ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. —Gross inequality in income,
wealth and power in the United States is the defining issue of our time—a
period in which the American empire is fast declining and the domestic economy
is moving into uncharted, troubling waters. Whether these enormous inequities
can be addressed without chaos may be determined by the strength of popular
resistance, most notably the Occupy movement, over the next few months.
There are indications in the social and traditional news media of a resurgence in grassroots
opposition in the spring, certainly by May Day. And because the outrage is so
widely held, the forces of reaction, the combines of capital and their
political and media front men, will be prepared.
Meanwhile, within the Occupy movement,
which has framed the conflict as one in which the 99% vs. the 1%, there are
divisions surfacing over ideology, strategy and tactics.
Chris Hedges, who has
been a prophetic voice of non-violent resistance long before Occupy Wall Street
last September, recently offered a surprisingly shrill denunciation of black
bloc anarchists, who he called “the cancer” of the movement. The black
bloc’s willingness to engage in militant and sometimes violent direct action
jeopardizes the Occupy movement’s legitimacy in the eyes of the larger public
and invites violent state repression, according to Hedges. He also
characterized the anarchists as elitists unwilling to work cooperatively with
other elements within the movement.
Hedges’ accusations drew an almost
immediate rebuttal from David Graeber, who has emerged as one of the movement’s
leading anarchist theoreticians.
Graeber claimed that Hedges wildly
misunderstands anarchism, has mischaracterized their efforts, and employs the
“language of violence” in his denunciations. “This is precisely the sort of
language and argument that, historically, has been invoked by those encouraging
one group of people to physically attack, ethnically cleanse, or exterminate
another—in fact, the sort of language and argument that is almost never invoked
in any other circumstance,” wrote Graber. “To see this kind of language
employed by someone who claims to be speaking in the name of non-violence is
genuinely extraordinary.”
“My first impression was that Hedges
is sensing the death of Occupy, and is looking for a scapegoat,” wrote
Michael
McGehee on his blog. He
thinks Hedges has failed the address the “elephant in the room,” which has been
the Occupy movement’s inability to create the “structures” that can sustain the
long struggles, the vision, as well as the activist communities over time. The Occupy movement has wisely
refrained from policy proclamations that can be easily appropriated and watered
down by reformists, but as McGehee argues new structures of cooperation must be
built in our neighborhoods and workplaces and the existing models of
cooperative enterprise like food coops, other retail purchasing cooperatives,
credit unions, and worker-owned
business
need to be dramatically expanded. Without those structures, the
movement will be even more susceptible to its greatest threat: the liberal
reformists who are determined to suck the revolutionary lifeblood from the
movement and channel it into package of cosmetic policy initiatives at the service
of an Obama presidential re-election campaign.
“I think these movements really
terrify the power elite and, in particular, the Democrats. One could argue that
the greatest enemy of the Occupy movement is Barack Obama,” said Hedges in an
interview published two days after his “cancer”
essay.
In the short term, the success of the Occupy
movement may be largely determined by how it chooses to engage the established order. It is strategic suicide to engage the 1% on the terrains in which they have
an overwhelming advantage, any field of competition easily dominated by money
or violence. Corporate and financial interests seeking a wholly subservient
state will always exponentially outspend the working classes, broadly defined
as the 99%, in the mass media battles for hearts and minds in federal electoral
campaigns.
The scales are even more lopsided
if the terrain is one of violence. State security forces are armed to the
teeth, loaded with sophisticated surveillance technology, and many of their
handlers are salivating at the prospect of violent encounters with the
movement. If anyone
believes the state will show restraint in any serious challenge to its
authority, I suggest they review U.S. labor history, which was as brutally
suppressed as any labor movement in the western world, or the Civil Rights
movement in which many of the guardians of law and order used truncheons and
unleashed attack dogs on women and children, while turning a blind eye on
vigilantes who tortured and murdered activists.
This is a struggle that can be won
as long as the movement of the 99% accepts that broad-based support is fickle, should
never be assumed, and must be continually earned and organized. Lasting structural change can only be built from the bottom
up, a proposition overwhelming demonstrated by Obama’s victory in 2008 and his
administration’s subsequent failures, by creating new structural alternatives
to replace the corrupt ones we will help to topple, and by strategically
engaging the 1% on battlegrounds in which we can employ our superior
imagination and cunning.
