Home > From Occupation to Revolution
From Occupation to Revolution
by John Spritzler and Dave Stratman - Open-Publishing - Wednesday 9 November 20116 comments
There is no step the OWS movement can take that would have greater impact than to decide explicitly that its goal is revolution.
Transforming the whole society has in fact underlain the movement from the start. It is implicit in the movement’s profound commitment to democracy, to equality among participants, to sharing and support for each other. Why should the values embodied in OWS be limited to a few blocks in towns and cities across America? The movement’s refusal to focus on specific demands is an unspoken acknowledgement that the whole society has to change.
To make transforming the whole society its explicit goal would clarify the agenda for the coming years: a national and international dialogue about how to defeat the ruling elites and what a post-revolutionary society should look like.
If OWS takes this step, then folding the tents in the heart of winter (or losing them to police raids) will matter less. The revolutionary strategy can be carried out even without them. The movement can scatter and regroup as the situation demands.
What does it mean to make revolution the goal? Does it mean picking up a gun or smashing bank windows or attacking the police? No, it certainly does not. It means building on the foundations already established by OWS: equal and supportive relationships among the people and democracy in decision-making. The question is how to extend these to all of society.
Some believe that if occupiers hang on long enough, then the desired changes will happen. Others believe that if enough people get themselves arrested in civil disobedience actions, this will exert “moral suasion” (as Gandhi called it) on the rules and make them change their ways. Some think that if everybody can agree on a few realistic demands, that will do it. And some believe that electing different politicians will solve our problems.
None of the above actions can succeed, however. Any solutions which do not remove the ruling elite from power and create a real democracy offer only more of the same. Difficult though it may be to achieve, revolution is the only practical solution to our problems.
To declare its goal to be revolution would transform the OWS movement. OWS would have a strategic goal within which the movement can develop tactics and measure success. By declaring its goal to be to defeat the 1% and extend equality and sharing and democracy to all of society, OWS would gain a new level of consciousness and create the possibility for far deeper ties and participation from the wider community.
The chief elements of a revolutionary strategy are recruiting to the movement and spreading revolutionary ideas—that the ruling class has no legitimacy, that revolution is necessary, that it is possible, and that it is the only way to create a society based on equality and mutual aid and democracy. Tactics would emphasize communicating these ideas to a wider public and recruiting fresh forces to the discussion of how to defeat the elite and how to make a new world.
Every Occupation should become a base camp for spreading the idea of revolution and recruiting to the movement. Occupations should actively reach out to the larger community, as Occupy Boston did recently when it cooperated with Occupy the Hood and local people to stage a large rally in the heart of the black community. The rally focused on local concerns, especially police brutality, but put them in the larger picture of inequality in American society.
The OWS movement has already found huge resonance with ordinary people across America and the world. The now-famous sign seen at OWS, “The beginning is near,” touched on a profound truth. Millions of people nationally, perhaps billions worldwide, long for a world based on the values which OWS has expressed. There is no better way for OWS to unite itself with these aspirations for a new world than to declare revolution to be its goal.
How might the Occupy movement proceed to embrace revolution as its goal? Perhaps a Declaration of Revolutionary Aims or some such document could declare the movement’s determination to defeat the rulers and outline some principles on which a new society might be based: for example, economic production to fulfill human needs, not profit; a sharing society in which all who contribute would have equal access to social goods; decentralized government based on federated local assemblies. (Our essay, “Thinking about Revolution,” http://thinkingaboutrevolution.com/outlines what a new society might look like.)
No doubt people’s sense of social possibility will grow more expansive as the movement grows in self-confidence. The point now is to start imagining a new world and put fighting for it on the agenda.
http://newdemocracyworld.org/revolution/from_occupation-to-revolution.html
Forum posts
10 November 2011, 11:53
Listenning to T Chapman "Talking bout a revolution" while reading this text
http://youtu.be/SKYWOwWAguk
10 November 2011, 11:59
Excellent text, lucid political proposal. It goes to the deep roots and does’not stay at the surface of things happening now.
If OWS is affraid of revolution (whereas it claims to wish one) it will collapse, for sure, and , collapsing, will destroy so many NRJ and hopes and wills that it will be worst than ever before.
You cannot stay "in the middle" if you want to change society. It does not take (only) flowers and words and new alternative practices of gathering, living together and so on... It takes hard, tough, unlikable, sometimes even disgusting... moments, acts, words.
"society" is a strange word. Means everything and nothing. Society under feodalism is different fron society under capitalisme, under socialism. "Changing society" means changing the system. Means, may be, rather than RE-volution, E-volution, Volution (from latin word signifying "Will" in action) (as Damasio found it in his first book "Zone du dehors", "Zone from outside"). The question here is the question of WILL.
what do we WANT?
How shall we obtain what we WANT?
LL
11 November 2011, 06:47, by Amerikagulag
"We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed." - Thomas Jefferson
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." - Thomas Jefferson
11 November 2011, 11:35
Taking the power back and sending tyrants in working-camps should be a sufficient step for the moment ;)
16 June 2012, 17:05, by guest
The OWS movement came out of the financial fraud that has taken place in Britain, America and Europe from bankers and politicians in case everyone has forgotton. The PIIGS(portugal,Ireland,India,Greece and Spain) are really feeling the squeeze on their corruption and over spending. It seems most had a good time at its height but now its time to pay it back, there is rioting. Both sides are playing hardball. The corrupt bankers and politicians gave tax payers money (mostly to idiots) and many took it, for expensive houses, cars, and holidays. Then there was their children’s education and other emergencies(health bills) YES you took it BUT not as much as they(bankers and politicians) they got away with the lions share and left everyone else to pay!
Now nobody has a future only debt huh? every scam or scheme will have draw backs and cut backs so when they announce their next hair brain scheme(scam) all ears will be cock and all brains ticking over because they have a nasty habit of coming back with the same game -new name!!! bomb and bust, deregulation(thief) and breaking down of all controls and not one voice of desention in the whole assembly in any country.
If OWS is to stay true to its aims, it must stand firm on the financials, civil and human rights issues that have always plaqued everybody. Look how they handled the student protests and the rioters. The OWS peaceful protesters were treated the same!
The ones who still have jobs but struggling and poor, the ones sinking under their morgages and student fees, ones arrested during the height of the protests, the ones who have fought before and now their words ring hollow but not forgotton, the homeless, the young and destitute already, the old who in their day stood for justice and fought to keep it, anti-war, anti-nuclear, anti-corruption, anti-pollution, anti-privitisation, anti-poor governance, anti-stupid greedy people etc the list can be endless and needs fighting on all fronts everywhere at all times.
We don’t listen to detractors of truth (like Rupert Murdoch and his newspaper empire another agent of the state) Only people who benefit from people like him will sing their praises - NOT OWS!
The latin American countries under Chavez, and Fidel are doing very well and they have linked arms across the oceans to link with Iran, Russia and China who are quite frankly fed up with the way Britain and America behave and unfortunately has a bad history of doing so. People are waking up around the globe, so its not just about OWS they’d be very wrong and stupid to think so.
Is it wrong to name and shame the idiots in our societies, and what can be inflammatory if your at fault?
10 July 2012, 04:57
The more people think, talk and write about a real, global revolution, a revolution for all the world’s people, the more likely it will occur.
Or are we just collectively spinning some very old and tired wheels? Is the world wide web the political establishment’s largest steam valve for mass discontent, allowed to exist solely to keep the riff raff in line with just enough slack on the leash?