LENIN'S TOMB

Monday, January 16, 2012

Austerity in Canada: Canadian Labour at the Crossroads posted by Richard Seymour

Guest post by Doug Nesbitt:

A wage cut of fifty percent. An elimination of pensions. Cuts to benefits.

These demands have inevitably led to a major showdown at a locomotive factory in London, Ontario between the 700 unionized workers of Electro-Motive Diesel and Caterpillar, a massive US-based corporation. The workers, members of Canadian Auto Workers Local 27, responded to the employer’s demands with a positive strike vote of 97 percent. The employer, Progress Rail, a subsidiary of Caterpillar, locked the workers out on New Year’s Day.

In addition to facing down a notorious anti-union employer who hammered the American United Auto Workers in the 1990s, there are plenty of rumours about Caterpillar closing the London plant and moving operations to Muncie, Indiana. EMD workers in London make $CDN 36/hour while their counterparts in Muncie are paid only $CDN 12.50-14.50. Indiana is also on the cusp of becoming the first rust-belt state to introduce a "Right to Work" law, a notorious form of anti-union legislation made possible by the even more infamous Taft-Hartley law of 1947, the long-standing crown jewel of American anti-union legislation.

The response of organized labour to the lock out has been swift. The Ontario Federation of Labour is coordinating a mass rally in London on January 21 with buses coming in from numerous cities across the province and as far away as Sudbury and Ottawa. The OFL is anticipating at least ten thousand protesters.

Mainstream media coverage has also been extensive and the shocking nature of Caterpillar’s demands have so far ensured that coverage has been neutral and even supportive of the workers. The story is being covered by all major Canadian dailies, prime-time news hours on CBC and CTV, and has received coverage in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and now the European and Australian press.

Not surprisingly, the federal government has stayed silent. Since they won their first majority government in May, the Tories have gone to war with organized labour. In June, postal workers were locked out by Canada Post, the state-owned crown corporation. The Tories responded with back-to-work legislation which called for pay increases lower than the employer’s last offer.

Federal Labour Minister Lisa Raitt went further, twice threatening to legislate Air Canada flight attendants back-to-work, even though Air Canada was privatized in 1988. From a party espousing government non-intervention in the economy, Raitt’s reasoning behind intervening in the private sector was that Air Canada was essential to the economy. This absurdity was repeated in October when Raitt floated the idea of defining the “economy” as an “essential service”, thus providing some pseudo-legal justification for further interventions.

The government’s hypocrisy goes further. In March 2008, on the very shop floor of EMD London, Prime Minister Harper announced a billion dollar tax break to industry in 2008, $5 million of which went to EMD London. Two years later, EMD London was purchased by Caterpillar.

Despite its record high revenue and profits in 2011, stemming from sales of its machinery to a booming resource sector (tar sands, mining), Caterpillar is attempting to destroy a union. In addition to their anti-union stance, the threat of roughly two thousand jobs being lost in London, and their profiting off environmental disasters like the tar sands and mining operations around the world, Caterpillar supplies Israel the bulldozers it uses to carry out house demolitions in occupied Palestine.

This leaves labour – and all the political allies of labour – at a crossroads in this high profile, high stakes clash between workers and state-blessed corporate power. The implications for other workers – such as Toronto municipal workers, the locked steelworkers of Alma, Quebec, the York Region Transit workers, and all other workers, union and non-union – couldn’t be greater. Since the Tory victory in May, employers, public and private, have received the message loud and clear: the federal government is siding with them in a sustained attempt to hold down wages and benefits, slash them where possible, and break the ability of workers to resist these moves by breaking their only means of defence: unions.

Is labour up to the challenge? The OFL has already moved the rally’s location from the picket lines outside the factory, to downtown London’s Victoria Park eight kilometres away. The move is explained by the OFL as ten thousand being too many for it to be “safe” on the picket line. What nonsense is this? Fifteen thousand pickets peacefully shut down the Port of Oakland last November in an Occupy-initiated general strike.

Holding the rally in Victoria Park will ensure that is a symbolic display of opposition and nothing more. Only a few hundred of the ten thousand will likely take up Local 27’s invite to the picket lines after the rally. Thousands of protesters will be boarding buses after the downtown rally to head back home and won’t have time to make it to the picket lines.

If you’re having deja vu, you’re not alone. Last year, ten thousand people from across Ontario attended the Hamilton Day of Action against US Steel held January 29, 2011. On the steps of Hamilton City Hall, union leaders and labour politicians denounced the lockout and backed the steelworkers refusing to see their pensions gutted by US Steel. A short march made it around a few cold and deserted downtown blocks before returning to City Hall. As one of the hundreds who lined up for union-sponsored buses back to their respective hometowns, I later that we had marched past the old Stelco building, US Steel’s Hamilton office, without even stopping to do anything.

The days of action in Hamilton and London may boost the spirits of locked out workers, but what will it accomplish beyond this? In the wake of Occupy as well as the Capitol Building occupation in Wisconsin last year against the stripping of public sector bargaining rights, the time seems ripe for bolder action. Bold action could galvanize thousands of Canadians angry at the Tories and the one percent, could overturn the limited range of Canada’s political debates, and maybe just put employers and the Tories on the back foot for once.

The battle at EMD might be lost, but it could still be a turning point for labour by showing a new determination to take more controversial but increasingly necessary actions to counter the “race to the bottom” overseen by an entrenched federal government keen on hammering workers and dismantling hard-won social programs.

Drawing on the Occupy movement, the Spanish Indignados, and the Republic Windows and Doors occupation in Chicago from late 2008, occupying EMD London should be on labour’s agenda. In this sense, moving ten thousand pickets away from the factory is a lost opportunity for initiating the occupation. If this sounds too radical, Egypt and Occupy have changed what’s possible – an occupation could be a galvanizing moment for Canadians and become a worldwide beacon of resistance. And the story of EMD London exposes so clearly the intertwined problems of corporate greed and tax breaks, the war against workers, failing democratic institutions, environmental destruction and imperialism. And what better union than the Canadian Auto Workers, founded on the plant occupations in Flint and Oshawa in 1936 and 1937, to carry this out?

Even if an occupation doesn’t happen but the demand is shouted loud enough – “Occupy EMD!” – it normalizes the idea among networks of workers and activists and lays the groundwork for occupations taking place in inevitable future labour disputes.

The decision to occupy will have to be taken by EMD London workers themselves. But solidarity actions can be carried out across Ontario and beyond. Caterpillar owns Battlefield Equipment Rentals with over 30 locations in Ontario, two in Manitoba and five in Newfoundland. The activist networks built up by the Occupy movement could link up even more with trade unionists to spread the resistance to Caterpillar far beyond London itself. This is what Americans did last August when dozens of Verizon Wireless stores across the country were picketed in solidarity with the communication workers strike against Verizon. The union, Communications Workers of America, even launched an “adopt-a-store” campaign for local activists to show their support, leading to many weekly pickets of Verizon Wireless stores.

Where Battlefield Equipment Rentals can’t be found, pressure can be put on the 166 Tory MPs riding offices in every province, highlighting government complicity with the corporate tax breaks to EMD London. Ottawa labour activists already showed this could be done when they occupied John Baird’s riding office during the postal worker lockout.

In short, the Canadian labour movement needs to reinvent itself and abandon the long-standing attitude towards conciliatory relations with employers, hopeless appeals for government intervention, and a general neglect of the wider, non-union working-class. The lockout in London makes this reinvention both necessary and possible. London could be the place where the labour movement – or at least a substantial minority of activists, union and non-union – recovers a tradition of militancy on behalf of the whole working class and sees itself as a collective force for economic and political justice and transformation.

About the Author

Doug Nesbitt is Co-Chief Steward of PSAC 901 representing Queen’s University Teaching Assistants and Fellows. He was born and raised in London, Ontario and now lives in Kingston pursuing a PhD in History at Queen’s. He also co-hosts Rank and File Radio, a weekly labour news program on CFRC 101.9FM.

Labels: austerity, canada, capitalism, class struggle, labour, liberals, occupy wall street, tories, trade unions, working class

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Shut it down posted by Richard Seymour

Obstructing the profit system:

Labels: american working class, capitalism, class struggle, occupy oakland, occupy wall street, profits, us politics, us ruling class

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Socialist pedagogy posted by Richard Seymour

Watch and learn:

Labels: capitalism, class struggle, marxism, occupy wall street, ruling class, socialism, us politics

This is for real. posted by Richard Seymour

"We are closer than you think. When thousands of us jam the streets of the Financial District and surround Wall Street on Thursday we will not be ignored. No business as usual until the voice of the 99% is heard and action is taken. You thought we would just go away. You thought we would be too cold. You tried to arrest us. You tried to beat us. It's not that easy. This is for real. We are serious. We will not be ignored. It has been two months, you are still stealing our money and our labor. You are still destroying the earth. You are still evicting people. But guess what? We are stronger than ever."

Labels: capitalist crisis, class struggle, militancy, occupy oakland, occupy wall street, ruling class, socialism, us politics

Sunday, October 30, 2011

Angela Davis at Occupy Philly posted by Richard Seymour

"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."

Labels: anti-capitalism, capitalism, class struggle, left, occupation, occupy oakland, occupy philly, occupy wall street, protest, socialism, strikes

Friday, October 28, 2011

OWS vs. the Octopus: On Making a Demand posted by Richard Seymour

Guest post by Ruth Jennison and Jordana Rosenberg

The biggest and broadest social movement we have seen in this country since the anti-Vietnam war protests has begun. The anti-capitalist revolts in Seattle, the movements to establish and defend the rights of the undocumented in Arizona, the defense of organizing rights in Wisconsin, the robust and indignant response to the murder of unarmed black men by the Oakland Police Department have prepared the way, nationally, for this moment. Internationally, the revolutions in the Middle East have raised the flag of full transformation. These are our waypoints, our history, our archive of how we got here.

The question we have asked ourselves, for so long now, has been: how far can they push us before something breaks?

Something has broken. And re-formed. And billowed – radiant and heterogeneous – into existence.

In the face of barrages of moralizing media campaigns that told us that overspending on our credit cards and living “outside our means” was the reason for the recession, we now have the blossoming of an entirely more accurate alternative narrative. Since at least the 1970s, the financialization of our economy has coincided with an unprecedented transfer of wealth from working people to the 1%. There has been a near absolute reversal of the gains won by working class militancy in the 1930s, as well as a gutting of the gains won for people of color in the long civil rights era. Such reversals at the level of finance and policy have been put in place through a steroidal injection of resources into the prison system, the police forces and wars: the repressive apparati of finance capital.

Even as veterans of the anti-capitalist and anti-war movements, nothing could have prepared us for the scope of what we have seen and participated in on the streets of New York. Everything you have read about the tremendous energy generated by Zuccotti Park is true. We have seen and love: transit workers shoulder to shoulder with tweens coming to social consciousness; street corner debates at the edges of Zuccotti that last so long the children fall asleep at the feet of their parents; when the food committee crosses the city to bring pizza to your working group, and your voice remembers it has a body that needs to eat; when the National Nurses United sets up voluntary shift rotations that make it feel just a little bit easier for the differently-abled to stick around, march, and wheel; when the human mic shouts “Free Mumia,” and it rings, in waves several times over, through One Police Plaza.

Zuccotti has given us a taste of what we want. Even the briefest breath of the air outside of full alienation feels like enough to strengthen us for the fight ahead. No-one wants this moment – so hard won – to end. But there is a temptation to say that the occupation itself is the revolutionary movement. Such a perspective partakes of some mixture of the long tradition of utopian communitarian social movements, a defanged lifestyle politics – whose injunction to “be” the change you want to see in the world has at times substituted for collective action – and the simple fact that the de-alienating atmosphere of this moment just feels really good.

And this same utopian whiff of de-alienation produces the sheer optimism that re-opens a historically healthy and crucial question for any social movement: the question of what we want. We have seen that there are diverse elements, in many working groups, that want to demand something in excess of the occupation itself.[1] These elements have not congealed, in any way, around a single set of demands. They are passionately interested in discussing the concerns of other groups, and constituencies, and communities. In the remainder of this piece, we argue not for a specific set of demands, but wish to address concerns about the raising of demands in general.

Those elements beginning discussions about demands do face some some steep questions from the rest of the movement. For the sake of clarity we have broken these questions down roughly into 3.

1) What is the Occupy movement?

Is it a clearinghouse – a hub? the center of a constellation? a member of the constellation? – by which other groups are inspired and to which other groups might bring their demands for solidarity? We have seen this structure functioning quite well in rallies with Verizon workers, the anti-police brutality and anti-Stop-and-Frisk demonstrations, the foreclosure auctions, and so on. There has been nothing – not even Zuccotti itself – that has been more inspiring than these actions.[2] But, after the raid on Occupy Oakland last night, the terms of both solidarity and of demands have intensified. Almost immediately, there was a call for the removal of mayor Quan from office. This demand resonated nationwide not as a divisive or premature silencing of debate, but as a cohering of the movement around necessary next steps. Today, the Oakland GA voted to call a General Strike for November 2^nd. What solidarity actions should we take in New York? Nationwide? How does Oakland’s sharpening of demands affect the Occupy movements around the country? It seems that, to even survive as a hub (much less to morph into an anti-capitalist movement that is able to truly challenge the State’s violent protection of the interests of the 1%) we may need to make some demands.

2) To whom do we make these demands?

Wall Street, or. . .the State? We cannot make demands of Wall Street. Wall Street, while it has taken on properly golemish proportions in the OWS movement, is not a coherent entity. It is tentacular. A blind and deaf octopus. Here, we might draw on the wisdom of the anti-Vietnam war movement, the Panthers, the sit-down strikes and the unemployed workers’ movements of the 1930s. All of these movements had a double vision, an ability to produce syncretic understandings of the way that the State and capital work together to ensure the status quo. The Panthers provide us with a particularly strong model: holding community-building in a tense and mutually constitutive dialectic with demands for the full restoration of what has been stolen, denied, or hidden from view. The vitality of such a perspective finds an echo in the strength, within OWS, of the solidarity actions against police brutality. It is not coincidental or simply reactive that we have mobilized so strongly against police brutality. It is not only because we have been pepper sprayed, tear gassed, and targeted with rubber bullets, that our largest, loudest, and most passionate marches have cried out against the violence of the State. It is because we realize, in these moments of extreme violence, that when we speak out against capital, it is the State that answers. It is the State that protects the interests of the 1% – the State that arms itself and brings itself down upon us, in the form of arrests, pepper spray, tear gas, and rubber bullets.

3)Another question that has been percolating in the movement is: what happens if you hazard a demand and lose it?

This is an understandable concern. For those of us too young to have participated in the fire last time, we have needed to read about vibrant cultures of resistance and victories in peoples’ history books, and in our archives. If many people are being radicalized now, or given a sense of political community and possibility for the first time, there is a hesitation to hazard a demand and lose it. Moreover, OWS is a loose constituency of many groups with many differing demands. Within it, there may be concerns about marginization by the movement itself. Many of our comrades of color might look with suspicion at a historical record scarred by the watering down and sidelining of crucial demands by white progressives and liberals. But, if we want to evolve from a sheerly populist movement to an anti-capitalist movement with teeth, we need to have these debates. We need to synthesize and motivate around the needs and wants of our constituents. In the understandably protective feelings that people have about the occupation, some are expressing fears that demands will divide us. But, if “divide” means that we lose the democratic opportunists and the Ron Paul supporters, maybe we should see it as less of a division, and more of a clarification of ourselves as principled anti-capitalists. Furthermore, demands have an inimitable power to further conversation and debate that ripples far beyond us. It is the fabric through which people discuss their relationship to OWS, and through which people who can’t occupy that particular space – for reasons of geography, health status, job, and so on – can take the debates to their communities.

And, if we don’t win a demand? Demands function in many ways. They exfoliate discussion, they clarify our objectives, they extend the optimism and vision of the occupation to real-life contexts. The forging of the demand is itself a laboratory for the revolutionary process. It necessarily entails and encourages a living dynamic between ourselves as the movement and those not yet in the movement.[3]

What, after all, is a demand? That we liberate New York, or Oakland, or Cleveland from the grips of financiers? That we must have returned what was stolen from us and given to the banks and to the 1%? That we deserve to live a life free of police repression and violence? That we want an end to imperialist projects and wars, and the restoration of social services and education? If any of our hesitation to demand comes from a fear of losing, let’s look around us and see how strong we are. For the first time in a lifetime.

[1] In terms of this question, we speak of our experience of New York alone.
[2] Erika Marquez, "The Zucotti/Liberty Park occupation seems to be, indeed, a symbolic (and, sure, material) interpellation to the monopolistic, speculative real state/space control in the city. Yet, this temporary space seizure must give place, as it is occurring right now, to decentralizing the occupation. To barrio GAs, to school occupations, to one-night occupations, to occupying airwaves." Notes from an Occupied New York City, After October 14," in Lana Turner Journal http://www.lanaturnerjournal.com/general/occupywallstreetkaplanwinslowmarquez.html

[3] Vijay Prashad’s conception of a succession of demands/victories as a way to nourish the “radical imagination,” is particularly germane here. http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/06/zombie-capitalism-and-the-post-obama-left/

Labels: anticapitalism, antiwar movement, civil rights, class struggle, democracy, left, occupation, occupy wall street, socialism, us politics, working class

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Police terror in Oakland posted by Richard Seymour

The question was always going to be posed. How do you stop the police from physically dismantling your protest by sheer overwhelming force of arms? How can you uphold your right to protest when that right is gainsayed by tear gas, rubber bullets, and bean bag rounds? When armed paramilitary police are running around like storm troopers - the cliche is appropriate - assaulting unarmed and non-violent protesters? When, having literally broken bones and smashed skulls, the chief of the police department can tell the press, "I think we allowed people to exercise their rights to free speech and free assembly"? And when the mayor - who was herself a target of Occupy Oakland's criticisms - can commend the police on a "a generally peaceful resolution to a situation that deteriorated"?

The debates on LBO Talk suggest two reasons not to be surprised by the police action. The first is that local Democratic Party machines are just as apt to resort to repression as the Republicans; and the second is the proliferation of Joint Terrorism Task Force franchises throughout the police during the Bush era - as is typical, a 'counter-terrorist' weapon has been largely refined and used in combat with workers and the Left. So what can one do? If you resort to tooling up and having running battles with the police, like the Black Bloc do, the police always win. At any rate, the problem isn't ultimately kinetic force, it's political force. Even at the moment when the police bring out their weapons, the chances of their being successfully faced down depend on political organisation not weapons. It is at the level of politics that the problem has to be countered. Yet, if you try to work around it by negotiating with local authorities, the mayor's office etc, you may end up having making your protest inoffensive and ineffective, at which point you may as well pack up and go home. The bourgeoisie fears "mob rule" more than anything at this point - by which they mean, they fear a surfeit of democracy. If you're doing anything remotely effective, the ruling class should be put out.

As far as I can see, the only possible solution is the one opted for by Occupy Wall Street - broaden the movement within the working class. The tactical alliance with unions was probably decisive in stopping NYPD's attempt to 'clean up' Liberty Plaza. Even that isn't necessarily sufficient. The Oakland occupation was, until last night, one of the largest in the US. It had already made links with major unions, as well as with several other occupations across the country. Labour organizers had come along to help out. They were doing everything they could do, and making a success of it. But this didn't stop the police waiting until the early hours of morning, and going on the rampage against children, women in wheelchairs, whoever - the cops weren't there to discriminate, they were there to break limbs. Even so, if Occupy Oakland has a chance of reviving and facing down this terror, it is because of the organisational alliances they formed, the political support they assembled, and the coalition of forces willing to continue to support them.

Labels: capitalist state, class struggle, democratic party, occupation, occupy oakland, occupy wall street, police, police brutality, ruling class, us politics

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Occupy Wall Street and the US working class posted by Richard Seymour

"The movement is still very young, and it’s very hard to gauge support for it. But one labor official shares with me a very interesting data point: Working America, the affiliate of the AFL-CIO that organizes workers from non-union workplaces, has signed up approximately 25,000 new recruits in the last week alone, thanks largely to the high visibility of the protests.

"Karen Nussbaum, the executive director of Working America, tells me that this actually dwarfs their most successful recruiting during the Wisconsin protests. “In so many ways, Wisconsin was a preview of what we’re now seeing,” Nussbaum says. “We thought it was big when we got 20,000 members in a month during the Wisconsin protests. This shows how much bigger this is.”"

Labels: capitalism, class struggle, democrats, occupy wall street, us politics, us working class, wall street

Monday, October 17, 2011

Visiting Occupy London posted by Richard Seymour

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.

***

If the occupiers are thus far not resolved on any particular strategy, they are much clearer about tactics. An essential component of their tactical repertoire is, as I've mentioned, the outreach team. This is where they look for groups of people with whom they have an affinity of interests and seek to build solidarity, and exchange support. In this respect, they're doing exactly what Occupy Wall Street protesters did, which had the result of bringing the union movement down on their side. This re-kindled an historic coalition also witnessed in Seattle, and it ensured that when the NYPD tried to clear out the occupiers from Liberty Plaza, union members helped organise their successful self-defence. In the Sixties, student, anti-war and anti-racist movements helped catalyse and radicalise class struggles. Today, the students movement and the occupations are playing a similar role, giving confidence to rank and file workers. I would bet that the 'Yes' vote in the union strike ballots for 30th November will be that bit higher because of the global #occupy movement. The alliance between the radical left and the labour movement is one that strengthens both sides.

Occupy London are also concerned to avoid unnecessary enmity or friction. This is particularly important as it would not be beyond the police in this country to use some ridiculous legislation to clear out the occupation. Getting the support of the canon for their presence on church grounds was thus crucial in terms of their negotiating position with police. "We are not black bloc," they say, and mean it. They aren't seeking a confrontation with police. Indeed, many seem to take the view that the cops are, as some Wall Street protesters put it, "one bounced pay cheque away from being on this side". I doubt this is actually true. I know that individual police officers have their own grievances with aspects of the system, and are unhappy with the cuts they're experiencing. But I also expect their institutional commitments to prevail over any such grievances. Historically, when state authority has decomposed under the pressure of popular movements, it has been the armed forces rather than the police that has split. Nonetheless, the occupiers seem to have it right: they have a struggle with the police that is currently conducted in terms of publicity, ideology and negotiations. Shifting it onto the terrain of conflict, where the police have the overwhelming advantage, would be foolish.

***

The sign on the wall says 'Tahrir Square, EC4M'. The sneering article on Huffington Post UK, observing this, quoted someone saying "it's not remotely like Egypt". Well, of course it's not like Egypt. This isn't a revolutionary situation, but merely a punctuating moment in the temporal flow of class struggle. But the purpose of slogans mentioning 'Tahrir Square' is to accentuate the internationalism of the movement, to point to its deep systemic roots, to express solidarity with the Arab Spring, to hope that this is the beginning of our own Spring, and to identify the commune as the political form of these aspirations. At the most prosaic level, it expresses the movement against austerity in its most 'political' moment, complementing the 'economic corporatist' moment of trade union struggle. It identifies the political class rule of the 1% as the key problem; the colonization of the representative state by big capital. And it proposes its own direct democratic answer. Of course, Occupy London is not yet a commune. But it is the germ of a commune. Perhaps its fruition will be when the germ takes seed in the heart of productive relations; when the commune is the workers' answer to the power of the 1%.

Labels: anti-capitalism, austerity, capitalism, militancy, occupation, occupy london, occupy wall street, protest, socialism

Saturday, October 15, 2011

#Occupy posted by Richard Seymour

Follow events at #Occupylsx for London updates.

Labels: austerity, capitalism, cuts, finance capital, occupation, occupy wall street, socialism, tories

Sunday, October 02, 2011

First we take Manhattan posted by Richard Seymour

Wall Street's famously chaste, humble bearing may not be the secret of its charm. When you ask what is, you begin to realise what the Right has accomplished. It has plausibly retailed something as banal as markets, and all the variations and derivatives thereof, as a libidinised field of popular (competitive) participation, the final source of all wealth/value (stock markets delivering oodles of the stuff like ducks farting out golden eggs), and, if this isn't a tautology, a genre of erotica. The insurance company as an aphrodisiac. Yet it had to occur to someone to give Goldman Sachs and allies something to worry about, a something from which they have thus far been protected. Under the Obama administration, which treats the quack orthodoxies of investment bankers as technocratic panaceas, the politically dominant fraction within the US ruling class has rarely seemed more powerful and at ease. In their home city, the banks and traders have colonised the political system to the extent that one of their own sons, Michael Bloomberg, can take office and actually run the city as a favour to them. (Bloomberg declines remuneration for his services.) This is 21st Century philanthropy.

On that very subject, it must be a felicitous coincidence that JP Morgan Chase donated $4.6m to the New York Police Department on the same day that the same department engaged in a mass arrest of hundreds of #OccupyWallStreet activists marooned on the Brooklyn Bridge.

"The whole world is watching," the protesters chant. No doubt. The question is whether any of those watching will take this as a cue to join the occupation in solidarity. Admittedly it is already an over-worked reference, but there are compelling, if distant, echoes of Tahrir Square in New York (and now, I understand, financial districts in Boston, Miami, Detroit, San Francisco, etc.), in the sense of a nascent attempt to find a new model commune. What the occupiers seek to create is both a rallying point for oppositional forces, and a model of participatory democracy that, if replicated, would give popular constituencies the ability and authority to solve their problems. We'll come back to the model of self-government being debated in Zuccotti Park, but as far as rallying opposition forces and pricking the mediasphere goes, the occupation has been having some success. The critical moment has been the participation of the organised labour movement, with the direct involvement of transport and steel workers, and the solidarity of Tahrir Square protesters. (A mass strike by transport workers in Egypt has just won a major victory, gaining a 200% pay rise, just months after the army outlawed strikes). The context of which it partakes is a germinal revival of class struggle in the United States. Doug Henwood, who initially expressed reservations about the (lack of) politics of the initiative, describes the situation as "inspiring". This is why the initiative has been greeted with the predictable sequence of tactful silence from officials, followed by open hostility, police brutality, threatening murmurs from Bloomberg and, finally, last night's mass arrest - which I would imagine follows orders from the mayor's office. Bloomberg, you'll be relieved to know, is not exercised on behalf of multi-billionaires like himself, but those Wall Street traders on a measly $40-50k, inconvenienced by anticapitalist wildlife.

As far I can tell, the occupation began with a deliberate strategy of having minimal concrete politics and no demands. The idea was that the politics and tactics of the occupation would be agreed in the context of a participatory, open-ended symposium. No doubt some of this is mired in what I would consider a destructive and caricatured anti-Leninism, but I can imagine it comes from real experiences and expresses legitimate desires. Some participants reportedly argued that what was important was the process, not a set of demands. The process itself, the decentralised, participatory system, should be the main 'demand' in this perspective. "Join us," would be the slogan. I can't imagine this approach being effective. There was an early fear that this could mean that right-wing elements would easily take over the movement and distort its agenda, and indeed some of the Tea Party websites have been vocal in their support for the occupation. Yet they aren't setting the agenda in New York. The political messages vary from the extremely abstract ("Care 4 Your Country") to the bluntly specific ("End Corporate Personhood"); from the maximalist ("Smash capitalism, liberate the planet") to the broadly populist ("I am the 99%"). The best slogan I've seen is, "How do we end the deficit? End the war, Tax the rich." This has the virtue of being a popular demand, a concise point, and right on the money.

On the issue of populism, I see that Doug Henwood has reported some misplaced sympathy for small businesses among some of the occupiers. Perhaps this would be a fitting moment to revive the old Stalinist/Eurocommunist idea of the "anti-monopoly alliance". I'm not being completely sarcastic. While the petty bourgeoisie is largely a bedrock of reaction, it can have its radical moments, especially when capitalism is wrecking the lives of small traders, shopkeepers, homeowners - as we've recently seen in Greece, where the lower middle class is overwhelmingly on the side of the working class and the left in this fight. I'm just saying that while one wants ultimately to win people to consistently anticapitalist politics, a sort of leftist, Naderite populism opposing the 99% to the 1% (the people against the ruling class in other words) is not a terrible place to start. The main thing is what the most organised and militant sections of the working class do - if they throw their weight behind the movement, they will probably lead politically.

But what I find most interesting is not the immediate politics, the tactics and the process - which I think tends to become an obsession - but what these say about the strategic orientations of the occupiers. In the broad outline, there have been two major strategies for those challenging capitalism. The reformist strategy has been the dominant one, and immense human capital and potential has been sunk into its promise. It posits society as, above all, a body of intelligent, rational citizens who can judge capitalism as wanting by reference to standards that transcend the system itself - ethical precepts that are universal, rational and humanistic. The influence of Kant on such thinking is well-known. The goal is therefore firstly to mobilise people behind a community interest favouring the gradual supercession of capitalism. This allows for a certain elitism, since it requires the dominance of those deemed most articulate, rational and intelligent in their advocacy of socialist values, as well as those most equipped to handle office. Secondly, those people are to put their trust in parliamentary means, using the power of the executive to impose abridgments of capitalist relations. Those advocating this strategy have differed immensely on the degree to which such an approach needs to be supplemented by industrial militancy and mass pressure. But it is ultimately the parliament which asserts the community's interests versus capitalist interests.

The revolutionary strategy rests on a different analysis. It judges capitalism by standards immanent to it, and raises socialism not as an abstract, supra-historical project, but as one situated within a specific historical moment - a technologically advanced, complex socialism has become possible because capitalism has created the material preconditions for it. Its universalism is not abstract, but class-anchored; rather than the sane, adult citizenry being the repository of universal values, it is the working class that is the 'universal' class, since it has a direct interest in the abolition of capitalism and an historically produced capacity to bring it about. Finally, it sees parliament not as an ideal democratic space in which socialist values can be elaborated and implemented with the authority of the executive at its back, but as a component of the capitalist state that is hostile to socialism. It follows that the aim is to create alternative, working class centres of sovereignty capable of implementing democratic decisions made at the level of the rank and file. Whether such a counter-power was to call itself a soviet, a commune or a Committee of Public Safety (as envisioned in News from Nowhere), its purpose would be to work as a rising alternative form of legitimate authority that would eventually be in a position to challenge the capitalist state. Through a period of dual power, the working class would learn to govern itself, acquiring the skills and self-confidence it would need, resisting attempts by the state to suppress it, until it was in a position to win a majority for taking power. This counter-power would logically centre on the process of production, but extend well beyond the workplace. It would have its own media, its own budget, its own leisure, and its own pedagogy. It would be the material infrastructure of the socialist order it sought to create. This doesn't preclude parliamentary strategies, as a means of helping legitimise and even attempting to legalise extra-parliamentary power.

Where does Occupy Wall Street fit into this? It is not my objective to pigeon-hole it as either a revolutionary or reformist strategy - it is neither, in fact. To put it in what will sound like uncharitable terms, it is baby-steps, the experimental form of a movement in its infancy, not yet sufficiently developed theoretically or politically to be anything else. There is a sort of loose autonomism informing its tactics, while its focus on participatory democracy is redolent of the SDS wing and the Sixties 'New Left', but it is not yet definite enough to be reducible to any dominant strategy or perspective. It is, however, potentially the nucleus of a mass movement, and how it relates to the problems addressed by both reformists and revolutionaries now will make all the difference in the future. At a certain point, the severity of the state's response to it will force a theoretical and political clarification on its (official or unofficial) leadership. Recall how the high watermark of Sixties radicalism in 1968 was also the moment at which the state got serious in its repression. This was the year in which the term "police riot" was invented to describe Chicago cops' response to protesters outside the Democratic convention, where police mercilessly assaulted protesters and bystanders alike, while students chanted "The whole world is watching". This was the year in which the FBI murdered several black leaders. It was in the years that followed that the movement was forced to crystalise politically, to become a much more grim undertaking - though with the unfortunate drawback that many of the leaders were drawn into the most ultra-Stalinist politics while others simply took their 'community organising' schtick into the Democratic fold. So, I would say that if a mass movement emerges from this, the early orientation of Wall Street occupiers to the major strategic questions will make a big difference.

The very attempt to mimic Tahrir Square implies a goal of creating an oppositional, popular sovereignty - a goal also hinted at in the rhetoric about "being the change you want to see in the world". It implies an aspiration, at this stage no more, to take and keep control of public spaces, conveniences, workplaces, government buildings, etc. This is a good, radical development. For the moment, it would be an improvement if they could march on a public highway without being arrested for it, and that is why it is so important that the movement spreads and enlarges. To that end, the evidence of class-anchored analysis and tactics by the occupiers is hopeful. For example, Pham Binh reports that Occupy Wall Street won the support of the Transit Workers' Union after engaging in a solidarity actions with workers at Sothebys and the post office. In this respect, the movement is already light years ahead of some of the early New Left trends, while the union movement is politically in a much better place than it was in, say, 1965. As in Wisconsin, the fate of this movement will partially depend on how much it defers to the Democratic leadership. I see no evidence of Obamamania or any other form of Democratic filiation among these occupiers. Indeed, the movement arrives just as Obama's support is crumbling among all sectors of his base (despite the efforts of apologists such as Melissa Harris-Perry to reduce this to the carping of white liberals), and could work as an alternative pole for its scattered elements, much as the left and various fragments of Clinton's disaffected base were fused together into a movement in Seattle in 1999. The achilles heels of the movement will inevitably be any tendency to exaggerate the suspicion toward centralism, which would tend to leave it vulnerable to repression, and also any tendency to over-state novelty as a virtue in contrast with the ideologies of the 'old left', which would leave it ideologically disarmed - as if any movement can do without the condensed learning and experiences of past generations facing similar problems.

At any rate, there is much to be said for the idea of an American Spring. And beginning the arduous process of experimenting in self-government is not a bad way to herald its advent.

Labels: barack obama, capitalism, democrats, occupation, occupy wall street, protest, ruling class, socialist strategy, strategy, wall street