Recently, I proposed a few points about the conjuncture in Britain.  None of these were offered in the spirit of hard and fast conclusions, but the aim was to begin to explain the stability and longevity of the coalition government in the face of quite serious social resistance despite its obvious weaknesses.  One factor that certainly needs to be added to this list is the delayed, protracted nature of the crisis facing the British working class.

It is often said that this government forgot the lesson that the Thatcherites learned: the need to salami slice one’s opponents, taking on weaker quarries first and only moving on to larger prey after a few demonstrative kills.  This government seems to be taking on everyone at once.  Its attacks on the public sector have at times seemed to be reckless, its negotiating stances absurdly hubristic, the sweep of its offensive indiscriminate.  Yet the two parties of government still have a plurality between them; they aren’t attacking everyone at once, they are attacking certain definite social constituencies, which are traditionally core Labour constituencies.  Of course, in the context of the wider capitalist offensive, this means that the vast majority of the working class, and a significant section of the middle class, suffers.  But they are doing so in a staged, multilayered fashion, and that has made a difference...

"We talked about the importance of building a movement that is inclusive, but recognising that the unity of the 99% must be a complex unity.  Movements in the past have primarily appealed to specific communities.  Whether workers, students, black communities, Latino communities, women, LGBT communities, indigenous people, or these movements have been organised around specific issues.  Like the environment, food, water, war, the prison-industrial complex.  Speaking of the prison-industrial complex.  This is the movement I have been personally associated with.  We have tried to call attention to the inoperable damage prison and the prison-industrial system has inflicted on our community.  So we have called for a reduction of the prison population.  Decarceration - decarcerate Pennsylvania.  And we have called for the eventual abolition of prisons as the dominant mode of punishment.  But we have also called for the revitalisation of all our communities.  We have called for education, health care, housing, jobs, hope, justice, creativity, equality, freedom!  We move from the particular to the general.  We have come together as the 99%.  There are major responsibilities linked to your decision to assemble here in communities.  How can you be together?  I evoke once more Audre Lorde.  Differences must not be merely tolerated but seen as a fund of polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic.  Finally, let me say a few words about my home town, Oakland, California.  You have heard about the police assault.  Scott Olsen remains in the hospital.  Oakland General Assembly met in the renamed park Oscar Grant Park and responded by calling for a general strike on November 2nd.  Many unions have already supported the call.  I end by sharing the language of the poster: decolonise Oakland.  We are the 99%.  We stand united.  November 2nd, 2011, general strike, no work, no school, occupy everywhere.  Occupy everywhere."

I went to visit the Occupy London site at St Paul's today.  I went with the specific intention of getting people to talk to me about what their goals were, what the strategy was, and how they viewed the politics of the occupation.  To this end, I went round nabbing people for interviews, and eventually ended up talking to someone at the media tent.  Before delving into the politics of Occupy London, I want to describe what's involved in sustaining such an activity for those who aren't able to be there.

***

First of all, Paternoster Square, the original target of the occupation, is still sealed off by police.  The cops, though, have relaxed their position since Saturday  Apparently, they've been told to 'dress down', which means adopting a less confrontational approach.  So, a conurbation of dozens of tents has gathered around St Paul's cathedral.  Out front are tents and banners.  Along the side are a free food stand, a small generator powering 'media tech', a media centre where you can usually find someone to answer questions, an information point, a first aid area, a 'surplus' tent where people can donate useful goods, a place where people wash dishes, a space where people make signs, and a regular garbage collection service.  Since the police removed the toilet facilities on the pretext of 'cleaning' them, and did not replace them, the occupiers have had to send out teams to visit local businesses and work out arrangements with them.  All of this infrastructure is run by the occupiers.  It is actually a Herculean labour.  Some of the people working on the occupation are donating an hour here or there after work or between shifts, while some are there full-time.  There are constantly people milling around performing basic tasks, while others engage with the police or members of the public.  It's not unknown for well-heeled City workers to stop and vent their displeasure, before being drawn into very public debates.

Despite the emphasis on avoiding 'leadership' in the traditional sense, there is an elaborate division of labour involving working groups on every area of the work that needs to be done to keep the thing going.  These report back to the general assembly, which tends to be held at between 12-1pm and then again at 7pm each day.  I won't labour the details of process.  The principles of consensual ratification and decision-making are familiar enough by now.  Essentially, when asked to vote on a proposal, you can vote 'yes', 'no', or 'block'.  Only if someone 'blocks' a decision does a majority not result in a motion being passed.  This means that if someone has serious objections, their ideas or interests have to be taken into account somehow.  Of course, this is intended to frustrate the emergence of any kind of centralised leadership.  "We don't need another Scargill, or another Swampy, I was told.  We don't need another leader they can cut down."  At the moment, the swarm is prevailing over the vanguard.  Naturally, I'm sceptical of all this, but it's only fair to say that everyone I spoke to said it had worked quite well.  At any rate, the occupation is digging itself in somewhat and it seems to be well enough organised for present purposes.  

***

But where can Occupy London go?  I wanted to dip my toe in the water of the politics of the occupation, so I asked about the heterogenous political elements present, and what people thought was the dominant tendency.  There is an idea, which I heard a few times, that "this is not about left and right".  One person I spoke to said explicitly that it was not just a left-wing event, and explained that there were many present who wouldn't call themselves left-wing.  Strangely, this insistence sits alongside a set of classic left-wing ideological articulations.  Catherine at the media centre said that "these old ideas of political divisions are not necessarily relevant," before going on to add, "because this is about the 99%, this is about the have-nots, versus the have-yachts."

This emphasis on popular unity versus the extremely rich was a recurring theme.  Another person said that he didn't object to anyone earning £50,000 a year.  It was the top 1% concentrating the wealth among themselves; and even within that 1%, increasingly steep wealth gradations.  Worse than that, it's these people who "have an enormous amount of leverage over decision-making in government ... things are happening without consent, in democratic or so-called democratic countries."  One example given was the secret loans by the Federal Reserve to banks amounting to $1.1 trillion in 2008 which - whether justified on economic grounds or not - was conducted in an extremely undemocratic and secretive manner.  So it's the immense political power of centralised capital, especially financial capital, that is motivating this.

Catherine went on: "We're talking about the super-rich who meet in their little clubs and get to divvy up the world according to what suits them."  The apparent rejection of left-right divisions is congruent with a rejection of traditional party politics, "where you just have clientelism and self-serving elites and people who are just trying to make sure they've got a bigger slice of the pie."  This is perhaps one reason why you won't find left-wing stalls or newspaper sellers there - not necessarily because they've been banned, but because at the moment it's hard to know how they would be received: as welcome support, or as interlopers?  Yet, it doesn't come with a suspicion of trade unionism, as is the case in some continental occupations.  The outreach team is building up relations with trade unions and I understand that a delegation of the occupiers will visit a picket line at Blackfriars' station.  Trade unionists visited to speak to the occupation, and deliver leaflets about the 30th November strike, and were extremely well received.  The occupiers' first statement included support for the general strike and the students' action on 9th November.  Moreover, the demands of Occupy London are of a sort that anyone on the Left could embrace; few on the Right could. There is, naturally, a section of the Right that will share the occupiers' hostility to the banks and monopoly capital, but they will agree on nothing else.  My feeling is that the aspiration toward a popular bloc of the 99% against the uber rich is eventually going to prove chimerical.  But people will find that out in due course.

***

The next thing I wanted to know about was strategy.  I suppose this comes up partly because of the way the early demands juxtapose concrete proposals for meliorative reforms with declarative statements on the need to move beyond the present system - with no mediating steps between the two.  Given that the entrenched power of the top 1% is considerable, and that the friction they can muster to prevent the passage even of moderate reforms is not negligible, I just wanted to know what thoughts people were having about how to navigate toward that systemic alternative.  Generally, the answer is that it's too early to say what the long-term strategy will be: that's what we're here to find out.  "We're on day three," Catherine reminded me. "The whole point of consensus decision-making is that we don't know what the answer is, and that we have to come to that answer through a process which is inclusive, which is democratic".  The main goal at this point has been to "get the discussion started", another said.  There is a tremendous amount of confidence that the answers will emerge organically in the situation.  We're just getting step one finished; we'll work out steps two and three as we go.

This is related to the political indeterminacy of the movement thus far.  "What we have agreed," I was told, "is that the current system is not working and that it needs changed.  And we have some suggestions for that, which include that idea that we need regulators that are truly independent from the institutions which they regulate, that we need government that works for people not the corporations, and that we put people before profit."  I would say that this combines the social democratic impulse, with an anti-capitalist impulse.  Of course, the 'system' is not named: it could be capitalism, or it could be neoliberalism.  And many of the demands are certainly compatible with capitalism continuing to exist.  Objectively, though, the demand that the "world’s resources must go towards caring for people and the planet, not the military, corporate profits or the rich" is one that can only be realised outside of capitalist social relations.  So, it's a reformism radicalising in the direction of an anti-systemic stance.  The main thing for the occupiers is that whatever the precise manner in which that indeterminacy is resolved, they are creating a sort of working polis in which it can happen democratically.

A guest post on the astonishing uprising in Spain, by quilombosam. Discuss:

“On 15thMay 2011, around 150,000 people took to the streets in 60 Spanish towns and cities to demand “Real Democracy Now”, marching under the slogan “We are not commodities in the hands of bankers and politicians”. The protest was organised through web-based social networks without the involvement of any major unions or political parties. At the end of the march some people decided to stay the night at the Puerta del Sol in Madrid. They were forcefully evacuated by the police in the early hours of the morning. This, in turn, generated a mass call for everyone to occupy his or her local squares that thousands all over Spain took up. As we write, 65 public squares are being occupied, with support protests taking place in Spanish Embassies from Buenos Aires to Vienna and, indeed, London. You probably have not have read about it in the British press, but it is certainly happening. Try #spanishrevolution, #yeswecamp, #nonosvamosor #acampadasolon Twitter and see for yourself. What follows is a text by Emmanuel Rodríguez and Tomás Herreros from the Spanish collectiveUniversidad Nómada.

IT’S THE REAL DEMOCRACY, STUPID

15THMay, from Outrage to Hope
There is no doubt that Sunday 15thMay 2011 has come to mark a turning point: from the web to the street, from conversations around the kitchen table to mass mobilisations, but more than anything else, from outrage to hope. Tens of thousands of people, ordinary citizens responding to a call that started and spread on the internet, have taken the streets with a clear and promising demand: they want a real democracy, a democracy no longer tailored to the greed of the few, but to the needs of the people. They have been unequivocal in their denunciation of a political class that, since the beginning of the crisis, has run the country by turning away from them and obeying the dictates of the euphemistically called “markets”.

We will have to watch over the next weeks and months to see how this demand for real democracy nowtakes shape and develops. But everything seems to point to a movement that will grow even stronger. The clearest sign of its future strength comes from the taking over of public squares and the impromptu camping sites that have appeared in pretty much every major Spanish town and city. Today––four days after the first march––social networks are bursting with support for the movement, a virtual support that is bolstered by its resonance in the streets and squares. While forecasting where this will take us is still too difficult, it is already possible to advance some questions thatthis movementhas put on the table.

Firstly, the criticisms that have been raised by the 15thMay Movement are spot on. A growing sector of the population is outraged by parliamentary politics as we have come to known them, as our political parties are implementing it today––by making the weakest sectors of society pay for the crisis. In the last few years we have witnessed with a growing sense of disbelief how the big banks received millions in bail-outs, while cuts in social provision, brutal assaults on basic rights and covert privatisations ate away at an already skeletal Spanish welfare state. Today, none doubts that these politics are a danger to our present and our immediate future. This outrage is made even more explicit when it is confronted by the cowardice of politicians, unable to put an end to the rule of the financial world. Where did all those promises to give capitalism a human face made in the wake of the sub-prime crisis go? What happened to the idea of abolishing tax havens? What became of the proclamation that the financial system would be brought under control? What of the plans to tax speculative gains and the promise to stop tax benefits for the highest earners?

Secondly, the 15thMay Movement is a lot more than a warning to the so-called Left. It is possible (in fact it is quite probable) that on 22ndMay, when local and regional elections take place in Spain, the left will suffer a catastrophic defeat. If that were the case, it would be only be a preamble to what would happen in the general elections. What can be said today without hesitation is that the institutional left (parties and major unions) is the target of a generalised political disaffection due to its sheer inability come up with novel solutions to this crisis. This is where the two-fold explanation of its predicted electoral defeat lies. On the one hand, its policies are unable to step outside a completely tendentious way of reading the crisis that, to this day, accepts that the problem lies in the scarcity of our resources. Let’s say it loud and clear: no such a problem exists, there is no lack of resources, the real problem is the extremely uneven way in which wealth is distributed, and financial “discipline” is making this problem even more acute every passing day. Where are the infinite benefits of the real estate bubble today? Where are the returns of such ridiculous projects as the airports in Castellón or Lleida, to name but a few? Who is benefiting from the gigantic mountain of debt crippling so many families and individuals? The institutional left has been unable to stand on the side of, and work with, the many emerging movements that are calling for freedom and democracy. Who can forgive Zapatero’s words when the proposal to accept the dación de pago1was rejected by parliament on the basis that it could “jeopardise the solvency of the Spanish financial system”? Who was he addressing with these words? The millions of people enslaved by their mortgages or the interests of major banks? And what can we say of their indecent law of intellectual property, the infamous Ley Sinde? Was he standing with those who have given shape to the web or with those who plan to make money out of it, as if culture was just another commodity? If the institutional left continues to ignore social movements, if it refuses to break away from a script written by the financial and economic elites and fails to come out with a plan B that could lead us out of the crisis, it will stay in opposition for a very long time. There is no time for more deferrals: either they change or they will lose whatever social legitimation they still have to represent the values they claim to stand for.

Thirdly, the 15thMay Movement reveals that far from being the passive agents that so many analysts take them to be, citizens have been able to organise themselves in the midst of a profound crisis of political representation and institutional abandonment. The new generations have learnt how to shape the web, creating new ways of “being together”, without taking recourse to ideological clichés, armed with a savvy pragmatism, escaping from pre-conceived political categories and big bureaucratic apparatuses. We are witnessing the emergence of new “majority minorities” that demand democracy in the face of a war “of all against all” and the idiotic atomisation promoted by neoliberalism, one that demands social rights against the logic of privatisation and cuts imposed by the economical powers. And it is quite possible that at this juncture old political goals will be of little or no use. Hoping for an impossible return to the fold of Estate, or aiming for full employment––like the whole spectrum of the Spanish parliamentary left seems to be doing––is a pointless task. Reinventing democracy requires, at the very least, pointing to new ways of distributing wealth, to citizenship rights for all regardless of where they were born (something in keeping with this globalised times), to the defence of common goods (environmental resources, yes, but also knowledge, education, the internet and health) and to different forms of self-governance that can leave behind the corruption of current ones.

Finally, it is important to remember that the 15thMay Movement is linked to a wider current of European protests triggered as a reaction to so-called “austerity” measures. These protests are shaking up the desert of the real, leaving behind the image of a formless and silent mass of European citizens that so befits the interests of political and economical elites. We are talking here of campaigns like the British UKUncut against Cameron’s policies, of the mass mobilisations of Geraçao a Rasca in Portugal, or indeed of what took place in Iceland after the people decided not to bail out the bankers. And, of course, inspiration is found above all in the Arab Uprising, the democratic revolts in Egypt and Tunisia who managed to overthrow their corrupt leaders.

Needless to say, we have no idea what the ultimate fate of the 15thMay Movement will be. But we can definitely state something at this stage, now we have at least two different routes out of this crisis: implementing yet more cuts or constructing a real democracy. We know what the first one has delivered so far: not only has it failed to bring back any semblance of economic “normality”, it has created an atmosphere of “everyman for himself”, a war of all against all. The second one promises an absolute and constituent democracy, all we can say about it is that it has just begun and that is starting to lay down its path. But the choice seems clear to us, it is down this path that we would like to go.

Tomás Herreros and Emmanuel Rodríguez (Universidad Nómada)
(hurriedly translated by Yaiza Hernández Velázquez)
please feel free to distribute, copy, quote…
1 Dation in payment or datio in solutionem, the possibility of handing in the keys to a property in lieu of paying the debt accrued on its mortgage.”