Occupy: Towards a Consequential Politics

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OCCUPY: TOWARDS A CONSEQUENTIAL POLITICS

JENNA R. AMIRAULT

Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts (Sociology)

Acadia University Fall Convocation 2012

The examining committee for the thesis was:

______Dr. Susan Boddie, Chair

______Dr. Terry Gibbs, External Reader

______Dr. James Brittain, Internal Reader

______Dr. Jim Sacouman, Supervisor

______Dr. Tony Thomson, Acting Head

This thesis is accepted in its present form by the Division of Research and Graduate Studies as satisfying the thesis requirements for the degree Master of Arts (Sociology).

………………………………………….

This thesis by JENNA R. AMIRAULT was defended successfully in an oral examination on July 10.

The examining committee for the thesis was:

Dr. Susan Boddie, Chair

Dr. Terry Gibbs, External Reader

Dr. James Brittain, Internal Reader

Dr. Jim Sacouman, Supervisor

Dr. Tony Thomson, Acting Head

This thesis is accepted in its present form by the Division of Research and Graduate Studies as satisfying the thesis requirements for the degree Master of Arts (Sociology).

I, JENNA R. AMIRAULT, grant permission to the University Librarian at Acadia University to reproduce, loan or distribute copies of my thesis in microform, paper or electronic formats on a non-profit basis. I, however, retain the copyright in my thesis.

______Author

______Supervisor

______Date

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CONTENTS

CONTENTS ...... iv ABSTRACT ...... v ABBREVIATIONS...... vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... vii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...... 1 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ...... 6 The Failure of Reformism ...... 6 The New Left and Anti-Globalization Movement ...... 9 Return to Marxism ...... 13 CHAPTER 3: METHOD AND KEY CONCEPTS ...... 18 Methods ...... 18 Occupy Origins ...... 21 Occupy Nova Scotia ...... 23 Occupy Wolfville ...... 24 Key Concepts...... 27 CHAPTER 4: REFORMISM AND PREFIGURATIVE POLITICS WITHIN OCCUPY 32 Prefigurative Politics ...... 35 Consensus Making and Anti-Authoritarian Activism ...... 37 Women’s Experiences within the Occupy Movement ...... 39 Anti-ideology and Demands ...... 42 The Role of Party Leadership, Demands, Ideology and Class ...... 43 CHAPTER 5: EDUCATION THROUGH PRAXIS ...... 47 The Power of the 99 Discourse ...... 47 Workers and Occupiers ...... 51 A Lesson in State Repression ...... 52 CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION ...... 57 REFERENCES ...... 61

ABSTRACT

This research uses the Occupy Movement in Canada and the United States as a springboard to discuss contemporary political struggle in the minority world. Drawing on the experiences of past social movements and the current struggle by Occupy activists, the research discusses the limitations of reformist, non-hierarchical, and prefigurative strategies within contemporary movements and asks how those who are exploited within capitalism can consciously and collectively push contemporary struggle in an anti- capitalist direction. Drawing on the writings of Marx, Engels and Lenin, the work examines how understandings of practice, the state and class politics continue to be central to the social justice agenda.

ABBREVIATIONS

CLC Canadian Labour Congress

FTAA Free Trade Area of the Americas

GA General Assembly

G20 Group of 20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governers

IMF International Monetary Fund

LGBTQ Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer

MWC Montreal Women’s Caucus

ONS Occupy Nova Scotia

OW Occupy Wolfville

OWS Occupy Wall Street

PAR Participatory Action Research

TAZ Temporary Autonomous Zone

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

There are many people to thank for their valuable insights and contributions to this thesis.

I would like to give a giant thank-you to Jim Sacouman whose ideas and insights were essential to the development of this thesis. Thank you to Jim Brittain for your insights and for keeping debate and critical thinking alive in the classroom. I am incredibly grateful to

Karen Turner who all Sociology students owe a considerable debt. Thank you to Mervyn

Horgan and Tony Thomson for their valuable insights. A big thank you to Justin, Shayna,

Ryan, Rebekah, Duane, Emma, Lisanne, Joel, Chantelle, Eva and to Occupy activists.

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

2011 sparked hope and fire in the hearts of many people across the world. For activists, change was both necessary and possible; many refused to sit idly as their families and lives were torn apart by economic and political policies that did not represent their interests. It is this necessity and possibility for change that Sacouman (1999:1) argues are

“the co-mothers of human, social creativity” and it was this condition that allowed people to imagine an alternative world where education, healthcare, adequate nutrition, housing and human needs would be provided for. In Tunisia, Egypt, Spain, Greece, Chile, the

United States and Canada, to name a few, the political atmosphere began to show signs of change. In Tunisia, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali stepped down after mass protests arose calling for an end to unemployment, corruption and food price inflation after street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi set himself afire after years of humiliation, harassment and abuse from police officers who made it impossible for him to maintain a livelihood for him and his family (Al Jazeera Jan 20, 2011). In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak after nearly 30 years of rule was forced to step down after mass protests and demonstrations

(Al Jazeera Feb 11, 2011). In Spain, the Spanish Indignado Movement saw protests and occupations of public spaces in objection to political corruption and economic hardship

(Al Jazeera May 13, 2012). In Greece, protesters took to the streets in protest of heavy austerity measures and unemployment (Al Jazeera June 30, 2011). In Chile, thousands of students mobilized to denounce a failed profit driven education system (Al Jazeera Oct 6,

2011). These demonstrations and protests1, among others, have inspired Canadian and

1 Particularly, protests in Egypt, Spain and Greece (Zill 2012). 1

US activists to organize against economic and social injustice in their own countries. As

Zach Zill (2012) points out, “these new movements have emerged as a direct consequence of the global economic downturn, which has darkened the futures of many millions of young people”. He argues,

In the span of one short year, all existing political assumptions have been turned on their heads. Previously unassailable dictators have fallen, “hopelessly conservative” Americans have occupied public spaces in hundreds of cities and towns across the United States, and “apathetic” youth “bought off” by cell phones and social media have turned these new technologies into weapons against the system. In country after country, these movements have burst through the restraints of the existing order, calling into question a political and economic setup that has catered only to the rich and the banks at the expense of everyone else. (Zill 2012)

In both Canada and the US, widespread opposition to austerity, foreclosure, and unaddressed environmental, social, and economic problems have led many to rally and demonstrate. Most noticeable in this respect, and the topic of this thesis, is the Occupy

Movement. Occupy emerged after the 2008 financial crisis to protest economic and social inequalities. The rallying cry of the movement focuses on the divisions between the “99 and 1 percent.” For Occupy activists, the “99 and 1 percent” are meant to expose the growing economic inequality and political influence of the rich at the expense of the poor and ‘middle classes’.

Drawing on the current struggle by Occupy activists and the experiences of past social movements, this work advocates for a return to an anti-capitalist politics grounded in an understanding of praxis, leadership, the state and of how our lives are shaped by relations of production. While the Occupy Movement advocates against social and economic inequality, it was often unclear on how these inequalities are rooted in and

perpetuated by capitalism. For example, many moderate activists within the movement consider Keynesian reform to be a radical solution to today’s economic and social issues.

These positions negate the seriousness of a system which produces for profit instead of producing for human need. In his book Capitalism: a Structural Genocide, Gary Leech conservatively calculates that more than

10 million people die annually as a result of capitalism’s structural genocide, hundreds of millions more suffer non-fatal forms of structural violence such as trying to survive on a non-living wage or no wage at all, a lack of basic housing, hunger, sickness and many other social inequalities. (2012:149) This structural violence constitutes a “catastrophe of genocidal proportions” against the world’s poorest (Leech 2012:7). Amidst such harsh material conditions around the world, the core of developed global capitalism has not seen such a large scale and sustained protest movement like Occupy in at least a decade, arguably since the more turbulent

1960s. The Occupy Movement is an important instance in history where one can observe the spontaneous outcry of people across a broad spectrum of society disillusioned by their economic and social circumstances. It is important, as is argued in this thesis, that the Left push this growing awareness in an anti-capitalist direction that is rooted in an understanding of class.

This is a difficult task as “advanced capitalism breeds delusions of classlessness”

(Eagleton 2011:163). Even anti-capitalists on the Left are quick to dismiss class and class struggle as a viable way to organize a movement for social justice. Many point to

“feminism, environmentalism, gay and ethnic politics, animal rights, antiglobalisation, and the peace movement” as examples of new radical forms of activism and politics outside of Marxism (Englewood 2011:211). Chapter two examines this claim and looks at

the emergence of the ‘New Left’ and what Ellen Wood (1986:2) terms the ‘new true socialism’ (NTS). While the landscape of class has changed since the days of Marx’s writing (Eagleton 2011:177), chapter two examines how class struggle is central to anti- capitalist politics. It refutes the idea that the focus on class by design negates feminist and ethnic struggle and argues instead that class that these must be key dimensions of class struggle.

Chapter three introduces the reader to the specifics of the study and the author’s involvement in Occupy Nova Scotia (ONS) and Occupy Wolfville (OW). The chapter discusses the strengths and weaknesses of participatory action research (PAR) as a method. It also, expands on key terms and concepts that inform this thesis and provides a brief account of the strategies, tactics and organization methods utilized by Occupy activists.

Chapters four and five, the findings chapters in this thesis, together provide an analysis of the Occupy movement within contemporary political struggle by emphasizing both strengths and weaknesses of the movement. Chapter four begins by revealing aspects of reformist, anti-hierarchical and prefigurative politics within the movement. By drawing on the experiences of ONS activists and the larger Occupy Together Movement it is possible to demonstrate the limitations of these ‘post-Marxist’ forms of activism.

Chapter five looks at how the Occupy Movement has helped to challenge the dominant political and economic discourse in Canada and the US which blamed individuals for their financial problems rather than a system in crisis; by connecting the stories of those affected by debt, foreclosure, unemployment and other issues, activists

encouraged people to rally, demonstrate, occupy, strike and even unionize. While Occupy was, in many cases, unable to articulate the type of anti-capitalist class politics needed to transform society, it has helped to develop the consciousness of its activists and supporters. Drawing on Marx’s theory of praxis, chapter five demonstrates how the movement forced many activists to rethink the role of the state, police, legal system and mass media; the eviction of ONS from Victoria Park and other evictions throughout

Canada and the US are drawn on as examples of how activists were forced to confront the realities of the bourgeois state.

Lastly, Chapter six concludes by reemphasizing the need to organize all aspects of our lives in solidarity with other oppressed and exploited groups to confront capitalism. It argues that the best way to do this is by organizing amongst class lines. Class helps tie together social antagonisms which otherwise have “no point of anchorage in anything outside of themselves” (Greaves 2009:215). The Left must bring together the unique and varied peoples to face the same direction against the system which exploits them all.

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter briefly examines reformist, anarchist, prefigurative and Marxist political currents as they relate to contemporary social movements, including the Occupy

Movement. It begins with a brief look at the Civil Rights (1950s-1980s) and Women’s

Movements (1960s-1980s) which helped gain women, racial and ethnic minorities formal equality under the law but failed to sustain this challenge to secure equality for the majority of women and racial minorities. These cases are drawn on to help highlight why it is essential to combat reformism and continue the struggle for substantive equality for all people regardless of race, gender, sexuality, ability, etc.

Next the chapter proceeds to a discussion of prefigurative and anti-hierarchal politics of the ‘New Left’ and anti-globalization movement. It looks at the work of anarchists David Graeber and Hakim Bey to demonstrate how the turn away from class has manifested itself in contemporary political struggle, namely the Anti-Globalization

Movement and Occupy Movement. This is followed by a Marxist analysis of these political currents and their failure to understand the structural and material realities of their own oppression. To do this, the work draws on Marx, Engels and Lenin’s polemics against anarchism and debates with Proudhon and Bakunin.

The Failure of Reformism

While the Civil Rights and Women’s Movement were able to secure formal equality under the law for women and racial minorities and challenge some ways of thinking about gender and race, they were unable to sustain this challenge to create higher

living standards for women and Black Americans (Brenner 2000:317). This is not to dismiss the efforts of these movements but to emphasize how capitalism makes equality impossible. As Mészáros (1995:206) argues, granting “equal opportunity to women (or, for that matter to labour) when it is structurally incapable of doing so, makes utter mockery of the very idea of emancipation.” The emancipation of the most marginalized in society depends on whether tactics move beyond hollow demands that leave “the structural edifice of exploitive class society totally unaffected” in the project for social change (Mészáros 1995:205). As Mészáros (1995:192-193) argues, it is

necessary to confront the question of what kind of equality is feasible for the individuals in general and for women in particular on the material ground of a social metabolic order of reproduction controlled by capital, in contrast to debating how the resources available within capital’s shrinking margins should be redistributed under the present circumstances. For the structural limits of any social reproductive system as a rule determine also its principles and mode of distribution.

In this way, Mészáros (1995:192-193) distinguishes between authentic equality and the

“equality of opportunity”` offered by bourgeois democracy.

In order to stifle the revolutionary energies of Black Americans in the 1960s the government passed a series of social welfare policies and implemented affirmative action programs in an attempt to increase the quality of life for Black people (Taylor 2012). It also actively oppressed, killed, and incarcerated radicals in the attempt to control dissent

(Taylor 2012). The result has been the ‘colour-blind’ politics touted by activists today despite the worsening material conditions of racial and ethnic minorities. Johanna Brenner

(2000:311) argues that,

By the time the Civil Rights movement finally won for Black people even a small part of the kind of consistent deferral support that had propelled Jews and other “Euro-American” men into the middle class and across the color line, the economic conditions that had allowed for such upward mobility were about to 7

disappear. Almost as the movements were coming into their own – from the mid- 1960s through the early 1970s – the U.S. economy was entering a sea change which culminated in the current reconfiguration and dominance of capitalist class power. (Brenner 2000:311)

The result is, as can be observed today, not substantive equality for Blacks in America but their continued exploitation, alienation and subjection to racism. Unemployment for

Blacks in the US is at 15 percent with youth ages 16–29 facing 30 percent unemployment

(Taylor 2010). Over 40 percent of Black children live in poverty and 90 percent will rely on food stamps before the age of 20 (Taylor 2010). As Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (2010) observes, “the American economy has gone through what has been called a Great

Recession. But the crisis in Black communities across the U.S. constitutes an outright depression.” Throughout America Black neighbourhoods are being deserted because of high unemployment and foreclosure. In Chicago alone, two Black neighbourhoods,

Englewood and West Englewood, in a nine-month period, experienced 725 foreclosures

(Taylor 2010). What is being witnessed is not an increase in living standards or substantial equality but the erosion of even minor concessions won for Black Americans during the Civil Rights Movement.

Similarly, while the Women’s Movement helped to transform some of the misogynistic attitudes and behaviours in society and elevate the positions of some women, it was not successful in securing better livelihoods for all or even most women.

As Brenner (2000:6) argues, the second-wave feminist movement was successful in dismantling “the system of legalized, intentional exclusion of women from key institutions in economic and political life,” but today many working-class women have found “their lives in some ways worse, rather than better, than before.” For these women,

“transcending the constraints of the gender division of labor and the burdens of the double shift will require more than an end to discrimination” but an end to capitalism (Brenner

2000:6).

Only by recognizing the limitations of capitalism and bourgeois politics can there be hope of transforming society. Class politics must embody race and gender as key dimensions. Anti-capitalism does not equal non-sexism or non-racism but it is an important economic precondition; until production is aligned with human development at the core of production rather than production for profit, women, racial and ethnic minorities cannot hope for substantial equality. Any movement that hopes to achieve substantive equality must recognize that “conventional politics is inseparable from the world of entertainment and culture” (Workman 2009:133) and that reformism is not an option. Self-emancipation, whereby people control their own lives without restricted access to the means of production, combined with the notion of production of complete human beings without any relations of exploitation, is an alternative that is found mainly within the realms of anarchist and Marxist thought.

The New Left and Anti-Globalization Movement

The 1960s gave rise to the ‘New Left,’ an ideological movement in the US,

Canada and United Kingdom which attempted to expose and combat the flaws of, what they called, the ‘Old Left.’ While these intellectuals drew inspiration from Marx, they rejected Marx’s central analysis of the proletariat as a force for change (Burner

1996:153). This shift in thinking was influenced by C. Wright Mills and Herbert Marcuse

(Burner 1996:260). In 1960, Mills wrote a “Letter to the New Left” which declared that the working class was no longer a revolutionary force and that it would be the young

intellectuals of the world who would make revolution (Burner 1996:153). This resonated with New Left radicals who “tended to be young …university educated, and either from the professional or managerial middle classes or, as university students, destined for them” (Bantjes 2007:76). Steering away from ‘vanguardism’ and politics of the ‘Old

Left’ these radicals believed that,

If enough people exposed, mocked, and rejected the spectacle of an alienating system…that the system would lose legitimacy and any ability to command assent. Corporate and state bureaucracies would simply dissolve when faced with a “great refusal.” (Bantjes 2007:77)

Wini Breines (1989:6) first coined the term ‘prefigurative politics’ to describe this attitude taken by the New Left; “the term prefigurative politics” she argues, “is used to designate an essentially anti-organizational politics.” For Breines (1989:6), as for New Left activists, this anti-organizational politics was meant to challenge hierarchy and central organization, which has been traditionally attributed to the Old Left with memories of

Stalinism and abusive bureaucracy2.

Prefigurative politics continue to play a central role in social movements particularly amongst anarchists and anti-hierarchical activists. Today, many activists draw on the open source initiative3 as an example of how “anarchist forms of order could be effective in getting complex tasks accomplished” with no “‘external’ incentives – no money, no chain of command, not even one established by majority vote” (Bantjes

2007:181). These activists attempt to break from the “hierarchical relationships

2 Terry Eagleton (2011) discusses at length in chapter 2 of Why Marx Was Right issues of past ‘socialist’ failures and challenges of revolutionizing the relations of production. 3 “Open source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process” (http://opensource.org/). The Linux project is an example of the open source initiative. The project saw hundreds of programmers collaborate using non-hierarchical organization methods to develop a software program. 10

characteristic of bureaucracies” and form new “horizontal relationships characteristic of networks” (Bantjes 2007:178).

For prefigurative anarchists like Cindy Milstein (2009), prefigurative politics is the only political tradition which can successfully “transform the whole of life.” Milstein

(2009) argues that prefigurative practice is effective because it demands that activists

“draw out and practice the things we want now even if they are partial glimpses that we might still want to do later.” For prefigurative anarchist, this ensures that activists do not establish hierarchies and relationships that will later harm or infect the society;

“Prefiguration cannot say ‘okay, we will do this now but we don’t actually want that to be a part of our better society’” (Milstein 2009).

The Anti-Globalization Movement, a movement often compared to Occupy, embraced prefigurative politics. Through practices of consensus and direct action, activists tried to prefigure the type of society they envisioned for the future (Graeber

2002). David Graber argues that prefiguration means, “acting as if you were already free” and “refusing to recognise the legitimacy of structures of power” (Evans and Moses

2011). This means not making demands or recognizing the legitimacy of the state but doing things as if they never existed. Graeber gives this example to describe direct action:

The classic example is the well. There’s a town where water is monopolised and the mayor is in bed with the company that monopolises the water. If you were to protest in front of the mayor’s house, that’s protest, and if you were to blockade the mayor’s house, it’s civil disobedience, but it’s still not direct action. Direct action is when you just go and dig your own well, because that’s what people would normally do if they didn’t have water (Evans and Moses 2011).

It is obvious, from the brutal repression of the Anti-Globalization Movement and Occupy

Movement, that this strategy of building ‘the new inside the old’ can only go so far.

However, Graeber goes so far as to suggest that, “‘capitalist totality’ only exists in our imagination” and that failing to adhere to it can alone transform society (Wolfe 2012).

Like Graeber, Peter Lamborn Wilson, better known as Hakim Bey, advocates for prefigurative politics. Bey’s book, Temporary Autonomous Zones, Ontological Anarchy,

Poetic Terrorism, particularly, his discussion on Temporary Autonomous Zones (TAZs) has been influential in the Occupy Movement (Occupied Times 2011, Sullivan 2011). For

Bey (1991), the TAZ is an example of prefigurative politics at play; it is a type of

uprising which does not engage directly with the State, a guerrilla operation which liberates an area (of land, of time, of imagination) and then dissolves itself to reform elsewhere/elsewhen, before the State can crush it. (Bey 1991) . While Bey (2011) recognizes that such a force would one day be confronted by existing

“Money Interest Power” he nevertheless advocates for a “retreat” from capitalism. On the subject of OWS and social change Bey forwarded this message to Occupy activists on

December 10, 2011;

The only true method of organizing the alternative world of Mutuality is through voluntary non-State free institutions such as co-ops, mutual banking & insurance, alternative schools, various types of communalism and communitas, sustainable economic ventures (i.e. non-Capitalist businesses) like independent farms and craft ateliers willing to federate with the commons outside the sphere of bank/police/corporation power. [Emphasis added] The problem is that until the capitalist state is overturned organization at this level is impossible and will be aggressively repressed just as it was during the Civil Rights and

Women’s Movements.

One way that activists tried to embody prefiguration in the Anti-Globalization

Movement was through ‘consensus decision making.’ Consensus posits to be an inclusive and ultra-democratic form of decision making. Rather than coming to all the right

decisions, consensus attempts to “imagine how people can live together, to begin – however slowly, however painfully – to construct a genuinely democratic way of life”

(Graeber 2009:319). There is certainly value in consensus-making practices where self- emancipation is concerned, but it is unhelpful to think that this process is the ultimate means to achieve the end of self-emancipation:

George Woodcock argued that “no conception of anarchism is farther from the truth than that which regards it as an extreme form of democracy. Democracy advocates the sovereignty of the people. Anarchism advocates the sovereignty of the person”. More recently, Ruth Kinna has admitted that anarchists have had little of substance to say about democracy beyond a desire for consensus decision- making which, as she rightly points out, is open to the criticism that it tends to repeat the characteristics Jo Freeman famously analysed in the American anarcha- feminist movement in the 1960s, what she called The Tyranny of Structurelessness: the ability of the most articulate (usually middle class) members of structureless groups to hold de facto power within them. (Blackledge 2010)

It is not always the case, or is arguably rarely the case, that the most marginalized peoples in society are adequately empowered through simple consensus-making processes. As is later demonstrated with the Occupy Movement’s ninety percent consensus policy, consensus often reflects the dominant ideology as the majority binds the group to the

‘middle of the road’ and the most marginalized in society remain on the fringe.

Return to Marxism

Marx, Engels and Lenin spent much time pointing out the flaws of anarchist ideas similar to those advocated by Graeber and Bey. In their polemics against Bakunin, Marx and Engels argued the importance of confronting the anarchist idea that the state and authority were the “root-cause of all evil” (Kolpinsky 2003:15). Lenin (2009:6) demonstrated how the state was the manifestation of social relations based on an

exploitative class relation. Similarly to Graeber and Bey’s dismissal of hierarchal organization and statism, Bakunin dismissed the state as “the yoke that creates despotism on the one hand and slavery on the other,” arguing that once people become representatives or rulers they “can no longer represent the people, but only themselves and their pretensions to govern the people” (Marx 2003:152). Kolpinsky (2003:7) argues that “all anarchist trends have in common… a utopian vision of setting up a society without state and exploiting classes through a spontaneous rebellion by the masses and instant abolition of state power and all its institutions.” Marx and Engels, he argues, countered this theory “with a materialist analysis of the nature and essence of the state”

(Kolpinsky 2003:13). As Eagleton (2011:197) argues, Marx saw the “state with cold- eyed realism”; he recognized that the states are “not a politically neutral organ[s]” and that “exist among other things to defend the current social order against those who seek to transform it” (Eagleton 2011:197). The state, therefore, needed to be “broken up and replaced by the proletarian dictatorship, as the state of the transition period” (Kolpinsky

2003:13). Eagleton (2011:204) explains that Marx used the term proletarian dictatorship to mean “rule by the majority.”

Engels (2003:103) dismissed the idea of authority and the state as categorically evil arguing instead that, “authority and autonomy are relative things whose spheres vary with the various phases of the development of society” and that with the development of a revolutionary consciousness amongst the working class, the state can be used as

“transitional institution which is used in the struggle, in the revolution, to hold down one’s adversaries by force.” As he points out,

All Socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the authoritarian political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that have given birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. (Engels 2003:103)

Engels saw that the immediate abolition of authority would lead to defeat; a state controlled by the proletariat was the only way to protect the revolution from internal and external counter-revolutionary forces. The politics of Graeber, Bey and Milstein fail to offer a real solution or consider the very real problem of the state which exists to protect the capitalist class at “the expense of human freedom” (Blackledge 2010). By looking at previous social movements and demonstrations we can observe this spectacle; Anti-

Globalization (1999), Quebec FTAA (2001) and Toronto G20 (2010) protests were all met with forceful oppression. Because the state is a manifestation of class relations, a revolutionary state is necessary to work toward the ultimate suppression of the capitalist class and capitalist relations of production:

Whereas capitalist states deploy military and ideological powers to maintain capitalist social relations, workers’ states mobilise their resources in the interests of suppressing the barriers to building a society based around meeting human needs. (Blackledge 2010) Marx, Engels and Lenin all stressed the importance of party leadership and organization in the struggle against capitalism (Kolpinsky 2003:23). This runs contrary to the prefigurative politics of anarchists and non-hierarchical activists who advocate for consensus decision making and abolition of authority. But Lenin, drawing on Marx and

Engels, knew that “the spontaneous action of the people must be integrated with the element of political leadership by trained socialist workers” (Draper 1990). While

anarchists like Graeber see this leadership as oppressive, Marxists recognize that leadership is necessary where capitalism “fragments the working class internally and divides it from other exploited and oppressed groups externally” (Blackledge 2010).

Blackledge (2010) argues that Marx and Lenin’s “so-called statism…consists primarily of a realistic appreciation of the enemy of the struggle for freedom: the workers’ movement requires a centralised military force to overcome its centralised military opponent.” Lenin distinguished “between the revolutionary party, as a relatively homogeneous group of socialist activists, and the working class, which is more or less fragmented depending on the level of class consciousness at any moment” (Blackledge 2010). For Marxists, the

distinction between party and class is not a distinction between a fixed elite and the foot soldiers, but a simple recognition of the fact that there exist a variety of levels of class consciousness within the working class—from scabs to revolutionaries and all the variations in between (Blackledge 2010). Ultimately, the goal is to eradicate class and the social relations that manifest the state.

Prefigurative and anti-hierarchical activists do not have an answer for how a revolutionary mode of production, rooted in self-emancipation and freedom from exploitation, could emerge organically on a large, global scale. Marx (2003:96) argued that because anarchists deny the primacy of addressing issues of the state and party leadership, they also deny the working class “every real method of struggle” and therefore are “harmful to the revolutionary proletarian movement and all liberation struggle in general” (Kolpinsky

2003:8).

Much of the debate surrounding non-hierarchical forms of organization and anarchist practice has been revived with the emergence of the Occupy Movement.

Chapters four and five show how prefigurative, consensus and anti-hierarchical forms of

activism played out in the Occupy Movement. First, chapter three takes a closer look at the origins of the Occupy Movement and how this research was conducted. Chapter three includes a discussion of PAR as a method and the key terms and concepts (praxis, class, leadership and state) that are central to this study.

CHAPTER 3: METHOD AND KEY CONCEPTS

This chapter explains the methods of inquiry used to comment on the Occupy

Movement, its activists, strengths, weaknesses and direction. It provides a brief description of the author’s participation in ONS and organizing efforts with other activists in setting up a rural4 Occupy Wolfville (OW); it also provides a general outline of ONS and OW organization and processes like general assemblies (GAs) and working groups.

This is meant to give the reader a sense of what one might have experienced when visiting or participating in the Occupy Movement in Nova Scotia. The latter half of the chapter reviews some of the key concepts that shape the research.

Methods

This paper uses both primary and secondary sources; drawing from field research, various online and offline news media, social media, journals, articles, livestreams, online forums and academic literature to inform the study. In researching the Occupy Movement it was important to draw on various sources. Occupy generated a lot of online attention from social media networks like Facebook and Twitter and other Occupy-specific online forums and discussion groups which often recorded and continued conversations started in GAs and at events. The research draws on some of the online discussion to inform this study but it prioritizes the events, discussions and happenings in the offline world and at the actual encampments. The secondary sources used in this study are peer-reviewed and therefore judged to be reliable.

4 This was a somewhat unique circumstance as the Occupy Movement, like the movements of Spain, Greece and Chile, has been almost solely an urban phenomenon as discussed by David Harvey in his appearance on Democracy Now! (2010). 18

While the author was present at many of ONS’s major events, one of the weaknesses of the research was the author’s inability to attend all general assemblies, events, and demonstrations in the Halifax area. Meeting minutes posted to ONS forums after GAs and the filming of many ONS events made it possible for activists outside of the Halifax area to continue to follow ONS and its deliberations. Social media was also an important method used to keep in touch with activists from ONS. One event in particular, the ONS eviction, was missed by the researcher and therefore relies on the accounts of activists the following day and secondary sources such as video footage and independent news media. Because this research is derived from my direct involvement in organizing and attending rallies, general assemblies, working groups, and occupations at Occupy

Nova Scotia and Occupy Wolfville, I am utilizing participant action research (PAR) as my method of inquiry. It is important to note that the author is no longer an active member of ONS or OW. OW has ceased meeting/organizing and ONS lost much of its support base and momentum after its eviction.

PAR has its roots in movements for social justice and is “aimed towards solving concrete community problems while deepening understanding of broader social, economic, and political forces that shape these issues” (Brydon-Miller et. al. 2011:387).

While PAR research can vary in its application, all participatory research emphasizes the relationship between theory and practice as Brydon-Miller (et. al. 2011:389) underline,

theory is informed by practice and practice a reflection on theory. Methods for collecting, analyzing, understanding, and distributing data cannot be separated from the epistemologies, social theories, and ethical stances that shape our understanding of the issues we seek to address.

During the 1960s, Fals-Borda developed the idea that “the practice of sociology should be explicitly focused on the needs of people who are the victim of exploitation” (Feagin and

Vera 2001:174). For Borda, sociologists should not limit themselves to ‘participant observation’ but “get fully involved in the processes observed” (Feagin and Vera

2001:174). There is a longstanding debate in the social sciences about whether personal involvement in research compromises the integrity of the research. My participation in the

Occupy Movement and my desire for it to succeed has undoubtedly framed my opinions of the movement but I disagree that a close relationship with one’s research is compromising if the author acknowledges their position and involvement within the work.

My involvement has not stopped me from being critical of the movement; it has instead forced me to personally confront the limitations of the movement. Rather than seeing my involvement as a barrier, I see it as strength. Whether research can ever be objective is an interesting and important debate that I do not wish to dwell on here in an age where corporate funding and the privatization of education are the more pressing threats to science.

While I applaud the efforts of Occupy I also criticize aspects of its activism that I see as detrimental in the larger struggle for social and economic justice. I draw on the efforts of the Occupy Movement inside both Canada and the US to provide examples of what I have observed as weaknesses in Occupy’s tactics or examples of where things are working well. My familiarity with movements outside of Nova Scotia has been limited to secondary sources such as livestreams, GA notes, videos, and news rather than first hand involvement. During the research period (October 2011- June 2012) I paid particular attention to events coming from Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Oakland, Occupy Toronto,

Occupy Patriarchy and Occupy the Hood. During my involvement in ONS and OW, I took various notes and larger descriptive fieldnotes during and after GAs, working group meetings, rallies and demonstrations, which I draw on to inform this study. These are cited using the abbreviation ‘fn’ in with the date of the occurrence of the event (e.g. fn

March 22, 2012).

Occupy Origins

The call to occupy New York’s financial district came from the Canadian-based

Adbusters magazine in mid-2011. At this time activists in New York were attempting to replicate the ‘Hoovervilles5,’ or shantytowns, of the 1930s in protest of mayor

Bloomberg’s cuts to social services and attacks on unions (Binh 2011). These tent cities or, ‘Bloombergvilles’ as activists called them, were repeatedly destroyed by authorities

(Binh 2011). It was not until activists shifted their focus to Wall Street and answered

Adbusters’ call that the movement picked up momentum and on September 17 activists began occupying Zuccotti Park (Moynihan 2011).

The movement, from the start, was difficult to define as it encompassed so many different people, beliefs, and values. The movement has, as a general rule, avoided defining itself politically and has focused instead on what it is opposed to and the prefigurative process it adheres to. Some GAs have drafted demands but none have developed a recognizable and accountable leadership or engaged in Party-building because the focus has instead been on creating alternative modes of living and being within existing society. While the ideas and tactics guiding the Occupy Movement are

5 Hoovervilles were tent cities set up in public spaces by the homeless during the Great Depression when everyone was losing their homes and jobs (Binh 2011). 21

mostly based on the prefigurative politics of anarchist and anti-hierarchical activists, it is difficult to judge the composition of political beliefs amongst supporters. Certainly a majority are anarchists but the movement is also composed of all shades of liberals, libertarians, communists, conspiracy theorists, and those new to politics. What united activists from such a broad spectrum of political ideologies was the potential of a mass movement that called attention to vast economic and social inequality between the ‘1 percent’ and the ’99 percent’.

The movement gained considerable support from the Canadian and American populations. A poll for the Globe and Mail revealed that 58 percent of Canadians who had heard of Occupy said they “had a favourable or somewhat favourable impression of them” (CTV 2011). For those under the age of thirty the number jumped to 74 percent

(Rebrick 2012:17). In Canada over 15 cities set up Occupy camps including; Toronto,

Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie, Edmonton, Calgary, Saint John, Moncton and St. John’s (CBC Oct. 2011). In the US, many are crediting the Occupy Movement for helping to change public opinion about the concentration of wealth and political power by a rich minority (Reich 2011). As Robert Reich (2011) argues,

Not since the 1930s has a majority of Americans called for redistribution of income or wealth. But according to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, an astounding 66 percent of Americans said the nation’s wealth should be more evenly distributed.

Similarly a poll by Pew Research Centre found that 66 percent of Americans polled believed “there are ‘very strong’ or ‘strong’ conflicts between the rich and poor – an increase of 19 percentage points since 2009” (Rebrick 2012:17). If the Occupy

Movement has managed to do one thing it has been to get a wide-cross section of the

Canadian and American public talking, once again, about economic inequalities.

Unfortunately, the call to redistribute wealth is not the same as the call end capitalism; it is instead a reformist strategy to reshuffle wealth while keeping the capitalist system intact.

Occupy Nova Scotia

Occupy NS began its occupation of Grand Parade in Halifax and held its first public GA on October 15, 2011 (fn). This day marked the beginning of many Occupy encampments, demonstrates and rallies across Canada, the US, Australia, New Zealand,

Japan, and China in a ‘Global Day of Action.6’ Before the event, a public preliminary meeting of ONS activists and supporters, many implicit leaders in the movement, met to discuss upcoming events and educate others in urban camping, working groups, the GA and potential police threats (fn Oct 8, 2011). An activist from Occupy Wall Street spoke about the experiences of activists in New York and the importance of spreading the movement globally (fn Oct 8, 2011). Activists expressed a mixture of emotions at this time; excitement and anticipation and also insecurity of not knowing what to expect on the day of occupation (fn Oct 8, 2011).

On October 15 approximately 600 people came out to support ONS throughout the day. Many activists were surprised and pleased to see this much support from the Halifax area (fn Oct 15, 2011). As tents were set up and donations came in, Grand Parade became transformed into a small community soon prepared to house, feed, cloth, and provide minor medical assistance to activists and Occupy residents in the following months (fn

Oct 15, 2011). That night ONS had its first and one of its largest general assemblies (fn

6 The call to action which was sent from Spain and supported by Occupiers around the world can be read at http://occupywallst.org/article/october-15th-global-protest-info/ 23

Oct 15, 2011). While GAs had strong numbers at the beginning of the movement they began to slowly decrease in number over time. After ONS’s eviction from their second location at Victoria Park, these numbers grew even smaller to the point that ONS issued several calls for help and attendance at GAs. During this time activists were schooled in what is cited by Graeber (2011), Rebick (2012) and youth activists Lockhart and Rotz

(2012:170-171), to name only a few, as one of Occupy’s most hopeful aspects, the consensus process and its manifestation in the form of the ‘general assembly.’ Many activists over the duration of Occupy and continuing to this day spend countless hours participating in non-hierarchal decision making for the future actions of the Occupy

Movement.

Occupy Wolfville

Occupy Wolfville began as an effort to bring the Occupy Movement to rural NS and to tackle some of the issues that specifically affect rural neighbourhoods. After many trips to Halifax activists in Wolfville, NS started a GA in their local area. One of OW’s goals was to use its existence and GA to communicate and support the efforts of ONS in

Halifax. OW never had an Occupy encampment but was committed to meeting twice weekly and established a number of working groups which were going to network with

Occupy Halifax activists to connect urban and rural issues. In its early days Occupy

Wolfville GAs fluctuated between 15-30 people, one of the largest contained about 60 individuals. After ONS’s eviction from Grand Parade and its consequent absence during the winter months, OW ended before having accomplished some of its smallest goals.

Nevertheless, many rural activists were schooled in Occupy’s consensus making process and were active participants and supporters of ONS.

The Encampment

The ONS encampment was organized similarly to Bey’s description of a TAZ,

ONS attempted to liberate a section of Halifax and use it as an area to organize a social movement that challenged dominant ways of thinking and doing things through a prefigurative approach to politics. After her visit to Occupy encampments Naomi Klein

(2011) spoke about activists “feeding each other, keeping each other warm, sharing information freely and providing health care, meditation classes and empowerment training.” These are all examples of how activists attempted to develop the types of cooperate communities they felt were missing in today’s society.

In the mornings people would gather and decide together what things needed to be done that day and what priority they should take (fn Oct 22, 2011). Much of this discussion revolved around maintaining the encampment. In fact, much of Occupy activists’ energies went into maintaining the community they created in Grand Parade, in contrast to discussing political economy or the drafting of demands; in fact, tensions were often high because activists felt like many of the responsibilities were falling on a small group of people. Many activists, while upset about Occupy’s eviction, saw it as an opportunity for activists to come up with new strategies and tactics to confront social and economic injustice now that their time was not being consumed by maintaining the

Occupy camp; however, this vision was never realized.

The General Assembly

The structure of ONS’s general assembly follows the consensus process established by OWS. It is at the GA that activists and working groups bring forth

proposals and vote on whether or not to carry them forward. The GA relies on a 90 percent approval from its participants, meaning that unless the vast majority of the group agrees with a proposal it will not be carried through. Again, the focus was the process not its effectiveness. In fact, because the GA is open to the public and working at a 90 percent consensus rate, it is often the case that an assembly changes its opinions from meeting to meeting because of the diversity of the crowd.

GAs meetings are monitored by a minute taker, stack takers and mediators which help keep the assembly on task. The GA claims to operate with a progressive stack which allows voices of those traditionally marginalized in society to speak first, although whether this is actually applied is often contested by activists. The GA begins with updates and announcements from working groups then proceeds with a review of the agenda in which activists can add to or make amends to before proposals are discussed.

To communicate effectively in large crowds activists use a series of hand gestures to indicate approval or disapproval with a notion. The GA, similarly to activists of the anti- globalization movement, use what is known as ‘the block,’ which allows activists to block a particular item on the agenda if they feel that it would violate their “fundamental principles or purposes of being in the group” (Graeber 2002). In the event of a block, activists are chosen to represent each side of the debate and often the proposal in question is amended to accommodate the concerns of individuals. Sometimes the proposals, after being debated, go into a re-vote and stay the same, and sometimes the issues are never resolved, as is the case with many hotly-debated topics. This process is more often than not a time consuming and frustrating endeavor; one of the number one complaints I heard from activists about the GA was its inability to make decisions about even the smallest

things because of the variety of opinions amongst activists. This is discussed in more detail in chapter five.

Working Groups

Working groups are an important part of the Occupy Movement because they are where the decisions of the GA are carried out and plans are made for future action. ONS had a variety of working groups including but not limited to, health and safety, media, legal, magazine, and direct action. Working groups consist of any persons who are interested in organizing and seeing through an Occupy project. Ultimately these groups are accountable to the larger GA.

Some of these working groups encompass groups of activists from a number of

Occupy camps. For example, Occupy Academics, Occupy Writers, Occupy Archive and

Occupy Research have established online communities devoted to conducting and sharing research with Occupy members worldwide. These groups in particular have been working collaboratively to conduct research that helps forward the Occupy Movement but there are many other examples to draw from; musicians, artists, computer scientists, and writers are all using the internet to connect. Many of these groups use the internet to connect activists working on similar projects and to help develop ideas, projects and research through open source initiatives.

Key Concepts

The following is a brief overview of the key concepts that are discussed throughout the thesis; these are class, revolutionary praxis, leadership and state.

Class

It is important to talk a little more about class as this thesis advocates for a return to an anti-capitalist class politics. Chapter two already looked at some of the ways the

‘New Left’ and other ‘post-Marxist’ and ‘post-modern’ ideologies have tried to dismiss class struggle as anti-revolutionary. It is important to emphasize that class antagonisms have not disappeared despite these discourses; for Marx class is not defined “in terms of style, status, income, accent, [or] occupation…[it] is not a matter of how you are feeling but of what you are doing. It is a question of whether you stand in a particular mode of production” (Eagleton 2011:160-161). While the face of class has changed, capitalism continues to exploit the poor and working classes and wealth continues to be

“concentrated in fewer hands than ever before” (Eagleton 2011:163). Class relations are a material fact within the capitalist mode of production. Life is produced day to day by socially creative human beings. When an exploitive relationship dominates society at the very point of production, such as a class relationship, fundamental inequality is produced in the actions of day to day life. The reproduction of the working class is “the wrong which keeps so many other kinds of wrong in business (imperial wars, colonial expansion, famine, genocide, the plundering of Nature, to some extent racism and patriarchy) it has a significance far beyond its own sphere” (Eagleton 2011:166). Marxists focus on class because it is a fundamental material reality of society: “Only by going all the way through class, accepting it as an unavoidable social reality rather than wishing it piously away, can it be dismantled. It is just the same with race and gender” (Eagleton

2011:167-168).

Revolutionary Praxis

Marx’s concept of revolutionary practice emphasizes how people transform themselves through their own creative activity. As Lenin (1999) observed, Marx was able

“to appreciate that there are moments in history when a desperate struggle of the masses, even for a hopeless cause, is essential for the further schooling of these masses and their training for the next struggle.” Leaders, activists and intellectuals must learn through their

“active participation in practical life” (Gramsci 2007:10). The idea is that, as the material conditions of life lead one to choose to struggle against them, the practical experience of struggle advances the consciousness of those who had the experience as well as the material conditions. Therefore, in considering the struggle for social and economic justice one must always consider how activists are learning and being transformed by their lived experiences. A Marxist perspective entails an understanding that “at the same time as conditions create man, man himself creates new conditions, through his revolutionary praxis” (Löwy 2003:196). Praxis therefore, as Antonio Santucci argues, is the expression of

subordinate classes who want to educate themselves in the art of governing and are interested in knowing all truths, even unpleasant ones, and to avoid (impossible) deceptions by the upper class, so much higher than themselves. (Santucci 2010:152)

Marx’s theory of practice differs from the prefigurative politics of anarchists and anti- hierarchical activists because it advocates adjusting tactics based on the given material and structural conditions while prefigurative theory can only act as it would act if the material and structural conditions were different (their version of a post-revolutionary society).

Praxis gives us a theory to analyze the experiences of activists within the Occupy

Movement and other movements for social and economic justice.

Leadership and State

This thesis talks a lot about the tensions between Marxists and anarchists and the role of leadership as it relates to the Occupy Movement and within other movements for social and economic justice. Anarchist and Marxist arguments about leadership are often interwoven with their disagreements about the role of the state in revolution. While

Marxists recognize the necessity of the party leadership and establishment of a worker’s state, many anarchists (including prefigurative anarchists) argue that formal party organization and the seizure of the state is an act of authority and repression that cannot be tolerated (Ostergaard 1989:204). For these anarchists, “formal organization is the real source of authority,” while Marxists argue that leadership is a necessary component of revolutionary struggle: “At the beginning of the revolution, the masses are set in motion mainly by ‘a sharp feeling that they cannot endure the old regime.’ It is only the leadership of the class, the party that has a clear political program” that the working class can set the revolution in motion (Löwy 2005:189).

Substantial Social Change

In speaking of substantial social change in this thesis I mean to imply change which overthrows and replaces the current exploitive class relations of capitalist society.

For Marxist this means reorganizing production to meet human need rather than profit.

This is the only way to ensure, as Michael Lebowitz (2010:65) argues, “that our social heritage, the result of past social labor, belongs to everyone rather than to a limited

group.” Substantial change must also include an understanding of the way that Western society has been built on slavery and the stolen land of First Nations people. Race, sex and ethnicity must be key dimensions of anti-capitalist struggle. There are many other aspects of substantial change like war and environment that I do not have time to unravel in this thesis, it is enough to note that substantial social change must include the radical reorganization of production to align with human development.

CHAPTER 4: REFORMISM AND PREFIGURATIVE POLITICS WITHIN

OCCUPY

The inability of the Occupy movement to clearly identify the nature of the capitalist system, particularly the role of the state within the system, has led its activists and supporters to embrace reformist and the prefigurative politics. In his analysis of the

Occupy Movement, Ross Wolfe argues that moderate activists within the movement

hold on to the erroneous belief that capitalism can be “controlled” or “corrected” through Keynesian-administrative measures: steeper taxes on the rich, more bureaucratic regulation and oversight of business practices, broader government social programs (welfare, Social Security), and projects of rebuilding infrastructure to create jobs. (Wolfe 2011)

This anti-revolutionary sentiment must be transformed; chapter two discussed the inability of reformist politics to challenge the structural inequalities of the capitalist system. As Lenin (2004) argued, reformism is the “bourgeois deception of the workers, who, despite individual improvements, will always remain wage-slaves, as long as there is the domination of capital.” While the struggle for reform is important to the development of consciousness it should never be seen as an end goal.

On October 29, Occupy Nova Scotia organized a ‘Tour de Finance’ march and rally around Halifax’s financial district to call attention to the huge profits made by

Canadian banks at the expense of Canadian taxpayers and their customers (fn Oct 29,

2011). While the event had some activists calling for the nationalization of banks, many moderate activists advocated for reformists solutions like ‘Robin Hood Tax’ reform or the promotion of credit unions, as opposed to large banks, as a means of solving the West’s

financial difficulties (fn Oct 29, 2011). These moderate activists were often guilty of trying to publically expose ‘crony-capitalism’ and greed as the major problems facing

Canadians. The slogan the “99 percent versus the 1 percent” often enforced this idea that the problem is a ‘greedy rich’ rather than a rich class structurally supported to grow wealthier through the exploitation of the rest of society. Moderate ONS activists often stated this reformism as the goal of Occupy; as one activists argued, “Occupy has the central issue of North America in mind and that is: the rich are too damn rich” (fn May 1,

2012). There is no shortage of these adages amongst activists:

“It’s all over the world; money that could be used to help people and they choose to keep it all for themselves.” (Canadian Maple 2011)

“The huge problem is corporate greed…we fight the politicians but they are controlled by the corporations.” (Canadian Maple 2011)

“Down with corporate dictatorship.” poster (fn Oct 14, 2011)

“Generosity Not Greed.” poster (fn Oct 14, 2011)

While greed and corporations are certainly a part of the problem, these positions do not reflect an understanding that expanding profit drives antagonistic class relations. Taxing banks and reigning in the super-rich do not challenge the very exploitive relations of production that this crisis stems from. Reformists activists fail to recognize that the

Canadian state has gutted even the “most modest working-class protections” won by the

Canadian labour movement since World War II (Workman 2009:16). In fact, the

Conservative Party of Canada is currently forwarding an austerity agenda which erodes environmental protections, raises the retirement age, reduces the size of the public sector, reduces Employment Insurance (EI) benefits and slashes social funding to the social

sciences and humanities (Raj 2012). Again, Lenin clearly articulated the weakness of the reformist program:

The liberal bourgeoisie grant reforms with one hand, and with the other always take them back, reduce them to nought, use them to enslave the workers, to divide them into separate groups and perpetuate wage-slavery. For that reason reformism, even when quite sincere, in practice becomes a weapon by means of which the bourgeoisie corrupt and weaken the workers. The experience of all countries shows that the workers who put their trust in the reformists are always fooled. (Lenin 2004).

As Wolfe (2011) argues, blaming the super-rich or “the moral constitution of the top 1 percent…ignores the way that the capitalists themselves are implicated by the intrinsic logic of Capital.” There is no moral constitution in capital; as Marx argues,

The consideration of his own private profit is the sole motive which determines the owner of any capital to employ it either in agriculture, manufactures, or in some particular branch of wholesale or retail trade…The plans and projects of the employers of capitals regulate and direct all the most important operations of labour, and profit is the end proposed by all those plans and projects. (Marx 2009:40)

While capitalists remain in a position of dominance at the point of production, they are still subject to the laws of capital which force them to constantly turn a profit at an expanded rate. The absolute primary consideration of capital is profit; moral constitution is a humanistic concept that does not apply to the social relations of production from the perspective of capital. Within capitalism, it is only in the interest of the working class to promote a more human side of production in the struggle against capitalist exploitation:

Capital and wage-labour… thus [are] understood as antitheses.” (Lebowitz 2003:77).

Prefigurative Politics

The failure to understand class struggle and the role of the state in bourgeois society has led many to embrace the prefigurative politics of anarchists like Graeber and

Bey. In fact, the entire Occupy Movement (consciously or not) resembles the prefigurative politics of anarchists and anti-authoritarian activists who advocate for organizing “the kernel of the new world inside the shell of the old” (Graeber 2012).

These ideas have been defended and supported by prefigurative activists in the movement who argue that,

the practice of occupation and the very mode of existence of the movement are themselves prefigurative of a new, more democratic and more egalitarian world. (Dean and Deseriis 2012) This type of thinking predominated in ONS where activists believed that by providing food, shelter, clothing and other services in a gift economy, they were acting in a way that could transform society. Similarly, Graeber (2012) argues,

Zuccotti Park, and all subsequent encampments, became spaces of experiment with creating the institutions of a new society – not only democratic General Assemblies but kitchens, libraries, clinics, media centres and a host of other institutions, all operating on anarchist principles of mutual aid and self- organisation

Within ONS support for prefigurative politics was not only an observable element in its tactics but also implicit in the language used by many activists:

“Why are we here? To create the idea that provides our families, clean water and air, food, truth, compassion. This is why we are here!” one activists writes in chalk. [Emphasis added] (fn Oct 14, 2011). One protester holds a sign quoting Gandhi: “be the change you want to see in the world” (fn Oct 14, 2011).

ONS activists and supporters often pushed a symbolic politics on the movement. After the ONS eviction, one activist argued that the movement would not suffer if people went home and pitched tents in their yards, parking lots, balconies and public spaces; “turn the whole city into a tent city, one they can’t take down” (fn Nov 12, 2011). Similarly, on

May 19, ONS held a solidarity rally in conjunction with ‘global re-occupations’ and erected a “symbolic representation” of the Occupy encampment. These symbolic politics do little to challenge capitalism and exploitation they are instead signs of a movement which is highly fragmented and not yet self-aware on a large scale.

Prefigurative and anti-hierarchical activists fail to recognize the true nature of

Occupy camps and their place as “isolated pockets within capitalist society, largely funded and maintained from without through the normal mechanisms of the exchange economy” (Wolfe 2011). The materials that flow into the Occupy camps (food, water, equipment, etc.) are all produced within the exploitive relations of capitalist society. One cannot imagine away capitalism from one’s life because one continues to operate within the logic of capital which dominates those within it at the very level of production of life itself. A person cannot live in the capitalist world without money to mediate their relationship with the rest of the world. To affect radical change, workers and allied forces must not act on a vaguely symbolic level (to appeal to a confusingly fragmented class that has not yet recognized itself as a common class) but actively, by taking action at the level of production itself – at the class level: Acting on a class level or with a class consciousness means taking control in every aspect of the social: the political, economic, and cultural for the interests of the class of which one is part. It means that human beings become active and creative participants (opposed to wage slaves) in the production of life.

There must be a complete shift on every level of society toward a mode of production in which “real wealth is the development of human capacities, the development of human potential” (Lebowitz 2010:43).

Consensus Making and Anti-Authoritarian Activism

The focus on prefigurative politics has led the Occupy Movement to stress the importance of consensus and non-leadership while neglecting the realities of existing capitalism pervading every aspect of the world around and within them, as their tactics and theory align with their non-class consciousness. While many activists claim that the movement is ‘leaderless’ and ‘consensus’ based, this assessment is not a proper analysis of the movement’s nature; nor are qualities of ‘leaderlessness’ and consensus helpful in such early stages of dissent where the working class is highly fragmented. This position is contrary to Graeber (2011) and other non-hierarchal activists who argue that the goal of the Occupy Movement is to challenge and resist verticalism and formal leadership at all cost.

Resisting leadership and verticalism, Graeber (2011) argues, is achieved through the Occupy Movement’s GAs. For Graeber this process acts as a model “for genuine direct democracy” which decentralizes power and emphasizes collective leadership

(Evans and Moses 2011). This type of thinking has caught on broadly in the Occupy

Movement. When asked what leadership exists in the movement, ONS activists often reply, “there are no leaders” or “we are all leaders.” While Occupy does not admit to any recognizable leadership, it is untrue that it is ‘un-led’ and leaderless. In fact, as one activist correctly observed, the Occupy Movement and the mass media have “made the white male the face of the Occupy Movement, as if the white male is the face of the 99

percent” (fn March 8, 2012). This is not to take away from the efforts of women, aboriginal, Black, Latino, and LGBTQ activists, but to point out the hierarchies and privilege that are often ignored in the movement. Harsha Walia (2011) argues that the attempt to go mainstream and appeal to large numbers of people has led the Occupy movement to ignore and replicate many of the hierarchies in current society. Rather than seeing the consensus process work in favour the voices of societies most marginalized, we are seeing them muffled and silenced. Samir Amin (2011:160) accuses the political culture of consensus of individualism. He argues that the consensus process eliminates

“the reality of social classes and nations” and proclaims the individual “the active subject of transformation” (Amin 2011:14). These processes center “solely on respect for a procedural, electoral democracy” (Amin 2011:160); by treating everyone as equals this process reproduces racist, sexist and other problematic values, as these values are already latent issues within capitalistic culture to begin with.

Occupy the Hood, Occupy Patriarchy, and Occupy Women’s Caucuses have formed in response to the lack of representation of Blacks and women within the movement and in response to the racist and sexist attitudes amongst many of the activists involved. These groups have helped to expose the privileged position that white heterosexual men enjoy in the Occupy Movement and within society. They also prove that rather than being ‘leaderless’ and ‘horizontal’ spaces, Occupy encampments and GAs are replicating some of the same oppressions they seek to overcome; without accountable leadership, these sexist and racist attitudes are not addressed at a serious level.

Marginalized voices are easily ignored in a process that demands 90 percent consensus because by trying to satisfy everybody the movement reproduces the status-quo. The

following section documents the experiences of women within the Occupy Movement to expose the problems of the so-called horizontal consensus making process. Though women serve as the practical example here, such experiences are not limited to women but extend to all other marginalized groups as well.

Women’s Experiences within the Occupy Movement

The claim of horizontal leadership does not match up with the complaints of many activists within the Occupy Movement, particularly women. Beginning with Occupy

Nova Scotia we can draw on the experiences of women’s inequality and misrepresentation within the movement as evidence of power and hierarchy. Many activists I spoke to expressed concern over the lack of representation of women in the

Occupy Movement. These experiences are summarized by one woman who was involved in both ONS and OW:

In my own experience at the Occupy site in Halifax, I saw that women were quickly put into ‘traditional female roles’ – kitchen duty, cleaning up of site, nursing and health care. I saw again and again women begging for help in these fields. At General Assemblies I saw men speaking the most and the longest and also attempting to silence women. (fn March 8, 2012) This claim that Occupy has silenced the voices of women is widespread. On October 11,

Occupy Nova Scotia distributed its first copy of ‘Occupy Magazine’ for the ‘99 percent.’

While the issue was widely celebrated in the Occupy community, the first issue did not include a single female voice. A letter was written by several activists and forwarded to the magazine working group voicing concern about the lack of representation of women, racial and ethnic minorities in the magazine which went unaddressed until it was posted on a public social media page.

Despite this type of discrimination many activists claim that the movement is blind to gender and colour. When the topic of discrimination was brought up in an

Occupy Wolfville GA it was argued, by so-called ‘progressive’ activists, that because the movement had a progressive nature, participants would assume that racist and sexist behaviours were not tolerated. These activists believe that when they walk into an Occupy

GA they check their prejudices at the door. Again, the attempt is made to treat everyone as equals despite living in a capitalist, patriarchal, colonial state which thrives on inequality and discrimination. These activists ignore a slew of particularly offensive materials that have circulated within their own movement; including, but not limited to,

Steve Greenstreet’s celebrated ‘Hot Chicks of Occupy Wall Street’ video and blog,7 the widely circulated sexist propaganda of Occupy Marines8 and a number of important decisions made by Occupy activists to keep women and women’s issues outside the

Occupy Movement.

The situation is not positive for women activists who, Mimi Yahn (Feb. 16, 2012) argues, have been “been pushed to the margins” like in every other “failed revolution and progressive movement throughout history.” After having concerns about representation in the GA process, women from Montreal’s Woman’s Caucus (MWC) proposed a progressive stack as a moderate measure to deal with issues of inequality (Occupy

Patriarchy 2012). The proposition was ridiculed by other activists and blocked by a white heterosexual male (Occupy Patriarchy 2012). After the assembly, MWC created a document to distribute to activists that better described the proposal that was so ridiculed at one GA. When the issue was brought up again in another GA it was argued, by one

7 http://hotchicksofoccupywallstreet.tumblr.com/ 8 http://www.occupypatriarchy.org/2012/01/11/objectifying-women-has-no-place-in-the-occupy-movement/ 40

man that it was time, “to guide the women back to the kitchen!” and remind them that

“getting laid once in a while” would do them good (Occupy Patriarchy 2012). While these comments are some of the most blatant forms of misogyny, they give insight into the experiences of many women activists within the Occupy Movement. While other forms of sexism may be more latent, the experience is the same; women are told they have no place within the movement and when they speak up they are relegated back to traditional roles like the encampments cooking, cleaning, and health care duties. Women who speak out are treated as irrational or as exaggerating the effects of patriarchy, capitalism and imperialism on women. ONS members regularly used sexist language toward women in online discussion forums or to belittle serious issues that affect women. In one online forum, a regular ONS member dismissed sex workers as “money grubbing whores" (fn

April 08, 2012) and when confronted by female activists about his misogyny, the man dismissed her as irrational and exaggerating the harm of his and others comments about women.

Occupy Austin “solved” the problem of women’s issues by dismissing them as being “too controversial” and “threatening” to the movement (Yahn 2012). This was the logic behind the GA’s decision to take abortion out of its Statement of Principles and

Official Action Plan (Yahn 2012). This is just another example amongst many that demonstrate how men have taken over the “thinking, policy-making and agenda” within the Occupy Movement (Yahn 2012). As Yahn (2012) writes, women, “the ultimate working class” at the “bottom of every culture, nation, race, and society”, should not have to adapt to misogyny when men “use their privilege as a weapon” to divide and weaken the movement.

The Occupy Movement’s claim to be ‘horizontal’ neglects the lived experience of women activists. While the denial of leadership and attempt at horizontal forms of organization reflect the fears of anti-authoritarians and anarchists who attribute this type of organization as necessarily dictatorial, as we see, in denying leadership the Occupy

Movement only acts to hide and obscure relations of power. While it is true that Occupy has no formal recognizable leadership, the voices of the privileged few are still replicated.

In a movement for the 99 percent, women should not have to battle for representation through consensus.

Anti-ideology and Demands

The success of the Occupy Movement has depended largely on its ability to act as a mouthpiece against economic injustice without adhering to any formal politics or ideology. I would argue that while this strategy has been successful in garnering widespread support for Occupy it ultimately hinders the prospects for radical change. As

Lenin warns, we must be cautious that “the weapons used to gain a victory yesterday do not become an impediment in future struggles” (Lukacs 1971:334).

Similar to an insistence on non-leadership, the ‘anti-ideology’ and ‘anti-demands’ stance that has shaped much of the Occupy Movement hides privilege by normalizing the ideology of those socially privileged sections of the movement. As Zill (2012) argues, if

Occupy fails to identify itself with any political ideology,

It means that the strongest political tendencies in society as a whole will dominate. For the United States today, that means liberalism. As we can already see with the attempts to channel Occupy into Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, if we don’t define what our movement is about politically, someone else will do it for us. (Zill 2012)

This is echoed by Dean and Deseriis (2012) who argue, “far from being a strength, the lack of demands reflects the weak ideological core of the movement:”

The refusal to be represented by demands is actually the refusal or inability to make an honest assessment of the social composition of the movement so as to develop a politics in which different forces and perspectives do not simply neutralize each other. (Dean and Deseriis Jan 3, 2012)

Without clear class consciousness at the leadership levels of the Occupy Movement the most fundamental aspect that binds the ‘99 percent’ together as a unified working class against the exploiting class are ignored as and the predominant ideologies of the existing society go unchecked.

The Role of Party Leadership, Demands, Ideology and Class

The experiences of women demonstrate the need for clear and accountable leadership, organization and demands within the Occupy Movement. The movement must secure the rights of those most marginalized and exploited by capitalism, imperialism, racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination if it is to succeed. Unfortunately, it is often the case with spontaneous movements like Occupy which “break out…as a defence against … the attempts of the [bourgeoisie] to find a ‘purely economic’ solution” to crisis that these issues are not properly articulated or organized (Lukacs 1971:307). Failing to organize spontaneous movements, Lukacs argues (1971:307), causes them to “peter out when their immediate goals are not achieved or seem unattainable.” This is what we saw happen in both Occupy Wolfville and Occupy Nova Scotia soon after the initial energies had largely cooled down.

In a speech to occupiers in Zuccotti Park, Slavoj Zizek (2011) warned activists of this type of fate: “The only thing I’m afraid of is that we will someday just go home and

then we will meet once a year…and nostalgically [remember] ‘what a nice time we had here.’” Similarly, Doug Henwood (2011) has argued that without organization, Occupy is going to face the same fate as the 1999 Seattle Movement and the Spanish Indignado

Movement which both began as spontaneous movements and sputtered out without a devoted and organized leadership to continue the struggle. Without organization, as

Lukacs (1971: 307) argues, spontaneous movements, “limit themselves at most to spontaneous mass actions.”

In combating Rosa Luxemburg’s optimism for spontaneous mass action, both

Gramsci and Lukacs stress the need for organization. For Gramsci (2007:129), the political party had shown itself to be the best way to organize struggle:

it can only be an organism, a complex element of society in which a collective will, which has already been recognized and has to some extent asserted itself in action, begins to take concrete form. History has already provided this organism, and it is the political party – the first cell in which there come together germs of a collective will tending to become universal and total. Gramsci (2007:132-133) argues in the Prison Notebooks for the important role of the party which seeks to represent the “history of a particular social group...[its] friends, kindred groups, opponents and enemies” (2007:151). In contrast, we see how the Occupy

Movement, anarchist in origin, refuses to make any explicit demands and declarations, other than its claim to represent the 99 percent and direct democracy. But as Dean (2011) points out, the movement cannot affect substantial change if the “decisions are being made by whoever shows up” and the composition of the group regularly fluctuates. This has been a regular problem for Occupy as it becomes “unclear at any meeting or conversation whether all or most members are participating” (Dean 2011). Dean (2011) correctly asserts that the absence of demands is not a strength but is instead indicative of a

movement that has not yet named a ‘we’ and instead, “names a movement oriented around a tactic, an occupation, motivated by an anger and frustration that has been building for years.” The role of the party, in contrast, is to represent a particular social group’s interests. Failure to organize a real force for change leaves people disorganized in the fight against bourgeois and state reactionism.

The anarchist claim that we can make change without party, clear demands and leadership ignores what Engels (2003:51) calls, the ‘experience of real life,’ which forces alienated and exploited workers to “engage in politics whether they like it or not.” For

Engels (2003:51), preaching abstention from political organization only drives workers

“into the arms of bourgeois politics.” The strategy of Occupy, which has been largely the strategy of anarchists, does not include a theory of the state aside from dismissing it prefiguratively or by suggesting superficial reformism in the case of liberals, keeping the essential class relations intact. As Marx and Engels (2003:83) recognized, and saw play out in the Paris Commune, the owners of wealth and property “always make use of their political privilege to defend and perpetuate their economic monopolies and to enslave labour”. Activists like Graeber who advocate that capitalism is mostly in our minds will constantly run into the materially existing problem of class relations in the form of the state (e.g. police, tear gas, rubber bullets, etc).

A class-conscious party is essential to a movement for the liberation the working class from the exploitive relations of capitalist production. As Gramsci (2007:199) warns:

Neglecting…so-called ‘spontaneous’ movements, i.e. failing to give them a conscious leadership or to raise them to a higher plane by inserting them into

politics, may often have extremely serious consequences. It is almost always the case that a ‘spontaneous’ movement of the subaltern classes is accompanied by a reactionary movement of the right-wing of the dominant class, for concomitant reasons. This has been the case in the recent movements, like Occupy and the Quebec student uprising, which have led those in power to enforce a series of laws which strip Canadians of their constitutional rights and use force to deter protesters (Democracy Now! 2012).

As Greg Lucero (2012) argues, if the Left does not begin to organize the working classes as capitalism continues to crumble there is a real risk that a reactionary fascist force may emerge to counter any challenge to dominant hegemony, as capital will go as far as it needs to go to protect the accumulation of profit if it is unchecked by counter-movement in favour of the working class.

CHAPTER 5: EDUCATION THROUGH PRAXIS

While the Occupy Movement has in many ways reflected a prefigurative politics that denies the movement any real possibility of radical change, it has nevertheless been a positive force in both Canada and the US. The Occupy Movement, with all its flaws, has acted as a mouthpiece for many to voice their concerns about economic and social inequalities where no such discussion was being had before. Though not always based in a clear class consciousness, the actions and words of Occupy activists have been helpful to expose aspects of the exploitative nature of capitalism. The experiences of activists within the Occupy Movement have been valuable for a developing consciousness through praxis. Drawing on Marx, Zill (2012) observes that “struggle is the best teacher.” Occupy has been an educative experience for anyone that was somehow touched by the Occupy

Movement. The movement served as a lesson in struggle, particularly in relation to the recognition of the vast majority of the population as within the dualistic category of

‘victims’ of the system and agents of change, the importance of connecting to workplace struggles, and role and nature of the state.

The Power of the 99 Discourse

By identifying themselves generally as the ‘99 percent,’ the Occupy Movement tried to draw upon the essential connectedness of the vast majority of the population as the exploited ones, but also upon the power of the people to transform their societies from the ground up. David Bush (2012) argues,

the language of the 99 percent has acted as a social lubricant between struggles previously atomized by elite narratives. This shared language of inequality is

perhaps the greatest gift the Occupy movement has given to those fighting for a more socially just world. The ‘99 versus 1’ not only points out the tensions between the rich and poor but illuminates the power of the people united. As Dean (2012) argues, the 99 percent responds to the problems faced in today’s society by asserting the power of the collective.

One of the ways Occupy activists were able to assert this power was by uniting people through their stories of hardship during an age of austerity. A good example of this is the Tumblr photo archive, ‘We are the 99%.’ The website9 streams the images and stories of the ‘99 percent’ creating a mosaic of thousands who have been affected by the crisis of capitalism. An analysis of the html script reflects the precarious position of people who lack affordable education, child care, healthcare and worry about and face unemployment (Konczal 2011). The pictures and stories put faces to those affected by economic difficulties;

I am 20 yrs old. I come from 3 generations of poverty…[My mother] worked in the adult industry to put me through school. I know what it is like to sit at school & wonder if I would come home to lights & running water… I am working off my mothers (sic) debt, who is trapped underneath her student loans and her parents debt. (Dec 24 2011) In 2009 at the age of 25 I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. I am sick and in pain every day of my life. Self-employed, the only insurance I can get is with our state high risk pool. My medications cost thousands of dollars a month. My 63-year-old mother, a retired school teacher, now works to help me stay afloat financially and pay my medical bills. I want to live to see her enjoy retirement…I am the 99%. (Feb 04 2012) I’ve been living in the US for 30 years, working in a restaurant all the entire time. Every day I work 13 hours, leading to my bad health now. After 9/11, I started getting respiratory problems. My wife used to work in the garment factories, but because there wasn’t business, she got laid off. Rent increases yearly, and we have

9 http://wearethe99percent.tumblr.com/ 48

2 kids. Now we don’t have work, so life is very difficult. We are a part of the 99%. (April 17, 2012)

I am 4 years old. My mom can’t afford to buy me winter clothes, even from the thrift store. She couldn’t buy me a birthday present either. I have never seen her cry so hard! (Sep 28 2011)

The Tumblr archive continues to record these stories and has spiralled a number of sister sites and film and video projects documenting the lives of the 99 percent. This has, as

Jody Dean (2012) argues, helped to change

the contemporary discussion away from the capitalist mindset that told everyone that her or his success or failure was strictly an individual matter, that everyone was on her or his own. By focusing on Wall Street, the movement has created a new context, one that explains what had appeared as either failure or bad luck as actually the reality of capitalist domination and exploitation. The global nature of the Occupy Movement has helped to extend this solidarity to occupations in different cities, provinces and countries. Occupy protesters generally feel that their struggles are connected. Many occupations, including ONS, cite the work of activists abroad as inspiration for their own dissent. ONS has credited OWS, the events of Tahrir Square and Spanish occupations as its inspiration.10 Recognizing the interconnectedness of struggle is essential for any movement that wishes to end the exploitation of capitalism because although people are exploited, they cannot necessarily notice that their lives are connected to the exploitation of others. People acting for change in the West must recognize their intimate connection to the exploitation of the rest of the globe given a history of imperialism. This is especially true as capitalism has “been pushing out globally since its consolidation centuries ago” as Workman (2009:138) argues,

10 http://occupyns.org/ 49

the search for new resources, the search for new markets, the exploitation of new pools of labour, the growth of local capitalist classes and the appearance of comprador bourgeoisies, and patent domination of many regions in the South by an imperialist centres in the North have all contributed to capitalism around the world. The extension of solidarity to others, regionally and globally, has been largely symbolic in gesture. Acknowledgements of the struggle of others, rallies and protests in support of other encampments and networking with other Occupy activists are examples. After

Occupy protests began in the US, OWS activists received a letter from Egyptian activists emphasizing the interconnectedness of struggle and solidarity between protesters:

To all those in the United States currently occupying parks, squares and other spaces, your comrades in Cairo are watching you in solidarity…Indeed, we are now in many ways involved in the same struggle. What most pundits call “The Arab Spring” has its roots in the demonstrations, riots, strikes and occupations taking place all around the world, its foundations lie in years-long struggles by people and popular movements.11 Egyptian activist, Asmaa Mahfouz, one of the original activists to call for the Egyptian people gather in Tahrir Square, spoke to OWS about her experiences as an activist during the Egyptian revolution. During her visit in October, Mahfouz spoke about the solidarity developing between activists, “Who can believe before that we Egyptian and Americans would be marching down Wall Street together? One world, one objective from Tahrir

Square to Wall Street, everywhere’” (Rebrick 2012:62).

On November 22, protesters of Tahrir Square issued a call for global solidarity, asking protesters of the world to “Occupy and shut-down Egyptian embassies, shut down arms dealers, and shut down the part of your government dealing with the Egyptian junta.” OWS answered by organizing marches on the Egyptian consulate in New York

11 The full statement from Cairo can be read at http://occupywallst.org/article/solidarity-statement-cairo/ (Retrieved May 29, 2012). 50

City and by assembling outside Combined Systems International in Jamestown,

Pennsylvania to “protest sales of those tear gas canisters used by the Egyptian military to repress protesters in Tahrir” (Kennedy 2011). While these events have been small and their significance should not be over exaggerated, they show that protesters are beginning to think and organize in solidarity with others throughout the world. When sections of the fragmented exploited class begin to come together around political and economic issues, especially in the global context that Occupy emerged within, there is hope for substantive change. Substantial change will not occur until it is made deliberately with a revolutionary class consciousness, but an environment of cooperation amongst fragments of the working class may cultivate such a consciousness.

Workers and Occupiers

The Occupy Movement has also been moderately successful in garnering support from unionized workers and has helped to connect youth with worker’s struggles. The

Canadian Labour Congress released a statement in support of the Occupy Movement:

The Canadian Labour Congress supports the aims of thousands of citizens, many of them younger people, involved in the Occupy Canada protests. They are gathering in Canadian centres from coast to coast to bring attention to how corporate greed is shattering the dreams and aspirations of far too many Canadians… The Occupy Canada movement conveys a real frustration along with a determination to work for change. We understand these protests and support their aims because we have also been fighting corporate greed and its fallout for a long time. We are in solidarity with these peaceful and timely expressions of commitment by our fellow citizens. (Canadian Labour Congress 2011)

ONS saw much support from the Halifax-Dartmouth District Labour Council and helped to forge ties between youth activists and workers. The Labour Council supported protesters monetarily and by regularly attending Occupy events at Grand Parade. On May

1, ONS joined workers in the 2012 May Day rally and demonstration to celebrate workers contributions to society and to speak about workers struggles (fn May 1, 2012).

Activists in Occupy Oakland have launched a new campaign to unionize minimum wage fast food workers in the Oakland area (Occupy Oakland 2012). Efforts like these help to politicize young working class people in ways that are directly related to their everyday lives and at the very point of production itself. From a Marxist perspective, activists interested in general social justice for all must make a connection to struggles in the workplace, to struggle at the very point of production of human life. Although Occupy failed to clearly as a movement for the people to retake control of their lives at the very point of creation and production, reaching toward struggles in the workplace is a step in the right direction.

A Lesson in State Repression

The Occupy Movement has forced activists to deal with the realities of the state and forces of consent and coercion working against them. In ONS’s early days many activists were unsure about the role the police and state would play in response to the

Occupy Movement and the occupations springing up worldwide. At ONS, many activists argued that the police were part of the ‘99 percent’ and were protectors of the people.

The true nature of the police as functionaries of the capital system became clear after the forceful eviction of ONS activists and eviction of Occupy encampments, often by force, around the world. This has forced, “those in the movement to think more seriously about what to do about the police, how to protect the movement, and what role the state plays in society. These are all political questions” (Zill 2012).

On November 11, Halifax Major Peter Kelly made the decision to evict Occupy protesters. This sparked considerable outrage amongst activists and supporters partly because the decision was made after activists relocated their encampment to Victoria Park to accommodate Remembrance Day ceremonies. These negotiations between activists and veterans were attended by Kelly himself (Stephenson 2011). The Halifax-Dartmouth

District Labour Council made a public statement condemning the act as shameful “given that Remembrance Day honours the memory of those who gave their lives for the right to peaceful political demonstrations, free speech and free assembly” (Tracy 2011). The eviction was documented on activists’ cameras which showed police forcefully evicting and arresting protesters, destroying the Occupy encampment and protesters’ belongings

(CBC Nov. 2011). Journalist and ONS activists Miles Howe (2011) described his arrest by Halifax police,

Having just spent the last ten hours shivering in a jail cell, I don't have much of an idea of what else has happened to the Occupy Nova Scotia movement. I can tell you that the treatment we received from the Halifax Police Department, brought about by Mayor Kelly's Remembrance Day Eviction Notice, has been absolutely deplorable.

Howe (2011) describes one woman’s request for medical attention resulting in “police boots laid into her chest” and describes another protester being “choked out by police.” In another instance one person was denied medical attention while Howe and others watched as the man had a seizure (Howe 2011).

On November 12, ONS held an emergency rally to support Occupy, at the rally protesters spoke about the eviction and their treatment by the Halifax Police Department

(fn Nov. 12, 2012). Those who were arrested spoke from outside the park, as their terms

of release banned them from entering Grand Parade (fn Nov. 12, 2011). Two young women recounted being attacked, and one choked, by police officers at the rally (fn Nov.

12, 2011). This rally saw more arrests and violence by police officers who ambushed

Howe and activists on Citadel Hill after Howe violated his terms of release (fn Nov 12,

2011). Activists I spoke to after the event talked about the difference between ‘knowing’ and ‘experiencing’ police violence (fn Nov. 12, 2011).

Although not all evictions were violent, the shared experiences of Occupy evictions across Canada and the US helps to further expose the role of police as a force for stabilizing the political economic system. Oakland, California, where there is a history of radical Black and working class struggle, police used excessive force against demonstrators (Gross 2011). On October 26, this led to the injury of Iraq War Veteran

Scott Olsen, who was sent to intensive care after being hit by a police projectile (Gross

2011). The Oakland Commune released a statement on November 19 writing explicitly about the role of the police in a capitalist society,

In this era of austerity, the role of the police becomes clear: they are enforcers of capitalist laws, here to ensure we passively accept each budget cut and repressive ordinance passed. If we turn a public plaza into a thriving social space and commune, they will shoot us with rubber bullets…the anger in Oakland is stoked by constant police harassment and violence, often targeted at Black and Brown youth…It is not enough to decry police brutality; instead we must recognize the police as a common enemy and abolish them. [original emphasis] (Oakland Commune Nov 10 2011)12 Occupy Oakland later organized a week of marches and rallies against police repression

(Oakland Commune 2011).

12 The Oakland Commune’s full statement can be read at: http://www.bayofrage.com/wpcontent/uploads/2011/05/againstrepression.jpg 54

Major instances of state violence, such as the forcefulness of police against

Occupy protesters, help to shed light on the actual role of the state’s armed wing. In fact, police violence is a part of the daily lives of many people in this class society. British

Colombian criminologist, Rob Gordon, recently criticized modern police culture in

Canada for “generating a whole breed of cowboys,” in which the use of excessive violence and police misconduct are the norm (CBC Jan. 2011). Occupy’s experiences with violence are not unique, in fact, First Nations and Black Canadians spoke to the importance of recognizing how this violence affects marginalized groups daily in

Canadian society during Occupy GAs and after ONS’s eviction (fn Nov 12, 2011).

The Occupy Movement is just one more example of how the state will respond to dissent. Other examples are the 2010 Toronto G20 protests, the Quebec FTAA protests, the1999 Anti-Globalization protests and more recently, the 2012 NATO protests in

Chicago and the student movement in Quebec which were also met with heavy policing, arrests and violence (Democracy Now! 2012). In fact, the militarization of the police has been openly celebrated by the mainstream media in Canada: Leading up to the Toronto

G20 protests the media showcased the latest police crowd-control weapons; sound cannons, long range acoustic devises (LRADs), pepper spray, police dogs, guns and

Toronto’s Emergency Task Force (EMT) were all showcased prior to the protest (Yang

2010).

Conclusion

Occupy has been important for the development of activists, particularly youth activists, who have learned through their own practice or ‘praxis’ the obstacles in the way

of social change. By organizing and participating in a grassroots social movement calling attention to economic inequality, activists have learnt the strengths and weaknesses of different tactics and obstacles in the pursuit of social change including those in its own organization and those imposed by the protectors of capital. Although the resulting consciousness of the people may not be a revolutionary class consciousness, the dialectical process of changing the world as one changes oneself has moved forward. The experience of Occupy pointed toward the utter class nature of the conflict at hand and how completely antithetical capital is to fulfilled, complete human beings.

CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION

By drawing on the Occupy Movement and past social movements this thesis puts forward the case for Marxism in contemporary political struggle. This argument is contrary to mainstream political thought which since the 1960s ‘New Left’ movement has dismissed revolutionary Marxist class politics as a thing of the past. By drawing on the failure of reformist politics to transform the lives of women and Blacks after the peak of the

Women’s Movement and Civil Rights Movement, this thesis shows how “economic and political liberalism, singly or in combination, cannot provide the solution to the problems of the twenty-first century” (Hobsbawm 2011:418). Today’s politics must be unapologetically anti-capitalist. Capital’s necessity to grow at an ever expanding rate at the expense of people and the planet is pressing us in the direction of unavoidable crisis.

In his book Structural Crisis of Capital, István Mészáros writes:

The truth of this disturbing matter is that there can be no way out of these ultimately suicidal contradictions [of capital] which are inseparable from the imperative of endless capital-expansion, irrespective of the consequences – without radically changing our mode of social metabolic reproduction. This demands adopting the responsible and rational practices of the only viable economy – an economy oriented by human need, instead of alienating, dehumanizing, and degrading profit. (Mészáros 2010:35)

As the crisis of capitalism continues to grow and people begin to struggle against it a new consciousness will form (Zill 2012). More than ever, the class conscious Left has to play a more prominent role in promoting anti-capitalist politics in this time of crisis.

But it is not enough to be anti-capitalist. The Left must also recognize the role of leadership and class politics in contemporary struggle. Without party organization and political leadership spontaneous outcries for social and economic justice, like Occupy, tend to burn out quickly. In a society where people have different levels of class consciousness, leadership is essential in uniting the working class and its allies in a direction of revolutionary change.

A Marxist critique of prefigurative and anti-hierarchical politics argues that these movements cannot sustain the fight for social change because of their failure to properly recognize, theorize and solve the problem of the bourgeois state. When movements begin to challenge dominant ways of thinking and doing, the state always responds with methods of oppression; the suppression of movements like Occupy and anti-globalization protests were drawn on as examples in this thesis. Activists must organize around this knowledge so they might be prepared to respond to the repression they can expect to experience. Naturally, organization of a class conscious party is implicated in preparing for such a confrontation.

Occupy’s failure to identify the class relation, the relation to the means of production, have rendered it an outright non-revolutionary movement. There is, however, hope for the development of general consciousness of those who experienced that moment in history on any level. One may argue that, levels of consciousness being variable amongst a fragmented working class, the lessons of class struggle would be clearest to those closest to a class consciousness. One lesson from Occupy was that the class conscious must be better prepared for confrontation when the moment arises (or if one is provoked). A revolutionary alternative was not clearly articulated to the exploited

of the world through Occupy, but it was a valuable early lesson in this recent period of instability and looming collapse.

The culmination of the class struggle in global capitalism naturally encompasses the struggles of marginalized and exploited social groups everywhere. The exploited should not be understood as the classical industrial proletariat because this is an incomplete and limited scope of who is truly being exploited for profit. The struggle of the factory worker is connected to the struggles of landless campesinos in Latin America, to the women who perform the unpaid labour, to the migrant workers in the fields, to the homeless and abused transgendered persons, to the people in Gaza and every human who suffers in a world where they are the means to the end of profit rather than an end in themselves.

The rise of the Occupy Movement in Canada and the US saw people, previously immobile in motion in response to the deterioration of their material lives. Its reception and popularity demonstrated how disillusioned people, especially young people, have become with the system. As Zill (2012) argues,

Young people today are growing up at a time when ruling-class ideology is weaker than at any point in more than a generation. Economic crises always discredit society’s rulers and precipitate ideological and political crisis. This is true no matter what the political system, whether it’s a dictatorship or a bourgeois “democracy.”

Getting workers and allies, young and old, in motion during this time is an important element for driving the radical kind of social change that reaches to the core of life itself.

However, simply having large numbers of people in motion does not equal a clear movement for change, as the Occupy Movement has demonstrated. The masses of

exploited people, in all of their racial, sexual, gendered and social diversity, can and must be consciously unified as a common human family producing for human need rather than individual material profit.

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