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Main Content
Occupy The Future
What should be the next step in the strive to bring democracy to the world financial system?
The contrast is strident: thousands of multicoloured tents planted on the bare ground right at the door of the grandiose fortresses of the capitalistic world. Impossibly high skyscrapers wrapped up in glass windows or austere marble buildings surrounded by columns; contemporary Goliaths under the attack of the humble David.
Many are claiming paternity of this extraordinary new-born starting by the revolutionaries of the Arab Spring to get the ‘Indignados’ of the Puerta del Sol in Madrid. But the Occupy movement defies any categorisation. What matters is that this unidentified political subject is spreading like wildfire around the world: the US, Great Britain, Chile, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Seoul, Hong Kong, Australia.
It looks like the coming of age of an entire generation of people who are suddenly coming to terms with the fact that there is no space for them in the current world order. They call themselves the 99% and are fighting against the top 1% of super-rich who are snatching an ever growing slice of the pie from their future.
Three years after the banks brought western economies to the verge of collapse and were bailed-out with public money, their outlook has not changed. Proceeds and dividends are exploding to pre-recession levels for financiers and corporate giants whereas the sheer majority of people are shouldering the burden of financial speculation by experiencing a drop in living standards, cuts in public services and rising joblessness.
Back in 2008, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury foresaw what would happen. He said: “It is no use pretending that the financial world can maintain indefinitely the degree of exemption from scrutiny and regulation that it has got used to. This crisis exposes the basic level of unreality in the situation – the truth that almost unimaginable wealth has been generated by equally unimaginable levels of fiction, paper transactions with no concrete outcome beyond profit for traders.”
Although characterised by different features, all the Occupy movements around the world reject representative, parliamentary style democracy and support direct, participatory democracy with decisions taken by consensus at general gatherings. The words of a demonstrator, Tom Holness are enlightening in this respect: “At the moment our access to democracy is limited to going to a ballot box every five years and voting for people who are going to lie about what they’re going to do.”
And the wake-up call does not seem to be falling on deaf ears. Certainly politicians and super-wealthy alike are taking action to make the best use of the movements.
Especially the Democratic Party and Barak Obama himself have tried to ‘adopt’ the Occupy movement for clearly opportunistic electoral ends. The US President is said to be drafting fiery speeches against tax cuts for the wealthy to sabotage the electoral chances of the Republican Party.
Likewise business magnate, Warren Buffet has publicly said he would like to pay higher taxes, in the hope perhaps that if the most pressing demands are met, the movement won’t later raise the stakes.
Even financial newspapers, always ready to blow the trumpets of the international capitalism, are acknowledging the existence of a tide of indignation rising worldwide and are calling for measures to accommodate their requests. Needless to say all of these publications advocate the creation of an overhaul programme of the current financial order rather than its overturn.
They go as far as suggesting the development of a new conception of corporate responsibility vis-à-vis society at large by venturing into verbal acrobatics that warmly recommend that ‘…energy be directed into making capitalism work better…’
However, it has to be noted that the Occupy movement has still to find its own identity and has to come up with a strategy for the future.
The alternative scenario if nothing follows will be one where the movement fizzles out or gets fragmented into a myriad of smaller movements that never get to punch above their individual weight. The Occupy movement cannot live confined in a square.
The biggest error would be to shy away from making direct and detailed political demands arguing that “the process is the message” as some have claimed. That would put the ball back where it has always been, the very political system the Occupy movement rejects.
Planning is key to the movement’s success. Only with a good plan the 99% will make it to the top. It won’t be about squatting squares any longer. It’ll be all about becoming owners of the fortress in their own right.
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