Occupy Wall Street

i've been advocating putting pressure on the major media outlets. i initially thought fox a logical target, but on reflection it really isnt...they'd enjoy and exploit it...and it's better to allow them to deteriorate gradually, helped along by the seemingly endless series of revelations of unethical practices from the news corporation...the latest being a scientology-worthy scheme for inflating circulation figures by purchasing pallets full of the wall st journal over and over and sending them from place to place maybe 40, 000 at at time and registering each pallet sale as individual sales to make the wsj seem way more important than it is. but the dominant media is definitely an aspect of the debacle that neo-liberalism hath made--without the repetition machinery to shape memory and opinion, none of this disaster would have been possible---so it's important to indicate that the dominant media is inside the scope of the political action and not, as they would prefer to pretend, outside looking at it.

i am not sure what the next logical move are or should be. wall street itself is not the actual issue---it's a symbolic target that stands in for both the material disaster of 2008 and, more basically, for the plutocracy that controls the land of the free and home of the brave and the dysfunctional priorities and policies that follow from plutocratic control. the disadvantage that poses is that there's no real purpose to be served by shutting down wall street itself, particularly given that there are a lot of people who work for those firms who are logically in positions that should pitch them toward supporting the movement. besides, there's not that much of the financial sector still physically located on wall street at this point anyway. the changes in capitalist geography are pretty fundamental, dontcha know. its like ned beatty said in network times a lot:

((click on the top link...embedding has been disabled))



i expect everyones seen this. but it's still a great speech. best thing in that movie by a mile.

 

How about fresh, clean, unemployed bodies? There's 24 million of them in this country. But you're right, at this point it's hard to say whether or not this movement has true staying power. But if the economy worsens and these millions of unemployed Americans head into a long, cold winter scrapping by, you've got a large population of people with little to lose. Don't forget, the Arab Spring is the primary inspiration to OWS, so I'm pretty sure they're not gonna go quietly.

 

I suspect that numbers will drop as time goes by, but it is quite possible that others are in it for the long haul.

The Greenham Common protests went on for years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenham_Common_Women's_Peace_Camp

 

the inadequacy of transnational regulation, and the institutions required to formulate and enforce them, is another hallmark of neo-liberal capitalism. there are occupations in 75 or so us cities now. there's occupations all over europe, including on at the london stock exchange directly inspired by ows. there are occupations in south america--chile in particular....i have a map but it won't embed & the resolution isn't great anyway. this is a global movement already. this will give an idea:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2011/oct/15/occupy-wall-street-movement-global

and it's going to intensify.

people should be concerned about the fact that tnc's can engage in massive tax evasion, that the financial industry is now structured so that profits generated by it have no necessary relation to the social coherence of any particular place, that political priorities in almost all neo-liberal dominated countries are paralyzed by a crisis that neo-liberalism itself produced as an ideological framework but that it offers no way of even adequately describing much less offering policy alternatives to....and conservative political discourse is even worse in terms of being able to produce either a coherent picture of or responses to this crisis, which they prefer to crush into some imaginary natural cycling for capitalism despite the fact that most conservatives are getting fucked over by the same paralysis that is affecting everyone else.

so while relations with vendors around zuccotti park is a local tactical issue that may or may not be as portrayed in fact--my view is no different now than it was last night on this----the issues that are being brought forward and talked about by way of the occupation movement are pretty fundamental to the overall survival of this capitalism thing, which seems to me a bigger deal than whether there are endorsements present on a menu website.

 

like i said, cyn, this is a local tactical matter and if it turns out that this isn't being attended to by the folk who are occupying that park, then it is an error on their part. they need the support of the neighborhood and there's no reason in principle they cannot win that by paying attention to the various relationships that have come into being because of the fact occupation. so yeah, i get the problem. i trust that it's being addressed.

if you're drawing an analogy between these relations as you present them and capitalism in general in order to naturalize the fact that there are "winners" and "losers" i think that's a convenient way to by-pass almost everything that's at issue here, all of which stems from the fact that capitalism is an aspect of a broader social system that conditions it and is conditioned by it and that this social system is not functional because of the class fractions and ideology that currently dominates it. so while in the abstract there are people who make out better than others, it's also the case that civilization---you know, basic ethics---would require that the social system ameliorate the situation of the people left behind to the greatest possible extent. and the united states, for example, can certainly manage that if there were to, say, stop pissing over 40% of total federal outlays on the books away on the national-security system, for which there really is no need at this point as it was developed to respond to the cold war and it's basic modes of operation are outmoded. so it's a conservative patronage system that produces machinery of death and destruction that somehow manages to suck away enough money that fashioning a more civilized, humane form of capitalism is beyond the imagination and so beyond the capabilities of the people who currently run the show. that's wrong. that has to change. that's a system matter.

i remember, as i'm sure you do, that famous quote from margaret thatcher--when i look around i do not see society. i see individuals. that viewpoint is central to the neo-liberal mythology. if you try to draw a parallel as i think you're trying to draw, you walk straight into that mythology. and that mythology is one of the central problems. most of the other central problems result from it.

 

This is today's poll from the nydailynews.com

 

Back to what it's all about.. quite a nice summary here .. http://www.businessinsider.com/here...n-what-the-protesters-are-angry-about-2011-10

It could say more about the money flowing into politics and the influence it buys, but if does a good job anyway.

 

so, let's see. what i read off of that (that=no.330. other posts in the meantime) is a cynicism about the occupation based on some idea that you have that you understand how everybody really is--which seems to me beyond arrogant, beyond even what the snottiest academic marxists i know would say.

second, you seem to be under the impression that ows is about replacing the existing order with themselves. no-one has said anything like that. because you seem to be under that impression, it would follow that somehow this business with the vendors "says something" about the movement itself---i dont see it as anything more than a tactical situation, one that's got me suspicious because (a) i dont know that it is true and (b) it looks a whole lot like a kind of infotainment the exclusive function of which is to set up ows as some kind of invading force and so to help set the neighborhood against it which (c) is material for arguments in advance to justify shutting it down.

on the other hand, let's say this stuff is true. you talk about moving to nyc..you had to learn to see the social arrangements you see around you (i can guarantee you that not everyone in any city sees picking up their dog shit as part of a social contract for example). you allowed yourself time to learn that---it didnt just Appear as Self=Evident. i've lived in cities most of my life---i know both what you're talking about and that learning to see it in terms of micro-arrangements is an adjustment. but you don't think it's ok to allow ows a similar learning curve. then you repeat the move of the articles and talk about them as if they're all the same--which you don't know---and from the burbs---which you are making up. why? they are Outsiders. so it's ok to hold outsiders to standards that didnt apply to yourself when you were learning how to read off relations and reciprocal obligations yourself.

and i assume that you buy stuff from every single vendor that you see everywhere that you go. you do not fall into this horrible avoidance of reciprocal relations you accuse ows of falling into. you take care of everybody and never choose. you go to every resto that you pass. it takes you days to get anywhere. c'mon. it's an arbitrary claim you're making on any number of grounds.

and then you avoid the systemic nature of capitalism with the intermediate term of an assumption--and nothing more---about how everyone "really is" which is, i suspect, a lot like you are. that would mean you set yourself up as the normative human. you really should brand that shit. you'd save marketing firms a fortune wasting their time exploring the diversity of responses. they can just ask you. there is a logical problem in your shift away from the local. it's a standard conservative cognitive problem, an ideological effect---there's nothing necessary about that way of thinking. and conceptually, the idea of individuals entirely outside the social is absurd. we are, for example, communicating with written language that we did not invent, but which is, rather, a social institution and a pretty basic one in shaping who and how we are in the world. no philosophical tradition posits individuals as outside the social---those which appear to make a move, usually early in the game they are playing, to exclude those aspects of being human by focusing on abstractions (the old mind in a vat problem) or fictions (the soul, the essence etc). so no, human beings are not atomized individuals. they're also not entirely social constructions. they're a mix.

we are in a socio-economic system that's not merely the sum of individual transactions---transactions are typically framed by a legal order that the individuals who transact work within for example, and that system modulates what they do and how they do it. that legal system is a historical creation and its meanings change--within boundaries---as a function of ideological change across time, which, again, individuals do not invent. ideologies are collectively reproduced, socially instituted frameworks for thinking, often at a very basic level. they're worldviews, so as a form of social cognition. they aren't necessary. when you try to evacuate the social by generalizing from a truncated image of particular instances or relations, what lets you both do the truncating and make the generalization is ideology. in the case of your post, that ideology is symmetrical with basic neo-liberal thinking. which is the main thing that the global occupation movement is attempting to fragment, to break the hold of in order to open space for thinking about matters like creating a more equitable and sustainable social form that people who think people are atomized individuals who are all basically the same haven't managed to do---in part because their ways of thinking prevent them from taking seriously ideas like what is socially equitable and what is sustainable. they think this order is necessary because it corresponds to their fictions about who and what human beings are. it's circular.

 

Cynthetiq,

I think they addressed that point (to a degree) in point 3.

I'm not sure how it is over there, but we had a lot of our manufacturing destroyed in the 80s (the Reagan/Thatcher monetarism thing) and now it seems they are looking to manufacturing to fill the gap. Hmm.

Anyway, is there such a gap if the people who got us into this mess are still paying themselves large bonuses with the money we gave them?

 

I think there is some benefit to others around the world and, arguably, not before time. We HAVE had it too easy in the West.

However, shouldn't the whole of society feel the weight of that shift? Or is it just the least able to afford it that should? I'm speaking as someone who sailed through past recessions and who has been in the top 10% (but nowhere near the 1%). Even when I was sailing through, I held the same views.

If there was less money in politics, I think there would be less fuel for this fire.

 

Outlaw lobbyist and special interest access to politicians. 1st on the list of demands - imo.

 

Ok, observation time. I've been watching this movement do their thing in NYC today. Pretty sad stuff. Thousands upon thousands of people being herded like cattle by the NYPD. The police put up their barriers and the demonstrators step in line. The police say move back and the protesters move back. I'm sorry, but these people are simply far too passive and it's obvious they've been too conditioned to obey the law.

These kids think the 1% is just going to hand over their power and wealth to the 99% without a fight? Gimme a break. OWS walks down the sidewalks like a bunch of sheep, through times square and then gathers in the park to have little bitch sessions. Laughable. The police are the strong arm of the 1%, and these American demonstrators have shown that they're just not up for a real confrontation.

I watched the video of the Boston arrests. The police were beating on people, throwing them to the ground and the crowd just watched and shouted "Shame." Yeah...uh, shouting "shame" isn't going to do jack shit except show the authorities that you don't have the courage to step in when your "brothers and sisters" are getting beaten by the establishment. What a bunch of wussies, seriously. This movement is a joke.