The Trouble with the 99%.

There can be little doubt about the importance of the Occupy movement to our recent political discourse. It succeeded in getting a significant amount of media attention and it forced politicians of all stripes, including those on the right, to acknowledge the danger that severe and rampant inequality pose to our social order and structure.

This ad hoc movement inspired many and managed to put its issues on the table to a sufficient degree that politicians of both the Social Democratic and Liberal brand, as well as some on the Far Right, have attempted to bask in its refracted glow. That none of them offer the slightest threat to the system that Occupy apparently opposes appeared often lost on the participants, however.

Naomi Klein, no less, told them that they were the most important political movement in the world. And, perhaps for that moment in time they were.

And yet a narrative, to be lasting, has to have longevity in its meaning and analysis, even if that meaning and analysis are distilled down to basics or essentials. What I mean by that is that this analysis has to be, basically, true and that it also must have transformative solutions to offer and not just injustices to expose.

Last week I approached the issue of what I felt were the organizational flaws with the Occupy idea. And these flaws are really troubling and fundamental. In my opinion they essentially doomed the movement tactically from the start. This does not mean that what happened was not inspiring, significant or important. It simply means that the methods could not, in even the short term, succeed in any systemic sense.

I also touched on the problem with Occupy's basic "Us vs. Them" 99% analysis. And it is to this I wish to return.

There is little doubt that the 99% slogan became the movement's greatest asset in terms of propaganda and mass appeal. It resonated and enraged and inspired. It motivated and was basic enough in its narrative that it could not help but be picked up by the media.

The message, from Occupy Wall Street and others can effectively be distilled down to this blurb from one of the websites:

"We are the 99 percent. We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we're working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything. We are the 99 percent."

With a variety of small or minor variations, this became the movement's primary ideological message.

But, the message is false. And this, in the long run especially, matters.

Occupy, of course, began in New York. As a Canadian, interested in the Canadian political context I will discuss the slogan in our statistical terms, though, as can be easily shown, this would apply equally in the United States.

There is no question about the grotesque growth of social inequality in the West. That the destruction of the post-war social compromise by the forces of reaction and neo-conservative ideologues has led to alarming levels of inequality has, as previously mentioned, even been accepted by much of the Right lately. That this push towards a State Capitalist system, where corporations are bailed out for their misdeeds while workers and much of the middle class, but most horribly (and least mentioned) the underclass and retail working class, are made to pay for the subsidization of the wealthy and the said bailouts, is real is not open to serious dispute. It is not the focus of this article. That this obvious fact has been ignored and even reinforced by the austerity agendas of all governments, regardless of political stripe, plays into an overall sense of hopelessness and reinforces reductionist and absolutist, totalizing ideologies and political views. The inherent danger when democracy becomes seemingly impotent.

But the trouble lies in understanding that undue corporate power and the rise of a new "Gilded Age" ultra-rich power elite does not mean that all of society, the media, politicians, governments, the courts, etc...are beholden to this elite, nor, more importantly, does it mean that the "99%" share common interests and that they can work together, in any meaningful sense, to rectify the problems as raised.

It also does not take into account the basically dangerous aspect to a world view like this...a world view that is both disingenuous and bourgeois in its desire to eclipse real issues of class, management, Social Mandarins, and the true underpinning of inequality with a slogan that appears to embrace "everyone", in the classic American way, but, by doing so, embraces many, if not most, of the basic enemies of working class and Socialist or anti-Capitalist politics, and embraces them in a way that lets them entirely off-the-hook for their political, economic and social actions that have helped greatly to lead us to this point.

In the last available stats the top 1% of tax filers in Canada made a minimum of $169,300 as individuals. They made, on average, $404,500.

The 99% is everyone else.

While normally I am loathe to use personal example, here is a case where, for the sake of simplicity, I will.

In the very late 1990's I worked as a manager in a transportation company. I did sales and public relations, but I had managerial control over the office and ground staff in many cases. I made, at the time, $45,000-$55,000 a year, depending on performance bonuses. That would likely translate to $55,000-$65,000 a year now, more-or-less.

This would place me, at the time, well within the 99%,(and,I can assure you,I am there still!) But were my class and social interests, were I to follow those, the same as the phone workers or couriers at the company? Really?

More basically, almost everyday I walk into my local Shopper's Drug Mart. The young woman at the cash, with two kids and a husband I have found out works at a non-union job site, makes, at most $12-13 an hour. The main Pharmacist who works there, who has a college education, makes in the range of $50,000-60,000 a year. Are their class interests the same? They are both in the "99%".

This view of society, while assuaging the guilt of the children of the bourgeoisie, would have you believe that they are "victims" of the system in the same way the children of the working-class, the underclass and the retail working class are. That may make them feel good about themselves, and aid in their often reactionary analysis, but it is pure American nonsense from a society that denies the very existence of social class, despite the fact that even Rick Santorum admitted that the US has less social mobility now than Europe or Canada.

There is no 99%. It does not exist as a meaningful class or political entity. There are the remnants of the old industrial working class, the underclass, the retail working class, the office level lower middle-class.

Then there are the managerial and middle-managerial class, the small business owners, professionals, media workers (who are often said to be tools of the 1%), academics...etc...

Their class and social interests are not the same and a movement seeking real transformative social change and seeking to actually confront capitalism as a system needs to understand this. Working and fighting in the interests of the former can be an effective way to really confront inequality. The latter's interests are, almost always, in perception or reality, running counter in whole or in part to this change.

What it comes down to is this; according to the 99% view someone who pays minimum wage while pulling in $100,000 a year on their business, someone who works at a corporate office for $125,000 a year, someone who has a $100,000 a year dental clinic, an $80,000 a year professional, a $65,000 a year middle manager, a $55,000 shop owner, etc...are all part of the 99%.

I am sure that they like that idea.

But beyond the problems of class analysis that this presents, it also plays into the worst aspects of pseudo-conspiratorial and reductionist ideas.

I will begin by saying that our courts, governments, media, economy, and social forces are not, actually, ruled and governed by 1% of the population. That is a ridiculous idea that does not withstand even the slightest true scrutiny. It is a good way for social democratic parties or liberal politicians like Obama to get out of their complicity in the creation and maintenance of the present ideological hegemony, but the reality is that we live in a very complex society where even supposed "agents" of the 1%, like the Toronto Star, for example, will suddenly endorse the federal NDP. Part of the plot? Or is capitalism a system and not a slogan and are it problems a fundamental outcome of this system and not a perversion of it?

Looking back at the quote from Occupy above consider this:

"Shrewd and calculating, their hearts are filled with lust for power and consumed by greed for money. Rich and aristocratic, they despise Christians and they loathe the lowly working class. They control the world's press and virtually all our banks and financial institutions. They screen and choose who America's leaders will be and even determine who will run on the Democratic and Republican Party tickets"

or..."crony capitalists were the ones that benefit from contracts from government, benefit from the Federal Reserve, benefit from all the bailouts. They don’t deserve compassion. They deserve taxation or they deserve to have all their benefits removed.”

The first is from anti-Semitic Bilderberg conspiracists and the the second is from the fanatically right-wing Ron Paul.

Surprising how "class" rhetoric devoid of class content can sound "left" wing.

The fact is that these kinds of reductionist slogans are dangerous because they imply, by definition, a simplistic social order and simplistic mechanism of systemic social control and they thus offer simplistic and often neo-utopian (in the Marxist sense) solutions.

Once you accept the 1% idea, that means the other 99% is innocent, so to speak. It is entirely analogous to notions that imply that "good" common people are perverted or led astray by an almost hidden overclass that shapes the political and social agenda by meeting in Colorado once a year or, more often, by being a part of a named or unnamed, but implied Jewish conspiracy.

This small group of financiers, industrialists, etc...have cheated us all of our democracy and stolen our futures and rights. That we and others may have played ourselves a role in it, in how we have voted and what we have sought politically and socially is, of course, largely left out. It absolves us of blame other than as being dupes of "their" media or victims of forces beyond our control (and these forces, by the way, were not and are not beyond our control).

We are the 99%, after all. We share common interests, shopkeeper, stock broker, cashier, factory worker, academic, single mother, dentist, stock boy, manager, minimum wage worker...our commonalities outweigh our differences because we share a national, democratic or popular narrative....and we have a very simple common enemy no matter our actions or own divisions, divisions outweighed by our unity in struggle against this greater enemy.

Familiar at all?

But inequality, at root, is not an aberration of capitalism, it is a function of capitalism. While, in large part with the willing and active complicity of large sections of the middle class and traditional industrial working class, the assault by neo-conservative politicians and parties on the gains of the post-war social compromise have led us back to social inequality at levels akin to those of the "Guilded Age" of the 20's, the inequality inherent to capitalism never went away. And it won't, without changing the fundamental nature of capitalism's economic relations. As the reversing of the economic aspects of the social gains of the 1945-1980 period clearly shows, cosmetic changes,while they have a real impact on people's lives and on our social cohesion, can be undone by shifting the terms of the ideological debate, which the Right has done rather successfully. The debate has been so successfully shifted that all major political parties in North America accept the fundamental premises that led us here.

This was not a conspiracy, and it was not done by the 1% and their "agents", though they have been its most pronounced, though by no means sole, beneficiaries. It was done by a political movement that stayed true to its principles and objectives, even when confronted by serious setbacks and even when their ideas were at first fringe ideas, and who remade our society by pursuing these objectives relentlessly in the political and popular arena. The degree of this achievement can be seen in relatively small ways, such as the widespread belief in the rhetoric of tax-relief or the amazing contempt that many who would most benefit from them hold for trade unions, or in more significant ways, such as the fact that if one were to propose the social and economic platforms of, say, the Trudeau Liberals of 1976 one would be regarded as an ultra-radical. Not a single political party is even proposing that we go back to the levels of taxation and interventionism that existed in 1980, let alone proposing actual systemic change.

And the reversal of this ideological victory can only, in any meaningful sense, be accomplished by doing the same thing on the Left. By building a coherent,long-term and ideological challenge to capitalism as a system in the streets, in the popular discourse and, most importantly, in the political arena. It can only be done by advocating for democratic socialism, and doing so consistently and regardless of electoral setbacks and short term opinion polls. "Winning" on grand rhetoric to then basically implement the essence of your opponent's agenda when in government,or to more "humanely" or "fairly" manage austerity or "growth" is a hollow victory indeed.

It is so hollow that one need only reflect on the fact that the march towards where we are now has continued, without serious detour, despite different shades of government, whether Liberal, Democrat or New Democrat. The victory of this ideological hegemony is so great that the NDP in Manitoba in the last provincial election, for example, did not dispute the widespread media reporting that there was little, in terms of economic policies, that separated them from the TORIES! In fact,they seemed rather proud of their record as "sound fiscal" managers.

But this is not a cause for despair, it is a cause for an ideological counter offensive that does not paint the 1% as the problem or cause of inequality, a rhetorical flourish that any populist politician, right or left, can embrace, but that recognizes that capitalism itself is the cause. They are simply its effect. While the 1% certainly has an entrenched and direct political stake in the continuation of the present state of affairs and the continued corporate power of State Capitalism, they are not the only people who have this stake, perceived or real.

However, as the effects of the victory of this ideological offensive become clear, decreased economic and social equality and democracy, decreased oversight of corporate activity, increased environmental degradation, rampant and soulless community destroying commercialism, the loss of social stability, union jobs, industrial production, and so much more, the seeds of the turning of the tide are sown.

Occupy, in a very original and inspiring way, has put these problems back into popular consciousness and political discussion. Now it is to us to build a class aware, avowedly socialist political force that will present real transformative solutions and alternatives in the coming years and that will work to see these policies enacted and implemented whether in or out of office. It would also, perhaps most importantly, work to popularize anti-capitalist ideas.

When we have won the broad ideological struggle against the ideas of both capitalism and neo-liberalism, we will have won the key struggle in ending grotesque human inequality and social injustice.

In the Wake of Occupy: Why Socialism?

I wrote this almost three years ago, after the start of the 2008 collapse and the beginnings of the bailouts. I am reposting it as an argument, in short form, that the solutions to the problems being raised by the "Occupy" movement lie in the attempt to create a socialist society and that the only way to do this is to fight, directly and forcefully, for socialism.

So, why Socialist?

Living, as we are alleged to be, in the post-ideological, post-political era, why should we continue, as a movement, to fight for socialism? Given the abject and apparent failures of supposed "socialist" regimes, given their appalling human rights abuses and their obvious inability to provide a comparable standard of living to that enjoyed in the capitalist bloc, why would one persist in the belief that a socialist society is not only possible but is necessary?

The left, as much as the right, has a past to account for. In our zeal to defeat inequality and injustice many on the left have supported governments that enforced the worst forms of inequity, through violence, denial of free speech and intimidation, that the working class can face. We have been willing to turn a blind eye to the reality that workers in many of these supposed "socialist" societies had (and in some cases have) less freedom and power than their brothers and sisters in capitalist countries. We have confused the power that flows from the idea and goal of worker self-government and worker ownership with the false god of state power and oppression. Millions of dead later it is enough to make one embrace the notion that the "triumph" of free enterprise is a positive thing and that the only alternative to the anarchy of unregulated capitalism is the unregulated anarchy envisioned by the post-modernist anti-globalisation crew who eschew government power altogether in the mystical hope that we can create a fair and equitable society for all without, presumably, a government of any kind.

And then there is apathy...the sad and sorry mind set of so many that draws a line from work to home to whatever shopping outlet they feel will fulfill the empty promise of a consumer driven lifestyle. Or, alternately, the many who feel that "politics" is somehow boring or facile and that their own personal devotion to sports, fashion, television, materialism, mysticism, or whatever else is presented as "individual" choice by the purveyors of the latest trend the supposedly individualistic herd is to embrace this week.

On the left are those who feel that devotion to the ends is enough. Given the supposed resistance of the public to socialism why bother? Why not just abandon the idea and fight for social justice in general, cause by cause, letting labels drop? Ideology is irrelevant if we can get get results!

But it is just not true.

Socialism is the idea that we can create a society whose primary objective is to generate economic and social justice for all by fostering conditions of equality in which each of us is allowed to thrive and pursue the dreams and personal objectives that they wish to, regardless of the fate of their birth, colour, gender, etc...It is the idea that every individual is entitled to the self-worth of personal actualization that is ONLY possible when we create conditions that allow for an equal starting point. It is the principle that we have the RIGHT to be who we are, to love who we want, to express ourselves as we wish, without the state, the church or the arbiters of community values having the power to stop us. It is the sense that we should, through the democratization of the economy, allow for workers to play a greater role in running their companies and that the government, OUR government, should represent the interests of the vast majority of citizens ahead of the corporate few.

It is, at its heart, when removed from the base detours of the dictatorial left, the strident affirmation of individual and personal freedom in the face of the oppressive emptiness of the hollow pseudo-individualism of the "free market".

Beyond this, though, socialism is not just another political label and it is not just another corrupted idea, supported by the usual crew of political junkies and wanna-bees who can't get a date on a Saturday night.

The great victory of the supporters of the capitalist system over the last quarter century has been their ability to create cynicism and apolitical attitudes in large segments of the population on the basis of the misguided and ultimately anti-democratic idea that politics is largely irrelevant and that the markets and inexorable economic interests of business will dictate social outcomes regardless of the will of the people. They have been aided in this by the actions of supposed left governments, such as Bob Rae's in the 1990s, that promised the world but delivered little, as well as by the willing accomplices in the destruction of the social solidarity net of the post-war compromise in the parties of the "centre-left" such as every single provincial NDP government in Manitoba & elsewhere, Clinton's Democrats, the Liberal Party of Canada and the Blair led Labour Party in the UK. They have also been aided by the clever promise of the dramatic economic growth of the post-socialist era which delivered record profits and wealth at the expense of any notion of fair or reasonable distribution.

Yet this same era of growth corresponded with a technological revolution that allowed the vast majority of the citizens of the developed world to at least adorn themselves with one or another of the various trinkets that we have come to associate with "living well" whether it be a Playstation, a cell phone, a digital camera, an ipod or whatever other device we all now desperately "need".

Having successfully conjoined the politically reactionary onslaught against the post-war gains of workers with the remarkably wide spread distribution of token items of apparent material success and the total defeat in the North American media of voices of dissent and representatives of labour, an entire generation of people has grown up thinking that politics is either irrelevant or has nothing to do with their day-to-day lives or desires.

What this apparent ideological victory has failed to do, however, is to eliminate the basic flaw in the engine of unregulated capitalist growth, that of inequality. Quite the opposite. This era of unprecedented economic vitality has seen ever greater income disparity and the increasingly immoral and repugnant expansion of child poverty and a lack of public services while the wealthy bask in the added personal surpluses brought on by disgraceful tax cuts. While the average worker sees their job security and income decline in ever more non-unionized environments the corporate elite can rest assured of massive government or business buyouts in the event that they do a bad job running their companies! While the bitter sections of the disenfranchised rant about immigrants or those on welfare, the wealthy exist and thrive on government backed bailouts or "development" handouts delivered to their already overburdened bank accounts without any requirement for them to fairly treat their employees or to even pledge to keep their businesses in the jurisdictions that gave them them the cash!

Socialism, it seems, is just fine for the well-to-do.

The real Socialist alternative, the actual dream for a better future, however, will never truly die for the very reason that, at heart, the human spirit cannot endure such appallingly unfair and egregious inequity without many millions of people feeling that there must be a better, a fairer and a more just way to create and distribute wealth. The human spirit cannot abide the disgrace of six-year olds going hungry or facing homelessness in nations that hand tens of billions of dollars out to corporate entities. The human spirit recoils at the violence inherent in the reality of our present state of social insecurity created by supposedly progressive liberals and democrats who, throughout the '90's, actively participated in the vile attacks of the political class on the the unemployed, unions, health care, welfare, public spending, education and more and who now stand rudderless and stunned in the face of the collapse of the very system that they engendered.

So why Socialism?

Because Socialism is the voice of the poor, the workers, the middle class, the disenfranchised, those who wish to express themselves without the oppressive weight of church or state, and those who stand against the terrible toll that economic instability takes on people and families. Socialism is an antidote to apathy and the irrelevance of a life that sacrifices security, justice and freedom for material reward. Socialism is not just an alternative, it is the only true alternative to our present course, it is a vision of a better world that does not rely on hate, fear or religion, but instead takes the needs of human beings as its starting and ending point. It is, at its best, as Samuel Gompers once said, a process that never reaches a conclusion because the human condition can and will always be made better by people themselves. It is a spirit of constant yearning to make a world with peace, equality and democracy for all, regardless of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or economic starting point.

It is a liberating and wonderful way to look at ourselves and other people.

And it is a way to say you not only care but that you truly want to do something about the terrible social and economic conditions faced by hundreds of millions of fellow citizens around this global community we live in. Something systemic, something total, something real.

This can only happen, will only happen, despite all the rhetoric of the free market devotees and the neo-anarchist anti-government "left", if we elect Socialist governments with a broad and coherent agenda for the creation of a Socialist economy. Governments that are willing to accept setbacks and defeats on our path forward, but who, even when out of power, never cease to fight for the overhaul and reinvention of our society. Governments that will place the interests of us all against those of capital.

These governments, that I truly believe we can and will create, are why I proudly call myself a Socialist.

Afterword:

Three years later!

While, predictably, the anti-electoral and political left, the neo-anarchists and psuedo-Marxists, see the Occupy movement as a triumph in and of itself, it can only be one if its supporters now seek to achieve actual results in a political and social context. Unless you believe that the revolution is at hand, and, frankly, it is not, then one has to think that a political agenda and coherent movement has to flow from this for it have anymore meaning than the countless similar moments that have come before.

At the time, when this was published in 2008, a month before the Ginger Project had its first meeting, I felt this could be done in the NDP, I no longer feel that this is the case. Especially after the last federal and provincial campaigns.


In the end, the only way to fight for a socialist government is to do just that. Fight for a socialist government. And this cannot be done in the context of the NDP. Nor can it be done with endless discussions about the need for a party or movement that will truly confront neo-liberalism. No kidding.

This can only be done by actually working to build this party and to fight directly for this ideology.

And it is the only way that any of the best aims of the Occupy movement, especially those of confronting inequality and corporate power, can ever be acheived.