In defense of Occupy’s politics Introduction Since the earliest days of Occupy Wall Street, the social movement has organised around a central message: “We are the 99%”. Starting in Manhattan, New York by a small group of activists, the movement was inspired by a reasonable sense of outrage against the bank bailouts and growing inequality, as well as by such movements as the Arab Spring, the student protests in Britain, and the “indignado” movement in Greece and Spain.[1] Originally influenced academically by certain strands of anarchist study in the field of anthropology, the Occupy Wall Street movement first made camp in Zuccotti Park and managed to inspire massive marches throughout the city of New York, whilst horizontally organising its own medical centres and libraries, shutting down key bridges and ports, and inspiring countless of other movements in cities across North America and Europe.[2] All of this was achieved, primarily, around the idea of a directly democractic, non-dominant and non-hierarchical politics which has since been highly criticised by several notable leftist theorists and academics. In this paper, I will address some of the criticisms frequently held against Occupy’s politics. In the process I will argue why it is fundamentally false to conflate Occupy’s alternative politics with a critique of liberalism, and will show why the very philosophy and foundational structures of Occupy’s non-dominant, horizontal and mutually recognitive politics is the mark of a truly radical, revolutionary horizon. What follows carries forward arguments made in Gunn & Wilding, ‘Revolutionary or Less-than-Revolutionary Recognition?’ and ‘Occupy as Mutual Recognition’, as well as R.C.Smith, ‘In defence of Occupy’s emphasis on non-dominant, non-hierarchical organisation’, ‘Russell Brand, the question of revolution and why we need more than an abstract, grand narrative of social change’, and ‘A series of essays introducing an alternative philosophy of systemic change’ Occupy’s revolutionary politics as ‘mutual recognition’ As I have highlighted in a number of recent papers, much has been written critically on the ‘left’ about what may or may not be perceived as ‘the ultimate demise of Occupy’. A contentious observation in and of itself, considering that Occupy still lives and inspires - majority of criticism against, and debate around, the movement and its perceived failure appears to emerge from out of more or less traditional frames of political analysis that express a clear difficulty in understanding the revolutionary horizon of Occupys politics. The arguments, while widely ranging, could be summarised as follows: that Occupy’s politics is a direct product of ‘liberal extremism’ or what is typically perceived as the ‘apolitical politics of Liberalism’, as though Occupy itself was guilty of extending the apolitical trends of “hope” and “change” once professed by Barack Obama.[3] These criticisms are advanced furthermore around Occupy’s refusal to isolate others and make specific positive demands to those who hold power in an already coercive, alienated social world. Inasmuch as the likes of Slavoj Zizek and Naomi Klein agreed for example that at the beginning an open stance was vital[4], particularly because it allowed for dreams of change to germinate and refused to supply policy demands to the very political establishment in question, eventually the tide began to turn. After a while, Occupy started to face an increasing amount of pressure from the existing political and academic establishment to close ranks and limit its inclusivity on behalf of positive demands. Today, a lack of ultimate political demands is widely held to be one source of Occupy Wall Street’s perceived failure. But is this necessarily true – was Occupy’s perceived failure down to its lack of formulating ultimate demands to the dominant political class? On the contrary to what Jason Hickel concludes for example, in similar spirit to Deseriss, Marco, and Jodi Dean (2012)[5], I argue ‘no’. In fact, I claim that to blame a lack of ultimate demands in the midst of an already polluted political circumstance as the source of Occupys ‘failure’ is the result of a terrible misreading of the fundamental political situation in which Occupy found (and continues to find) itself. Occupy was right to widely discredit the very structure of the present political order, and to argue that it is not up to the task of meeting truly progressive and radical demands in the first place. Does this necessarily mean that Occupy had no demands at all or was subject to a sort of apolitical liberal position? On the contrary, as Yotam Marom made clear at the time of Occupy Wall Street... ...Read the rest of this paper here: heathwoodpress/defense-occupys-politics/
Posted on: Fri, 15 Nov 2013 16:33:37 +0000
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