Occupy in the Rearview Mirror

Ten years ago, September 17, 2011, protesters settled in Zuccotti Park in the New York City financial district, a privately held park owned by Brookfield Office Properties and named after its former chairman. This action acquired the simple, straightforward, but somewhat misleading moniker, “Occupy Wall Street.”

While the specific motivations of the congregation are debated, there is a general agreement that the 2007-2009 economic crisis, and especially the failure to punish its perpetrators, was an instigation. Occupy became a phenomenon, even a brand in the era of memes, social media, and ultra-consumerism. Occupy-like copycats sprang up around the country and in different forms of activism. 

In its initial form, Occupy was an open invitation to gather in a public or semi-public space and hold it. The participants resisted a program, organizational structure, or leadership. Like previous efforts at anarchist levelling-- so-called “radical” or “participatory democracy” -- everyone was nominally of equal voice and stature. And like its anti-structure antecedents in the New Left, the Zapatistas, the anti-Globalization movement, the Indignados, etc., one can only wonder how its spokespeople, organizers, “facilitators,” or anti-leaders, are democratically selected in the absence of some structure. 

The common thread that runs through all of the celebrated anti-hierarchical organizations is a semi-religious confidence in spontaneity. All worship at the altar of this elusive idea, despite the fact that there is no successful historical precedent to support faith in its success. 

Though the Occupy movement succumbed after two months to a brutal assault by the coercive forces of the US ruling class, it left a popular slogan that continues to be embraced by a large sector of the US left: “We are the 99 percent!”

The Ten-Year Retrospective

Not surprisingly, various estimations of the value of Occupy are springing up on the 10th anniversary of the initial occupation. They range from the romantically naive, crediting Occupy with spurring every struggle since 2011, including the minimum wage fight and the teacher strike wave of 2018, to the coldly skeptical viewing of Occupy as an opportunity lost to “performative acts” or merely an historical “blip.” 

Michael Levitin, writing in The Atlantic contends that Occupy “made protesting cool again… it brought the action back into activism…” In fact, protesting has never been “cool;” it requires a sacrifice on the part of participants. More importantly, it should conjure a commitment beyond an event, a performance, a statement. Protesting requires the uncool tedium of building a movement that can grow sufficiently to tackle the unequal power of the rulers, a goal difficult to achieve without leadership, organization, and structure. The “1%” is more than the economically privileged; the “1%” has also accumulated massive power largely immune to the incantations of a general assembly. 

Micah L Sifrey, writing in The New Republic, references a somewhat chastened Occupy Wall Street organizer, Jonathan Smucker from his book:

Occupy wasn’t just a success in putting class back on the American agenda.

It was also “a high-momentum mess that ultimately proved incapable of mobilizing beyond a low plateau of usual suspects.” As he wrote in his book Hegemony How-To, “We were not merely lacking in our ability to lead the promising social justice alignment that our audacious occupation kicked off; many of the loudest voices were openly hostile toward the very existence of leadership, along with organization, resources, engagement with the mainstream media, forging broad alliances, and many other necessary operations that reek of the scent of political power.” Because Occupy’s general assemblies were so time-consuming and so easily hijacked, much of the real work and decision-making went elsewhere, “into underground centers of informal power,” he writes. 

It’s possible to look at Occupy as an experiment for its time-- 2011 was the year of the rise of Spain’s anti-austerity movement, the Indignados. Occupy came shortly after the Tunisian Jasmine Revolution which sparked the Arab Spring. All shared the elements of non-violence (by protesters), spontaneous or near-spontaneous risings, absence of a clear program, an allergy to hierarchies, and cross-class engagement. None were led by traditional leftist parties or ideologies (apart from a nebulous connection with anarchism). And-- a conclusion that none of the commentators want to accede-- all faded away, leaving the balance of power essentially unchanged.

Occupy did demonstrate the power of social media and internet communication. Old-timers were in awe at the ease and speed that people could be rallied around actions and events. Time proved that the new technologies came with a downside: action came almost too easily and with minimal commitment or understanding. Activism often sprang from the same emotional immediacy as going to a concert or movie. One commentator called Occupy “exhilarating” -- a kind of political Woodstock?

Arun Gupta, writing in In These Times, casually notes: “Every movement reaches the end of the road, and a decade later Occupy-style protest has smacked into a dead end.” 

Yes, Occupy-style protest is exhausted today, but Gupta’s dismissing that demise with a shrug reflects a measure of political immaturity. Any movement bent upon challenging inequality, injustice, capital, or, most importantly, capitalism, cannot accept a dead end as an inevitability. Quite the opposite, any movement promising success must stay the course if it holds out any hope of winning against an unprecedented accumulation of power in so few hands and a long history of falling short. Occupy lacked that vision.

Gupta writes of the “authenticity” of Occupy and the satisfaction drawn by its participants. Insofar as it served as a “pre-school” for a generation of young people deeply scarred by student loans, poor job prospects or unemployment, and deeply disappointed with the political establishment, Occupy was a worthy introduction. Insofar as political elders, movement veterans, and theorists accept Occupy as the road forward and offer no alternate routes, they bear much of the responsibility for the collapse of the movement.

The Lessons

Clearly, many feel strongly that the legacy of Occupy is worth fighting over. Witness the statement by the Metropolitan Anarchist Coordinating Council, claiming Occupy as its own. Or the debate in The Nation: Was Occupy Wall Street More Anarchist or Socialist? 

Undoubtedly, Occupy served to introduce thousands of young people to collective action, to resistance to the rich and powerful. With “the 99 percent” slogan, many saw social life in the US through a rudimentary lens of class division for the first time, a reality denied us by our education system, our media, and our leaders.

But “the ninety-nine percent versus the one percent” construction was far too simplistic and far too crude to capture the differences or reflect the structure of twenty-first century capitalism. It failed to explain the divisions that kept the ninety-nine percent or its various strata and classes from uniting against the one percent. It failed to fit this simplification into the dynamics of the two-party system-- a system of control fundamentally owned by the one-percent and its allied strata-- while denying effective power to everyone else. It failed to offer a road map either inside or outside of that decadent structure. 

In short, “the ninety-nine percent” was analytically far too blunt of an instrument to advance Occupy beyond well-intended street theater. 

What was needed was a deeper class analysis that more accurately distinguished between the exploited and the exploiters. If they would have bothered to look, Occupiers might have found that more profound analysis in Marxism-Leninism.

Occupy follows a long trajectory of “new” radicalism in the US shaped by subtle, but long-festering anti-Communism. Since the purging of Communists and their allies from US social and political life in the post-war era, every version of revitalized resistance pays subtle, but uncompromising homage to the religion of anti-Communism-- a silent loyalty oath. From the student-based New Left to Occupy, it was understood that the limits of tolerance ended at the door to authentic Marxism-Leninism.

Instead, every emerging movement ostentatiously showcased its commitment to “democracy” in stark contrast to the caricature of Communism and its alleged soulless hostility to the individual. The cult of the individual and a utopian “participatory” democracy is meant to demonstrate a breed of radicalism distinctly different from the Cold War image of Communism. Thus was born a kind of individualistic, petty-bourgeois anarchism characteristic of US activists from early SDS to Chomsky and to Occupy.

Where anathema to the lessons of over a hundred and fifty years of Communist and socialist (and anarchist, as well) practice were not purposely obscured, different outcomes ensued. The Chilean student movement, though concurrent with the Occupy phenomenon, is a case in point. Though virtually ignored by the media and the US left, Chilean high school and university students demonstrated from 2011 until 2013 for educational reform. 

Unlike Occupy, the protests were highly organized, welcomed democratically chosen leadership, and constructed a coherent set of demands. In addition, the students engaged and were joined by the Chilean labor movement. The left political parties collaborated and enjoyed growth from their engagement, particularly the Chilean Communist Party. The successful socialist candidate for president in 2013, Michelle Bachelet placed educational reform at the top of her agenda.

Students again sparked the August 2019 protests that continued through the next two years, with over a million Chileans in the streets on October 25, 2019 in Santiago alone.

Unlike Occupy, the Chilean student protests of 2011 led directly to the empowerment of the left, electoral gains, and a referendum opening the way to a new constitution.

The political maturity of the Chilean movement and its successes serve as a stark counterpoint to the shortcomings of the Occupy model of resistance.

To its credit, Occupy broke the pattern of movement quiescence during a Democratic Party administration. For decades, anti-war and reformist protests only took on a mass character when the Republicans were in power. The anti-war demonstrations of the Bush administration were never duplicated, not even when Obama engineered the troop surge in Afghanistan. The dominant liberal and social democratic wings of the left fear antagonizing the Democratic Party torchbearers, unleashing street heat only when Republicans are in power. Allergic to electoral politics, the anarchists at the core of Occupy fearlessly and determinedly pressed forward during the Obama years.

Nonetheless, after two months of intense media attention, exhilarating public theater, and sincerely felt protest, the Occupy movement was swept away by military-like operations of the police. With no deep moorings, no road map, and no lieutenants or captains, the movement was shattered into many pieces. Some, in frustration, sought to change the Democratic Party; some sold their souls to the social-change-industry of NGOs, foundation grants, and non-profit social engineering; some returned to academia; and some, out of cynicism, simply dropped away.

An unlikely chronicler, loyal Democrat Robert Reich, noted perceptively that a contemporary right-wing populist movement, the Tea Party, expressing outrage against the powers-that-be from a different perspective, found much more success in shaping the political terrain. With its focus on performance over program, form over content, spontaneity over organization, Reich could understandably not see any hope that Occupy would change the course of history.

Well before Reich’s skepticism, V.I. Lenin railed against spontaneity in his classic polemic against the enemies of organized leadership, in What Is to Be Done? Lenin mocked actions that came to be called “participatory democracy” as examples of “toy” or “primitive” democracy. While they appear to be ultra-democratic, they actually inhibit serving the cause of the people with their endless obsession over procedure. 

Occupy ran aground on the shoals of procedural sectarianism, organizational chaos, and the lack of a programmatic compass. Will the lessons be heeded or will the US left continue to flirt with “toy” democracy over substance, cultural expression over political engagement?

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

Hope for a Left Revival?

Fifteen years have passed since the zenith of capitalist triumphalism, the peak moment of capital's successful penetration of nearly every inhabitable area of the globe. Not unlike the beginning of the last century, the wealthy and privileged saw few storm clouds on the horizon, a future of unlimited accumulation and placid rule. While there were some risings in the hinterlands and some rebelliousness in the air, they were easily suppressed or marginalized.

At the center of this capitalist utopia stood the world's gendarme-- the US Goliath-- with bases, military power, and unmatched technology, ensuring that the world was a secure haven for monopoly corporations. Moreover, the US sought and enforced international dominance. They pledged to bring “democracy” to the world with the same self-righteous hypocrisy and hubris that the earlier imperialists had masked their economic voraciousness behind religious missionary zeal.

But matters went awry in the new century.

The support for religious zealots organized by the US, NATO, and their allies against Middle Eastern secular, independent movements boomeranged. Unlike earlier puppets who were quickly jettisoned when their usefulness was exhausted, Islamic fundamentalists struck their erstwhile masters before they could be betrayed by them. Under the guise of a “war on terror,” a perpetual overt and covert war against Middle Eastern states and populations-- a veritable modern-day crusade-- continues to this day. The US, NATO, the EU, and a motley collection of scavengers cynically used the excuse of terrorism to reconfigure an entire region, destroying stable societies, killing millions, and leaving millions homeless.

At the same time, a global economy resting on the triumph of nineteenth-century bourgeois economic thought and practices began to falter. Faith in the bright future was shaken by the destruction of trillions of dollars of nominal value, a disaster brought on by the foolish speculations of a gang of the oracles of a new era of technological advance.

Before the effects of the so-called “dot-com” crisis subsided, the global economy was struck with another downturn, shaking the capitalist underpinnings like no other blow since the Great Depression. To answer this catastrophe, capitalism spun off millions of workers, stripped wages and benefits, and shredded an already meager social safety net. The wake of the 2007-2008 collapse continues to drown the hopes and aspirations of millions, with even more turbulence on the horizon.

To any sober observer, capitalism is in the throes of a deep, profound, multi-faceted crisis. The celebration of fifteen years ago was a hollow and unwarranted declaration of the unstoppable success of capitalism. War, deprivation, and uncertainty are the legacy of those hailing that moment. Few alive today know a time when the future looked so unsure.

The Basis for a Left Revival?

Years of disillusionment following the decline of the Soviet Union and its Eastern European allies produced an era of navel-gazing and an extreme dilution of the socialist vision for the left, especially in the US and Europe. Murky enemies like “globalization” or “empire” replaced “imperialism” and “capitalism” in public discourse. Gradualist programs, market-centered reforms, and a trivialization of diversity toward micro-identities guided a dispirited left. Revolutionary politics were smothered by a sense that a “humane capitalism” was the best that could be gotten.

Sure, the left rallied around the anti-imperialist project in Latin America, particularly the heroic rise of Hugo Chavez, and later, Evo Morales and Rafael Correa. The broad-based defiance of the North American gendarmerie served to inspire millions who had lost hope. But the leftist “Spring” that swept through the South has yet to spawn a real replacement for capitalist economic relations, not to mention, a rock-solid socialism, such as that in Cuba.

Now with capitalism on the ropes, one might expect a left upsurge. With political and economic crisis-- endless war and near-depression-- one would expect a revitalized left to emerge today.

It hasn't happened.

In Europe and North America, two flawed, failed currents dominate the left ideological landscape: anarchism and social democracy. The anarchist tendency is not the revolutionary anarchism of Bakunin, but a tame version based on the utopian idea that all that stands in the way of a just and fair society is restraint on the freedom of the masses-- authority, and not capitalism, is the ultimate oppressor. For the modern day anarchists, social change lies in radical democracy, removing the encrusted bureaucracies that rule over our society-- civil servants, agencies, union leaders, politicians, etc.

Of course there is some truth in this critique, but without a greater vision, without a plan to replace capitalism, overturning a bureaucracy simply invites another one. And insofar as its enemy is authority, modern anarchism differs little from its anti-government counterpart on the extreme right. The social base for this contemporary strain is, as it was in the 1960s, students and the economically marginalized. The failures of the 1960s New Left are reproduced today in the meteoric rise and quick collapse of the Occupy Wall Street movement and its European counterparts. Its clarion calls, as in the past, are spontaneity and “horizontalism.”

A second dominant strain in our time is social democracy, a posture that traces its origins and draws its life from hostility to Bolshevism. As an antidote to revolutionary socialism, it attempts to awkwardly straddle the divide between working class advocacy and accommodation to capitalism. It offers an evolutionary road map-- a socialism-lite-- that depicts capitalism as gradually eroding and giving way to a growing public sector. Moreover, the mechanisms established to insure capitalist rule are to be somehow harnessed to this end. The social base for social democracy is the ossified union leadership, opportunist politicians, and a neutered, cowed working class made impervious to revolutionary ideology.

For much of the twentieth century, social democracy rivaled Marxism-Leninism. But after decades of advocating market solutions and supporting imperial belligerency, social democracy-- in the form of center-left political parties-- stands discredited and unpopular.

Where successful campaigns of anti-Communism and fear-mongering had taken root, social democratic parties did thrive. However, when periods of deep crisis appear, social democracy invariably fails the working class. We are in such a period now.

The last gasp of social democracy arose with the election of SYRIZA in Greece. Garbed in a militant swagger and an outlaw persona, SYRIZA quickly became both the darling and flag-bearer for the left wing of social democracy. For Die Linke, France's Left Party, Spain's PODEMOS, and other European movements seeking to revive the social democratic corpse, the Tsipras government of open-collared and casual intellectuals promised the rescue of a spent political philosophy.

But as quickly as SYRIZA rose, it crashed and burned, delivering the Greek people a fate even more onerous than that delivered by earlier governments. But more than a failure, the SYRIZA tenure was a fiasco with an ill-considered national referendum giving the party a mandate to resist, only to be followed immediately by a humiliating surrender.

Not to be deterred by the debacle, the admirers of SYRIZA--- the last bastions of social democracy-- spun a web of apologetics, excuses, and obfuscations worthy of the best confidence artists. Where sober-minded observers drew critical lessons, these sycophants chose to deflect and deny.

Writing in the Peoples World (9-11-2015), Sam Webb, recently retired chair of the Communist Party USA, wrote: “Nevertheless Tsipras still hoped that the large ‘no’ vote of the Greek people in a referendum a week before the negotiations began might give German leaders reason to pause, to reconsider their draconian bargaining posture, and maybe, just maybe, consider some form of debt relief.

Or, alternatively that the vote would nudge France and Italy, as well as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), to show some backbone and stand up to the German capitalist juggernaut.” (my emphases)

“Nudge”? “Reason to pause”? “Reconsider”? “Maybe, just maybe...”?

Are these the considered negotiating objectives of serious leaders confronting the resolute and naked power of European monopoly capital? Do you “nudge” a bully? Do you chance that “maybe just maybe” a ruling class will show compassion? Webb sees history as not the history of class struggles, but the history of class “nudges.”

And then there is Oscar La Fontaine, the godfather of Germany's Die Linke party, writing on Jean-Luc Melanchon's blog (Melanchon is the leader of France's Left Party): “We have learned one thing [from the SYRIZA debacle]: while the European Central Bank, which claims to be independent and apolitical, can turn off the financial tap to a left government, a politics that is oriented towards democratic and social principles is impossible.

It is now necessary for the European left to develop a Plan B for the case where a member party arrives in a comparable situation.” (my emphases).

“Claims to be independent”? Did La Fontaine only recently discover that the ECB is a tool of monopoly capital? Like the cynical Captain Renault in the film Casablanca, La Fontaine is shocked, shocked that the ECB is neither independent nor apolitical! And how dare the ECB deny “a politics that is oriented toward democratic and social principles...” That's not cricket! Like Webb, La Fontaine does not see monopoly capital as the enemy, but as a partner acting unreasonably.

It should be no surprise, accordingly, that La Fontaine's “Plan B” depends upon the EU oligarchs agreeing to disarm the ECB, an outcome as likely as their acceptance of SYRIZA's original plan. Thus, the circle is complete: the Euro-left needs to secure an agreement from the very same forces that “shockingly” denied a moderate agreement in the first place. Could anything be more futile?

Curiously, the former Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, sees things differently and yet the same! In a long-winded speech in France (Festival of the Roses, 9-23-2015), Varoufakis locates the roots of Europe's problems in its unification: “Why? Because we let our rulers try to do something that cannot be done: to de-politicise money, to turn Brussels, the Eurogroup, the ECB, into politics-free zones.” (my emphasis). So where Germany's La Fontaine faults the European oligarchs for politicizing their decisions, his Greek counterpart faults Europe for de-politicizing its institutions! He goes on incoherently: “When politics and money are de-politicised what happens is that democracy dies. And when democracy dies, prosperity is confined to the very few who cannot even enjoy it behind the gates and the fences they need to build to protect themselves from their victims.

To counter this dystopia the people of Europe must believe again that democracy is not a luxury afforded to creditors and declined to debtors.”

So the debacle arose from a shortage of democracy. And the remedy is for the people of Europe to “...believe again that democracy is not a luxury afforded...” to the few. Varoufakis conveniently deflects the blame that he and his colleagues share for the Greek tragedy onto the people of Europe and their lost belief in democracy. “We do not have to agree on everything. Let us make a start with an agreement that the Eurozone needs to be democratised.”

If only there were more democracy! If only Europe's rulers would see the need to cooperate! And if only the people of Europe would make them act democratically! Smothered by Varoufarkis' petulant burst of disconnected ideas is the simple truth that rulers rule. They rule for their own interests and not to please or recognize supposed oppositional forces like SYRIZA or their ilk.

All three commentators, like many others who fawned after SYRIZA, are now left harboring wild illusions and offering shallow, unimaginative answers to the crises of capitalism.

A Path of Renewal

SYRIZA's harshest critic offers a different answer to the challenge of a wounded, but ruthless capitalism. From surveying most of the left press in Europe and North America, one would not know that the leaders of a Greek political party clearly analyzed the SYRIZA program and accurately predicted its failure. One would not know that only one Greek party now offers the only program even remotely hopeful of resisting the further impoverishment of the Greek people. One would not know that only one political force in Greece gives the Greek people a dignified path forward that does not depend on the “fair-mindedness” of monopoly capital or the condescension of European elites.

That party is the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), a party with both a long history and deep ties with the Greek people.

Shamefully, most of the leaders of the Western left ignore the KKE and its alternative program, a reflection of the deep strains of anti-Communism infecting political thought and the obdurate close-mindedness of the neo-anarchists and social democrats. Thus, the KKE is objectively blacklisted from the Western discussion of a road forward.

With Greek elections coming on September 20, KKE has adopted the campaign slogan: “You have tried them… Now the solution is to be found on the path to overthrow the system, joining forces with the KKE.” This slogan reminds the Greek people and others that finding a solution within capitalism is not only a bad idea, but a proven failure.

“KKE is stressing that the people must not give a 'second chance' to the parties that support the path of capitalist development and the EU, the path that brings the memoranda and the anti-people measures. They must not approve the implementation of the new anti-people memorandum with their votes. They must not give a 'second chance' to those who, in the recent past as well, sowed illusions about the ‘humanization’ of capitalism.” With the Greek people's standards of living approaching the tragic levels found after the Second World War, we are witnessing a preview of where the capitalist crisis is taking the rest of the world. For those who are open to seeing it, the collapse of SYRIZA is a demonstration of the futility of finding a way out of the crisis within the system of capitalism. KKE understands this and offers an alternative; not an easy road, but one more promising than following the dead ends traveled in the past.

KKE electoral success this coming weekend will shorten that road immeasurably as well as provide an inspiration for those of us seeking an alternative to the bankrupt model of social democracy.

KKE gains will improve the chances for a real left revival.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

Anarchy in the USA-- Live at Zuccotti Park

In my last posting, I deplored the state of the US left, citing the rise of utopian and reformist alternatives to socialism. Deeply ingrained anti-Communism explains the ready acceptance of the shallow and muddy alternatives to capitalism served up by academic oracles like Professor Gar Alperovitz. These wishful options come at a time when more and more US citizens, especially young people, are showing a hunger to learn more about socialism. But the thin gruel of cooperatives and other small-scale and locally owned enterprises will not satisfy that hunger. Nor does monopoly capital seem too alarmed by the prescriptions of the good Professor. The threat of one, two, three... thousands of little “socialisms” has left big business singularly unmoved in spite of Alperovitz's reach well beyond the left establishment.

Among those fans of Alperovitz who wish to slink away from Marxism and revolutionary politics it has become customary to cite Lenin's essay “On Cooperation” from 1923. This shamefully dishonest tactic rips Lenin's praise of agricultural cooperatives from its context. Writing at the time of the New Economic Policy, Lenin emphasizes that cooperatives are only viable because of Soviet power, the monopoly of “political power is in the hands of the working-class.” He is crystal clear on the cooperative movement under the capitalist state:

There is a lot of fantasy in the dreams of the old cooperators. Often they are ridiculously fantastic. But why are they fantastic? Because people do not understand the fundamental, the rock-bottom significance of the working-class political struggle for the overthrow of the rule of the exploiters. We have overthrown the rule of the exploiters, and much that was fantastic, even romantic, even banal in the dreams of the old cooperators is now becoming unvarnished reality.

“Fantastic, even romantic, even banal...”

Seasoned veterans of the left know that any strategy that promises to be non-threatening and enters through the front door of the monopoly media should be received with suspicion.

Occupy Revisited

For the above reason, I read a recent The New Yorker article with a jaundiced eye. While nearly everyone acknowledges that the Occupy Movement is --if not dead --splintered and marginalized, a New Yorker “critic at large” Kelefa Sanneh, picked this moment to revisit it. Moreover, the usually attuned-to-the-cutting-edge editors indulged five full pages of copy to the movement's “godfather” and the allure of anarchism.

Just weeks ago, before the elections in Venezuela, the magazine published a long piece scathingly critical of the Bolivarian Revolution and its late leader, Hugo Chavez. No doubt with the approval of The New Yorker's dogmatic Cold War editor David Remnick, who still sees Stalin lurking under every bed, the author revived the tired canard of Chavez “preventing a coup like the one that put him in office.” [my italics] Of course Chavez didn't come to office through a coup, a fact that The New Yorker later acknowledged with a small correction. Certainly joining with the mainstream media to trash Chavez and his socialism doesn't dispose me to expect The New Yorker to experience a sudden change of heart and promote any genuine alternative to capitalism. And they don't disappoint.

Paint Bombs: David Graeber's 'The Democracy Project' and the Anarchist Revival (5-13, 2013) is a stealth exercise in distraction and diversion. Where many of us saw the Occupy movement as an incipient anti-capitalist movement degraded through its failure to generate organization and focus, Sanneh sees a noble struggle against “verticals” and in defense of the procedures of the “horizontals.” Sanneh crows: “Occupy resisted those who wanted to stop it and those who wanted to organize it”.

Imagine wanting to organize the Occupy movement! The shame!

The self-styled and New Yorker-anointed guru of the “horizontal” movement is David Graeber, an anthropologist and author of an interesting, eccentric book on debt. Sanneh acclaims Graeber as “the most influential radical political thinker of the moment” (Take that, Gar Alperovitz!). The arch enemies of the “horizontal” movement are “verticals” represented by Marx, the Soviet Union, and parties, leaders, and demands. Sannah claims to see this through the prism of Occupy:

...instead of arguing about economics and ideology, the Occupiers could affirm, instead, their unanimous commitment to freedom of assembly. Occupy may have begun with a grievance against Wall Street, but the process of occupation transformed the movement , peopled by activists demanding the right to demand their rights...

Perhaps no one could say exactly what the Zuccotti Park occupation wanted, but lots of people knew how it worked.

At a critical moment in an economic crisis adversely affecting millions, the “horizontals” were able to transform a movement against Wall Street into a statement “demanding the right to demand... rights.” Thankfully, this does not characterize all Occupy experiences outside of Zuccotti Park. In many cases, Occupiers joined activists in their cities and neighborhoods fighting for health care, jobs, economic justice, and against US aggression. They found righteous demands and learned valuable lessons in organized struggle.

Sanneh concedes that the “rehabilitation of the anarchist movement in America has a lot to do with the fall of the Soviet Union, which lives in popular memory as a quaint and brutal place-- an embarrassing precursor that modern, pro-democracy socialists must find ways to disavow.”

So it's embarrassment and not ideology, disavowal and not commitment that drives the popularity of anarchism. Does this not reek of opportunism? An opportunism that prefers to swiftly and resolutely condemn and separate from the Soviet experience in the face of a “popular” inquisition rather than candidly address both the Soviet strengths and weaknesses?

However, embarrassment should be felt for the anarchist blueprint for forging a new society. Rather than the vision offered by “grim joyless revolutionaries,” Graeber wants “a kind of de-centralized socialism, with decisions made by a patchwork of local assemblies and cooperatives...” – in his own words - “something vaguely like jury duty, except non-compulsory.” Thus, the road to an other-than-capitalist future is paved with “open mics,” assemblies, cooperatives, and a fuzzy analogy.

Adding more to the anarchist strategy are the views of a fellow anthropologist and ally, Yale professor James C. Scott. Scott salutes anarchism for “its tolerance for confusion and improvisation.” He finds anarchism's foot print in such acts of resistance as “foot-dragging, poaching, pilfering, dissimulation, sabotage, desertion, absenteeism, squatting, and flight.”

“Grim joyless revolutionaries” will be surprised to learn how easy is the road forward. Instead of tiresome organizing, demonstrations and marches, instead of demands and manifestos, instead of meetings and planning sessions, instead of party-building and coalition work, acts of individual and often covert defiance mark the way.

One suspects that despite the rhetoric of radical and participatory democracy advocated by Graeber, Scott, and other anarchist “influentials,” their ideas were not forged in the cauldron of struggle, their thinking was not the product of collective, “horizontal” decisions. The professors decry leadership, but contradictorily speak authoritatively for their movement with little hesitation. They are unsanctioned spokespersons for a leaderless movement. Strange.

To appropriate an old expression: Scratch an anarchist and find an angry, embittered liberal. Like all liberals, modern-day anarchists are obsessed with procedure. It's not a program that defines their agenda, but the ritual of decision making. It's no surprise that the liberals at The New Yorker are fascinated. And it's no surprise that they take us no further from a decadent, crisis-ridden capitalism.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com