After the Occupy Melbourne event was forcibly (and it appears, disproportionately violently) cleared by the Victorian Police at the instance of Melbourne Mayor Robert Doyle, Dr_Tad has been reflecting at Left Flank on some of the criticism of the actions in Australia by “ostensibly progressive bloggers”. He focuses in particular on Grog’s Gamut and Possum Commitatus.
As Kim observed in her previous post on the Occupy X movement, much of the critique is predictable and unsophisticated. That seems to be the case in respect of this “ostensibly progressive” critique too. It’s a wonkish critique, and rests on two foundations: first, the comparison of American and Australian economic and social statistics (forgetting that the Occupy X movement has also taken flight in the UK, and is in many ways paralleled by social uprisings in countries such as Spain and Greece). Secondly, there’s the perennial ‘what do these people want?’ cry. Protests, it would seem, ought to be focused on a particular issue and a ‘demand’ translatable into policy terms, rather than take the form of a social movement.
As Dr_Tad indicates, the US comparison is neither here nor there in many ways, and in any case the sunny side up stats disguise alarming levels of comparative inequality. (Ask not what the unemployment rate is, but how the unemployed subsist, and how low the wages and high the living costs of many of the employed are.) In many many ways, the thrust of this argument is a Labor Right one, one particular to the Canberra political class, which also blinds itself to the economic causes of much of the right wing unrest.
What the movement actually goes to is the sense of elite domination of politics and life. Here, Dr_Tad astutely cites a number of essentially liberal observers:
US foreign policy realist Stephen Walt, hardly a fringe radical, describes well the factors that have led to the rapid spread of occupations despite the differing conditions in various countries. He lists: (1) Economic globalisation causing growing inequality between and within countries, (2) new technologies allowing much more rapid spread of information, and (3) the “incompetence and/or corruption of governing elites … and the tendency of governments to do too much to protect wealthy and powerful interests and not enough to help ordinary people”. Paraphrasing a colleague, he adds that, “the present combination of economic inequality and political gridlock is fatal to the proper functioning of democratic orders”.
He goes on to quote Nouriel Roubini:
Any economic model that does not properly address inequality will eventually face a crisis of legitimacy. Unless the relative economic roles of the market and the state are rebalanced, the protests of 2011 will become more severe, with social and political instability eventually harming long-term economic growth and welfare.
The model of organisation and dialogue involved in these actions, about which Greg Jericho is so flippant and dismissive, is in fact a necessary form of social ordering, democratic in and of itself, in that it does not presume to stipulate a form of social ordering dignified or given by the state or ought not so to presume. How the 99% seeks to counter the rule of the 1% is an open question, and ought to remain so.
The question remains, though, why Occupy Australia can be dismissed in such a fashion. (It’s related to an analogous question about the level of intensity – I don’t say size – of the movement in Australia compared to those in the US and the UK and elsewhere, which Jericho and Possum gesture to, but misframe.)
As well as being a wonkish Labor right argument, the Jericho/Possum critique appears to resemble Leibniz’ in form. Yes, there are social evils. But such evils are amenable to limited redress. But there must always be inequality because in some way it is functional to the greater good. So, in effect, we live in the best of all possible worlds, and a wonkish tweak here or there might sometimes be necessary to ensure social mobility, but we have no ground for critiquing the underlying structure which produces and reproduces that inequality. (Or rather, it is something to which the observer must blind herself).
This is the essence of what I have called Gillardism as the philosophy of the Labor party.
That phenomenon, the reduction of the political philosophy of the labour movement to a kind of ameliorative social liberalism (which is not so liberal when it comes to those who must suffer social inclusion by diktat – Indigenous people, poor people in Western Sydney subjected to ‘income management) in itself would repay much more thought. What has gone wrong with the Labor Party has a lot more to do with this than Julia Gillard’s personal style or whatever.
The question for me, then, is why the Jericho/Possum Labor Leibnizism resonates. And there is no doubt that it does. Why is Australia a “bubble”, seemingly insulated from the winds of change blowing throughout the world?
I hesitate to do more than sketch an answer.
But it’s a question that must be posed.
I think, in teasing this out, we need to consider:
(a) the specificity of Australia as a social formation, one which in many, many ways, as has been argued, represents the export of particular class fractions on 19th century Europe, making it very distinct from its antecedents and “always already modern”, remembering that class struggles in Europe had a history and a social trajectory going back many centuries;
(b) the particular social utopian imaginary of Australia as a settler society constituted by dispossession;
(c) the very incomplete and fragmented nature of political and social globalisation.
I think those three things go a long way to accounting for the fact that the waves of change and upheaval, which are very significant indeed, wash over these shores only as ripples on the beach.
In the trajectory of Australian social democracy (a concept that if mentioned in the ALP, before the early to mid 80s, would have met with derision – the right were “democratic socialists”) it’s the full stop of having given up any transformational ambition and conceded the field to (neo)liberalism that is significant.
I don’t think it’s just “Hawke & Keating” though. The real shift happened when the ACTU, (then) CPA, the intellectual reformist left and much of the SL gave up just at the point that Australia Reconstructed appeared on the scene. Even Kelty’s restructuring of unionism still had reference to the idea of the labour movement as such and as a transformational one.
But the point I am getting at is that we circle back around, culturally, to the idea that we are some sort of workers’ paradise in the South Pacific. Gillard’s social liberal rhetoric, and all the statistical mystification beloved of the sorts of people Dr_Tad takes aim at, exemplifies this. I wonder whether we are not also going back a century with the mad obsession with borders and contamination.
We are all Deakinite liberals or Sir Samuel Griffith paying a polite visit to Trades Hall now?
History doesn’t move in a straight line. It has backwaters and reverse currents, too. We’re stuck in one.
Cross-posted at Sed Probate Spiritus.
Update: Richard Green defends the wonkish case at Troppo.
Thanks for expanding some of your thoughts from our FB discussion last night.
I actually think there is a danger in trying to find too fundamental or distal a reason for the current “bubble” nature of the Australian predicament.
One could easily argue that Ireland was in a similar “bubble” of relatively low levels of resistance and rebellion despite a much worse economic crisis, although the hatred of the political class there surpasses that of our own. Or that Germany was in a “bubble” because it has turned serious attacks on wages a decade ago combined with continued strong exports to China to its relative advantage, again with the result of interesting manifestations in terms of struggle, but a much less visceral domestic revolt than the Eurozone “periphery”.
Part of the Jericho-Possum argument is that Australia has escaped GFCs 1 & 2 (to date) because of excellent policy wonkery. I see it as global capitalism having uneven & combined developmental patterns (to use Trotsky’s appellation), with the unevenness currently being tied up with a truly global underlying crisis that is very large and intractable to the usual interventions. That is why the political class have found it hard to respond to the #occupy movement, because it essentially rejects their legitimacy, which had rested on the idea that markets would provide material wealth for all. There may not be 40 percent youth unemployment here, but people can see that the same economic project as has operated here has also led to such outcomes overseas. There’s a real fin-de-siecle atmosphere about, even if it is more expressed in terms of political gridlock than economic class war.
I agree the Accord years originated in other trends in the Left, not just “Hawke & Keating”, in particular the ones you describe. The problem with the ideology encapsulated in that project was that it put a radical-sounding gloss on what was essentially a program of re-subordinating working class organisation to the state after it had run well beyond the state’s control from around the time of the 1969 O’Shea strike. That it found favour among many union militants is a reflection of the radical Left’s weaknesses in size and politics; thereby an inability to pose a different political project in the face of twin crises: the sudden end of the post-WWII economic golden age and the Kerr coup.
By the time the Accord happens, two recessions and mass unemployment have worn away syndicalist militancy, and the social contract appears to offer some way out. Of course, it is actually a disaster (but one that the “ostensibly progressive” types celebrate as a great victory).
It’s ongoing today. Cops, dogs, whaddawewant…..
Interesting posts Mark and Dr_Tad with a lot to think about/comment later.
On the same topic I see a commonality between the OWS movement, the UK and Greek protests and the Tea party/local equivalents. There is a shared frustration that reflects a perception that “things are getting worse and aren’t going to get better” combined with a sense of powerlessness. In the case of the Tea party it is often an individual thing. “I had a good job in the manufacturing industry and now I am fifty or and unemployable” (not sure about the OWS)
Some of these people may have simplistic solutions like “impeach Obama” and “ditch the witch” or the crap fed to them by the Koch bros or…. But part of the frustration is that people really don’t know what to do.
At this point the key thing to understand in all these cases is the feeling that things aren’t right and that problems like job insecurity, the treatment of the people at the bottom of the pile and loss of self respect are part of the problem.
Demanding policies NOW from the OWS protesters seems unrealistic.
If you put aside his opposition to gay marraige and a few environmental issues, I would have thought the position of those at “Occupy” in Australia is largely that of Bob Katter’s Australian Party. A return to pre-1983 economic arrangements, and a vague sense that there is a small global elite pulling all the strings.
Well, I have no idea on what basis you make that claim, Terry. It seems to me quite an unwarranted assumption.
Mark, its the many anti-globalisation statements on the #OccupyBrisbane Twitter stream. Apparently, anti-flouridation statements are also coming from the podium.
Also, as #OccupySydney has chosen the Reserve Bank offices rather than locating outside one of the Big 4′s HQs or Macquarie, this can be taken as a protest againts the floating of the $A.
Its not like Katter is any longer anathema to the industrial Left. Dean Mighell is committing $50K of ETU money to the new Party, and Alex Scott is considering committing QPSU funds to Katter. The latter has strong support from union members who are concerned about union rights, but also oppose the carbon tax.
Regarding the question of demands I think Mark has nailed it. What unites this movement is an understanding that the problem is the economic and political system and that it therefore can’t be fixed simply by changing a few features. There are things that can be identified as symptoms of the problem: the treatment of refugees; the Northern Territory intervention; the demonisation of welfare recipients; the privatisation of public transport and utilities; the corporatisation of universities; the persecution of building unions; endless imperial wars. “What are you rebelling against Johnny?” “Have you got a couple of hours?”
Up until thirty years ago there was a left which embraced, not just the far left and various social movements, but much of the labour movement including a vibrant left wing of the ALP and there was a sense that there was an alternative (or various alternatives) to capitalism. Campaigns around single issues were normally run by people who considered themselves to be socialists or communists. New people drawn into those campaigns were easily attracted to left politics as their grievance over uranium mining or the treatment of gays or whatever could be explained as a consequence of capitalism.
The collapse of the Soviet Bloc removed, unfortunately, more than Stalinism. For a generation it has removed the idea of any alternative to capitalism. In 1977 if you convinced someone that it was impossible to obtain what they wanted (say free tertiary education) within the bounds of capitalism then they could become a socialist. By 1997, if that same conviction was more likely to make them feel that free education was an unreasonable demand and that HECS was the best we could hope for. Hence the policy wonkery that Mark identifies above looks like the only alternative.
What has happened is that, in parts of Europe and in the US, capitalism appears to be visibly falling to pieces. The vacuum on the left remains (at least in the English speaking world, less so in places like Greece and Spain), but desperate people who need to protest understand that the problem is systemic even if they have no idea of a systemic solution.
It is at this point where I disagree to some extent with Mark’s attempt to explain the “Antipodean Bubble” based on historical features of Australian political culture – a sort of Australian exceptionalism.
If you were going to explain the difference between Australia and Spain or Greece that may appear to make sense. But if you’re comparing Australia to the rest of the Anglophone world, it makes no sense. Australia has historically had a larger left than the rest of the Anglophone world. It had the biggest Communist Party, and for most of the Twentieth Century had a better organised and more combative working class. This may have disappeared, but it’s not as if the left in Canada or New Zealand hasn’t shrunk at the same time. Most crucially, the collapse of left-wing politics and working class organisation in the US has been much worse than here.
So why has the movement exploded in America? Well, clearly “it’s the economy stupid”. Which doesn’t mean those who argue that a movement in Australia is pointless are right. Quite apart from the fact that our relative prosperity is dependent on China and a Chinese recession could wipe it out in a stroke, neo-liberalism has wreaked its havoc here just as it has in the rest of the world. There is a sense here too that there is something systemic about all the bad things that are happening. It’s just that it hasn’t reached the point it has in the US.
This explains the different reception of the protests. In the US there seems to be a wider acceptance that there is something to protest about and hence less of the “silly buggers don’t know what they’re protesting against” reaction.
In short, we’re all on the same train heading for the same abyss, but some of us are less worried because our carriages have comfier seats.
OccupyMelbourne kicked ass today! I estimate about 1000 with even onlookers joining in. Not sure the decision to occupy Treasury Gardens was the best. Hoping we can mobilise bigger forces for next Saturday, esp unions who were largely absent. Consensus decision making ended up being more or less normal voting process, was great to see so many young people caught up in the democratic moment. Also good to see people wising up to the nature and role of the cops. The “not all cops are bad” sentiment did not get much traction at the General Assembly today. “Whose streets, Our streets”!
Amen …. spot on Robert.
I see it as a runaway train rather then one heading for an abysse. It makes it legit to ask what type of engine is ahead and who is the driver. The damage is different too in that scenario, you could say more messy and patchy, never mind the seats.
I agree with pretty much all of what Robert says, except to say that Spain is more like Australia than one might think in terms of the vacuum on the Left. In fact, in some ways worse.
Unionisation is considerably weaker, the ex-Communists (in Izquierda Unida) have moved towards social liberalism with an unstable relationship to social movements, and on the radical Left loose autonomist and anarchist ideas remain dominant. This is not to say that the period since Seattle (1999) hasn’t been more radical in Spain than here, but the disconnect between popular movements and the organised working class has been very problematic.
The union leaders’ betrayal following the one-day general strike in September last year was the subject of such bitter demoralisation among wide layers of the population that the 15M movement has systematically excluded not just political parties but trade unions from its activities. This divide remains unbridged, leading to a curiously depoliticised radical politics on a massive scale.
Such a rejection of official politics also characterised the early days of the Square movement in Greece, but conscious intervention by the anti-capitalist Left has broken down those divisions much more effectively, helped by the fact that Greek workers have been radicalised around their anti-austerity struggles. Still, while the vacuum on the Greek Left has been smaller than here or in Spain, the Left is divided and there has been a slow process of realignment during the current events, still incomplete.
It was positive — in this context — to see Qantas engineering union representatives speaking at #occupysydney today.
It’s an act of solidarity. Quite appropriate. Another generation have just been taught what a bunch of violent arseholes the Victorian coppers are. Good blooding.
Mark, the reporting of the demands of the Occupiers has tended to say they oppose corporate “greed”. People sympathetic to the protestors whom I’ve talked to have also fingered “greed”. I’m totally alienated by this. As Josh Clover said in a recent piece, “When the investment bank across the street leverages up to a debt/equity ratio of twenty-nine to one, you leverage up to thirty or get out”. In short, moral sentiments of either the good or bad kind have little role to play in the logic of capitalism.
And the distinction between Australia and the US in terms of concrete demands is important. The redistribution of wealth in the US over the past 30-40 years has been markedly different from that in Australia. In Australia it would be great if we got rid of negative gearing, and introduced death duties. Then the Occupy X movement could give an answer to those who asked what they’re for. Surely we’re not against “greed” (because that has or hasn’t been a constant of the human condition and has nothing to do with how capitalism has played out) and we’re for death duties!
dear Terry
i dropped by the sydney demo yesterday – the part of martin place they’ve occupied has the reserve on one side & the channel 7 “sunrise” studios on the other side. it is also directly across macquarie street from the nsw parliament. i think they picked the location well.
yours sincerely
alfred venison
What the movement actually goes to is the sense of elite domination of politics and life.
Indeed Mark, I find this so self-evident I am completely nonplussed at people saying, “What are they whining about?” – as if the Occupy Movement is on par with the largely apolitical tabloid complaints (fuelled, I might add, by those self-same elites) about carbon tax, “cost-of-living” etc.
I suppose this illustrates that one man’s reactionary is another’s activist, but really, I kind of feel like the real question is why are so many people contented with the steady co-option of their democracy and representation by special interests that care not a whit for any citizen, anywhere?
I include myself in that rhetorical. I have my reasons as many no doubt do, but though I may not be there in person, I attend in spirit. The idea of ridicule or befuddlement in the face genuine political activism is I think a truly depressing – albeit ancient – phenomenon. I can never see people giving a shit about democracy and the corruption thereof could ever be bad.
The redistribution of wealth in the US over the past 30-40 years has been markedly different from that in Australia
This is untrue. It’s the same pattern but stronger. Read Matt Cowgill’s recent blogs on this.
I suspect the cynicism of Grog and Possum are more to do with the individuals dominating the “organising” of the Occupy X movement — who mostly come from the various fringe socialist propaganda and various hippy groups.
http://posterous.alexwhite.org/from-occupations-to-a-movement-occupymelbourn
Thankyou Alex, the sensible discussion was getting boring. It needed a dose of cliche and banality.
I know this is a quote of a quote, but it seems to me that this assessment is factually wrong.
Globalisation has resulted in greater income inequality within countires, sure. But the most profound economic effect of the past couple of decades of globalisation has been a much wealthier China, India, Brazil, and to a certain extent Indonesia, along with a bunch of other smaller countries throughout Asia and South America.
By contrast, GDP growth across the developed world has been slow, so the richest countries have not been increasing their wealth particularly quickly.
The poorest countries (the vast majority in sub-Saharan Africa) remain desperately poor, of course.
But I find it hard to sustain the argument that the world is becoming more unequal, from a nation-state perspective.
Of course, the rise of the Chinese and Indian economies has not a little to do with the stagnating economic situation of the American 99% (though government policy is the larger factor).
I’m sorry Robert. I should have used the terms “wonkery” “predicament” and “Antipodean Bubble” to fit in.
Robert @18
This blog post by Michael Roberts has detailed data on global inequality, which is on the rise even if inter-state inequality may have diminished with the rise of the BRICs (although I am not sure how strong this trend has been and what the Great Recession has done to it):
http://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2011/10/21/1-versus-99/
“always already modern”.. I give up and google is not helping. Sometime I think you need footnotes, Mark.
Yes, Dr Tad, you’re right – inequality within countries, even the BRICs, is on its way up.
However, if that’s because (at a guess) 500 million people in the BRICs now lead a moderately comfortable lifestyle (if not affluent by Western standards) whereas 30 years ago only a few million did, it’s hard to see that as a terrible thing.
If that inequality became entrenched, of course, that would be a terrible thing.
And, obviously, the rising levels of inequality in the developed world, particularly in the United States, are outrageous and have no justification whatsoever.
“Predicament” is a fairly ordinary word. I don’t know how it’s upset you, but perhaps you’d prefer “unfortunate circumstance” or “tight fix”. “Wonkery” is admittedly a jargon word, but it is one which, I think, passes the test for such words in that it legitimately condenses meaning. “Antipodean bubble” (Mark’s phrase) is, I think, an excellent description of how the current economic and political crisis afflicting so much of the world has not affected Australia.
Should you have use those terms? No, of course not. The English language is rich and diverse. You could have used lots of words and phrases. I’m a particular fan of “elbow” and “tumultuous”. Otherwise I can only say, as a general guide, that I am a disciple of Orwell in these matters and prefer straightforward language.
But straightforward language is not of itself a guarantee of straightforwardness. The Herald Sun is mostly written in words of few syllables, and they are weasel words for all of that. Which brings me to your short little post that got me upset.
You gave us the delightfully insightful phrase “fringe socialist propaganda” which tells us that there were commies there, that they are on the “fringe” (which they would be being commies). You then went on to establish your concern at the presence of “various hippy groups” which has been the standard cliched dismissal of every protest since the late 1960s. Hair, hygiene, eccentricity; we all know the drill.
I have since, because I thought I’d be fair, clicked on the link to read your blog post and found that it doesn’t add much to this other than the fact that you have apparently seen some of these individuals before at protests. Presumably these protests were ones you didn’t agree with. That must have been because they were led by hippies and socialists.
No doubt they didn’t wash enough and nationalised your toothbrush.
Robert @22
I think Michael Roberts’ figures go further… that overall global inequality between people is going up. So the intra-state inequality is rising fast enough to more than offset any gains between states.
A good example is China, which has caught up to the US in… a higher Gini co-efficient! See here: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-income-inequality-in-the-us-china-france-brazil-2011-10
That out burst was intended for Alex #19 (if you hadn’t already guessed).
Now, in reply to the other Robert #23. The thing about the dramatic rise in living standards in the BRICS is important. My wife is Chinese and I just spent three months working in Beijing. I know then from direct family experience that the changes in China are phenomenal and it would be idiotic to pretend that there hasn’t been a dramatic improvement in the lives of millions in China and India in particular. Though it’s also true that that improvement has been uneven and has been based on super exploitation and there has been an explosion in class struggle in China in the last year that has been largley ignored by the western press – strikes and riots have occurred on an increasing scale over the lasdt few years.
The expansion of capital into China and India has both given the system breathing space and caused new problems. If China goes into recesssion due to the collapse in demand (which will happen if the crisis in Europe and America deepens enough) then we will be living in very interesting times. And out “Antipodean Bubble” might just burst, causing a predicant for the wonkery.
predicament for the wonkery
“Part of the Jericho-Possum argument is that Australia has escaped GFCs 1 & 2 (to date) because of excellent policy wonkery.”
Hahahahaha yes indeed. I think at one stage it came to an impassioned plea to shut up if you hadn’t sacrificed yourself by going to university. This went to the real failure of the argument in that Australia had ‘smart’ people and somehow the US didn’t. If it’s simply a matter of being ‘correct’ then ideology doesn’t come into it. No oughts if you’re an is man.
Good article, thank you. But when you mention it is ‘Spinozist’ and you refer to the best of all possible worlds, do you mean Leibniz instead?
There are quite a few vectors to this discussion.
To take one, though, “why is Australia as it is”, the because of our formational process we “were always modern” is very interesting and I think quite right. But right because of the struggle at the beginning. Times of national challenge usually have a unifying effect within communities. Australia has endured a procession of difficult periods with each forming its own facet on the jewel of Australian Culture.
I feel, though, Mark that you are being a little parochial in your argument by not recognising that New Zealand is on a (relatively) parallel trajectory to Australia culturally, despite having very different historical circumstances. This suggests that level of equality has something to do also with the age of our nations relative to others.
The litmus test for these issues is in the study of the life and times of King Alfred the Great, a person who in the period of 40 years created great civility out of complete chaos. ie what is possible versus what eventuates elsewhere.
Another vector is in an understanding of the nature, causes and methodoligies of the inequalities in this country, as well as the relative differences in other developed countries. I’ve got to set up some machines so will come back to my thoughts on this point.
Why has the #Occupy movement come to Australia?
According to Newcastle University’s Professor Bill Mitchell @ billyblog the Australian youth unemployment rate is 38%
see “The scourge of youth unemployment”
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=16583
Occupy Sydney smashed up by police this morning: http://occupysydney.visibli.com/share/5J2QKd
We’re certainly not in a bubble when it comes to the state and protest!
Moving #Occupy Melbourne away from the old city square is a good idea. The old city square is opposite Town Hall and being out of the Lord Mayor Robert Doyle’s sight is safer. Although the location is wonderful for disrupting major tram routes as numbers swell in support of the occupation. Treasury Gardens is outside the Victorian state Parliament with much more room for camping and the occupiers can march down Collins St to Swanson St to engage the populace or march to further down Collins St to engage with the remnants of the financial hub – why didn’t they camp on the lawn outside AXA in Market St?
Occupy X protests remind me of the protests against the invasion of Iraq, where the majority recognise the immorality of what’s intended, protest on that basis, but at the end of the day on Wall St, in Martin Place, in Canberra or the Pentagon, it’s business as usual.
The ’99%’ have the resources to organise effectively, but like a pointer on a duck farm, can’t decide or know which particular injustice brought about neo-liberalist ‘free-markets’ to target. But it’s gratifying that big chunks of proles now come out in opposition to the immorality of corporatocracy.
Capitalism is probably going to have to fall over all by itself, which appears to be exactly what is happening. It can be accelerated, aided and abetted by a jaded consumer who can now neither afford nor is particularly inclined towards ignoring the many and varied evils involved in the production of tonnes and tonnes of useless electronica and crap clothing.
The Australian Govt’ need be mindful that the flow on from a likely worldwide drop in demand for Chinese produced consumer goods is going to lower demand for raw materials, which will have little impact on the bulk of the population who receive no benefit from the resources boom (save aforementiond cheap and nasties) until such time as the government start to screw us with ‘austerity measures’ to make up for the shortfalls.
Dr Micheal Power being interviewed by Alan Kohler on Inside Business this morning fails to see that the Spanish Indignadios ie unemployed youth, teachers and nurses facing 25% pay cuts are not the same people involved in the “we are the 99%” participating in the Occupy Wall St movement
At first I was a bit cynical about the Occupy movement’s lack of specific demands. However I have to admit that they have started a discussion about inequality which has been sorely lacking. Notably the counter argument is usually ‘it’s not as bad as it looks’ rather than ‘inequality is actually good for you’.
I do want to stick up for wonky specificity however, by noting that Occupy has attracted various strands of climate denialists, David Icke-ists and LaRoucheists. I don’t want to exaggerate as other activists are doing the job of keeping them in a box. However these people can offer ‘solutions’ which take up the available space unless someone proposes sane alternatives.
http://www.businessinsider.com/what-wall-street-protesters-are-so-angry-about-2011-10?op=1
The site above does a very good job of pulling together all the relevant statistics.
The “market” won’t fix the problem, it won’t fix CO2 emissions either.
Huggy
John Clarke and Brian Dawe. Heh. Wind direction is very imporant.
Link’s point about the anti-GWII protests is an interesting one.
In Britain, these were among the largest in British history. Yet they failed to divert Blair from warmongering.
Blair, as parliamentary leader of the broad left, was already in power. He had captured the apparat of the BLP, defying elements of his party to overthrow him, risking thereby the Labour government.
Many comparisons can be made. One is the Australian Moratorium movement of the Vietnam era. This movement was also broad based. But a large component of it was connected institutionally to the ALP. Thus, behind the scenes a bitter struggle erupted between outright capitulationists led by Cairns and the Whitlamites who argued that Cairns’ leadership of the antiwar movement compromised Whitlam’s ambition to be PM. At the same time, many people joined the ALP specifically to oppose the war. Thus the war changed the ALP.
Since then, notoriously, the ALP has changed. The party is now much less open to this type of insurgency.
These days the Greens is the natural political home of the Australian Occupy movement. But is it likely that the Greens, though augmented by folks energised by the Occupy Movement, will in the near term have sufficient clout to drive reforms demanded by “the 99%”.
“I suspect the cynicism of Grog and Possum are more to do with the individuals dominating the “organising” of the Occupy X movement — who mostly come from the various fringe socialist propaganda and various hippy groups.”
As opposed to the corporatist propaganda that is regularly on show at the Tea Party astroturfs organized by the Liberals and the shock jocks? Attitudes like “one hippie in the bunch means the whole protest should be ignored” is part of how the 1% are able keep screwing the 99% – it’s a distraction from the actual issues at hand.
The hippies were right – war and greed doesn’t lead anywhere good, for humans or the planet. But 40 years on, they are still painted as “unserious” by the 1% who’ve been slowly flushing us all down the tubes. Hippy-punching is a distraction. Don’t buy into that frame of thinking. We’re all hippies now.
Whar are we to do then? Political media coverage is just rot. You have the commercial chns. and you have the ABC which is now just journos interviewing journos as well as people whose opinions you already know. A pox on all their houses!
And no wonder the Victorian police cannot fix themselves up – tools of the ruling “mob.”
@29 – Yikes, yes I do! I’ll fix the post.
Lisa Gunders:
http://thememesofproduction.org/articles/who-does-the-occupy-movement-threaten
i’m not so much put out by the greed, that’s a human inevitability to different degrees.
i’m greedy, i want entertainment, info, innovation and more.
right now there’s probably a dying kid in africa with the potential to finding a cure for cancer/reactionless propulsion… things i can’t imagine, but non of them will be realised. not until someone is born both rich AND clever. we’re slowing ourselves down by waiting for that combination.
we’re stuck in a system where our chips are placed ONLY in large amounts on very few bets.
besides limiting our future, it’s also causing people to turn to crime to survive and a generally negative unhappy world, which corrodes our prosperity more.
it’s worth changing. and even the rich could be better off.
Shades of The Eureka Stockade here. An early Sunday morning intervention to put down an ongoing protest. The reactionaries have learned nothing in the past 150 years.
I’ve been watching and have attended some of the Occupy Sydney meetings. The occupants were starting to fracture with disparate groups not being able to reach agreement. An example being the inability to reach a consensus whether to march or at the Sunday rally. Left to their own devices this protest would have probably petered out. I say this because the most committed activists (the ones actually sleeping there) are from groups such as the Socialist Alliance. These groups normally participate in direct action protests and target single issues, albeit under the banner of Marxism.
By forcibly removing the protestors at 5am the Authorities had hoped that no footage of violent confrontations and assaults would be available. Of course there is plenty of footage showing police using (excessive) force from other protests. The clandestine nature of the police operation makes this eviction look even more sinister.
So the Marxists have their “single” issue and will continue to mount protests. But now a significant number of non-aligned people will begin to fell uneasy about what is happening and develop sympathies toward a protest group that they would never normally consider supporting.
The Marxists know this and will use it to increase their support.
Update: Richard Green defends the wonkish case at Troppo.
If you are in Melbourne keep out of this cop’s way.
http://www.youtube.com/verify_age?next_url=http%3A//www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DqRCu2XEsWKU%26feature%3Dshare
Shades of The Eureka Stockade here.
Yeah, except for that whole racism thing…
By doing this at 5am the police ensure that most of those confronted are those actually breaking the “no camping” laws.
dear Uncle Buck
you see eureka, I see vinegar hill – i hope you’re right. how does that go? reactionaries: “learned nothing & forgotten nothing”.
yours sincerely
alfred venison
Vinegar Hill would have to count as a defeat for the insurgents.
Eureka scared the authorities largely because the government could not get a conviction for treason against the defendants and because Peter Lalor lived free in almost open defiance of the law, supported by his neighbours.
When the Occupy movement achieves a similar level of support among the Australian people I will be impressed.
Eureka was a tax protest as much as anything. It is more like the tea party than the occupy 99% crowd.
Oh dear, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Eureka wasn’t anti-tax. It was opposed to a specific tax regime.
Thus the Eureka insurgents were not really like the Tea Party at all.
In fact, the insurgents urged for a dismantlement of the squattocracy and a major impost on the wealth of the “1%”.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballarat_Reform_League
Correct Katz. Eureka can best be understood as an antipodean echo of Chartism and 1848 (most of the participants having taken part in one or the other). Admittedly, there was a tax issue – the basic principle of “no taxation without representation”, so it was like the original Tea Party (in the 1770s). However, the eventual resolution, if I recall correctly, was that you still had to pay for a miners’ right, but if you did so you got the vote. The miners’ were happy to pay tax if it gave them the vote.
This all, of course, led to a significant extension of the franchise and a more left wing colonial government and eventually a precocious antipodean democracy. Terry Irving’s recent work has pointed out the extent to which this was also the product of a militant (and frequently violent) urban popular movement. His book, The Southern Tree of Liberty, mostly focuses on Sydney, and is useful in this respect as the urban movement was purely concerned with the franchise and not with taxation. It involved ordinary people making trouble on the streets – a direct parallel with the present movement (except that no-one in the 1840s and 1850s believed in non-violence or consensus).
What an extraordinary thread.
I realise that the complete implosion of the ill-conceived Rudd/Gillard/Brown experiment has left many of you bereft of any coherent intellectual basis for your politics, but surely you can do better than let’s pretend it’s 1968, man the barricades again, as your best shot at a replacement? Let alone the attempt to co-opt Eureka.
It truly is the self-styled progressive left which is the most backward looking, conservative, part of the current Australian political landscape.
@55
The progressive forces are at present attempting to fundamentally change the relationship between industry and the environment by insisting that industry, for the first time, pay a reasonable price for their destructive behaviour.
The LNP, the conservatives, are hysterically attesting their determination to undo these arrangements and to do precisely nothing. Indeed a great many conservatives are anti-science, claiming that AGW is a conspiracy aimed at installing a world government. Seen in this light your comment is a complete and utter nonsense and your rhetoric impotent. Tell me I’m wrong or sit down and stop wasting the courts time.
As co-founder & strategist of the movement I’d say there is a plan. It will be successful. It is not as scary as you think. Certainly not to the 99%. The alternatives are worse. Waiting would have been worse. This was just the awareness phase. There is a political phase. There are many ways to skin a fat cat, figuratively, not literally. Be they not foolish enough to resist the tide of change & redirection of human energy to better things. Only those without imagination, intelligence & daring could see anything but a bright future. I see a great one. Win win. Only a fool would play the all-in bet. Overcome your fears.
An Aussie
The US cartoonists on OWS Warning: Not completely unbiased.
I like cartoons too.
http://www.npr.org/2011/10/22/141587473/double-take-toons-what-is-ows
Oh dear. Occupy on Monday’s Hack on Triple J well and truely schoolled by Andrew from the Commitee of Melbourne.
Occupy really need some media people to speak for them.
Ya reckon?? I thought part of the Occupy ethos is a rejection of the need for old-media paradigms. They don’t need to buy into the self-serving spin of the “Sideshow” political/media complex.
The Tea Party are/were a souffle creation of having “some media people to speak for them”. Their movement has been revealed to be hollow, and has petered out accordingly.
Occupiers don’t need media flunkies. They need this guy.
Then occupy will continue to be blindsided by the more media savvy 53% not to mention the 1% who own the best spinmasters in the biz.
The sheer termerity of occupiers everywhere, but especially here in Australia, declining to behave as media outlets demand – realise that they are unfocussed, that they have no coherent grievance, no program, that they have never had it so good and that there are polls, polls I tell you – declaring that the overwhelming majority of a self selecting cohort of Alan Jones listeners don’t like young people – honestly. Why wouldn’t they just go home like everyone else and watch ACA. Had they done that they could have seen a prog about the top five annoyances experienced by God fearing Aussies which included, and I quote from ACA, ‘course language’. Instead, they clutter up public places singing and playing guitars and talking to each other. Shocking. Aren’t they worried about their super like everyone else? Is there not sufficient dignity in shelf stacking to reward them for their degrees? Is that it? A disgrace. We need National Service. A war. Make them plant trees and rehabilitate deserts. Send in HR shock troops to sort these so called dissenters without cause out.
OWS refuse to take police violence lying down – and VICPOL dont like it. Good strategy.
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/cops-slam-occupiers-attack-on-dangerous-policeman-20111026-1miop.html
Well, the nerve, Lefty E. A cop has the integrity to go the thump in broad daylight and all he gets is slanderous anonymous poster attacks. He’s just prepared to show us what he’s got and I think that deserves support.
Icelandic public refuse to socialise the bankers’ losses. Go Iceland!: http://sacsis.org.za/site/article/728.1