After Occupy : What Next for the World?
This trend is clearly moving towards a permanent emergency state and the suspension of political democracy. So we should see in this development also a challenge: Communism is not just or predominantly the carnival of the mass protest when the system is brought to a halt; Communism is also, above all, a new form of organization, discipline, hard work.
The ethics of the new economies
The protesters should beware not only of enemies, but also of false friends who pretend to support them, but are already working hard to dilute the protest. In the same way we get coffee without caffeine, beer without alcohol, ice-cream without fat, they will try to make the protests into a harmless moralistic gesture.
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In boxing, to "clinch" means to hold the opponent's body with one or both arms in order to prevent or hinder punches. Bill Clinton's reaction to the Wall Street protests is a perfect case of political clinching; Clinton thinks that the protests are "on balance … a positive thing", but he is worried about the nebulousness of the cause. What one should resist at this stage is precisely such a quick translation of the energy of the protest into a set of "concrete" pragmatic demands.
Yes, the protests did create a vacuum — a vacuum in the field of hegemonic ideology, and time is needed to fill this vacuum in in a proper way, since it is a pregnant vacuum, an opening for the truly New. Economic globalization is gradually but inexorably undermining the legitimacy of western democracies. Due to their international character, large economic processes cannot be controlled by democratic mechanisms which are, by definition, limited to nation states.
In this way, people more and more experience institutional democratic forms as unable to capture their vital interests. It is here that Marx's key insight remains valid, today perhaps more than ever: The key to actual freedom rather resides in the "apolitical" network of social relations, from the market to the family, where the change needed if we want an actual improvement is not a political reform, but a change in the "apolitical" social relations of production. We do not vote about who owns what, about relations in a factory, etc — all this is left to processes outside the sphere of the political.
It is illusory to expect that one can effectively change things by "extending" democracy into this sphere, say, by organizing "democratic" banks under people's control. In such "democratic" procedures which, of course, can have a positive role to play , no matter how radical our anti-capitalism is, the solution is sought in applying the democratic mechanisms — which, one should never forget, are part of the state apparatuses of the "bourgeois" state that guarantees undisturbed functioning of the capitalist reproduction.
The emergence of an international protest movement without a coherent program is therefore not an accident: The situation is like that of psychoanalysis, where the patient knows the answer his symptoms are such answers but doesn't know to what they are answers, and the analyst has to formulate a question. Only through such a patient work a program will emerge. Some former Occupiers are also creating worker cooperatives; others are engaged in training and education projects like Wildfire and seeking to strengthen other post-Occupy formations.
A key finding from our report that attracted an outsize share of attention was that Occupy activists were disproportionately privileged: Beinart amassed a wealth of data suggesting that Millennials are not just disproportionately in favor of same-sex marriage as everyone knows but also far more skeptical about capitalism and class, and about mainstream politics, than their elders, and on this basis argued persuasively that they represent a new political generation.
Some of the young people we surveyed who participated in OWS were still students, but many more were recent labor market entrants with college or postgraduate education who faced dismal economic prospects after the crash, in a labor market in which precarious work was becoming the new normal. At the same time, many millennial respondents to our survey had a personal connection to the issues Occupy raised: In this regard OWS was hardly unique; the wave of protest movements around the world since , although attracting a diverse group of supporters, have been fueled by this generation.
Occupy Wall Street: 5 years later
This was the same generation that was infatuated with Barack Obama in , and then disillusioned with the results of his election. Although we found that most OWS organizers were well to the left of Obama before , the larger population of Occupy supporters included many for whom the process of political disillusion reinforced economic disappointment.
We tried to get the best liberal we could, and then we got more of the same shit.
Millennials are the first generation for whom social media are the dominant mode of communication. OWS activists not only rejected mainstream US political parties as hopelessly corrupted by corporate power; they also spurned traditional left-wing organizations as overly hierarchical. More influenced by anarchist and autonomist traditions than by the socialist left, their eclectic political critique and praxis combined elements of all these traditions, united by a tactical commitment to nonviolent direct action and to prefigurative politics, which shaped the ways in which decisions were made as well as the organization of daily life in Zuccotti Park.
In self-conscious contrast to the vertical structures of mainstream political parties, unions, and traditional left organizations alike, OWS embraced horizontalism. As the movement expanded in size, however, horizontalist principles were often strained and compromised, sparking complaints that people of color, women, and other groups were sidelined. Equally important was the transformation of OWS participants who had not previously been politicized. Many OWS organizers told us how much they valued the personal relationships they had built with other Occupiers, and some were convinced that OWS was the beginning of a new wave of social movement activity.
Even if the anemic economic recovery eventually accelerates, reducing unemployment and underemployment, the Millennials will continue to confront far more restricted economic opportunities than their parents. Not only are they burdened by unprecedented debt, but many will be limited to precarious forms of employment like freelance or contract work. Although they will surely retain the anti-hierarchical, egalitarian approach that animated Occupy and that for many makes mainstream politics anathema, perhaps next time around they will find ways to transcend the limits of radical horizontalism, building new movements that can frontally challenge inequality and injustice.
The Case of Freedom Summer. The New Global Revolutions Verso, , p. Manuel Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movement in the Internet Age. Polity, , p.
Occupy After Occupy
Breaking Bank Issue It strikes at the heart of the unity and consensus that the central government is so anxious to enforce. For now, however, most eyes are focused on the chief executive election. If Leung does not come back to serve a second term, however, the attention will be directed toward the next chief executive. Write to Rishi Iyengar at rishi. Joshua Wong, year-old protest leader, is a co-founder of the group Scholarism, which helped kick-start the Hong Kong protests.
A pro-democracy campaigner holds placard during sunset outside the city's legislature in Hong Kong on June 15, , ahead of a key vote on the government's controversial political reform package. Pro-democracy demonstrators are sprayed with pepper spray during clashes with police officers during a rally near the Hong Kong government headquarters on Sept.
A pro-democracy demonstrator gestures after police fired tear gas towards protesters near the Hong Kong government headquarters on Sept. Riot police use tear gas against protesters after thousands of people blocked a main road at the financial central district in Hong Kong, Sept. Policemen rest following pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong on Sept.
A protester raises his arms as police officers try to disperse the crowd near the government headquarters in Hong Kong, Sept. Pro-democracy demonstrators hold up their mobile phones during a protest near the Hong Kong government headquarters on Sept. Joshua Wong, leader of the student movement, delivers a speech as protesters block the main street to the financial Central district, outside the government headquarters building in Hong Kong Oct.
Protesters react as Joshua Wong not pictured , leader of the student movement, speaks to the crowd outside the government headquarters building in Hong Kong, Oct. A protester holding an umbrella stands on the street close to the Hong Kong Government Complex on Oct. A local resident breaks through police lines and attempts to reach the pro-democracy tent on Oct.
Policemen try to get a man to let go of a fence guarded by pro-democracy demonstrators in an occupied area of Hong Kong on Oct. A pro-democracy protester sleeps on a concrete road divider on a street outside the Hong Kong Government Complex on Oct.
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The statue "Umbrella Man" by the Hong Kong artist known as Milk, is set up at a pro-democracy protest site next to the central government offices in Hong Kong on Oct. A pro-democracy protester uses bamboo to strengthen a barricade blocking a major road in Hong Kong on Oct. Demonstrators walk past notes hanging on a wall outside the Central Government Offices in the Admiralty business district in Hong Kong on Oct. Tents set up by pro-democracy protesters are seen in an occupied area outside the government headquarters in Hong Kong's Admiralty district, Nov.
A young Hong Kong couple who did not give their names wear gas masks as they pose for a wedding photographer prior to their marriage next to the tents used by pro-deocracy demonstrators at the Admiralty protest site on Nov.