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Occupy Wall Street: The Left vs. the Liberals

By injecting a potent anti-capitalist message into mainstream political debate, the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement has also reignited tensions on the American left, particularly the intellectual left. Though American liberals have traditionally been critical of the free market, which they would like to see subject to stricter government regulation, they have typically shown little inclination to challenge the very principles upon which capitalism itself is based. For this reason, they have often been regarded with suspicion by leftists, whether they consider themselves anarchist, communist, socialist, “New Left,” or social-democratic. These leftists are often over-represented in intellectual circles and academia. OWS has succeeded in stoking some of the latent tensions between these currents. It has, moreover, forced liberals to clarify their position on the nature of contemporary capitalism.

Since the movement began in mid-September, numerous leftist intellectuals have expressed their support for the occupiers of Zuccotti Park (as well as for the mirror movements that have sprung up across the country). Some are American, others are non-Americans who work in the United States (it is interesting that some of the more outspoken and influential belong to the latter category). If there is a common denominator between their expressions of support for OWS, it is the claim that the movement represents a rupture in American political discourse, which usually makes little room for relentless critiques of capitalism. These intellectuals, moreover, have hailed OWS as the embodiment of a new conception of democracy, one that distinguishes itself from representative democracy, which stands accused of being too enmeshed in the current economic crisis.

Naomi Klein, the Canadian journalist and activist who is best known for her important essay The Shock Doctrine, spoke to the occupiers at “Liberty Square” on October 6. In her view, the difference between 1999—the year that saw the birth of the anti-globalization movement—and 2011 is that there is no longer any doubt that the existing economic order is seriously dysfunctional. Moreover, even in developed countries, the inequalities created by neoliberalism are now glaring. “Ten years later,” she remarks, “it seems as if there aren’t any more rich countries. Just a whole lot of rich people. People who got rich looting the public wealth and exhausting natural resources around the world.” OWS’s originality lies precisely in the fact that it does not propose a traditional political platform. Instead, it testifies, by its very existence, to a way of life based on fundamentally different principles. What must be changed, Klein contends, are “the underlying values that govern our society … That is what I see happening in this square. In the way you are feeding each other, keeping each other warm, sharing information freely and proving health care, meditation classes, and empowerment training. My favorite sign here says ‘I care about you.’ In a culture that trains people to avoid each other’s gaze, to say, ‘let them die,’ that is a deeply radical statement.”

On October 9, it was the philosopher Slavoj Žižek’s turn to address the occupiers. Žižek is Slovenian, but has frequently taught in the United States. His post-Marxist writings, heavily influenced by the thought of Jacques Lacan, have become very popular on American campuses. Like Klein, Žižek believes that OWS’s significance lies in its success in inventing a new political language—a possibility that seemed precluded by the single-minded orthodoxy of current global economic policy. To make his point, he tells a Soviet-era joke. An East German is exiled to Siberia. Before taking off, knowing that his mail will be read by the secret police, he and his friends agree on a code. If they receive a letter written in blue ink, everything it says will be true. If, however, a letter arrives written in red ink, this will indicate that it contains nothing but lies. After a month, his friends get a letter. The exile writes: “Everything is wonderful here. Stores are full of good food. Movie theatres show good films from the west. Apartments are large and luxurious. The only thing you cannot buy is red ink.” This, Žižek concludes, “is how we live. We have all the freedoms we want. But what we are missing is red ink: the language to articulate our non-freedom. The way we are taught to speak about freedom— war on terror and so on—falsifies freedom.” And this, according to the philosopher, is why OWS matters: “You are giving all of us red ink.”

Klein’s and Žižek’s contention that the real significance of OWS lies in its political character is shared by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. The former teaches literary theory at Duke University, while the latter is a philosopher and a legendary figure of the Italian “autonomist” movement. Together, they have written a number of essays that are widely hailed as the bibles of the anti-globalization movement (notably Empire and Multitude). Hardt and Negri believe that OWS belongs to a broader trend that includes Madrid’s “indignados,” the occupiers of Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the pro-union movement in Wisconsin, the demonstrations of Athens’ Syntagma Square, and the tent camps raised in the name of social justice in several Israeli cities. If these movements’ demands are often economic in nature, they nonetheless pose, at least implicitly, a “seemingly naive, basic question: Is democracy not supposed to be the rule of the people over the polis—that is, the entirety of social and economic life?” Yet it would seem, rather, that “politics has become subservient to economic and financial interests.” By their very form, these movements embody an alternative to existing systems of political representation. They “have all developed according to what we call a ‘multitude form’ and are characterized by frequent assemblies and participatory decision-making structures.” One must thus not expect that they will produce a unifying leader along the lines of a Martin Luther King. Rather, they are sounding representative democracy’s death knell.

This generally positive assessment of OWS is not unanimously shared by those who identify with the American liberal tradition. The editors of the (occasionally) liberal magazine The New Republic suggested some of the reasons why in a recent editorial: “One of the core differences between liberals and radicals is that liberals are capitalists. They believe in a capitalism that is democratically regulated—that seeks to level an unfair economic playing field so that all citizens have the freedom to make what they want of their lives. But these are not the principles we are hearing from the protesters. Instead, we are hearing calls for the upending of capitalism entirely.”


According to some liberals, OWS even risks repeating the very mistakes that weakened the American left in recent decades, fueling the rise of free-market conservatism. According to Fred Siegel, the demonstrators are oblivious to the fact that the growth of social benefits during the sixties resulted in the emergence of a vast and often ineffective government bureaucracy. The Wall Street occupiers are “literally recreating the follies of the 60s in miniature.” Moreover, “the protesters, oblivious to our national debt, disregard the understandable disdain with which most Americans currently view the federal government. The denizens of Zuccotti Park seem hell bent on further expanding the bureaucratic black box when the job at hand is to it open it up so that it can be right sized and reorganized.”

It is, of course, too soon to predict what long-term impact OWS will have on American politics. One should not, moreover, overestimate the capacity of outspoken leftists to attract widespread popular support. Even so, the anti-capitalist left finds itself, thanks to OWS, highly energized—far more so than its liberal counterparts. Liberals may have a difficult time casting their lot with a movement that is so critical of the existing system. But OWS should remind them that, once upon a time (think FDR), they dared to take a firm stand against the economic and financial powers-that-be. A reorientation of American liberalism along these lines could be one of the most important consequences of this still developing movement.




Jean-Michel Masson 04 nov 2011
One question which is not being coped with by either most liberals or radicals is whether any kind of population or economic growth is sustainable.Of course their analyses of the excesses of full-blown free-trade or "corporatecracy" is undeniably valid whatever their differing solutions to try to curb or to stop its greed. Our planet is not expanding and this has to be taken into account. There is no trying to dim those key points. In "The meaning of Life "the Monty Pythons have given a grim answer to this question. This is why my stance is to pave the way towards another kind of society based on the "Common Decency" advocated by George Orwell in "The Road to Wigan Pier". Meanwhile something has to be done to stop the nonsensical suicidal drift of this economic system towards the annihilation of progress, of progresss as a means to alleviate our toiling to eke out a living. This is why I keep suggesting an economic system based on three tiers in a somehow balanced mixture of the existing systems. See my scheme on http://jmmasson.wordpress.com , particularly the June 15th article. This is also a means to promote French, a language... which does not seem to be ever-expanding! I have happened to speak about this idea in public lectures. some people asked how come nobody has thought about this? When you suddenly come up with some common sense ideas ... you are often looked down upon as if you were a day-dreamer. I had rather such ideas were implemented, first on a small scale then on a larger one than wait until mankind loses control and is swallowed by its excesses and greed or until people get angry and violence spreads.

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