Occupy The World! To the Barricades Comrades?
Four
years ago in a Ministry of Defence Review, the Whitehall Mandarins,
more astutely than any so-called Lefty, determined the following:
“The
Middle Class Proletariat — The middle classes could become a
revolutionary class, taking the role envisaged for the proletariat by
Marx. The globalization of labour markets and reducing levels of
national welfare provision and employment could reduce peoples’
attachment to particular states. The growing gap between themselves and a
small number of highly visible super-rich individuals might fuel
disillusion with meritocracy, while the growing urban under-classes are
likely to pose an increasing threat to social order and stability, as
the burden of acquired debt and the failure of pension provision begins
to bite. Faced by these twin challenges, the world’s middle-classes
might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape
transnational processes in their own class interest.” — ‘UK Ministry of Defence report, The DCDC Global Strategic Trends Programme 2007-2036’ (Third Edition) p.96, March 2007
Yeah,
I know, I’m always using this quote (I first used it four years ago)
but it illustrates the great intellectual divide between the political
class and the citizens they rule, including our Left, now made so
apparent by what the pundits are now calling the ‘Occupy The World’
(OTW) movement. It seems that only our very own ruling class foresaw
OTW.
Dig a
little deeper into OTW and we find that with a few exceptions, there are
no challenges to capitalism, mostly it’s a ‘clean up your act’ kinda
thing. Throw a few billionaires in jail, add some regulation and things
will eventually turn out just fine. Dream on…
But we’ve
been here before. This is what attempts at ‘reforming’ capitalism in
the past have looked like. We lived under such a system from 1945 until
the late 1970s, before the Empire reasserted itself, proving once again,
that concepts like ‘democracy’ under capitalism, are at best, mere
conveniences and so vague a concept that it can be made to resemble
almost anything.
And once
the so-called Good Life that capitalism allegedly had offered us started
to wear thin and capitalism once more plunged us into war and poverty,
so too the ‘Good Life’ had to be dumped. Belt-tightening time again.
But
unlike 1968, or even the ‘Anti-Globalization Movement’ that some are
comparing OTW to, socialism is barely mentioned, let alone the central
motif. Yes, there are increasing anti-capitalist references but in 1968,
politics was at the very heart of the situation. It wasn’t about money
but about posing a real alternative to capitalism. The concept of
belonging to a class still existed in the public’s consciousness, even
if it lacked the collective will to do anything about it.
Am I
being altogether too cruel to OTW? It is after all, early days in the
development of OTW. It might all fizzle out or if it doesn’t, the
political class might have to use the logical response to the MoD’s
quote above: suppress it. Something for which, no doubt in another
(secret) report, the Whitehall Mandarins have laid out the strategy and
tactics to be employed in suppressing a burgeoning (socialist?)
revolution.
After
all, when “[f]aced by th[o]se twin challenges, the world’s
middle-classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and
skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest”,
says it all.
You have
to take this stuff seriously! It’s not a game and the state is very
adept at employing whatever tactics it chooses to suppress serious
dissent including the use of agents provocateurs (a long-standing
‘tradition’) to infiltrate and provoke pointless confrontations with the
state, in order not only to justify suppression but more importantly,
as part of a propaganda war waged through the media, where we have no
counter-voice.
Repression
of course carries its own risks and far from being a solution could
only further excerbate the problem. Timing is all. This is not a game.
The political class is fighting for its life and that of its masters,
the corporations. That’s why they write those reports. Just as with the
insurrections earlier this year in the UK, the state had a clear
response to it and the role of the media was central to its
effectiveness in spreading the state’s message.
Let it
‘burn baby, burn’ and turn the world’s cameras onto the conflagration,
followed by a good dose of Victorian ‘rough justice’ (pity they’ve
abolished hard labour and deportation to Australia). Make an example of
them should anyone else have ideas about following in their footsteps.
The key
here is the observation made by the Whitehall Mandarins about “class
interests”. Now if well-paid and no doubt loyal members of the political
class’ intelligentsia have gotten it figured out (and so far, their
prediction is right on the money), how come the ‘Left’ hasn’t?
Currently
class is something almost entirely absent from the OTW movement.
Without it eventually taking centre stage, OTW is bound to be stillborn.
But there are some positive signs that some kind of ‘consensus’
mechanism is emerging from the chaos akin to some kind of
‘self-organizing’ principle. After all, we have what the MoD report
called “access to knowledge, resources and skills” necessary to produce
workable alternatives not only to capitalism but to fashion a new kind
of inclusive democracy, one that hasn’t existed before.
The aim
is to create a venue for democratic deliberation and open debate in a
place normally associated with secretive privilege. People working in
the City of London have played a starring role in creating the global
economic crisis. Since our representative institutions have thus far
failed to address this crisis in a way that is both sensible and just,
it is only fitting that we should use the City as a place in which [to]
work on solutions ourselves. — ‘Talk Amongst Yourselves‘ By Dan Hind
It’s not a
‘peasants revolt’ kinda thing, though of course inevitably those hit
the worst by the crisis will revolt first. But the crisis of capital has
now hit those who make up the very bedrock of capitalist society’s
justification for existing, its so-called middle classes. These are the
major consumers in our economy, not only is their consumption a major
chunk of our GDP (as well its debt), they are also the managers and
technicians of capitalism and the state machine. Piss them off and
things could get out of hand just as the MoD has predicted.
Some on
the Left in the UK are still calling for revitalizing the Labour Party
as a potential force for socialism but if so, then it means that it
would have to come from its decimated grassroots membership, a tall if
not impossible order to carry out. At the first signs of revolt in the
Labour Party’s constituency membership, the Party Machine will intervene
and purge its ranks just as it has done so many times in the past.
For a
Left largely pinning its hopes on a working class that no longer exists,
it will have to broaden and deepen its knowledge of how capitalism has
evolved and transformed the nature of the working class and learn to
seek connections to a much more diverse and complex alliance of forces
if we are to defeat the Empire.
What an
irony that the Left—led largely by middle class intellectuals—fails to
see what has happened, trapped as it is in its own patronizing and
nostalgic vision of the working class aka George ‘middle class’ Orwell’s
‘Road to Wigan Pier‘.
And this is the problem: it’s always middle class intellectuals on the
Left who have set the agenda, not for their own ‘class’ mind but for an
idea that emerged in the middle of the 19th century; that the organized
industrial working class would undertake the Revolution, led of course
by middle class intellectuals.
OTW is
nevertheless a transcendent moment, one to cherish and sustain and no
doubt just the first shot across the bows of Global Capital but for it
to have a chance of success it will have challenge corporate
capitalism’s right to exist.
To do
this we will first have to dispel the ‘bad apple’ theory as the cause of
the current crisis. That it’s just a question of regulating capitalism,
smoothing out the rough edges, eliminating the extremes and above all,
restoring ‘competition’, so-called real capitalism.
But this
could only be done by breaking up the giant corporations and abolishing
the financial sector in its entirety as it currently exists. Is it
likely that advocates of ‘real’ capitalism aka Max Keisser
could undertake such a mission? The way I understand it, a ‘real’
capitalist economy would consist only of small competing private
businesses, cooperatives, public utilities and the self-employed, and
one assumes massive state intervention in order to make it all happen.
Sounds a bit like my favourite kind of socialism, William Morris’s version and not an overly ambitious objective given the political will to carry it out.
But who
will break up Shell or Goldman Sachs? Who will smash the
military-industrial-media complex? Only a state owned and managed by the
working class can undertake such a momentous task. OTY OTW…
