Occupying together; a “democratic awakening” by Baba Aye

When Zuccotti Park was taken over on September 17 by a few hundreds of protesters, marking the beginning of what would become the Occupy Movement, the mainstream press where it gave the event any attention at all considered it as “irrelevant” and a sort of “circus”. The billionaire Mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg felt the occupation demonstration was harmless enough and could be easily kettled. Qith ease then he had said "people have a right to protest, and if they want to protest, we'll be happy to make sure they have locations to do it.” Today, the call to “Occupy Everything” rings across some 80 countries in the world sparking actions of protesters taking over streets with tents in well over a hundred countries at some time or the other. The apogee of this global protest occupation was on October 15 commencing the generalisation of the occupy movement as an international trend of alternative politics, in a sense and more aptly as an alternative narrative signifier in world discourse.

The earlier benign acceptance of the phenomenon and even verbally expressed support by representatives of the American and a dozen other states, not to talk of the papacy literally evaporated. It has been replaced with ill-disguised caution, chastisement (disguised as chastisement of a few bad apples, but invariably condemning the entire basket) and outright repression. On November 14, in a near simultaneous wave of suppression, in city after city, the police moved in to disperse occupy movement camps. While protesters still stood defiant, the creeping in of winter equally limited the physical space of this movement which the African-American academic and activist, Cornel West describes as a “democratic awakening”. The tongues of the embers of imagination it has brought into on-going and unfolding resistance across the world can however not be doused.

In Nigeria for example, the recent wave of mass protests that marked a January of popular awakening has often been described with the empty signifier of a phrase; Occupy Nigeria. There are indeed a few disparate groups that identify themselves as “occupy Nigeria”, but to a great extent, except for Nigerians in the diaspora whose intervention has been based mainly on that real myth, it has been more of a framing of the events of the January awakening by many who believe the protest movement had to be made to fit into the dominant alternative narrative, globally.

The beginning is quite often the best place to start, as water tends to be clearest at its font. It would thus be useful to look at the origins of the occupy movement, at this juncture.
The call for the first shot of OWS was made by the Canadian-based network of information age activist known as Adbusters in August. The Arab Spring and the May 15 Movement (15-M) of los Indignados in Spain were its primary sources of inspiration. The democracy village of activists in front of the British Parliament in November 2010 was a key element of the model of resistance it has constructed, and the wave of sit-ins against attacks on workers benefits and rights, which started at Wisconsin earlier last year was the soil on which this model germinated.

It is worthwhile to point out thought, that, the first Occupy initiatives had actually started on July 30 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This was Occupy Dataran summoned to coincide with a vigil for the EO6 including international socialist Dr. Michael Jeyakumar Deveraj, a leader of the Malaysian Socialist Party (PSM), who were however released a day to this. It was equally influenced by the M-15’s strategy of resistance.

It is thus rather pertinent to have a perspective of the 15-M politics to understand the occupy movement in general. On May 15, a few thousands of youths had demonstrated across Spain “for real democracy now”. They had categorically stated that “we are not commodities in the hands of politicians and bankers” and were not equivocal in pointing out that despite the formal representativeness of subsisting bourgeois democracy in the country, essentially, “no one represents us”. This first spark ignited a movement that would swell to involve millions of indignant youths and working people in demonstrations and Assemblies across more than 50 countries in the country, within the spate of one month.

As with the Asian Spring, youths are the moving spirit of organising the 15-M movement, many of them former students’ union activists. With youth unemployment rate that near equals that of Nigeria, a great proportion of youths in the country are indignant and rightly so. But the road to the ignition of their indignation into action is littered with mass strikes, sensitization using diverse means of which new communication technology was a useful component and of course, the spread of fierce resistance against austerity measures that had rocked countries like Greece, Portugal and Italy, earlier.

The dominant ideas in the 15-M are autonomist or as is common to call the same thing now, movementist. It has also been quite an influential current in the broader occupy movement, along with Anarchism which however lost some ground with the provocative politics of the black bloc in Occupy Auckland. Autonomism with its origins in the 1960s Operaismo is itself a form of hybridization of Marxism and Anarchism which presents the possibility of the 99% winning control of their lives without taking over the state. It has been rife within the alter-globalisation movement that had declared its place in history with the Seattle re-claiming of the streets in 1999.

Back to the occupy movement in general though; it has drawn from the strategy of organising and claiming of space from the M-15. A key element of this for labour activists concerned with post-capitalist alternatives is that of Popular Assemblies. In recent times, this strategy and structure (which actually has its roots in the direct democracy of Athenian times), evolved in the Argentine turmoil of 1999-2002. It has left its imprint in the occupied enterprises movement that still remain across that country, run by the workers. In my view the generalisation of the primacy of the Popular Assembly principle for emancipatory politics, is the greatest significance of the occupy movement. The dynamics between General Assemblies and their working groups as the assemblage of participatory democracy, give glimpses of the epoch of freedom over necessity which is that of a post-capitalist construction of another possible world.

We are indeed living through historic times which the Occupy Movement tries to capture. It is a moment in which we could dream dreams and see visions of how really human society could be like, based on solidarity and cooperation and not the cut-throat competition and individualism that is foisted on us through the machineries of the capitalist system. There are very similar trends from 1848 and 1968 in the current period we are in. Probably the closest to 1968 in the occupy movement in particular is the disdain (young) protesters hold parties in general in. This is a “heritage” of anger and distrust of the Stalinist methods which are not limited to “Stalinist” sects. But the limitations of vanguard politics within the myriad of resistance is the very death knell of this revolutionary moment, despite the beautiful insights it presents us with.

An example is with the Popular Assemblies. As Grigera who was very active in the direct democracy movement in 1999-2002 Argentina notes:

‘no matter how progressive or ’advanced’ the social relationships, forms of decision-making and activities of asambleas are said to be, their small scale, lack of influence and flawed co-ordination between themselves and other movements render this movement unable to overcome very narrow limitations.’

It takes a vanguard party rooted in the masses through work to overcome this “flawed coordination”. A vanguard party as Mandel shows is not the same thing as vanguard organisations of sects and cannot be built outside the revolution, though in a sense it would rest on the work of such sects before the storm. Its cadres would also have to learn from the realities of the present and the poetry of the future and not merely cram lines and phrases from Marxist classics.

Does this mean that the decisive social force for moving society forward is a vanguard party? Definitely not! It is the working class. We can see that it played the role of tilting the revolution to fruition within each of the pathways of the Arab Spring. Within the OWS as well, the trade unions and the broader labour movement’s role was very pivotal. Indeed, even before the general strike and closure of ports at Auckland, the anarchist linguist and philosopher, Naom Chomsky had declared to the OWS that workers’ power was of the essence to move forward. In Nigeria as well, much as many citizens felt let down by the eventual suspension of the indefinite general strike after 8days, it was obvious that the entry of workers as a class into the anti-fuel subsidy struggle deepened and generalised it in a way no other social force could have brought about.

It is important in this light to realise the dynamics within the working class between workers and the trade unions. The trade unions do not equal the working class. But it is its primary associative organ and despite disillusionment with the politics of the labour aristocracy that constitutes union bureaucracy, building relations with the trade unions is, I strongly believe a very important aspect of work for indignant youths and all social forces committed to changing the world.

In summing up, we are living in historic times. Capitalism will not be brought down in this hour though. This is as a result of weaknesses of linkages between working class revolutionary theory and practice as represented by the partisan and broader social manifestation of this most decisive force of bringing to birth a new world on the ashes of that morass which we now live in. But it is an hour in which great leaps forward can be made and are being made. Such hours come with lessons that would be invaluable for us living today and for generations coming after us that would eventually cleanse the life of humankind of the ugliness and pains that capitalism stamps on its beauty and fullness.

Vinceremos! We shall win!

* in Global Labour News, No 5, Feb., 2012, pp 2-4
online @: http://www.global-labour-university.org/fileadmin/Global_Labour_News/GLN_no_5.pdf