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The is a meta diary. I’m not going to take the time to write too much.
In mathematics and physics, there’s 2 distinct ways of teaching a subject. One is basically a “polished” approach, where you start by stating directly what you want to prove or show, and then doing so. The other involves first motivating your final destination point, by pointing to some mystery, some partial result, a real or apparent contradiction, etc.
I’ve been thinking about writing a diary or two about what I will probably call an “ecology of activism”. Activists are supposed to lead the charge to fix problems of mainstream society. In order to fix deeply entrenched, powerfully ‘maintained’, and even systemic problems, one would hope that activists be as efficient as possible.
I will probably try and write a diary or two on what I think an ecologically fit activism would look like, but in this diary I’m just going to point to a couple of recent examples that, I would have hoped, would tip people off that they are not heading down a “happy path”, one of great efficiency. They are probably heading down the path of marginalized futility.
If people do not think that they are performing at far below their potential, then they will not have much motivation for becoming more efficient.
In this diary, I want to (briefly) motivate my readers (all 5 of you – you know who you are!) to see if they think that there have to be better ways to go about things. If they conclude that there has to be better ways, then, hopefully, they will start trying to figure out what those better ways might be.
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I’ll also make a few numerical assumptions, which I’m not going to argue much. All assumptions regard minimal targets for political muscle, to achieve a tipping point, and all involve manpower.
Assumption #1
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Protest movements which target the government must be very large, and persistent, to force it to respond positively to demands. We saw these two conditions – large and persistent – met during the anti-Vietnam War marches and demonstrations. We saw large demonstrations against the Iraq War, but once the war began, these fizzled out.
Assumption #2
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Another way to exert political muscle involves electoral threats. In an off Presidential election year, you can guarantee a ‘firing’ of an incumbent, in many contests, by showing up in a primary, with fellow citizens that number only about 20% of the registered Democrats or Republicans in your district/state. Your D/R neighbors will only constitute about 25%-35% of eligible voters. So a lower bound target for throwing a monkey wrench into any given D/R primary is only about one out of 15 eligible voters.
Assumption #3
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Clictivism and petition signing, unaccompanied by credible electoral threats, will typically accomplish nothing (except in the special case that they’re related to referenda with real political, legal force behind them), no matter how many clictivists, petition signers you round up. That’s because the “transaction cost” is too low.
Speaking of “transaction costs”
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I’m aware of this phrase is from the book about social networking, called “Here Comes Everybody”. So, really, my assumptions are not just numerical – they also touch on a 2nd dimension, that of “transaction costs” (of participation.) If transaction costs are too low, people will tend to ignore you, because they know that your activism cost you very little, so probably doesn’t imply any other serious pushback. Such activism is sort of like this funny video of a lazy cat having a “paw fight”, while laying down, with another lazy cat.
If your Congress critter looks at you like these lazy cats, you may provide him with some laughs (behind your back), but you will have no effect on his/her behavior.
Activist Scenario #1
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Yesterday I attended a meeting of local (Newark, NJ) activists, called “People’s Organization for Progress”. One well-spoken man talked about the housing and foreclosure crisis. Part of his approach involved getting people to sign a petition. Another part involved (IIRC) squatting in houses that were foreclosed on.
There was no indication that this well-informed man had considered the utility of a petition as a form of activism, because the transaction cost of signing it is basically nothing, even if the transaction cost of getting physical pieces of paper signed by many different people is, mechanically speaking, much harder than doing so using the internet. I.e., there was significant transaction cost for the activist organizers to get the petition signed, but of course, they will be outnumbered by petition signers maybe 100-1. The votes of petition organizers can be readily ignored by any politician who passed 3rd grade mathematics.
There was also no indication that the transaction cost of squatting could be too high to make adoption of this tactic widespread.
Activist Scenario #2
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In a video in a diary posted at MyFDL, NPR Debate between Gary Johnson and Jill Stein moderated by Guy Raz of All Things Considered on the economy, health care & the role of gov’t, Cheri Honakala gives a talk, where she says something like the “next President Jill Stein blah blah”. The audience is not shown, but it sounds like less than 20 people are cheering and clapping. (That’s less than 40 hands, for those of you mathematically challenged. :-) ) Getting a much more modest 5% of voters voting Green in a general election, which is obviously more doable, would guarantee $20 Million Federal matching funding in 2016 for the Greens, and would pose a large threat to the Democrats (forcing them to react, if it had been earlier in the election cycle, anyway; teaching them a lesson, even at this late date). Getting a more modest 1/15 eligible adults to commit to throwing a monkey wrench in the well oiled, D/R primary machinery is not mentioned, either.
Activist Scenario #3
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Occupy Austin tries to re-establish an encampment. Doesn’t go well (which was completely predictable). I post the following comment:
I have a question for you. If you had to choose between having an occupation consisting of 100 “encampers”, vs. having a daytime “occupation” that involved 300 “non-encampers” who occupied the same public area during daylight and evening hours (say 9am – 9pm), which would you choose?
I don’t see the point of fighting for illegal encampments, when the same energy could be applied to creating a larger public presence.
Consider:
1) People who have jobs are likely not going to join an encampment.
2) People who have children are not going to risk arrest, since they can’t discharge parental responsibilities when they’re in jail
3) Enthusiastic, full time (= 40 hr/week) occupiers could have their housing needs met by non-full time Occupy sympathizers
4) Not-so-enthusiastic, full time (= 40 hr/week) occupiers (those who are jobless and/or homeless against their will) could have their housing needs met by non-full time Occupy sympathizers
IMO, insisting on encampments is a losing strategy. When the unemployment rate goes to 40% and 20% of Americans are starving, sure, you might be able to force through encampments in public areas. What if America doesn’t decay to something like Greece-like status for another 20 years? Why would anybody want to expend energy on a tactic more appropriate to a significantly worse situation than America is currently in, and thus not pursue other opportunities and low hanging fruit?* Besides the direct cost, what is the opportunity cost of pursuing encampments?
Using concepts discussed in “Here Comes Everybody” and “Bowling Alone”, Occupy X’s did not create much social capital, and the “transaction cost” of being an occupier (encamper) was/is too high.
I have recently released a beta web site, occupypublicspaces.org, which not only facilitates legal gatherings in public spaces (assuming mini-march organizers plan their mini-marches such that they terminate in the same area, at the same time), but also makes it a bit easier to facilitate people wanting to be “full time occupiers” (i.e., full time activists), by allowing them to declare themselves as “housing distressed” and “Open to Full-time Activism”.
* The fact that encampments lasted as long as they did, was largely a function of their novelty. The PTB were caught, unprepared. The sentiment expressed by the mayor of Oakland – that she will never allow encampments, again – is probably typical of other mayors.
No answer. A more fundamental question, though, is “Why didn’t Occupy Austin activists think of these questions, themselves, and post their reasoning as to their conclusions?”
The picture in the diary shows about 30 Occupy activists, in a city that had a population of 1/2 million in the 80′s.
The sound of 30 people clapping will be exactly the sound of 60 hands clapping.
With apologies to Bob Dylan,
The question, my friends, is blowin’ in the wind
The question is blowin’ in the wind
And that question is: “What is wrong with this picture?”
More generally, “What do YOU people think is wrong with these scenarios?”
22 Comments
It’s a little like grasslands after a heavy rain, and then comes drought. A few thunderstorms role in, and lightning strikes, but the grass is too wet and the temperature not warm enough yet to dry it out.
Is the lightning to blame?
Just let it keep coming, keep striking, and as the grass dries (as it will dry) one day there will be such a fire…
I am proud of all the protesters since the days of protest against the Iraq war. Look how long we have kept on keeping on.
Bravo Austin. Bravo all protesters, whistleblowers, political prisoners, homeless, poor people, those without healthcare, students burdened by debt! Bravo third parties. Bravo those who vote and those who abstain. Fewer votes make those who vote third party a larger percentage as well – it doesn’t just work for the duopoly!
The atrocity pile is growing, and the instability of Things As They Are is growing too.
Keep striking, lightning. Even if only two hands are clapping. Clap, clap, hands!
Egypt took fire in an instant, after decades of suppression. The Soviet Union fell, the Berlin wall fell, overnight.
It will happen.
“When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall? Because of its attraction to the earth, because its stalk withers, because it is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes it, or because the boy standing below wants to eat it?
Nothing is the cause. All this is only the coincidence of conditions in which all vital organic and elemental events occur. . .” [Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace]
Let’s not blame the lightning.
Are you willing to be sanguine about the conditions for the majority of the US population to become as hard as for the majority of Egyptians, before the “US fire” occurs? Must we tolerate the same level of government control over our lives as the Russians, before our “Berlin wall” falls?
Even if you’re happy to just let things evolve (or devolve before they evolve), can you see where hapless foreigners, at risk for getting drone-bombed by the US, or having their country destroyed over Western paranoia (e.g. Iran) would not think too much of your patience?
If people with your attitude judge us 20 years shy of Egypt-like and Russia-like turning points, why should such people just not look out for their own skins, and those of their immediate families? After all, they can just join the revolution at that magical moment when it becomes inevitable. Why get all stressed about trying to force any issue before it is ‘ripe’, when doing so is impossible? Why not “eat, drink and be merry”, until then, instead?
Speaking for myself, I am interested in deep reforms without either revolution or social chaos or an American Dark Age preceding it.
After the Allies destroyed enough of both the Wehrmacht and its cities and infrastructure, the German people were quite willing to say “goodbye” to Nazism. Would it not have been much better to have nipped Nazism in the bud? Would it not have been more moral to try?
The members of the White Rose Society are rightly remembered with admiration, even though they paid for their activism with their lives. Those who discovered their capacity to organize against Nazism after the Allies occupied Germany, deserve no special respect.
Actually, Metamars, you and Juliana are both correct in a way if you fuse your thought process.
There is a two-step approach. The disintegration of capitalist society is ongoing, devolving as you say, even as it ascends in formerly third world countries.
See, the Earth is finite after all. The ability to grow our way out of the capitalist conundrum becomes moot at a certain point after most of the world successfully adopts capitalism and the worldwide population which must be supported continues to double every several decades.
Trying to “reform” our way out of the coming worldwide crisis without a revolution or without societal chaos is not an answer.
Human nature precludes meaningful reform. Capitalist progress, such as it is, also cannot morally be denied to the rest of the world that we have already degraded since the industrial revolution. They have every right to attain improved living standards and will regardless of our belated concern for the environment after we have got ours.
Capitalism is an equally essential element of the historical process that Marx identified and critiqued so well, as did Lenin and Trotsky later (although their own revolution occurred in the pre-capitalist conditions of czarist Russia and thus was doomed to failure).
We are forced to live through the capitalist phase worldwide first. You may say no and others on this blog may say no, to whom I say “show me how the capitalist phase, flowering now say in Asia, can be avoided.” The answer: it cannot be avoided. The heightened degradation of the planet cannot be avoided, either.
Sorry, Greenies.
Juliana is correct too. There is no way to evade the coming nightmare except through our merciful mortality. The historical process will continue to build, apply pressure, ebb and flow, but as the capitalist hegemony grows so to will the conditions for its eventual replacement.
And as the capitalist system undergoes its own self-destruction in other parts of the globe as well as the declining West, the numbers of the disaffected will also grow simultaneously to engulf and overcome the system when the conditions become unbearable.
Meantime, expect fascist power plays in the interim as the elites maintain control of the system by playing off of the natural fears of the plebes. This also results from human nature.
War, total war, with its attendant destruction and the opportunity for rebirth is the only proven means of capitalism to regenerate itself.
Organising and fighting the war machine is perhaps the best direct way for today’s activists to impact the historical process.
That is not happening, at Occupy or anywhere, as far as I can see.
I suggested targeting the MIC for direct confrontation at their places of business and was invited to leave my Occupy because this was seen as advocating violence and I’m sure in the paranoia of the moment I was thought to be an Agent Provocateur.
RIOTOUS! My destiny is to be a troll. So be it.
Occupy has self-marginalised.
Oh and recommended.
Meta is the best utility for blogging, IMHO.
For what we are doing here is always and everywhere about us!
Also, for those who believe we’re very close to numerous climate tipping point, that spell disaster, I don’t see how they would accept a more organic, patient, waiting-for-turning-point approach.
For those who are not willing to wait, for whatever reason, they need to address the issue of efficiency – how can activists efficiently (and peacefully, I am arguing) tear power away from greedy plutocrats, and invest it more with the people. (Which also has its share of dangers. The American public is no paragon of either knowledge about important issues, nor the ability to think logically. Nevertheless, there’s not too many options besides plutocratically controlled Mandarins vs. people power. Let’s just hope that the more ignorant and irrational citizens don’t vote.)
It certainly makes it doubtful. However, “preclude” has a finality about it that I can’t accept.
During the Progressive Era, there was successful pushback against plutocratic control in the US. Not towards a capitalist-free society, but to a capitalist-constrained society.
Also, Latin American leftists have successfully moved to get their people elected to the highest office in their lands. They basically did so peacefully.
The Tea Parties have also exerted real political muscle in the US.
There are lessons to be learned, and experiments to be tried, which are not being learned, and not being tried. While we apparently agree about the futility of the current trajectory of progressive reformist elements (I’m loathe to use the phrase “progressive reformist forces”; what “force” would that be??), I am conditionally optimistic about our prospects for significantly altering these trajectories, for the better.
Otherwise, there’s no point in my writing. Just sharing what would be a fatalistic, gloomy POV isn’t worth my energy. If we’re going to go to hell, for sure, then I’d prefer to join the party!
Well, yes, the Progressive Era is contained in one of those ebbs and flows. Certainly “progress” was made, is being made, will continue to be made. As will “regress”, such as the period which we now reside during the conservative reaction to the Progressive Era which lasted roughly until the election of Richard Nixon.
Perspective is everything, and can be too much self-directed as well as influenced from without. There is a fine there.
In Marx, there is an inherent optimism built in. Stand back for a moment and understand that we are but one small phase of a tendency that itself is a minour element within a conservative reactionary era that itself is a very short term, tiny historical phenomenon enveloped within the historical sweep of Western Civilisation, whose ebbs and flows can be traced all the way back to the founding of Greece.
One must look at the future with this same connected and rather universally wide scale as one also must assess the momentary fragmentary day to day reality in which we feel ourselves trapped.
Buddha perhaps understood this need for an enligethened outlook best.
A new human nature is definitely required. For the inevitablity of Marx future vision as well as for surviving in the current rather grim circumstances. We are an aging, decaying society true, but there is an awful lot of history to be made in the centuries to come.
Chin up, Metamars.
I appreciate very much that you are not allowing the currency of the echo chamber to weigh you down. You are able to see and communicate reality in very articulate and clear terms within the cacaphony of nonsense that abounds in this, the era of the infoboobtubes.
“Cacaphony” an interesting word. Caca + phony.
[:o)
My point is, metamars, that science may be part of the mix, part of the lightning, but if something is going to happen it will happen when it happens and is, as the Tolstoy quotation points out, composed of many different organic elements, so many in fact that extracting one or several of those elements, as you constantly do, and pointing out that it on its own is ineffective isn’t helpful – but go ahead if it makes you happy.
I am just as interested, as my posts will indicate, as you are in bringing about said change, but also, I don’t want people to think that the various ways they have to deal with real problems and effect change are not effective. That seems to be your mantra.
And I do agree that climate change is of the FIRST order. We had a black out from a ‘minor’ storm last night that lasted six hours (during which my happy little solar pathway lights just kept on shining). Hardly anything that storm was, but massive amounts of rain fell in probably ten minutes. I can’t imagine what would have happened had that been ongoing for even an hour. At any rate, with candles and no computer (I used to be able to get online with the slow phoneline connection – with router now no way) sorry I couldn’t respond sooner.
And this is one of the many effects that will contribute sooner rather than later to our own coming Spring – quite literally, a lightning strike!
And again, I did not say patient, or waiting, or any of the passive things you attribute to my post. I said we do not know what will be our tipping point, just as they did not know who began the change in Egypt that they were doing what so many there got up and responded to as they began, when Egypt finally poured out onto their streets all over the country. And they did not know the Army would be somewhat receptive for reasons of their own or out of fear it would destabilize – who really knows why. There are countless conditions making up such a happening. But they all come together for it, and they come together in a moment, not over time. It is only the timing, I say, that is out of our hands. If it didn’t yet happen, it will. Perhaps a climactic event will trigger it, perhaps a significant call for an audit of debt as has been proposed on this forum – to place the onus on those who have caused it.
I am positive this accumulation of conditions, of private personal incidents of decision, will happen. There will be too many for the dam not to break, and a breaking dam is an immediate organic happening too. As the Tao says, water is the gentlest, most accepting and acceptable element of nature, but as a force it is unstoppable (my roof proves that.)
I said, Bravo Austin, because that was another lightning strike. It didn’t take – yet. But the lightning strikes and the one pair of hands clapping continue and continue – they don’t stop. They accumulate. And when the time is right they will catch fire, or the dam will break. It could be five minutes from now, (as happened to me yesterday with my stormlet) it could be next month, it could be longer. Go ahead, too, with your instincts for how change can be accomplished. It is all part of the mixture.
You don’t know. I don’t know. We keep on keeping on. I don’t want people to get discouraged.
But what if they are, in fact, not effective?
I don’t expect anybody to take my word for what is effective and what is not. But I am indeed challenging people to try and figure out what is effective and what is not, for themselves, and to be open to democratic experiments. Even a failed democratic experiment (e.g., pamphleting schools with flyers that educate about the grossly tumored GMO rats) is valuable information.
In a new diary I just posted, I referred to the book “The Lean Startup”. But another useful analog from that book is the concept of “vanity metrics” vs. more meaningful criteria. Just trying one thing or another, with little regard to both the direct cost (and how that affects participation level) or the opportunity cost would be analogous to acquiring favorable vanity metrics.
A new human nature is not required, donkeytale. This is not the long view of history, because we are right in it, in the time of change, that time which the Chinese wished upon their enemies. The signs are all here, and as metamars points out, the biggest one is climate change. What looks like cacaphony to you is simply the planet realigning, the people of the planet turning to face what faces them. The inertia is not our inertia, it is the inertia of the Powers That Be which desire to remain so.
They cannot.
Who are you or who am I to determine what is effective, metamars? A martyr from the first or second century may motivate a person to stand up and be counted, and that person may influence one or two others who go on, even as not believing what that first person did, but to influence a change in mindful participation in society. It simply happens that way, and everyone’s path is to some extent unique.
Everything is effective, if you take a Faustian perspective (or should I say, Mephistophelean?)
Well, I would argue that talking of tipping point presupposes a decay of conditions such that the “dam breaking” becomes more likely a route of change. And I don’t see that as a good thing. One of my motivations for political writing and activism is to prevent decay to catastrophic levels. If unemployment rate goes high enough and hunger and even starvation become widespread enough, in the US, successful occupations might become inevitable, not futile.
Furthermore, with all of 30 people in Austin showing up for what, I suspect, even they view as a futile action, there is no accumulation of water sufficient to break any dams.
Apparently, you and I would disagree that trying to force encampments will eventually lead to conditions analogous to a dam breaking. I don’t see that. I’ve been to Zuccotti Park post OWS heyday, and there’s basically no evidence of a changed political environment. Yes, there’s some stuff going on behind the scenes, that wasn’t going on, before. It offers some cause for hope, but not as hopeful (to me, and many others) as seeing large amounts of our fellow citizens publicly gathering for reasons of political networking and education.
If whatever political networks that survived the evictions, expend their energy on re-occupying Zuccotti Park, then I would also see this as inefficient, and carrying more of an opportunity cost than whatever transient gains might be accomplished.
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Are you opposed to Occupy Austin even considering if their attempts to re-occupy are inefficient and even counterproductive?
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BTW, there’s an effort underway to recruit for a world-wide pot-banging actions Oct 13. As flash in the pan type of actions, I don’t see this making a big difference. But what if various Occupy’s looked to recruit amongst new pot-bangers, and consolidate their gains for some other legal means of large public gathering?
That, I believe, is worth a shot.
Last year, on the strength of the Arab Spring, Occupy took hold like lightning and were a real force across the land, with exciting posts on this forum from Kevin and so many others. It didn’t fail. A hasty dam was thrown up by the enforcers, but they had to do that. By force. This was not Egypt. But what they dammed up didn’t go away; it has simply been restrained. A dam is like a very impermanent wall.
Occupy is part of the solution. You may be as well. (I’m not even a bird’s beakstroke part, I’m just pointing out the obvious.) I’m not saying this to discourage your efforts, good metamars; only to discourage discouragement!
:)
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast…
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down…
We two can pass together through this wall.
Unfortunately you’ve taken to heart the worst of Marx, which was his (Hegel-derived) determinism. His and Hegel’s determinism is an opinion, based on philosophical theories about flawed and simplistic understanding of history. In other words, their determinism is based on nothing and it’s dumb to concern ourselves with it.
Specifically,
‘Capitalist progress’ is a complicated thing, in fact it’s not progress for many affected by it. Capitalism has, for example, been a catastrophe for much of Africa for the past century. Capitalists left to their own devices typically don’t seem to want progress, look at the EU imposing a long-term recession on itself. In fact, ‘capitalist progress’ is most often associated with a nationalist, inward-oriented, government using a mix of public enterprise and infrastructure investment _and_ capitalism to create economic progress.
Well, just no. History is far more complicated than Marx/Hegel imagined, and hasn’t been a smooth succession of thesis, antithesis and synthesis.
So, We aren’t …
Because we haven’t lived through it in the past.
Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, China, and Vietnam, most of east Asia, where they have progressed has been through strong nationalist governments directing the capitalist infrastructure toward turning mostly agricultural economies into advanced manufacturing ones. Where the finance capitalists have regained power, such as in Japan, we see long-term recession. Two ‘capitalisms’, one good for most folks the other one bad. What did Marx have to say about them? Nothing. But that’s not a criticism of Marx but of those who have turned him into a holy seer.
Oh, thinking human beings.
Hah, I had thought about throwing in a side point about good karma and an expanded timeframe for growth that belief in reincarnation provides.
In a previous comment, I threw in a good word for the White Rose Society of Nazi Germany. I’m not opposed to (likely) futile actions, when such are about all that is possible.
However, let’s say that the White Rose had started earlier relative to Nazism’s ascent in Germany. The question of whether it would have been more effective to have occupied public squares in German cities and towns, versus pamphleting about the evils of Nazism, would have been a perfectly legitimate question. I used to have a friend who was in the British Air Force during WW2, and he marvelled at how clean and orderly the German POWs were. From his comment, alone, I’m pretty sure that illegally occupying in the middle of German cities and towns would have been despised by large segments of German society, including anti-Nazis. (OWS in NYC was a real eye sore, right along with positive aspects.)
Not being God or even a Pope, I don’t claim that my judgements are infallible. However, the fact that we can’t ultimately know, in a God-like way, the truth of a human conceived proposition (mathematical propositions are an exception) is no excuse not to try our best.
I am so sure of my judgement of the ineffectiveness of attempting to re-occupy, at least at this stage in US history, that I have strongly argued the case, and furthermore challenged others to come to their own determinations. I in no way will ever tell anybody “Who are you to have judged the value of pursuing encampments”, just because they cannot know the truth of their judgement, in a God-like or perfectly objective way.
OTOH, if they duck the challenge, exhibit fuzzy-headedness, and/or produce irrational or weak arguments for whatever judgement they render, then I am likely to call them on that.
And I make no apologies for that.
“Are you opposed to Occupy Austin even considering if their attempts to re-occupy are inefficient and even counterproductive?”
Not at all. Though I hope they won’t think of it as having been counterproductive, and I’m sure they could themselves appreciate their inefficiency as I do mine. They accomplished one important goal – we noticed them, and we saw that they were still being outrageously repressed. They made much more of an effort than I have; I mark that.
A child learns to walk by falling down. Well, that toddler fell down! His attempt at walking is obviously not working. What sense does it make to say that?
Well, we work with the army that we have, to use a tired aphorism. I’d like to think, and I do think, ours is formed from the 99%. Some of us, a precious few, had good educations and have learned to use our minds as you do. Others are learning fast and using their (I always want to say Godgiven, sorry) inherent intelligence, integrity, and grit. Occupy has been a shining example of this.
One man’s ineffectiveness is another man’s moment to think deeply about what this administration and others before it have done to destroy the inherent capabilities of our youth. I think they need encouragement and love, not disheartening attributes such as ‘dysfunctional’. And I believe that their efforts so far have been helpful.
But that’s just me.
I described the movements as dysfunctional, not the people within them as dysfunctional. You might say that I am describing something akin to the Veal Pen. Would you have trouble saying that Veal Pen groups are dysfunctional?
Please explain how Occupy Austin’s efforts to re-establish encampments give us good reason to expect benefits to society, at large. If you, personally, draw inspiration from their acts, similar to a commited Christian drawing inspiration from Christian martyrs, well and good.
However, in order to see real political changes, attempts at re-establing encampments have to significantly contribute to meeting some sort of threshold of numbers (of citizens), plus some optimum amount of social capital (not too much, not too little). This was the point of laying out my assumptions. Besides the opportunity cost of not pursuing other strategies, I would tend to view attempts at re-establishing encampments as demoralizing. That’s because they’re basically guaranteed to fail.
Do you see this as a possibility? I.e., by continually attempting re-encampments that are sure to be promptly evicted, OWS enthusiasts will actually get demoralized?
If you want to argue that one or more of my assumptions are wrong, go ahead.
Ho-hum. Its my good buddy Fairleft offering yet more
nonsensemalarkey deep from inside the heart of the echo chamber.Uhm, yes we are forced to live through capitalist hegemony. Whether you want to call it ‘progress’ or not is irrelevant. This is not merely an opinion. Its not my belief. Its ontological. First hand knowledge for all! The best science there can exist, and it supports Marx theory. We have lived through capitalist growth, the most amazingly productive (if not necessarily progressive) time in human history for 150 years and counting while its influence continues to grow and spread worldwide in front of our eyes. The “woulda/coulda/shoulda” school of your utopianism does not apply to the present or past tense. This school of thought is entirely mired in your reformist fantasies for a future that no one can predict.
Marx may or may not have much to say about “finance capitalism.”
Lenin, however, had much to say about it. He hit the proverbial nail on the head 96 tears ago (1916).
More recently, Nouriel Roubini, another of the mainstream Wall Street economists for whom you are or once were a dedicated groupie, confirmed the Marxist/Leninist critique of capitalism. That even with the amzing productivity of capitalism lies the seeds of its own eventual destruction. He didn’t go far enough to call for a Marxist revolution? Well, he gets his bread buttered on Wall Street too, just as well do in reality. That’s on him and us, not Marx or Lenin.
Asian capitalism is steeped in nationalism you say? Yes. So what? All capitalism is steeped in nationalism. You can look it up. Even as capital itself does not and never has recognised borders. Belief in nationalism is on you (and Hitler), not Marx or Lenin.
So far, your argument is weak. All the weaker since you merely pull it out of your ass.
Yippee, it’s ontological!
Anyway, you are the one who insists on calling capitalist domination progress. You do so because Marx calls capitalist domination during ‘its phase’ progress. He was stupid that way.
In fact as we all know who look at the actual world, there are some ‘capitalist phases’ that are good (Scandinavia from the 1930s till fairly recently, for example; generally, manufacturing/industrial capitalism where it is hemmed in by democracy and strong unions) and some that are bad (Neocolonial capitalism as practiced against the interests of most of the third world; financial capitalism that now dominates most of the West and Japan), so the idea of a singular ‘capitalist phase’ is simplistic and damages rather than helps us understand the world.
Your happy theory is that capitalism will fall of its own accord because Marx’s theory of history says it will. Yay, you donkeytale don’t have to do anything, in fact your duty to your fellow citizens is to come on the nets and tell us not to do anything. Seriously, does it look like that will work?
Or, is it possible Marx is wrong and that history doesn’t tell us what will happen in the future? What if our real story is that we will have to actually examine our past mistakes smartly or stupidly, propose a crappy or excellent concrete alternative to the current abyss, think up a good or bad plan for turning that alternative into reality, back the right or wrong leaders, propagandize well or badly, and go forward uncertainly toward failure or success?