While these may be interesting discussions, much of the media coverage is distorting the central issue of what the protests are about. The phrase 'anti-capitalist' might be vaguely inserted as one of those surefire ways to rile the public with images of drugged-up anarchists. When Boris Johnson was interviewed, he was not pressed on how he intends to address flaws in the banking system, rampant and normalised corporate irresponsibility, tax evasion or the yawning gap between the so-called 1% and the 99%. Instead he glibly remonstrated that they had "made their point" and now he would like them to leave. As long as the movement keeps growing, as long as people care enough to show solidarity, to camp and march over problems which concern all of us, then the point has not yet been made.
Similarly, while sympathetic commentators expounding theories of a shadowy cabal of evil capitalist puppet-masters controlling the world are doing themselves no favours, no serious protest coverage that I have seen has looked at this question. No news organisations picked up a recent study from the Swiss Institute of Technology which mapped out the interconnections between all 43,000 transnational corporations in the global economy. The study found that a core of around 1,300 corporations directly or indirectly own businesses representing 60% of global revenues, and a "super-entity" of 147 highly interconnected corporations controls 40% of the wealth in the entire network.
I am not camped at OLSX – indeed I have not even been able to visit London, though I have followed events and interviews closely online. But I have visited my local, smaller occupation in Bristol. There, participants were extremely friendly and 'normal' – one woman we spoke to was a social worker while another participant was sitting in on his lunch break before returning to work. Some were more eloquent and articulate than others about their precise purpose, but there was a prevailing feeling of welcome contrary to the oft-described 'arrogance', and a speaker's corner had been established to promote public discussion.
Yet the critic's trump card is: but what difference are they actually trying to make? We know what they are against, but what are they for? Again, a no-win situation for the protestors: if they pronounce united and forthright replies, they are pigeonholed as a fanatical gang of loony Marxists. If they cannot immediately illustrate a highly-developed ideology or have differing motivations, they are muddle-headed, infantile idealists. That they do not have an advanced manifesto declaring unanimous solutions to all of the world's problems based on in-depth economic, legal and sociological research does not mean their actions are somehow ridiculous. Has no-one else noticed the far from successful attempts of the so-called experts – politicians, financial gurus and scholars – at even beginning to understand, let alone solve, the world's economic and ecological crises?
The purposes of the Occupy demonstrations might seem under-developed but the difference they are trying to make is startlingly simple and desperately important. They seek to highlight the fact that the 'There Is No Alternative' (TINA) worldview is a bald lie. This is simply about disrupting the West's hegemonic discourse of neoliberal, globalized and growth-premised capitalism, which would have us believe that these results are a desireable and, in fact, inevitable corollary of free democracy. If it is sometimes difficult to articulate proposals it is precisely because these are not necessarily organised around current categories of thought, for example, the left and right of party politics. It is extremely telling that one of the only references which critics gleefully trundle out for these protestors is that old bogeyman - state communism. Why are there only two options, the current norms or the gulag? The rush to survey participants is also telling – are they on benefits? Are they foreigners? Until they can be comfortably labelled, they cannot be slotted into a preconceived set of critiques. Even well-intentioned efforts to debunk the myths lend credence to such questions and their premises.
If the Occupy protests are about anything, it is the faintest glimmer of hope in the human imagination versus the relentless, oppressive reality offered to us by government and corporate marketing. Before we can actually change anything we have to be able to concede that some of the most naturalised and unquestioned assumptions of our current system are neither natural nor unquestionable. There are other possible realities. There might be a social form of capitalism predicated not on growth-at-all-costs (infinite growth – even though we have a finite and ever-dwindling resource base) but on a steady-state and community-centred model. There might be alternative curriculums that promote debate and educate young people about the complex chains of responsibility in our world economy and polity, instead of spoonfeeding and then testing meaningless chunks of information. It might become normal for enterprises to discount profit and pursue genuinely beneficial innovation. We could create political institutions primarily focused on social justice, equality and distribution, rather than electoral squabbling, one-upmanship and soundbites.
What the demonstrations must not do is focus on demonising the "1%", the 'greedy bankers' and 'deceitful politicians'. Conspiracy theories are wrong because there is no conspiracy, there is never any outright intention to create harm, whether unemployment or environmental damage. Most people in positions of power within the political and financial worlds are not evil, greedy or deceitful. They genuinely believe they are doing the right thing, or at least, nothing wrong. They have so strongly invested, heart and mind, into TINA that their horizons are sadly reduced. The only thing they believe to be a positive contribution to society is to foster business growth, create jobs and market stability, and abide by the letter of the law. Judging by comments on the BBC news website, among ordinary folks, TINA translates into: get a job (any job!) and do some 'real work', make money, pay taxes, and stay out of trouble, which entails ridiculing those clueless layabouts at the protests. Many are understandably so desperate to look after their own precarious job and their own family that they do not have the wherewithal to confront these issues except through an occasional and confused grumble.
As individuals we can try to overhaul our own lives, try to extricate ourselves from the most exploitative and unjust elements of the global economic system. As critics have suggested protesters ought to do, we can limit our purchases, we can take our money out of the big banks and put it into cooperatives, we can volunteer. But we quickly reach a point where, because of the ubiquity and embeddedness of the system in every aspect of our lives, we cannot realistically do any more, though more is needed. This is the point where collective protest comes in and not for nothing is it called a demonstration. It is about this demonstrative power, the performative logic of solidarity: different kinds of people in disparate locations joining a movement and reminding each other that we are not just individuals. Contrary to the erroneous thinking of Dan Hodges, we do not have to mentally accept the range of possibilities handed down to us and constantly recreated for us by political parties and institutions including the press. Call it infantile idealism if you like, but these protestors have not lost the imaginative ability to suspect that there may be some much better, untried, realities.
Posted on October 31, 2011
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