yet, next he says, “it (assembly)
can make demands of the economy as well.” In a flash,
self-determination is gone! One moment he offers freedom,
and in the next moment he takes it away. He is just like the
system which grants rights and easily takes them away.
Demanding reforms
from the system presupposes the legitimacy of the system.
Calling for reforms from Wall Street is naïve, because the
System cannot be reformed to be bothered with human needs.
This is in reality a call for upholding the System that
causes the crisis.
Therefore, Albert takes for granted the market economy and
he just demands that the market be more humane and
compassionate!
Chris
Hedges believes in change within the system. He thinks there
are humane forms of capitalism, and that the corporate state
as it has arisen in America is a corruption of power. Hedges
wants to reverse the “corporate coup d’état”.[18]
Although he does not think the Occupy movement should make
demands from the oligarchy, he thinks the corporate state
should be dismantled within the confines of friendly
capitalism. Like Chomsky, Hedges seems to believe that there
is nothing wrong with capitalism itself; it is just
corporate capitalism that is wrong, as if corporate
capitalism is not the inevitable outcome of capitalist
dynamics! Even though Chris Hedges, does not support the
view that #OWS present a list of demands, he still remains
in the reformist camp. For him, the function of liberal
institutions is to “provide a safety valve” when things
breakdown and the system is not amenable to demands or
petitions. These liberal institutions he says offer
“piecemeal and incremental” reforms. These reforms pacify
the people, but also keep the system intact. Although he
states the obvious that tyrannies, like the US, rely more
and more on force “to keep public order”, he seems neither
to understand the System, i.e. the market economy and
representative “democracy”, nor anti-systemic analysis.[19]
Hedges offers no alternative to the System (which he does
not identify) and no anti-systemic project. Clearly, he
sounds like the Democratic Party bureaucratic machine from
the halls of Congress to the local level that will “stand
with others”, “we are all in this together, we’ll roll up
our sleeves and work on this problem”. These are the
political slogans to ease the pain caused by the System and
do not question the causes of the crisis itself. The
struggle is to regain the public sphere which has been
closed off by the growth of marketization.[20]
Inclusive Democracy (ID) alternative
Just
as the US is not a post racial society, it is also not a
post class society. The US cannot simply leave racism as it
cannot leave class behind. Classes do exist in America, just
as racism is alive and well in America. The present class
divisions emphasized by #OWS, where a monolithic class of
merely 1% of the population is having more combined wealth
than 99% of the population, is only a half truth, or better
an oversimplification. It is true that 1% of the population
does indeed control such wealth, but these divisions are
neither just quantitative nor simply founded on Marx’s class
structure based on economic categories. Today’s class
divisions are created by the power relations and structures
created by the present fundamental institutions and not just
by greedy Wall Street hustlers or corrupt corporations.
Moreover #OWS’s class analysis is a quantitative fiction in
terms of the concentration of economic power. If class were
to be dependent solely on financial quantitative data, the
1% do have a concentration of wealth greater than 99%,
however the next 10% of the population also have more
accumulated wealth than the bottom 89% of the population.
Therefore the “99%” is far from united. The interests of the
upper middle class and their social status brings them
closer to the elites than to those below it; the interests
and the social status of petty bourgeois brings them closer
to the middle class than to the working class etc. So, #OWS
is off target with its quantitative and misleading slogan,
“we are the 99%”.
On the
other hand, Marx’s class narrative has been shown to no
longer be valid. Class is not a layered structure based on
economic interests or ownership of the means of production
alone, although they are still very important determinants
of the ‘class’ position of an individual within the social
pyramid. Class stratification in a hierarchical society is
based on power relations rather than just on economic
inequality as #OWS assumes, although the unequal
distribution of economic power is a crucial determinant of
the inequality in the distribution of power within present
society.[21]
The #OWS slogan ignores the socialization process where
there are interconnecting interests between the class
divisions. The assimilation process, through society’s
dominant institutions and the dominant social paradigm[22]
makes clear why people in the ensemble of lower groups, or
others who suffer other forms of hierarchical power
relations, accept, promote and protect the System and its
associated institutions and values. Takis Fotopoulos
emphasizes that Inclusive Democracy, “is a new paradigm
which, while recognizing the different identities of the
social groups which constitute various sub-totalities, at
the same time acknowledges the existence of an overall
socio-economic system which secures the concentration of
power at the hands of various elites and dominant social
groups within society as a whole.
The
System will create another crisis whether or not #OWS
consensus-taking general assemblies abound in every American
neighborhood as long as the System is intact. A new
political and public space will not be made from a reformist
movement. #OWS is another human rights movement petitioning
their oppressors for rights. #OWS declares, “that our system
must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system,
it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and
those of their neighbors”.[23]
It is apparent from this
statement that #OWS takes for granted the System of the
market economy and representative “democracy”. There is no
analysis of the Systemic causes of the multidimensional
crisis we face. Fundamentally, the System of the market
economy and representative “democracy” are to be overthrown
and replaced with the equal distribution of power in every
aspect of the social, political, economic and ecological
spheres.[24]
The
urgently needed revolution must be anti-systemic, because
the System cannot be regulated or reformed to bend to #OWS,
or any other reformist grievances or naivety, such as the
police are workers too and therefore should be embraced! The
police are well paid, well pensioned, well privileged, well
fed mercenaries for the ruling elite. The System of the
market economy and representative “democracy” is the cause
of the multidimensional crisis we face, not corrupt
politicians, Wall Street corporations or their underlings.
It is imperative to overthrow the System and re-make society
based on the ID aims for the equal distribution of
political, economic, social, and ecological power.[25]
The political and economic elite nationally and
internationally (G7, G20, IMF, World Bank, UN and their host
of NGOs, think tanks, etc.) determine how the rest of us
will live. The Arab Spring with
which #OWS identifies has not produced a revolution. The
System continues intact with reliant puppets.
It is urgent that in order to have
revolution from below it is necessary that everyone attain
the same degree of political consciousness. Revolutions in
the past have failed because the citizenry did not manage to
achieve the same level of political awareness needed to
overthrow the System and replace it with the equal
distribution of political, economic, social, cultural and
ecological power. The System is irrational because it fails
to take care not only of human needs, but also the biosphere
itself; indeed, society, community, individuals and nature
are built around the profit needs of the market economy and
its political complement representative “democracy” that
keeps the System intact. How can each person in a
representative “democracy” give over to a stranger their
ownership of decision-taking power? Political and economic
decision-taking is unquestionably, unhesitantly and smoothly
given/taken away in representative “democracy” to/by someone
who claims to represent their constituents’ interests.
So it is not by ridding the
System of a gaggle of corrupt, unethical, or evil
individuals or corporations that will change anything.
Capitalist corruption is an outgrowth of the competitive
privatized hierarchical society created and reproduced by
the market economy and representative “democracy”,
therefore, is imperative to replace the System!
In an
inclusive democracy the issue of writing letters to newspapers
and sending petitions to political representatives to get
adequate hospitalization, for example, is a non starter because
the basic human need for health care would be available for
everyone. The System creates divisions by class, race,
ethnicity, sex, gender, etc., and the ensuing hierarchies and
financial disparities, therefore must be abolished and replaced
with inclusive democracy and the equal distribution of power in
the political, economic, social and ecological spheres.
Inclusive democracy is the form of democracy that secures the
institutional pre-conditions of direct democracy, economic
democracy, democracy in the social sphere and ecological
democracy.[26]
Inclusive democracy is, therefore, a self reflective choice for
autonomy. Autonomy is not compatible with heteronomy and its
dogmas, religions and irrational or closed theoretical systems
which rule out any questioning about their ultimate grounds. So,
inclusive democracy as an anti-systemic project creates the
conditions for the equal distribution of power among all people.
Inclusive democracy challenges the System of the concentration
of power itself and not any part of it as with single issue or
identity politics. Organizing to reverse the multidimensional
crisis brings to the public space the need for a new political
organization and program for systemic change. The gap between
the rich and the poor will always grow within the class
structure under the current capitalist System. Inclusive
democracy aims to replace the present society’s institutional
framework which results in the unequal power distribution and
the ensuing class divisions, i.e. the market economy and
representative “democracy”, as well as the corresponding system
of values of the dominant social paradigm, with ID institutions
and the corresponding values, which secure the equal
distribution of economic, political, ecological and social
power.