On Tuesday, Oct. 4, The Herald published a political cartoon by Loren Fulton '12 that echoed a sentiment often perceptible in the mainstream media. The subject of the artist's satiric drawing was the Occupy Wall Street movement, and the gist of it suggested that the rallying cries of these protesters span from the extreme left, who categorically rebuke capitalism, to the most watered-down liberals, who express an unfocused and callow dissatisfaction with society.
Having extensively participated in the ongoing Occupy Providence and Occupy College Hill movements over the past couple of weeks, I want to acknowledge and respond to the reasonable skepticism the author of the cartoon expressed, but I must qualify what follows. I do not write this as a representative of the views of others in the Occupy movement. Rather, this is meant to be a defense of my personal participation in the Occupation, couched in my own experience and philosophical commitments.
As I understand it, the Occupy movement is deeply committed to democratic ideals in the strongest sense. There is no formal leadership hierarchy. Each participant is entitled to speak her mind on any issue in front of the General Assembly, and every proposal must be ratified by at least a simple majority, though some assemblies require 90 percent of the vote. So, it is a little unfair to expect a uniform message from a community that takes such pains to respect each individual's right to express her own ideas.
In fact, a moment's reflection will show the repetition of a single creed would be a poor strategic play on the part of the Occupy movement. If the Occupiers did release some "grand solution" for the socioeconomic problems they decry, it would only serve the ends of the establishment media, who gripe about the ambiguity of the movement's message presumably because it prevents the pundits from pigeonholing the protesters into ready-made ideological boxes.
The Occupy movement rightly resists a uniform narrative. But I want now to present my own response to the urgent questions — what's wrong, and what do we do about it?
At the cost of oversimplification, the most succinct way I can frame the problem is as follows: We live in a global society that first obeys the logic of capitalism and dictates markets, and then secondarily — if at all — attempts to implement democratic structures on top of that economic edifice. That is to say, if the will of capital conflicts with the will of the people, usually money talks. The end goal, then, is to reverse the order — first democracy, then, if at all, capitalism.
We can notice a fundamental tension between capitalism and democracy in at least two ways. First, a natural side-effect of capitalist societies is hierarchical class structure — we might even say a "caste system." Democratic institutions of course pride themselves on the horizontality of their decision-making procedures. Second, capital is only responsible for generating more of itself — the CEO only answers to her shareholders — whereas democratic leadership is accountable to the interests of the citizenry.
There are many of us at Brown that actively take part in some sort of community or political activism. My hope is that the Occupy movement becomes a space where our various organizations can stand in solidarity — where your struggles are mine, and mine yours. The movement might serve as both a vehicle for communication among our already established groups as well as a space for coordination of actions aimed at systemic problems that in one way or another affect all of us. Many problems in our society have common roots, so it makes a lot of sense to work together.
The very difficult problem is envisioning an economy that is not driven by growth — that is to say, the consumption of Earth's natural resources — and can allow democratic structures to flourish. But, though this problem may be daunting, we should not let our fear of failure prevent us from attempting to solve it. The general direction that I hope the Occupy movement seriously considers is experimental, local self-governance. It takes little to see that any global economy with a chance for long-term stability must be based mostly on local production and distribution. Additionally, local socioeconomic structures have the benefit of creating a community-based politics, potentially in which each participant is on equal footing and mentally invested in the welfare of his own future.
Part of the mission of this ongoing Occupy movement, as I see it, is to bring together visionaries who seek to reinvigorate the project of the 1960s counter-culture — creating a democratic, grassroots alternative to capitalism. As I have mentioned, this undertaking is arduous, but worthwhile. I hope that we have learned a few things from previous struggles and can start thinking more rigorously about local, self-sustaining communities. Establishing the primacy of local governing bodies would allow us, on one hand, to create a myriad of novel cultural and social infrastructures that can learn from and teach one another. And on the other hand, it allows us to sustain long-term strategies that undermine the dominant economic paradigm which has proven destructive for countless lives.
At any rate, history is happening before your eyes, and I strongly urge each of you to become a catalyst rather than remain a part of the passive inertia.
Jared Moffat '13 is a philosophy concentrator from Jackson, Miss. He can be
contacted at jared_moffat@brown.edu.
