A Tale of Two Occupations

This article was published in the Yorker's Green Party Column in Winter 2011. http://www.theyorker.co.uk/legacy_articles/387

Today, the NYPD broke up the Wall Street section of the global 'occupy' protests, the centrepiece of the movement. Meanwhile protests in other cities are slowly dying down and the authorities are close to reaching a similar conclusion in London. The end is nigh for Occupy, yet global capitalism still stands, so surely it was a failure? Yet such a statement suggests that the protests were distinctly 'anti-capitalist' and hence supportive of unpalatable doctrines like communism or Stalinism, and so the mainstream media and political establishment dismiss them as 'loons'. Indeed Tory MP Louise Mensch even made the incredulous comment that the 'anti-capitalists' were betraying their principles by visiting Starbucks. The problem with such an assertion is simple; the occupy protests are not anti-capitalist at all, in fact they are pro capitalist, only they support a different form of capitalism to the 'neoliberal' definition so routinely shoved down our throats.

If these protests were so anti-capitalist, than surely we would be experiencing a revival in communist and extreme socialist parties, surely the red newspaper, “Morning Star” would not be on the verge of liquidation. Instead, the wide levels of public support for the demonstrations as well as the general resentment towards financial greed suggests that ordinary people within the capitalist system are waking up to its labyrinth of lies and abuses. Such people do not want a 'dictatorship of the proletariat' or to 'smash the state', all they want is a re-configuration of the present system to end its corruptions and injustices. Since the 1980s we have been sold 'free market' policies that would create a wealth that 'trickled down' for all. Not only has this failed to occur, but in many ways these policies have not created a free market at all. Instead they have linked politics and corporate power to the benefit of each. They have developed a monopoly on what defines 'capitalism' and the 'market' and so they have a monopoly on prosperity as well, hidden behind the façade of media manipulation and vacuous democracy. Hence the current wave of protests have united forces as opposed as Ron Paul and Slavoj Zizek.

Anglo-Saxon systems are so obsessed with acquisition above all else. That is why we have the travesty of a law that companies must pursue profit above all else, leading to unsustainability and high risk operations. We only need look abroad, to successful mixed economies like Norway, or even in some respects, Germany, to see that this does not have to be the case. The state can have a role in a prosperous capitalism, but only if we see growth as just one of an array of aims for our society to look toward. In fact, currently one of the fastest growing economies in Europe, Belgium at 0.7% of GDP, has no government with which to implement austerity measures. Cutting down the state even further will clearly only hurt the economy more. History shows the state has grown out of practical necessity, not ideology, to help achieve social progress and economic competitiveness in the 1900s and 1940s. It is, contrary to popular belief, the libertarian, anti-statists, whose ideas are based solely on ideology and not grounded in a concrete utility.

Any questioning, it would seem, of the economic status quo, down to its finest minutiae, faces similar accusations. Measures such as the Tobin Tax, breaking up the banks, tougher stances on financial sector bonuses, and a slower pace to the cuts, are all denounced as 'unrealistic' or met with blunt replies like 'you wouldn't understand' and 'what is your alternative then?' Again it is implied that any opposition goes against the natural or necessary state of affairs. However such ideas are not unrealistic at all. They have the support of several notable figures like the ground-breaking Cambridge economist Ha Joon Chang, and are only opposed by the money men, whose interest lies in the continuance of the present arrangements and who have betrayed our trust in the past.

By creating a social democratic state based around green investments in cutting edge technologies and an expansion of public transport, we can bring the opportunities of capitalism to everyone, not just the rich few, and can balance out the naturally unsustainable and exploitative aspects of it. By separating out the economy, we could avoid risk taking, and create slow, and stable economic growth. By putting people before profit we could stop the reductive nature of the present arrangements. The sexualisation of children, the marketing of virtue, the mimicry of all human life, as mere economic units, figures on a spreadsheet. Put simply, we could learn again, that there is more to life than money.

An economy is determined by the aggregation of individuals that are involved in it. So let it be the 99% that defines what capitalism is, rather than the oligarchy of the 1%. It is time to end the occupation, not of the ordinary people occupying, peacefully, the avaricious foci of the global economy, but the occupation, nay annexation, of our societies, our governments, our everyday lives, by the interests and agendas of a rigged system.

The Greek root of the word economy, oikonomia, meant household management. So perhaps it is time to get our house in order and begin the discussion of alternatives.