A Brief Response to "Why Occupy Wall Street Will Not Succeed"

The name calling that we are perpetuating in this forum attests to just how widespread capitalist cultural control extends and how it fragments our society into subgroups till the point when we loose our collective power.

What is interesting about Occupy Wall Street? It is a call for an open dialogue, and not just one centered on petty quips and debates over the best forms of political reform, but about asking ourselves what has capitalism culturally instilled in us as “proper dialogue” and “acceptable activism”.

It is first and foremost about inclusivity. Capitalist society assures that those in power stay in power by fragmenting knowledge and society into sub-disciplines and subcultures. This “movement”, as no other term has arisen to name it, is about breaking down the walls of our public rhetoric, of what we accept as “rational” thought so that we can benefit from the extensive wealth of knowledge that humanity has generated, but, since the rise of the post-renaissance, modern era, has been subjugated into culturally reproduced and therefore legitimized knowledge, and culturally marginalized and therefore illegitimate or “radical” knowledge.

        Allowing the cultural controls of capitalist society to exclude necessary fields in human knowledge from public conversation is as much of a tool of oppression as militarism or economic exploitation. In fact, it may be even more dangerous as it is not readily evident to most people who are the most effected by it. Disciplines of philosophy, idealism, utopianism, original Marxism, anarchism, communalism, syndicalism, primitivism, modernism, quantum theory, psychology, evolutionary theory, eastern thought, to touch only on the surface level, have all been excluded from the discourse by those who turn the wheels of our globalizing world, and the reaffirmation that these fields of knowledge are somehow separate. They have been excluded from the conversation so that classical economics and the rationalization of irrationalites become the dominant tools of rhetoric; anyone not versed in this conversation is immediately excluded as a radical (another example of a term that has been used to illegitimate large sects of our society), or not holding the institutionally certified credentials to be a validated participant. The point is that these are not “radical thoughts” (in the negative definition that is connoted by that label).

There have been systemic changes in history, collapses of empires, experiments with other systems that have failed, and there is something to be learned from them all. It may seem like an impossibility standing up against such a large web of systemic control, but that is another mechanism that is intrinsic to capitalist cultural control that prevents any challenge to the system from generating any momentum. Just because capitalist society has perpetuated itself to a state of dominance does not validate it, and what we are learning is that there are other, natural systems that are not compatible with this system and if things don’t drastically change shit will hit the fan. 

Why does Occupy Wall Street deserve attention? In many ways it is a hope that there can be a new form of revolution. I’m not arguing that Occupy Wall Street is a revolution waiting to happen, rather that it is merely an instance in what we need to envision as a multitude of smaller global revolutions that are interconnected. It doesn’t matter how small one individual explosion of discontent is, but instead how globalization can be used as a tool to fight. We can pat ourselves on the back for the end of slavery, the civil rights movement, womens' rights movement, public discourse on gender, and all the other “victories” within the system, but within all these the tiniest bit of liberty is won -- just enough so that a real revolution doesn’t take place.
Capitalism is complex. It involves intricate systems of cultural control that are often imperceptible, but to anthropomorphize it for a moment, it knows what it’s doing. It will keep handing us tiny advances to placate our temporal frustration as we bicker with one another about who has a right to speak out against it. Rights aside, we all need to put aside our narcissistic viewpoint and realize we are making one another into enemies.

            Here is my take away message for this Internet forum in a few more than a few sentences. This argument, this polarization, this antagonism, this subjugation, this fragmentation, this selfish want to be the one to bring about change is exactly what capitalism utilizes as a tool to keep itself alive. We are all guilty of it, but we shouldn’t feel guilty about it. It is part of an oppressive system. As easy as it is to throw mud at each other, pick and choose who has a right to speak out against an exploitative system, who really and truly is the most marginalized, who has slept a night in the gutter, we have to fight against this tendency because that is exactly what leads to paralysis. It’s hard and it takes the will of every individual to push against the selfish tendency to want to BE the bearer of real change, when really we should ALLOW for change to happen regardless of an individual hand ushering it in. Life is circumstantial and we shouldn’t ostracize one another for that, but rather recognize that our anger stems from the same focal point.
            Let’s allow ourselves to learn from one another and not just speak so we can feel better about asserting our viewpoint as right. Students perpetuated this conversation, and let’s remember that we have knowledge that is constructive and we can educate one another outside of institutions, not because we are Students (or those who are legitimized by the system as the holders of knowledge), but because we are questioning our systems and ourselves. It’s not about being the first to recognize it, or the most vocal, or the right one, but about not working with capitalist control to smother any attempt at real, systemic change.

Peter