Kicking Off

Paul Mason's book Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere is a sort of left wing version of Tom Freidman's Flat Earth hypothesis, creating linkages between new information technologies to world political development and ongoing struggles. He did a great deal of travelling and interviewing and research and the book is getting lots of buzz. I really need to read more before commenting on his basic argument.

What I do want to look at is some things he said in a recent interview concerning the Occupy Wall Street movement.Looking to history he points out:

"This movement is content to live within capitalism, to create it's space within capitalism, but the problem is, capitalism might be about to go into a level of crisis that doesn't allow you to do that. This generation of protesters could easily suffer the fate of social democracy."

In our local Occupy discussions about a vision going forward it is clear that a necessary starting place is consensus on WHERE WE ARE NOW. I've harped on this before but everything depends on your definition of crisis. If you believe we are experiencing a crisis of corporate corruption and de-regulation you will turn to re-regulation. If you believe the corruption infects deep into politics/governance, you will want to see the courts create remedies to check the legislative-executive branches. If you think the crisis is the total capture of democracy including the judicial branch and the media, you have to look at even broader systemic or structural remedies including the hegemonic role of capitalism. We aren't there yet.

We know starting in the 1890's those who thought the system could be reformed, such as Eduard Bernstein, started a deliberate 40 year program to build an electoral base. "The movement is everything," he famously said, "the ends are nothing." He could not have seen the World Wars coming that would destroy his project but that's the thing about historical development, it is not smooth or seamless, it is uneven. The revolutionists of Egypt do not have the luxury of such "ends are nothing" thinking. Do we?

There are literally hundreds of programs out there now to "build a better capitalism". Even as Fukuyama abandons his own theory, a huge majority accept liberal democratic capitalism as "the end of history". Mark Fisher explores this in depth in his book Capitalist Realism. Solidarity economy. Blue economy, Steady state, Slow growth, no growth,New Economy Great Transformation perma-culture Transition Towns have an obvious appeal and to the degree they can present themselves as "radical alternatives" they will draw folks away from true anti-capitalist critiques such as Parecon.