From another perspective the brilliant and already sorely missed new publisher and executive editor of Laissez-Faire Books, author of It’s a Jetsons World: Private Miracles and Public Crimes and Bourbon for Breakfast: Living Outside the Statist Quo, the Jeff Tucker covers the political economy of #OWS.
The Difference Between OWS and Anti-Vietnam Protests
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The Occupy protesters imagine that they stand in a great tradition of American radicalism, willing to stand up to the man and risk arrest in order to achieve their goals. The most obvious case of such a mass movement would be the anti-war protests of the 1960s. They started small and grew and grew until they became mainstream and actually affected a dramatic policy change. The U.S. military pulled out of Vietnam, implicitly conceding defeat and mourning the long history of calamity.
But consider the gigantic differences. The Vietnam protest movement had a clear goal. It wanted to end the war. It had a clear enemy: the politicians and bureaucrats who wanted the war to last forever. It had a clear message: this war is wrong. It had an intense motivation: the protesters were terrified of being drafted to kill and be killed. This is what standing up to power is all about.
So far as anyone can tell, the Occupy movement has none of this clarity. Ten thousand articles have been written on these people and there is still no consensus concerning what the issue really is. The goals of the movement are posted here and there, but not everyone among the protesters agrees with them. The motivation is just as amorphous and varied: unemployment, sinking job prospects, sinking incomes, blowback from the bailouts, the desire to slum around in a decadent sort of way, and the destructive urge to trample down the pea-patch of life itself.
Worse, from my point of view, is that the movement isn’t really standing up to power. It is standing in for power to urge that the state take on more responsibilities and control people’s lives even more than it does already. They imagine that they are demanding human rights, but the main agenda as listed in public websites amounts to a list of ways for the government to violate human rights, or at least intrude aggressively upon them.
Raising the minimum wage, for example, amounts to a limitation on the rights of workers to negotiate their own employment contracts. The minimum wage says: you have no right to offer less for your services than the state gives you permission to offer. Thus, the minimum wage not only promotes unemployment; it restrains the human right to associate on any terms of a person’s choosing.
Likewise, the demand to nationalize health interferes with the rights of doctors and patients to negotiate their own contracts. The demand for tariffs interferes with the rights of people to peacefully trade with anyone from around the world, and effectively entrenches the nation-state as the only permitted geographic range of economic associations.
The imposition of new taxes takes people’s property. This is property acquired through their own labor which is then forcibly taken by the state to use for political purposes. This demand is a prescription for further impoverishment.
The push for refunding domestic infrastructure denies private entrepreneurs the opportunity to use their resources and talents to rebuild on a for-profit basis and in a manner that that can actually be maintained. There is a reason that state infrastructure always seems to be crumbling: it is built by the state with all the inherent economic irrationality of most state projects.
The real problem with the OWS movement is its political naiveté. The protestors imagine that by attacking free enterprise and the capitalist system they are upholding the rights of the common man. The exact opposite is true. The only real alternative to free enterprise is an economy owned and administered by society’s most ruthless and cruel elements, who always seems to gravitate toward statist means.
If OWS is successful, it will wake up to a world that is lorded over by federal bureaucrats and jack-booted enforcement thugs. The entire world will be run like the Post Office, the TSA, the IRS, and the Customs Bureau. This has nothing to do with freedom and nothing to do with human rights.
For this reason, the OWS protest is not really a threat to the establishment. So far, its message has been that the state needs to be truer to itself, that the worst aspects of both the Democratic and Republican platforms need to be implemented with a vengeance. This is a movement the state can come to love. Indeed, the White House has drawn closer and closer to this movement, saying that Obama “will continue to acknowledge the frustration that he himself shares.”
Again, the contrast with the Vietnam protests of the 1960s cannot be starker. The White Houses hated these people. The politicians of both parties were terrified of what “people power” meant in those days.
If we had the equivalent movement as it relates to economics today, it would be calling for an end to the Fed, privatization of education, privatization of health care, the right to global free trade, an end to state robbery of persons and their businesses, and a right to keep what you own. In short, a truly radical protest movement would be calling for a consistent and authentic capitalism as a corollary to the peace agenda in international politics.
Now that would be radical.
Regards,
Jeffrey Tucker
{ 60 comments }
So you begin by complaining that the Occupy movement lacks clear, specific objectives, and then proceed to spend your article arguing about some very specific objectives of the Occupy movement? I don’t think that works….
“[motivations for occupy include...] the desire to slum around in a decadent sort of way, and the destructive urge to trample down the pea-patch of life itself.”
Where are you getting this from? I mean, seriously?
“This is a movement the state can come to love. ”
Which is why we’ve seen so much police violence at peaceful, legal Occupy protests?
Because protesters of any kind are also a threat to the State as far as the vast majority of the public views any such prolonged behavior and disruption as a lack of confidence in the State’s supreme power and authority and its ability to enforce its own laws. But you must distinguish between seemingly contradicting short term and long term interests for the State here. Strategically, this movement is pro-state in all of its form, which is why the major aspects of the political system will align themselves with this movement very strongly.
“Which is why we’ve seen so much police violence at peaceful, legal Occupy protests?”
That is the welfare-warfare state turning on itself and taking the showdown public. Police and the protesters both represent two different versions of welfare recipient. OWS represents social-welfarists who seem more open to libertarian ideas when it comes to ending war, the drug war, etc. The militarized police are part of a bureaucratic-welfare spectrum. Then there are the corporate welfare recipients, who are perceived by Occupiers to have more power and get more than their “fair share” of the loot. It’s like a two-headed monster eating itself.
That said, it’s still very disturbing to see the police state use relatively trivial ordinances as an excuse to pepper-spray and violently suppress free speech. As I mentioned in a comment below, this is an opportunity for libertarian thought.
“Where are you getting this from, seriously?” Wow, thats a tough one, it couldn’t have anything to do with with the theft and vandalism that seems to follow those “green” OWS socialists everywhere like a cloud.
I think arguing that one of the *motivations for* OWS is a “the destructive urge to trample down the pea-patch of life itself” is very different from saying that theft and vandalism has accompanied some Occupy protests. If that was all he had said, I would have agreed. But saying that destruction is one of the motivations for protesting is something that really requires far more proof to be anything other than a rhetorical trick.
It is no secret that the OWS protesters are anti-capitalism. It is no exaggeration to state that the majority of OWS protesters share a very strong urge to tax the rich and redistribute wealth (via brutal Statist means, no less). They want an oppressive controlled highly regulated strangled economy. In other words, they have a very strong motivation to (effectively) trample down the pea-patch of life itself.
If this rhetorical device by Jeffrey Tucker made you think about the consequences of OWS actions, it may have achieved its purpose. Otherwise, it’s just casting pearls before swine.
You can argue that the effect of OWS is destructive, that the goals they seek will ultimately achieve a worse economy, a totalitarian state, etc. But motivation and effect are distinct. Tucker is saying that destruction is a motivation/cause for OWS.
Perhaps an analogy: left-socialists would probably say that libertarian goals will lead to social destruction, but that is not equivalent to saying that libertarians are motivated by destruction, that they desire destruction. Quite the opposite.
Aaron, we get it. You didn’t like Mr. Tucker’s turn of phrase. Okie dokie.
In truth OWS is very familiar. It is the same as the socialist protests in Europe years ago. It had no purpose but to disrupt to give politicians an excuse to seize power. It was orchestrated by a group of agitators who knew exactly what their purpose was, chaos.
The true goals of OWS are:
Prevent the Tea Party from being a serious force in the 2012 election.
Disrupt Tea Party rallies before they can get started.
Prevent Republicans from speaking.
If prevention fails disrupt Republicans so that their message is tainted.
Provide a scapegoat for the Democrats so that they do not have to take any blame for the economic collapse.
Bottomline is that OWS is Kristallnacht Chicago style.
Do you sit around listening to stupid rantings of Rush, Hannity, and Glenn Beck? That’s the only thing I can think of because what you say is insane clap trap. There are no clear OWS goals that are intended to for smearing and domination of republicans, who by the way, suck as legislators and people.
The Tea Party will prevent itself from doing anything meaningful. What used to be a splinter from the anti-war Ron Paul movement got co-opted by the gop hacks and turned into what I like to call “neo-con lite.” They say a few good things about spending, but none of them are interested in cutting SS, medicare, medicaid, or the police state and warmongering. They are just more of the same, with louder, shriller voices. A lot of people are tired of hearing from them, and so am I. Their only use is as obstacle to bipartisanism, besides that, they are worthless.
If there is one thing to fear about OWS is their ignorance on economics and their lack of focus. With something like that going on, it’s very likely they will be subsumed by some kind of union apparatus. And then you’ll have pressure for even worse labor laws than we have now. On one hand, they sense the system is somehow rigged. It is. But it’s not, like OWS claim, because of capitalism, it’s because of socialism, mercantilism, and fascism.
I really think they are clueless. They’re been fed the government BS propaganda in public schools their whole lives. They were told to go to college, in whatever major they chose, and run up a bunch of that “good” education debt because it will pay off in the end with a great job. They now see how this was all a bunch of garbage given to them by teachers ( secure-at-any-cost jobholders) who don’t know much more than they do. Their instincts tell them they have been wronged, they’re simply so misinformed and confused by their state upbringing that they must now go after the villains, the evil capitalists. The whole thing is sad, really.
It’s crony capitalism that the OWS crowd doesn’t like and the fascism of the banking system. When their many different messages are filtered through the mainstream media it appears to be only “anti-capitalist” in nature. It’s not surprising that some people see it this way when the hard-left predictably makes an appearance. But here in Portland I’ve also seen “End the Fed” signs at Occupy protests. It started as a leaderless “social movement” and in many respects it still is. But the hard-left has filled that leaderless void, at least as far as mainstream perception is concerned. Once again, libertarians are caught napping and just writing blogs. Mr. Tucker is correct that their message isn’t 100% clear, but that doesn’t mean there still isn’t an opportunity for libertarians.
If the Occupy movement can adopt an anti-corruption platform instead of the disjointed messages, they will be much more respected. An Occupy member’s page http://owwc.gu.ma , supporting a business owner who lost millions of dollars to a corrupt officials, seems to go a long way in starting down that road.
frest,
“Anti-corruption” campaigns are also tools of increasing statism. It may be used by some in political internal authority to solidify its power against yet other internal competitors or growing outside threats. Simultaneously, “anti-corruption” campaigns may be used to pacify public outcry, and in such a case, scapegoats are found, and the first purposes of centralization and solidification are served. Communist China, the UN, and the American Progressive Era epoch hold many examples of such statism. Those in power want power first, then they can both benefit from corruption and the day-to-day functions of state (monopoly force). Agree?
Of course, outsiders may use “anti-corruption” to gain power too.
The OWS movement is like the Menendez brothers complaining that they are orphans.
Barack Obama promised “Hope and Change”.
As P.T. Barnum used to say “there is a sucker born every minute”. They fell for this, expecting a life on easy street. Now after 3 years listening to the prattle of Marxist/socialist professors, they find themselves without a job (they don’t even show up in the unemployment statistics) and in debt. The only sign of change is in the tin cup of the street person next to them.
The fact of the matter is that Senator Barack Obama voted for the bailouts and TARP. Wall Street bank-rolled the democrats and Obama.
So is the solution to Obama, four more years of Obama? The OWS crowd should prepare themselves for more change. The French used to say – “the more things change, the more it’s the same thing”.
This time around it is probably going to be – the more things change, the worse it is going to get.
“Be careful what you vote for – you might get it”.
Forget OWS….
The real question is…where is Jeffrey Tucker?
Why is Justin Ptak acting as if Jeffrey was never part of Mises.org? The bio introduction is strange…it’s as if Jeffrey Tucker is being reintroduced by rewriting his work history. (Apparently, he was never part of the Mises Institute.)
Do you really believe those of us who have been coming to this site for the last several years (in my case since 2003 and posting regularly, until recently, since 2009) haven’t noticed that Jeffrey (and others) are gone.
Jeffrey Tucker was mises.org. He was its webmaster and editor. He was the passion and energy behind the site. A site that at one time had a thriving and intellectually vigorous blog with numerous minarchists and anarchists like myself commenting and having discussions with each other. (Hard to do these days since they eliminated the ability to be notified via email of follow-up comments…funny that disappeared about the time Jeffrey stopped posting.)
But the real insult is this…why has there been no explanation (a blog post or press release) on Jeffrey Tucker? Why would I donate my hard-earned money to an institute that has no respect for its constituents?
Since Justin had to post Jeffrey’s article (which you can find posted at a third rate site called Whiskey and Gunpowder – now there’s a name that will encourage those on the fence to join the movement…might as well call the site Dope and Tofu) I have to assume that Jeffrey is no longer allowed to post his own articles at mises.org.
Sorry for the rant…this has been on my mind for sometime now. For those of you who are longtime Mises bloggers…I would like to hear from you. Perhaps you have info and can shed some light.
For those of you who are new and don’t know what I am talking about…I’m afraid you have missed the golden years at mises.org
And for those at the Mises Institute who have insulted others and me by pretending nothing has happened…
I have two words… F#@k you!
Well, I don’t check in every single day, but I hadn’t noticed that Jeffrey and others had gone…where have they gone? Who’s gone? What’s happened to mises.org?
I guess you missed the words “already sorely missed” in my first sentence since you think I am acting as if Jeff was never a part of LVMI. It was Jeff himself who wanted a quiet exit.
As for news about Jeff’s exciting new opportunity see:
http://newsroom.agorafinancial.com/tucker-laissez-faire-books/
My apologies if you do not like the Whiskey & Gunpowder blog. You may also read the article in its entirety here:
http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Mises-Economics/2011/1122/The-difference-between-OWS-and-Vietnam
Or, here:
http://dailyreckoning.com/the-difference-between-ows-and-anti-vietnam-protests/
Justin,
I apologize if it sounded like I was attacking you and in my initial post… I wasn’t. But since you brought it up…
I am not sure how one is to infer mises.org or LVMI from “already sorely missed” when your sentence clearly reads “…the brilliant and already sorely missed publisher and executive editor of Laissez-Faire Books…
OMG…Justin… I finally figured out what you’re talking about…no offense but that is a horribly written sentence. Here’s how it should read:
…the brilliant and already sorely missed editor and webmaster of mises.org has now taken a new position with Agora Financial as publisher and executive editor of Laissez-Faire Books. (By the way, you misspelled executive.)
Justin you’re right. There is no pretense or “whitewash”…just extremely poor writing.
Needless to say, there should have been a proper blog posting of Jeffrey’s departure so that others could have expressed their appreciation for his time and effort.
Well, I didn’t think I had to remind anyone around here of the contributions that Jeff has made to Mises.org or the Institute as a whole. And, I guess I took it for granted that people in liberty circles knew of Jeff’s departure and new position. It really hasn’t been a secret as verified by the LFB YouTube video and the Agora Financial press release that I linked to.
Thank you for pointing out my misspelling of executive though. Obviously no offense was taken.
I hope you can respect Jeff’s decision to move on quietly and not write a blog post announcing his departure.
Have a great day!
Justin,
I want to thank you for showing me respect by replying to my comments. And for the record, I think you’re a very good writer. Even I have days where the words just don’t come out right.
Justin, one last thing…do you know why they eliminated the ability to be notified (via email) of follow-up comments?
Many of us post here to improve our thinking and writing. Without the email updates, it makes it very difficult to hold a conversation or follow the conversations of others.
Thanks again for your time, and I hope you have an enjoyable Thanksgiving…
I have no idea as this is the first time I’ve heard of any change to the notification system. I will look into it.
Have a great Thanksgiving!
At least Mr. Tucker didn’t get disappeared like N. Joseph Potts. Now that was a dawn raid in an unmarked car.
Makes it sound like they’re whacking people or something. Is this the online version of the Godfather?
http://goo.gl/KTHoi
Well, I don’t share all of the “F#@k you!” and conspiratorial insinuations, but I’m not sure how Jeff Tucker’s exit could be “quiet” without rubbing (probably thousands of) people the wrong way. Nothing at all wrong with Jeff moving on and doing something else, but it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence when people just disappear with no explanation at all, at the same time that the site content kind of diminishes somewhat. (I actually don’t entirely mind the fewer articles and day-old-reruns – I don’t have an hour+ to read websites per day, but that’s just me… )
Anyway, why not just a simple blog post explaining changes? People do care about such things. I figured he got busted again for running stop signs and was in Guantanamo now.
Especially since he was such a MAJOR part of this website! How’s about a goodbye blog post or a “I’m leaving, but will still poke my nose in now and again” blog post?
Something smells fishy here.
Maybe it’s none of our business, but then just say it, don’t try to whitewash it or cover it up like some dishonest bureaucratic organization.
I don’t know anyone that is trying to whitewash or cover anything up, but I appreciate your opinion. Feel free to email Jeff and ask him for a goodbye blog post, no need to worry though as it is not goodbye. He is still working with the Mises Institute as a consultant and as far as I am concerned will always be a part of the family.
dagnytg, thanks for bringing this up. I had been wondering about Mr. Tucker too.
Mr. Tucker was with Mises.org since 1995 (the very beginning) (Source: Gary North). He was (among other things) the public face of mises.org.
And one fine day, we find obiter dicta, that he has been “purged”. A little more decency please!
I think Agora Financial is a good opportunity for Jeffrey Tucker and a very smart move by Agora. I can’t think of a better person for the job. He will be missed here but it’s still very easy to read his work. He leaves a good legacy at Mises.org regardless of how or why he left. Good luck to him.
Dear Reader,
Please consider endorsing and participating in this event.
Thanks ,
Kenn
Dear Mr. President,
There is a very large demonstration being planned for January 20th, 2012 at the Federal Courthouse at 700 Stewart street in Seattle, – and at every Federal Courthouse in the United States.. There are many groups organizing and “gearing up” for this demonstration. I will be promoting and advertising it. This “occupy movement” has only just begun. I suggest you figure out your plan of action and response; The rules of engagement; – Need a way better understanding of what is going on; – than during WTO in Seattle. Treat the people like they are the enemy, and they will become it
I feel the occupy movement does have a basic underlying message; Stop letting money decide political elections; And regulate corporate lobbying (and all lobbying) making it a public forum. Right now lobbying is mostly two old white guys sitting across from each other in an office. “They” have probably worked with each other or went to the same school; And “they” have promised you a job when you get out of politics, — tripling your present salary!. The “lobbyist” used to be a “politician”, it worked for him!. Who owns who? – That’s a “Person-hood”.
January 20, 2012 – Move to Amend Occupies the Courts!
Move To Amend is planning bold action to mark this date — Occupy the Courts — a one day occupation on Friday January 20, 2012, of the Federal Courts, including the Supreme Court of the United States and as many of the 89 U.S. District Court Buildings as we can. (I am inspired by Doctor Martin Luther King who said; “a true revolution of values”, … “there comes a time when silence is betrayal”., “people are not gonna be silenced”.). Move to Amend will lead the charge on the judiciary which created — and continues to expand — corporate personhood rights.
Please Sign the petition to amend the Constitution for revoking corporate personhood at:
movetoamend.org
It’s Time to GET MONEY OUT of politics
Bailouts. War. Unemployment. Our government is bought, and we’re angry. Now, we’re turning our anger into positive action. By signing this petition, you are joining our campaign to get money out of politics. Our politicians won’t do this. But we will. We will become an unrelenting, massive organized wave advocating a Constitutional amendment to get money out of politics.
Please sign the petition!
http://www.getmoneyout.com/
http://open.salon.com/blog/kennspace/2011/10/28/corporate_occupation_of_the_united_states_1
This, even if successful, still leaves concentrated political power in these so-called representatives and the vast state apparatus. So, no thanks.
Get money out of politics?
I’m sorry, you seem to misunderstand the point of politics, government and the state in general.
The point is money. Money is its raison d’etre.
Your proposal is like saying they should take sound out of the music industry. They should take the whole winning-and-losing thing out of sports.
The State exists to force people to do things they don’t want to do. The State exists to steal and enslave. That’s its purpose and function.
This is a “root of all evil” problem, it seems. The problem is not that money corrupts politics. Politics is inherently corrupt because it is always ultimately based in force. Money is not based upon force, but rather voluntary cooperation. The problem, then, is that politics corrupts money. You have it entirely backwards – It’s time to get politics out of money.
Nicely done.
There have been numerous attacks on the ows movement. They suggest that they are rapists and murderers. They complain that the movement has no goal and then go on to make up their own goal for the movement and then attack it. The way I see it, big money has captured the country and the world. Government is the only thing that can stand in its way. The answer is not less regulation and oversight. I know laisez faire sounds good, but, it is just darwinism. The strong will dominate the weak and that is what we have to stand up to.
“The way I see it, big money has captured the country and the world. Government is the only thing that can stand in its way.”
Government is the means by which “big money” has captured the world, do you not agree? I mean it is the only way; “big money” has no means to do so on its own and thus they buy politicians, write their own laws, manipulate the system to be anti-competitive in their favor, etc.
So what you’re saying is the solution to this problem is to give government more power?
Do you see the circular logic that’s at the root of the criticisms of OWS?
Indeed, if the problem is that “big money” has gained the coercive power of government (by wielding their evil influence over our innocent little politicians), why would the solution be to grant government yet more power? Why do we think the results would be better?
Since almost all of the OWS crowd lacks a coherent concept of The State, Power, and Market, they won’t be able to come to any type of solution or consistent direction, either.
Hey wait, that sounds like a book that’s available for free on this site!
http://mises.org/resources/196/Power-and-Market-Government-and-the-Economy
Check it out, OWS fans.
Wrong. The political means of doing things is much closer to biological competition since politics is aggression; predatory power. The market is the best means that humans have to fight against ‘survival of the fittest’. Cooperation through voluntaryism is far more productive than all other forms. This is a logical conclusion of economics.
Heh, they love darwinism except when they are behind old Charles’s eight-ball, eh?
Let it be declared that ‘it’ be referred to as “Charles’s Eight-Ball” for here after. Haha.
It’s actually much simpler than this! Yes the strong will always dominate the weak. Yet in this example, the state is the biggest baddest species. Competitors in a free market win by being cheetahs instead of tortoises. To some extent it’s genetics, but an idle, sleeping cheetah still won’t get anywhere without a hunter coming along to mount it on his wall. Remember that the state cheats natural selection by using elephant guns! The state is the only entity here that effectively can cage and kill at will, so darwinism is finally curbed.
Sorely missed? Did something happen to Jeff Tucker? Did he take a new job or something?
Well, you obviously do not read the comments, dg-money.
See here: http://newsroom.agorafinancial.com/tucker-laissez-faire-books/
No, obviously I did not.
For the record, smarmy replies like this won’t win you many fans. Maybe if you had explained better in your introduction this question wouldn’t have been asked twice. I check Mises and LRC daily and this is the first I’ve heard of his departure.
Best of luck on your future assignments. I don’t plan to read any of them because I think you are an asshole.
-Davis
Wow. Nice people, eh?
Double wow as I thought I was being helpful.
Maybe you thought you were, but you came off as condescending in your responses.
“I guess I took it for granted that people in liberty circles knew of Jeff’s departure and new position.”
Not everyone is inside those circles. All I noticed was that Mr. Tucker was no longer posting to the blog. I find it odd that someone who was deeply involved with the LVMI for so long disappears without giving a hint to its loyal followers. Just a little blurb would have sufficed. I don’t think a tear-jerking goodbye letter was needed, but at least something to keep people from wondering what happened.
Happy Thanksgiving.
I’m with Otto.
Have any of you actually hung out at an OWS site? Y’all (Jeffrey Tucker included) sound like you’ve been getting all your info about the phenomenon through the usual news sources. When I’ve visited, the crowd god knows has been largely dreadlocked college white kids, but it hasn’t been hard to run across Ron Paul/End the Fed types either, as well as more mainstream types.
As for the “what’s the program?”criticism — hey folks, OWS isn’t a political philosophy, let alone a political party. And they aren’t running any candidates. It’s a protest movement. They’re protesting misbehavior on the part of our elites. They’re demanding that our elites behave better. That’s about the gist of it. What’s your problem with that?
It’s kinda hard to ignore the obvious call for redistribution in the “99% / 1%” rhetoric, isn’t it? And so long as OWS, generally, is asking for government to take any action whatsoever, (instead of simply removing its involvement in banking and other business,) OWS is indeed a political movement. It is attempting to utilize politics to achieve some social goal, which is exactly what got us where we are today. Lots of well-meaners, lots of corrupt bastards, lots of opportunists, lots of nitwits – all grasping at those levers of power. Just an ounce more poison is the cure, or what?
Jim, OWS is better understood as an attempt to step outside routine politics to complain about the process. If it were trying to “utilize politics to achieve some social goal,” it’d be trying to obtain power within the Dem or Repub parties. It isn’t doing that. It isn’t trying to obtain power in the voted-into-office sense at all. (At least not yet. God only knows what direction it’ll take in the future, of course.) If your point is simply that any attempt to affect the political process is by definition political, well sure, but that’s such a general statement as to be not very helpful. Whatever the individual signboard the news cameras choose to focus on, the general organizing principles behind OWS are anarchistic. It took me all of a couple of hours to pick that up, simply from the way the OWSers behave, carry on, and conduct themselves. There’s a lot of mutual education going on, at least here in NYC, and a bunch of very smart, very well-versed-in-protest-strategies and well-versed-in-anarchistic-philosophy people helping OWS along.
I notice that Lew Rockwell has expressed sympathy for OWS …
It’s hard not to, really.
If the monied class used government to take over the world we can use it to take it back. I think unionization might help a redistribution as well. What other choices are there besides force?
New here, Rodney? What other choices do we have?
Start here:
http://mises.org/resources/3793/Inclined-To-Liberty-The-Futile-Attempt-to-Suppress-the-Human-Spirit
I am not suggesting that we legislate away the abilty to become wealthy or anything like that. Americas GDP has doubled since the seventies but wages have not. I would call that a redistribution. It didn’t happen by accident and the people know it. It used to be the policy of the government to ensure full employment. Now, they employ a buffer stock of unemployed to keep wages at a non accelerating rate of inflation. Some would say blame the government. I say blame they people who bought the government.
I would agree with the idea that there are those who have “bought the government”. Yet, since this is the case, how do you expect the government to be able to fix this problem?
Moneyed interests will always sway political power so long as there is political power to be “bought”. The solution to this problem is not to increase political power but abolish it instead.
“It had a clear message: this war is wrong.”
All the wars we have going on now are wrong.
“It had an intense motivation: the protesters were terrified of being drafted to kill and be killed.”
Now that intense motivation is absent, almost nobody even notices that the US has been at war for the past decade or so.
It’s probably not a bad guess that the mass movement of the 60′s was essentially about the draft.
The US is under the thumb of a shadow government. All policy innovations and developments of significance, both foreign (mainly the wars) and domestic (Homeland Security, the Patriot Act, Police Brutality – in short the descent into police state fascism) ultimately appeal to 9/11 for justification, and so rely on treason.
When everything is broken, floodlights are required, not focus.
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