Front Page Reviews & AIR

Note from the Editors:

This past week, while discussing the possibility of Chris Madin writing a column on Occupy Wall Street, we realized that there was some disagreement about the merits of the OWS phenomenon.  So we decided to try out a point/counterpoint format.   Adam Caress agreed to join Chris for a back and forth email discussion on the topic, which is printed below.  Obviously, the two of them don't represent the totality of opinion held by the various Mule staffers or writers.  But since we know that a lot of our friends and readers are having similar debates about OWS, we thought this point/counterpoint might be a good intro to a discussion here on the Mule, and we hope you will join in with your thoughts and comments.  

Adam gave Chris the first word…

Chris:  Let me start off by acknowledging that the entirety of my knowledge of OWS has been derived from media reports with various biases, and I understand that each individual protestor’s motivations will be much more complicated than I can understand.  That being said, I just don’t get what’s going on here.  I mean, I get that things are pretty crappy in various ways and there’s a lot to be mad about.  And I think the original overarching issue was economic inequality generally, which is fine; but it looks to me like a lot of these people showed up to protest first, just for the sake of protesting, and then tried to figure out why they were there.  Some early protestors were unable to articulate any particular motivation except that they were there to exercise their right to protest.  It looks like a lot of later arrivals heard a free-form protest was on, grabbed their issue, and joined the party.  In the last few weeks I’ve heard various targets: student loans, war, wall street (obviously), government spending (both too much and not enough), hunger, junk food, meat, fossil fuels, homelessness, injustice (generally), corporations, oppression (generally), Republicans, Democrats, NYC’s Mayor Bloomberg, capitalism (generally), and Fox News.

Granted, most of these things are worth being mad about to one extent or another.  But you can’t just protest “everything” and expect to be taken seriously, or actually accomplish something.  To the extent public protests have had any effect at all historically, it’s because a group of people felt passionately about an issue, got together in a display of solidarity, and took a public stand (i.e., the Freedom Riders, Vietnam, etc.).  They targeted a specific set of laws, practices, or beliefs and made specific demands for change from specific actors.  They helped shape public opinion and pressured their target (usually the government) to take action.  But when you have thousands of people sleeping in tents and yelling slogans about whatever it is they are mad about, and making unarticulated demands on vague, undefined entities, I find it confusing.  What exactly do they want?  Are they asking us to shut down the government?  Close the stock market?  End capitalism?  Since I can’t figure out what the protestors are trying to say to me, I have a hard time buying it.

Adam:  I see where you’re coming from.  Not only is OWS protesting a wide variety of issues, there seem to be precious few solutions offered (renegade Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi has a few suggestions for focusing the troops, but he’s not exactly revolutionary leader material).  But unlike you, I think that’s OK.  At least for now.  There are a lot of systemic problems with both politics and the economy right now, especially where the two intersect.  What I find refreshing about OWS is that people are finally willing to acknowledge those problems and show their dissatisfaction.  Yes, they are dissatisfied about a lot of different issues, but there are so many problems that I sympathize with their difficulty focusing on only one.  And I think it’s telling that so many people with so many varying grievances are attracted to the same movement.  It’s obviously struck a nerve with a lot of people.

To me, all the various issues stem from one basic issue: the fact that our government is so beholden to corporate interests.  The deregulation of the banking industry was spearheaded by politicians whose campaigns are funded by banks.  Same with the bank bailouts.  The corporate food lobby has so much power that the huge food corporations basically get to pick their own insiders to regulate them.  Same with the FED: Who is the FED accountable to, besides banks?  Certainly not voters.  Of course the bank bailouts were the most obvious example.  After the major banks had engaged in a number of wildly speculative (and sometimes overtly fraudulent) behaviors, the government responded by bailing those banks out (twice!) with taxpayer money, the same taxpayers who they had screwed in the first place.  And congress approved the bailouts, even though their constituents overwhelmingly opposed them – in some cases more than 50-1.  Why?  Because they don’t answer to the voters, they answer to their campaign contributors.  And large corporations contribute a lot more money than individual voters.

To me, this isn’t a problem with capitalism; this is a problem with a particular facet of our capitalist system.  What is the single most important factor in getting elected to public office in America?  How much money you can raise, plain and simple.  And that, of course, leads to all kinds of problems.  Does that mean we need publicly funded elections?  Maybe.  If there’s another solution, I’d be open to that as well.  But what OWS needs is a leader, someone who can show them that all of their frustrations are actually the same frustration, that all of the impotence they feel is the result of the fact that they are – actually and systemically – politically impotent.  Maybe they won’t get that leader.  Maybe the powers that be will co-opt OWS just like they co-opted the Tea Party.  But even if that happens, the fact that these populist movements keep popping up gives me hope, hope that people will eventually be frustrated and focused enough to actually change things, to take their country back from a political system that no longer has their interests in mind, a system that is instead beholden to corporate interests.

On a side note, how awful is it that the Supreme Court has given corporations all the same rights as people – essentially saying they are people.  Corporations are not people.  They are made up of people who already have individual rights.  Giving a corporate entity the rights of an individual seems ridiculous to me…

Chris:  Great insights.  When you put it like that, I feel like I should be down there with them.  The problem is that out of the thousands of people protesting across the country, no one is putting it like that.  That may be how you interpret the movement, but everyone is interpreting it however they want – because as you pointed out, there is no leader; and there is no unifying message.  Further, the issues that are legitimately raised are very, very complex and cannot be adequately addressed with a slogan (your analysis above won’t fit on a placard, unfortunately).  For example, the thing that I hear articulated most is economic imbalance between the haves and the have-nots (which is obviously a real issue).  And under the umbrella of economic imbalance, you find general protests against the usual suspects: Wall Street, capitalism, and corporations.  Yes, executive compensation is outrageous and often incentivizes bad behavior – that should be protested, as should some of the behaviors of corporations.  But corporations and capitalism in general?  Guess who owns any major publicly-traded corporation?  It’s not some cackling fat cat with rings on his fingers.  It’s millions of Americans, including teachers’ pension funds, mutual funds, Social Security, your parents’ IRA, and your 401(k).  Companies are legally and ethically obligated to maximize their profits because those profits get distributed as dividends to people like us who own them.  This is what makes our retirement accounts grow.  If companies started “putting people ahead of profits,” they would violate federal and state laws, our investments would become worthless, and the economy would truly implode.  Then we would be out there protesting that these so-called corporations blew all our money and didn’t act in our best interests.

My point is that these issues are much more complicated than they are portrayed, and I’m not sure free-form protests are the most productive way to address them.  Some starry-eyed writers have lionized these protestors as the embodiment of democracy, hallowed symbols of the essence of America’s greatness, fighters for truth and the essential rights of society.  Aging baby boomers see these protesters and get nostalgic for their own activist days.  But the difference is that in the 1960s they were protesting specific, articulable things like racism and the Vietnam War (and they were protesting them one at a time).  And while Vietnam protests and civil rights sit-ins did shape public opinion on these issues, and I’m sure they pressured the United States government to address them, these examples are unique because they were so unusual.

“Protesting” in and of itself is not the essence of democracy or America.  America is a Republic (also known as a Representative Democracy), which is different from a democracy.  In our Republic, the American people have the right to vote and elect leaders of their choosing, who will then enact and enforce the laws that govern us.  This is the mechanism by which we shape our society – by electing leaders and participating in government.  Protesting may raise awareness of certain issues and shape society’s opinion, but again, OWS has been thus far unable to articulate any particular message other than that they are mad as hell and aren’t gonna take it.  Their efforts would probably be more productive if they got involved in government (like running for or supporting candidates for public office, or serving on city boards and committees).  This is how we tackle complex issues like how our government is run and how it is beholden to corporate interests.  No amount of protesting is going to make city, state, and federal governments suddenly stop gorging at the corporate/special interest trough.  What it will take is grueling, time-consuming, hard work by legislators and leaders that we elect because they share our beliefs.  I realize this is not as sexy and thrilling as nationally-televised protests, but in my opinion it’s the way to make a meaningful difference.

Adam:  I’ve spent some time at Occupy Asheville and I know my views aren’t necessarily shared by the majority of the people at OWS-type events across the country – otherwise I’d be actively protesting with them (or out there with a bull-horn attempting to rally them behind a common cause).  But my point is that just because you don’t agree with everything they’re saying or protesting doesn’t mean you can’t find hope in OWS.  And I disagree that voting for people who agree with them is the answer.  What if people don’t have credible candidates to vote for, ones who aren’t bought and paid for by corporate interests?  What are they supposed to do?  Wait for a focused protest movement to come along that specifically addresses their every frustration?   There are so many symptoms of the current systemic problem that that’s just not going to happen.  And I’m glad people aren’t waiting around.  I just hope someone is able to rally them against the root problem, which is the government’s financial obligations to the corporate lobby, not corporate behavior itself.

To address your example, I have no problem with a corporation giving its officers big bonuses.  They’re a private corporation and that’s their call.  The problem most people have is when they do it with public money.  Which they shouldn’t have in the first place.  The answer isn’t to ask corporations to self-regulate.  I agree with you – they never will.  The answer is to punish them when they break the law and perpetrate a fraud on the public.  But rather than putting the heads of the banking industry in jail when they crashed the economy, the government rewarded them with upwards of $1.5 Billion.  The problem is that the politicians owe their positions to the corporations who gave them the money that got them elected in the first place, and they have no incentive to cross them.  Until that issue is addressed, all of the other issues are moot.  To my mind, people shouldn’t be occupying Wall Street, which has no incentive to change.  They should be occupying Washington and asking their elected officials to stop accepting Wall Street money.  The best thing that could happen to this movement is a pledge by the hundreds of thousands of OWS protesters around the country to support only candidates who refuse corporate money.  That would be a coherent and potentially effective message.  “No corporate money” looks pretty good on a placard.  Maybe a March on Washington that unites all the OWS protesters from around the country.  I’m getting fired up just thinking about it.

Chris: It’s hard to disagree with anything you’ve said.  I don’t know what people are supposed to do.  I guess they could run for office themselves, but as broken as the system is, I think it is true that no one can succeed in politics without selling themselves to corporate interests.  Washington is the appropriate target of OWS’s ire – it is the government’s complicity, regulation, and deregulation, and its close ties to industries, unions, and special interest groups that have allowed many of these things to happen.  But Washington is not their target – corporations are (see OWS’s official statement); which I think demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the issues and solutions.  I’m not interested in being an apologist for Corporate America – but let’s stop and think about this for a minute.  Every piece of clothing worn by those protesters, every placard, every sharpie, every piece of food they eat, every tent they sleep in – are all made by the corporations that are being vilified.  Most of these protesters work, have worked, or will work for corporations.  Industry is what made America a first-world country; corporations are the ones that employ everyone.  Clearly “corporations” are a great scapegoat – but not all corporations are the same, and not all are equally worthy of being vilified.  If you want to protest the banking industry, great.  If you want to protest government, great.  But if the best you can do is a general statement followed by twenty-three unrelated complaints (united only by their attribution to “corporations”), then I think that’s kind of a fail.  I don’t see hope there – I see chaos.  It’s the law of entropy – I sincerely doubt that this thing will become more orderly, articulate, and coherent as more and more people join in.

Questions: Why do you think corporations are the big target here, while the protesters seem to have largely overlooked government’s complicity?  Does OWS legitimately expect Corporate America to change its ways of doing business in response to their protests?  Does Corporate America have any incentive to care at all?

Adam:   Hmm…  I didn’t realize that OWS had an “Official Statement” or that it exclusively blamed corporations rather than the government.  It’s unrealistic to think any corporation in existence is going to bow to all those grievances on its own.  It seems like the only way to “solve” the issues laid out in the Official Statement would be via either 1) a Communist-style state takeover of all corporations or 2) a French Revolution-style violent overthrow of the whole system, with CEOs on the guillotine.  Needless to say, neither of these outcomes would be desirable.  Luckily, none of the people I know who are backing OWS want either of these things.  And almost all of them blame the government, at least partially.  So I question the authority of the “Official Statement” to speak for OWS (also, the fact that I’ve never heard of it before – it hasn’t been mentioned in the numerous reports on OWS I’ve read – tends to downplay its authority).  My question is this: when I organize Occupy Washington 2012, are you with me?

Chris:  Yeah, I guess I can’t vouch for the “official” nature of the statement, but it does appear to sum up pretty much everything that’s going on there.  I agree that neither communism nor the French Revolution are particularly appealing solutions – and I don’t know what the solution is.  But I will say this: kudos to the kids for giving something a try, regardless of whether or not it has any significant impact in the long run.

And if you’re marching to Washington, absolutely count me in (as long as my wife and I can park our tent next to yours and we all play a little hacky sack during our downtime).

Adam:  Deal.