Blog #16 – The Future: Strategic Implications
A. Transformation
So: since 1968, at least, the situation seems to have been ripe for transformation., objectively the material and technical prerequisites for a more socially supportive and equitable society are all there, the contradictions within the existing system blatant. But the relative strength of the forces supporting the status quo, compared to those resisting its consequences, are such as to take transformative change off the immediate agenda. The contradictions in the system are manifold, but the subjective forces for change are inadequately mobilized, the conservative forces still too strong.[1] Within the existing relations of power, those who are objectively potential agents of change are not subjectively adequately organized to marshal their power to achieve that change, and those among them who are nevertheless thus dedicated face the subjective unreadiness of others as a present objective roadblock to progress.[2] As one formulation puts it, “…contradictions do not explode by themselves,”[3] contradictions only produce change when there are agents of change with the desire and the ability to catalyze that change.
Some believe that, despite these dangers, “we are on the threshold of a new era.”[4] Potentially, yes. But there is much to do before we get there.
The resulting strategy of both Occupy and the Right to the City movements leads towards formulating immediate demands that are transformatively anti-capitalist in direction but not in immediate goals. Demands are formulated seeking immediate gains and are at most transformation sector by sector. They reflect the limitations imposed on them by the absence of more radical possibilities.
How far the Occupy movement and the Right to the City movements (and kindred) will go depends, I believe, on four questions of basic strategy:
- Understanding who the 99% are, and bringing enough of them into the fold, whether by joining, forming alliances, or common actions, to have the power successfully to confront the 1% (see Blog #13);
- Achieving clarity of long-term and transformative goals while pursuing immediate, concrete, and achievable gains for the exploited, the discontented, and the excluded.
- Dealing with how the existing organizations of those resisting, such as militant workers’ organizations and groups such as Occupy Wall Street and Right to the City Alliances handle the continuing changes in their character and deal with the internal and external dangers they face;
- What strategy for transformation step by step, perhaps seeking transformation sector by sector or institution by institution, will progressively lead to comprehensive and radical social changes, capturing the positive aspects of capitalism, putting them in a new framework, and rejecting its inherent undesired characteristics (see examples below).
In terms of actions: there is visible a convergence of the power of the exploited in progressive labor actions, the concrete but more limited demands of the Right to the city movements, and the broad inchoate but deeply felt demands of the discontented in the Occupy Wall Street movement.. Not crossing a threshold; at best in the direction of transformative actions and transformative demands:
Transformative actions, pushing the limits of participatory democracy, espousing direct action as an everyday tool, and combining the power of the exploited, the discontent and the excluded, linking the concrete but more limited demands of the right to the city movements with the broad, sometimes inchoate but deeply felt demands of the occupy movement together.
Transformative demands, pointing in the direction of radical change, perhaps sector by sector, pushing the possibilities of direct democracy,[5] extending the range of governmental decisions over the market, constantly showing the extent of real change necessary to achieve their full goals. In a way, to join the pressures of the included to get in with the pressures of the already included to get out, to get everyone into a new and better society.
The convergence of actions by organized workers, the exploited, with the groups in the right to the city movement, the excluded and oppressed, and with occupiers, the discontented, is in fact taking shape.[6] There is much evidence that such convergence in the shaping of individual demands, but aiming them towards a transformation of the whole, is happening. The national Right to the City Alliance’s program to define transformative and develop transformative demands explicitly recognizes the necessary direction, the planning for the future of the General Assembly and Working Groups of Occupy Wall Street does so also. The mobilization of students and their allies in Quebec heads in the same direction. So do efforts such as those of the Brecht Forum in New York City, radical caucuses in mainstream organizations, small but well-organized small radical and Marxist groups. Thoughtful examinations such as Jeremy Brecher’s pieces and others in The Nation,[7] journals such as “transform: the european journal for alternative thinking and political dialogue,” and many others, mostly small, many fiercely independent, but all seeking for radical alternatives, moving generally in the same direction.
So what specifically is that direction? What are the implications for strategy for those that desire transformative change?
B. Concrete Individual Demands, but Aimed at the Whole.
Almost any demand for immediate and feasible change can at the same time raise the real long-term structural change that fully dealing with the issue would require – can contain a critique of the whole. . Making clear what ultimate solutions to a problem would look like, while pursuing immediate reforms, makes that pursuit also part of an educational process that can endure beyond the immediate effort. Andre Gorz spoke of the difference between reformist reforms and non-reformist reforms; the former can be converted into the latter with inclusion of the ideological issues, long-term implications of the reform.
Community Voices Heard, “a member organization of low-income people, predominantly women with experience on welfare, building power in New York City and State,” puts it this way:
We aim for policies that will truly improve our members’ lives and change the balance of social, economic and political power, while negotiating for concrete wins along the way.[8]
The Right to the City Alliance, at the national level, has defined transformative demands as those which follow five principles:: 1) People over profit; 2) Social Ownership; 3) Democratic control; 4) Scale; and 5) Consciousness.[9]
Many examples could be given:
In housing, working to prevent foreclosures and evictions can be exposed as coupled to the inevitable and logical working of a private market in housing, in which housing is treated as a commodity, for its exchange value, not its use value.
In housing, pushing for affordable housing can suggest the possibility of distribution of housing based on need, not wealth or ability to pay, or nationalization of land.
In education, working to reduce student loans and interest rates on them can be linked to the call for completely free public higher education for all.[10]
In educational reform, not seeing education as the solution to inequality, but as a matter of right, and thus not joining the job-oriented rejection of the liberal arts and social sciences in educational reform efforts.
In transportation, fighting congestion and pollution can raise the issue of free public transportation and public investment in mass transit.
In taxation, demands for progressivity in tax rates could suggest the substitution of income and wealth taxes with a reasonable absolute ceiling in lieu of all other revenue-targeted taxes, to be collected by national governments and redistributed to states and localities, or include an anti-speculation tax.[11]
Demanding full insurance coverage for necessary health care can be liked to calling for health care based on need, not fee for service.
Protecting the natural environment in the name of sustainability can be linked to valuing and affirmatively enhancing it for its own sake; rejecting the value of growth for ITS own sake
Contesting abuses of the criminal justice system, stop and frisk laws, excessive and negative incarceration, can expose the need to the causes of criminal conduct and shutting down the system of incarceration as the solution.
Cultural demands for support of artistic and related activities can be linked to their service as a vehicle for cultural and social criticism, valuing culture as itself a transformative activity. Bread and Roses in the Lawrence strikes of 1912 was already a convergence foreshadowing the exploited and discontented united demands of 1968, and the approach of Occupy today.[12]
Reform of business practices can point towards the elimination of profit motives from a whole range of activities, and steadily enlarging the public sector or communal control of actions necessary for social welfare. The tactic of using stockholder activism to change corporate policies is not likely to go far[13]., but can point to the withdrawal of corporate involvement in socially undesirable activities altogether, from warfare to pollution damaging health. stockholder control, but most stockholders are notlikely to be sympathetic to criticism of capitalism;.[14]
C. Unity: The Right to Occupy the City.
The exploited, the discontented, the oppressed, have different grievances against the capitalist order, but the different parts of the 99% have in common (see Blog #13 D) the desire and the need to transform the system. It will take their combined power to do so, and coalitions, alliances, joint campaigns, will be of the essence of such efforts to unify their actions and join their separate powers together. That does not mean losing their separate interests, but merging them with others in analysis and action: working in unity. Maybe no single slogan can capture the claim, but perhaps:
“THE RIGHT TO OCCUPY THE CITY”
More fully, it might be:
“THE RIGHT TO OCCUPY THE WORLD, ITS SPACES, ITS ECONOMY, ITS GOVERNMENT”
would be more comprehensive, but less but less declaim-able.
D. Transformative education, ideology: culture.
E. Ideology and Values
Van Jones, from a liberal-to-radical point of view, writes:
Without question, within a broad, progressive alliance “the socially responsible and eco-friendly” businesses must be a part of it. But I question if that alliance itself should declare itself pro-capitalist. It seems to me that what is needed is an alliance built around a
program on the issues. Debate should take place about what are the best ways to address the range of system-produced crises – climate, health, unemployment, housing, education, cultural violence, inequality, etc. – without the alliance having an explicitly pro-capitalist, pro-socialist, pro-libertarian, pro-anarchist or any other historically-based ideology.[15]
In “Channel the Anger and the Hope,” Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation magazine, lavishes praise on the Occupy movement and then goes on to write:
“For me the central question now is how to channel the anger and hope of Occupy into strategies that will forge a new politics and economy. … This requires a politics of conviction…”
“A politics of conviction.” That is, a politics funded on an ideology[16], a belief system, logic and emotion, cultural[17] factors rather than material needs.
Joseph Stiglitz makes the same point, in a piece titled “The 99 Percent Wakes Up”
:
Around the world, the financial crisis unleashed a new sense of unfairness, or more accurately, a new realization that our economic system was unfair.[18]
Material needs and cultural needs are different, and lead to different forms of resistance in a society that fails to meet needs when it has the capacity to do so. The relationship between material factors and ideological ones was formulated in classical Marxism as between base and superstructure, but further development of the approach in the neo-Marxist literature, and certainly in more mainstream approaches, gives greater weight to the independent influence of cultural factors. Even such obviously material an issue as poverty is today acknowledged to have a significant cultural, or relative, content. As society has developed an ever greater ability to produce and distribute material goods, the importance of the cultural factor grows. More and more political and social actions are determined by cultural values, values which are heavily influenced by material circumstances but also in critical ways separated, almost independent, of them.
Dissecting the basis of the values, the cultural issues, which provoke resistance among the 99%, is well beyond the scope of what is here undertaken.[19] Yet naming these values can be important politically, for it may suggest important points in common between the resistance part of the 99% and many of those well to the conservative side of them. The integrity of the individual and the desirable scope for the individual’s development, the desirability of various levels and sources of inequality, the importance o democratic participation, the varying motivations for work, the nature of creativity, are all subjects of interest to many viewpoints, and open discussions of them may open a door for the resistant part of the 99% to expand its influence within the whole.
To summarize this argument: there are a number of values in common among the 99% that are likely to resonate well among others whose support the active 99% would like to have. . They include an aversion to injustice, solidarity with kindred, valuation of human life, appreciation for beauty, the importance of love in human relationships, a rejection of force in the making of social decisions. Their elucidation may actually be an organizing tool for the 99%.
Further, speaking explicitly about values can be important practically both to avoid the accusation of selfishness, of merely wanting more of what others have, as well as opening the door to discussions of those ideologically supporting the established order, the 1%, who in fact will share many of exactly these values.
In those discussions, many of the points in contention turn out to be really issues of fact and careful analysis. What sociology has to say about motivations to work and about creativity, what political science and political economy have to say about effective participation, what economic analysis has to say about the respective role of government and markets in the production and distribution of goods and services, what history teaches about the role of civil liberties and civil rights, , what psychology and philosophy have to say about nature and nurture in the formation of ideas, are all topics to which all people can come from very different starting points, even with very different initial material interests, and lead to some common understanding and perhaps some common approaches to policy issues. Power will ultimately determine actual outcomes, but rational discussion, and social formats that would promote it, can influence relations of power along the way. In an age of super-pacs, Citizen’s United decisions, media monopolies, with critical material consequences at stake, the importance of ideological work and debate is greater today than ever.
All this suggests the strategic importance of ideology,[20] analysis, understanding, and specifically understanding the relationship between the 99% and the 1%, the cause and effects of poverty, discontent, and oppression, etc. While values will shape the responses to the findings, there are essentially question of fact involved in describing them accurately and laying out causes, determining who benefits and who suffers and in what ways, what regularities determine individual behaviors and social actors conduct, and what effects each is likely to have. Education and theoretical work are of major and growing importance a
Thus clarifying values and understanding the dynamics of behavior becomes an increasingly important part of the construction of resistance within the 99% — and to some extent even among the 1%. Ideology, liked to culture broadly viewed, today demarcates the fault lines relevant so social change perhaps as much as or even more as the traditional purely materialist definitions of class. As Joe Biden’s Middle Class Task Force put it: “middle-class families are defined more by their aspirations than their income,” although some, from the more traditional end, making a different point, complain: “Stop Using ‘Middle Class’ to Depict the Labor Movement.”[21]
A transformed understanding is needed for clarity on the issues.
F. Patience for the Long Haul
The whole thrust of the argument here is that, while conditions call for radical structural social change, the present constellation of power does not permit it to be accomplished today. Yet its necessity remains, and its potential to be achieved in the future remains. The implication is clear: patience, thought, including theory, and planning are necessary.
In 1968, at the height of the protest demonstrations in Berlin, Rudi Dutschke, one of their most prominent leaders, spoke of a “long march through the institutions.” That made and makes sense. Change will be a long process; patience is necessary, and targeted, planned, actions, campaigns. The call for progress towards change sector by sector is another way of saying the same thing.
As Guy Debord already wrote in 1967 for the French Situationists:
[Revolutionary critique must] work among the irreconcilable enemies of the spectacle, and admit that without them it is nothing; [in between times,] it must know how to wait.
G. Transformative Strategies
Transformative demands, a key part of any transformative strategy, are outlined in B. above, are specific and concrete, and seem reasonably clear to me. But PLEASE NOTE: The Transformative Strategies presented below are only intended as a preliminary check-list of possibilities worth discussing; obviously each one deserves far more than the short paragraphs here, but looking at each in the context of the others may be a useful way to inform thinking through the best ways to go forward.
The earlier argument leads to a number of different strategies, mutually consistent, that can be considered. They are simply outlined below; a number of current initiatives, such as the Right to the City Alliance’s work on transformative demands, and a variety of manifestos and declarations circulating on the web, provide much more detail and many other possibilities.
1. Recognizing Practical Minority status
During this likely long waiting period, those desiring radical change must perforce recognize that, while they may speak for the overwhelming majority of humanity, the 99%, they are not themselves anywhere near that number. Neither the exploited, nor thediscontented, nor the oppressed, by themselves constitute the 99%, and the active among them indeed are a relatively small number. Their hopes to achieve change rest on their cooperation with others who are similarly moved but not yet in action in the same direction.
That means, among other things, that electoral strategies under present rules will not work. The forces for change, absent a crisis, are unlikely to beat the 1% by reaching to the point of 51% or more. . That limits possibilities of a simple electoral strategy. The recent Wisconsin results in the recall election suggest the reality of the situation. The intensity of support does not directly translate into quantitative majorities.
3. Direct Action.
Direct action, by itself an ambiguous term, here means the dramatic, visible, usually audible, demonstration, with their physical presence and actions, of the strength of a particular conviction, program support, criticism, opposition, as by marches, demonstrations, occupations, as of homes threatened with foreclosure or businesses or public or private spaces, strikes and picket lines, Jeremy Brecher’s article, noted above, gives many examples. They are important not only for those whose attention is caught by them among non-participants, but also for the participants themselves, as way of solidifying solidarity and expanding united action.
4. Illegal disruption: e.g. occupying Wall Street offices
The power of the police, ultimately the control of organized force by the 1%, is today in most situations adequate to prevent serious disruption and immobilize its practitioners. Physically defending illegal occupations has been tried in a few instances, e.g. Oakland, ineffectively. In a few cases, house occupations, mass picketing, there have been temporary successes, and, more important, increasing awareness of injustice. The symbolism of such actions can be potent; the actual results achieved by the use of “illegal” physical measures are likely under today’s circumstances to be negligible. Preventing furniture from being put out on the street in evictions, sitting in in factories, booing a speaker, can have some, but probably limited, effect. As the civil rights movement has shown, however, and Frances Piven and Richard Cloward have convincingly recounted in history,[22] under other circumstances the results may be dramatic, and unachievable by any other means.
It does seem clear that the situation in 1967 is not the same as that of today. Then, according to Nathan Glazer, quoted approvingly by Daid Patrick Moynihan:
…disaffected groups, whether blacks or the poor, or students, can act as if the state were a dictatorship, can gain wide sympathy for their position, and can maintain the kind of disruption that makes it impossible for many institutions important for the society to operate. Thus universities can be brought to a standstill. High schools and now even elementary schools can be disrupted…[23]
Similar examples today would be few and far between.
5. Spaces of hope: Model-Building.
The idea that specific spaces could become examples of what a utopia might be like, or become the incubators of resistance that would produce basic social change, has been a fervent hope. From Fourier to St. Simon to Robert Owen to Joseph Smith to the stalwarts of the California communes,[24] to some of the occupiers of Liberty Plaza, the effort to build model utopias has been seen as a promising route to broader social, but historically none have ever lived up to such expectations. They may in fact distract from a direct involvement in the on-going process of political confrontation and social action in the society as a whole, outside the model. Henri Lefebvre and David Harvey have stressed the role of cities a incubators and supportive battlegrounds for broader change,[25] but that is not the same thing as saying that efforts to produce particular places as “spaces of hope” is a practical priority in the struggle for social transformation,[26] although they may light the way to the desired shape of transformations that others produce.
If such spaces are not outward-looking, expansionist, actively proselytizing for, rather than just model building, they are likely to become simply an island isolated off the shore of the real economy and political life.
6. The solidarity economy
Solidarity economic activities: worker ownership, bartering, cooperatives, autogestion, can be seen as sorts of “economic space of hope,” and have both the positive aspect of their spatial analogy and the same limitations. Embedded in a capitalist economy, they can rarely survive in areas subject to market competition in which the exploitation of labor plays a role, because by definition the solidarists won’t exploit, and so will have higher prices than those willing to pay less for the labor they use. Different incentives, stronger motivation, better skills, greater flexibility, may compensate to some extent, but the potential depends ultimately on the way such solidarity activities can be linked to broad systemic, transformative changes in the economy as a whole.
7. Building coalitions, then alliances, around consistent demand
That single-issue coalitions, leading to multiple-issue alliances, are critical for strategic action is already well known and widely practiced. As an arbirary example, look at the protests at Bohemian Grove, in Monte Rio, California where annually “2,000-3,000 rich and wealthy men have gathered every summer for 133 years in a private 2,800 acre ancient redwood retreat to celebrate themselves with parties, entertainment, and speakers.”
The protest [against the gathering] will feature Occupy groups as well as other organizations including Code Pink, Peace and Justice Center, ANSWER Coalition, Project Censored, Bohemian Grove Action Network, Veterans for Peace, National Lawyers Guild, Round Valley Indians for Justice, and various others groups focused on key issues, such as climate change, human rights, Palestine, Cuban Five, and a living wage.[27]
Affirmatively calling together such coalitions, trying to cement them into lasting alliances, is an obvious route to g. Occupy can be a non-turf-threatening instrument to move in that direct. Doing some careful analysis of what groups are likely participants, perhaps using an analysis such as that here discussed, can make recruitment and solidarity more effective.
8. Winning over those with inconsistent demands, including the tea party.
Activists, those with their roots among the exploited, the discontented, and the oppressed, and already seeking transformative change, are still a small minority in the population. But they in fact share the values and much of the life experiences of every-day life with many, many more, ultimately perhaps reaching close to 99%. Every opportunity can be taken to find common ground with those not already engaged on the side of resistance. Highlighting shared values, pushing the links among them, exposing inconsistencies, carrying on continuing constructive dialogue with others whose have every reason to be sympathetic, is usually a better option than negative polemics or overt hostility. The self-identified “middle class,” who are insecure in their status, see their children with limited opportunities and increasing debt, , all those who the current crisis is already affecting are clinging to what they have with real fear for the future, those who, for instance, are a major constituency of the tea parties, should be a fertile (if often difficult!) target for persuasion.
9. Taking advantage of weaknesses and contradictions within the 1%.
One can even imagine cooperation with some of the 1%, who are after all human beings also and have, despite their position within the 1%, the full range of human desires, emotions, and aspirations.
Who are the 1% , after all? Can they be part of the 99%? Ask Prospero, in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. He has controlled everything, made everything bloom, but at the expense of enslaving Caliban and the unfreedom of Ariel and all the other spirits of the island. He is touched by remorse, and voluntarily gives up his magical powers, and contents himself with his human ones. Realizing at last that he has accomplished all he can and should, he abjures power, and realizes he is mortal, a human, with death as the ultimate ending. His power, his magic, is real, but it is also an illusion. Like the magic of capitalism, converting relations among men and women into relationships among things, the fetish of commodities?
More realisstically, the 1% is hardly internally homogeneous.[28] Reactions of its members to the Euro crisis now in sway are sharp; it is hilariously described by John Mauldin.[29] In general, as Joseph Stieglitz has written, “There are good reasons why plutocrats should care about inequality anyway—even if they’re thinking only about themselves.´[30] And there are sharply conflicting interests among members of the 1%. Real estate interests, for instance, have very material incentive to push housing costs up and up. Employers, on the other hand, have a direct interest in having housing available at rents and prices affordable to their employees, thus reducing the pressure on wages employers need to pay to get and keep workers. Pressures for maximum develop of buildable open space is a goal of developers; it may stand in the way of tourist development or amenities for the rich. Donald Trump’s antics and developments are not universally favored by the 1%. Some billionaires support Obama, even if most support Romney. So he 1% is not homogenous, although structural pressures will always influence them to act in concert, and there is no reason those resisting some should not make temporary marriages of convenience with one or another of them opportunistically around specific issues.
10. “Occupy” does not mean Fetishizing Space.
“Occupy” had, originally, a literal and spatial meaning. But clinging to that narrow focus for the movement is no longer useful.[31] See my Blog #5. In addition to the problems discussed there, three other weaknesses arise if the term “occupy” is assumed to have one and only one meaning. But when a campaign goes under the name of Occupy Our Homes, or joins campaigns to prevent foreclosures and evictions with the Home Defenders Leagues, occupying is meant literally, but as a positive for keeping the occupants of that which is occupied where they are, a defensive move rather than a demand for a change in occupancy. Further, occupations can be by forces and for purposes that most in the occupy movement would clearly oppose, as in the occupation of the West Bank by Israeli settlers taking over Palestinian-owned lands.[32] Finally, as pointed out above, “occupy” can have a no-spatial meaning, as in Occupy the Economy or Occupy the Euro. As suggested above, “occupy” in such cases simply means: “take militant action to transform.”
11. Electoral Strategies..
The change desired by the occupiers will not be achieved through victories in any immediate electoral campaign, but neither are immediate elections a matter of indifference. This is a matter of tactics as well as strategy; the devil is in the details of how that role should be played. The discussions here are on-going; I doubt if there is a perfect answer. By and large, I would support the position of Robert L. Borosavage and Katrina vanden Heuvel of critical engagement;[33] Jeremy Brecher speaks of it as a “non-electoral 99% opposition”
An opposition not to the Democratic Party or the Republican Party but to the corporate party of the 1 percent, which dominates the entire political system?[34]
It is a strategy that harks back to the identical strategy put forward by Rudi Dutschke in 19968, largely if only briefly and partially followed at least in Germany and France: that of an “APO” an “AuserParliamentarische Opposition,” an opposition outside of Parliament. The devil will again lie in the details.
* * * *
The argument for a transformative strategy, a strategy of concrete individual demands aiming them towards a transformation of the whole, is compelling, and I believe shaping such a strategy is already well under way.
[1] It is still unclear whether the current crisis is deep enough to to either cause splits and eakening on the conservative side or broad enough outrage on the radical side to produce braod structural changes; even basic sectoral changes do not seem imminent. The crisis does seem deep (David Harvey, Rick Wolff), but But time will tell.
[2] See the earlier blogs on the necessity of bringing large elements of the right, such as the tea party supporters, over to the side of transformative change., and the emphasis, in the writings of H. Marcuse and David Harvey, among others, on the need and the possibility of individuals remaking themselves as part of the social processes of change.
[3] Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 1974, p. 197.
| [5] See, for instance, Mark Purcell, 2008, Recapturing democracy: neoliberalization and the struggle for alternative urban futures. Routledge: New York. |
[6] Occupy Wall Street got glowing endorsements in both speeches and informal discussions [at the recent Labor Notes conference.]. You could see the influence everywhere from the transit workers€™ orange “Occupy Transit” t-shirts to the many references to the 1% and the 99%. In fact the official theme of the conference was “Solidarity for the 99%.” Occupy Chicago was represented by Jan Rudolfo of National Nurses United and Andy Manos. At a labor education workshop, Steve Ashby of Occupy Chicago’s Labor Outreach spoke of the cordial relationship between Occupy Chicago and labor that helped create a number of solidarity actions including a march of thousands against the Mortgage Bankers Association who met at the Art Institute last fall. They Call Themselves the Troublemakers Union. By obboSphere.Daily Kos May 07, 2012 Available at http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/05/07/1089585/-They-Call-Themselves-the-Troublemakers-Union
[7] My own piece on the mortgage foreclosure crisis might be another example.
[9] Housing & Land: A Need for Transformative Demands
Right to the City’s Transformative Demands Working Paper Series– Edition #1
[10] Free public education pre-school through graduate school is already one of Quebec stludent demands: The Threat of Quebec's Good Example. Peter Hallward. The B u l l e t: Socialist Project • E-Bulletin No. 647, available at June 6, 2012 http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/647.php#continue
[11] See for instance the tax proposals in The People’s Budget of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. For a brief summary, see David Moberg, “What Americans Want,” In These Times, June 2011, p. 20.
[12] It would thus recognize the political part of the argument Herbert Marcuse makes in The Aesthetic Dimension as to the inherently critical role of art. –the aesthetic dimension of discontent.
[13] only 4% voted to restrict salaries at a Wells Fargo meeting, despite an aggressive camaign. By E. Scott Reckard, Los Angeles Times , Protesters disrupt Wells Fargo shareholder meeting, April 25, 2012, available at
- I. Protesters disrupt Wells Fargo shareholder meeting. And see Huffington Post, “99% Spring Has Sprung: Shareholder Actions Underway Across the County,” Mary Bottari of the Center for Media and Democracy catalogs some of the actions that Occupy groups, unions, and community organizing groups have planned for May Day as part of ongoing campaigns to challenge corporate America.
[15] From Rebuild the Dream
[16] I use the term “ideology” in the sense of a set of explanatory theories relating to observed social developments, rather than the more specialized meanings of Karl Mannheim and the Frankfurt School, which should also be brought into play here, but transgress the bounds of this article.
[17] Again, I use the term “culture” in its anthropological sense, including, for instance, sense of ethnicity, or sexual orientation, rather than in its cultural studies sense. For definitions and sources see Marcuse, Peter. 2007.”The Production of Regime Culture and Instrumentalized Art in a Globalizing State.” In Globalizations, vol 4, no. 1, March, pp. 15-28. Reprinted in Globalization Of The World Economy, ed. Manfred Steger, Series Editor: Mark Casson. Edwin ‘Elgar: Cheltenham, 2012.
[19] Blog #17 –poverty, inequality power,– the moral and/ideological basis of the resistance is an attempt under development to be more detailed than the discussion here.
[22] See Poor People’s Movements.
[23] Nathan Glazer, “For White and Black Community Control is the Issue,” The New York Times Sunday Mgazine, April 27, 1968; quoted approvingly by Daniel Patrick Moynihan in Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding, p. 2ne. 1970, p. xi-xii. Interestingly, “acting as if the state is a dictatorship” is a plague on many analyses. See Peter Marcuse,“The Myth of the Benevolent State and “The Myth of the Malevolent State.”
[24] Perhaps even from St. Augustine. See my Blog, :On reading David Harvey on the Tarmac with the Help of Jesus.”
[25] See his Spaces of Hope and Rebel Cities. Both effectively argue the potential of the recognition of space, , particularly both in and of cities,as a factor in supporting efforts for radical change.
[26] See Blog # , On Fetishizing Space.
[28] See the discussion in Blog # .
[33] “A Politics for the 99 Percent,” The Nation, June 25, 2012, pp. 18-21.
Peter Marcuse's Blog 