#OccupyWallStreet - Call to Action

The problem that I see is that these people do not understand that which they seek to oppose. Thus they offer no programme and they do not understand what they need to do. They are swimming in the water.

As an example, in the article you cite the author suggests that the people can make a difference by withdrawing their money from the banks and putting it into credit unions. I do not think that is true. It is predicated on the idea that banks now are as banks were originally. But we are very far from that situation. The banks no longer take money from depositers and lend it at interest to borrowers: there is an element of that, certainly. But it forms a very small part of the banks' business, so far as I can discover.

As we have seen in other threads, banks make money in other ways. They extend credit to corporate borrowers, as seen in the care home stuff I have been writing about. But not care homes alone. Banks own hotels and all kinds of other businesses or they help others to do so: and the profit comes from asset stripping and manipulating the market. A great deal of the "money" does not exist and never has existed. That is in part based on deposits: because they multiply what they lend, then for every £100 they actually have they lend 5 or 10 or some other multiple of that at interest. This has been true for a very long time: it is based on the idea that there will not be a "run" on the banks: that people will not demand their money all at the same time. And banks in the 19th century frequently collapsed when that happened: it did not happen for many years because the regultions prevented it: but those regulations have been diluted or removed. And this is a very spotty leopard: so Northern Rock was an old fashioned collapse, so far as I can tell. It was the first practical demonstration that we had turned the clock back nearly two centuries: and the outcomes were the same as they were then.

In this country there is a debate about the proposal to "ring fence" the retail arm of banking: that is to separate the business of taking deposits from you and me (traditional banking) from the investment arm. The banks are howling with fury and threatening all sorts of dire consequences: all of which tends to suggest that that business is important to them. It is. But I do not think it is important for the reasons which would arise from a traditional banking model. Rather it is important because it is the reason they get bailed out. If we the public did not stand to lose our money when the bank failed we would let them fail. That is what they seek to avoid, so far as I can see.

I do not understand finance, I freely confess. I am trying to learn. But I do know this. The bankers were despised and hated in the 19 century and this is demonstrated in cartoons of the time and of the early part of the last century. The were shown with top hats and £ signs sticking out of their waist coats. They were known to be corrupt and greedy and to be destroying the economy and the lives of ordinary people during the Laissez Faire period. The people were not fooled then: though it took a long time for us to react. The same vested interests were there then as are there now. It is fashionable to say it is different this time because of the technology and the speed with which transactions are made: but I see no real difference: perhaps quantitive, but certainly not qualitative.

We took real measures to change that situation after the great depression and perhaps a little before that: and they worked. For 50 years bankers could not do what they do now: and for a couple of generations the change was reflected in the public perception of bankers: staid, reliable conservative figures who were boring but trustworthy. We came to respect them. And we forgot that there was nothing inevitable about that. We forgot it is not in their nature but in the regulation of their activity. And so we allowed the destruction of those regulations. The results are predictable. Effectively we handed the control of the money supply over to the banks from its rightful place in the hands of government: and we did so on the curious grounds that private industry is more responsible than government. That is frankly astonishing.

www.basicincome.com/basic_banks.htm

We cannot change that situation by actions on the small scale: it is attractive to call for people power but it cannot be effectively wielded that way. We do not understand the problem and we do not have the direct power which withdrawing our money implies: this is a political problem and the solution has to be collective. And this is where I part company from Anonymous and their ilk. I like the idea of educating the people and getting them to act together: but they are trying to fudge the need for collective action with the power of the individual: and that won't work. At least that is how I see it.

That is true. I suppose you are correct that different ideas will insert themselves and it is part of the process of discussion which will eventually lead to a programme that is workable. I suppose I agree that the state, as currently constituted, is at one with the corporations, and together they form a power structure. But I see no alternative to "the state". For me the state has to be a strong power base which can limit the corportations' activities in the interests of us all. It is not inevitable that it will become identical with them, as seems to have happened now. If what anononymous wish us to understand is that the state has divorced itself from the people it represents that is fine: but there are those who seem to take the view that government qua government is the enemy: and that I do not believe. I think that democratic government was a method for limiting the privilege and theft of the "haves": they have subverted it, as one would expect. They have done so with our collusion and that puzzles me. But it is so: and that is the perennial problem of democracy.

To the extent opposition to that outcome is to be expressed it must come from the people and in ways Anonymous suggest, probably. So I am not disagreeing with that. But I do think that it is important that people understand that local action is not an end in itself: and that is what is missing. Presuming I agree with the aims of freedom and the definition they give I see no bridge between that demand and the local action they call for. How is the kind of protest they ask for to be translated into increased freedom? Arguably it is founded on the notion that one does not practice for freedom, one exercises it. And that is true. But freedom really does require cooperation and the definition they give does not satisfy me because it seems to trumpet individualism: and that is the water I meant.

When they say " If you agree that freedom is the right to communicate, to live, to be, to go, to love, to do what you will without the impositions of others, then you might be one of us." I have doubts. Not because I object to anything in the words; and it may be I see an implication which is not actually there: I hope so. But "impositions of others" is a very wide phrase and I am not sure what it encompasses. Is it an imposition that we should feed and clothe and care for children? It certainly feels like it some of the time. Should we be free not to bother? It is utopian to imagine that does not require imposition: some of the time it does. Similarly, is it an imposition that I am sanctioned if I choose to steal your computer? I think it is: but the prohibition against individual theft is not one I necessarily wish to live without. And it is a consequence of scarcity: in a situation of unlimited resource theft is unnecessary: but we do not live in that world

Yes I like the stacking: and in particular the inclusion of stand aside and outright disagreement: that is an idea I have long supported and if it can be implemented it represents a real development of democracy, in my mind.


Also the people's microphone: interesting that a movement which relies on technology can also function with none.

And I am actually pleased it is slow: because it needs to be slow. I think that it is a beginning which may give people a platform to refine the ideas and the way forward. It is maybe pessimistic on my part, because people are quite used to instant results and I wonder if they can sustain when there is a really long term need for action: but this seems to be accepted by those who are there. It may be that America has further to go than other countries who have launched mass protests. But even that is uncertain. America had a very strong people's voice in the not too distant past. The portrayal of it by the mainstream media is no more accurate than the portrayal of my own country and the ideological hegemony is neither so deep nor so wide as they would like us to believe. The very fact that people can see they are not out of step with everyone else in hating this is surely positive in building a consensus.

ETA: you say it is inevitable that any movement will adopt a Big Word: maybe you are right. But if I concede that (and I am not happy to do so, I confess) on pragmatic grounds, it still matters which one is chosen. Perhaps they chose "freedom" as a way to claim back the word from those who have distorted it. But the fact remains that it is distorted and I think we are all affected by that distortion. I think it shows in the manifesto you reproduced.

If we need a big word then why not choose "Equity" or "Equality"? Maybe that does not play so well now: it played ok in France in 1789, why not now? Because it actually makes plain that the person espousing it means to curtail the "free market", maybe?

I had not heard about this. Which is unfortunate, because I try to keep my ear to the left. It's good to hear that there is a movement which echos the famous speech by Mary Elizabeth Lease. At least in their views expressed here, I am with them. I will have to investigate them further to see what I can do in my remote and highly right-wing region of the country.

I had not heard of it either until Vninect drew it to my attention: so I am playing catch-up too. I think that is quite interesting in itself. I am not particularly ill-informed, I don't think. And I have an interest in politics. Yet if a thing is not reported in the mainstream media it seems I miss it. That is not a great surprise: the suppression of alternative opinion is clear and I am aware of it: but it does show the power of that. And the limits of the online community media, much touted as a counter to that distortion. That source of information will grow, perhaps. But we are a long way from an equal voice for all.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/1...ngry?CMP=twt_fd

Guardian report: comments few and unsympathetic in part

http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2011/09/21/...tter_socialflow

Seems the police in NY are very well educated, legally.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/...ests?CMP=twt_fd

Unhappily there seems to be a little more coverage now that there have been some ugly incidents.

This protest is not huge but nonetheless the lack of mainstream coverage in America so far is disturbing. Michael Moore has spoken about this on TV, and points out that far fewer people demonstrating for far shorter periods do get reported in the american news media. If that is correct then one cannot help but ask the question why this is not true of this action. Did every editor of every free press outlet indpependently decide that this is not news? There will perhaps be a tempation to believe that "government" issued censorship orders: but even if that were true, it need not be successful because America has strong laws on freedom of the press. We blind ourselves if we think that censorship can only come from government: "news values" can do the job too.