Occupy Salem And Occupy Portland Give Me a Lot To Think About---Part Two

Yesterday I posted the first part of this article and I tried to use it to direct readers to a very important article in the People's Voice and to raise some of the questions Occupy Salem and Occupy Portland are leaving me with. I attempted to do this by talking about my own experiences as young person on the left in the early 1970s. My first article was, to be sure, somewhat idealized, but it also captured the feeling of the times I lived in.

The movements I mentioned in my first article did not succeed for the most part. The reasons for this lack of success are complex: a lack of leadership and the absence of a true vanguard political party, internal divisions, the hangover of McCarthyism, police and government repression, the lack of a unified program at the end of the Vietnam war, the lack of a working class base, the racist attack by the right on the civil rights and independence movements (Puerto Rico, Azatlan, the Black Belt, etc.) and the recession which hit hard in 1975 are to my mind the main reasons why our movements did not go further than they did. Still, this gives those of us who were active then something to say to the occupation movement today. We also have much to learn from this new movement.

I want to repeat the themes I raised yesterday in a more concise and less narrative form for the new movement.

First, socialism is the only solution to the problems capitalism has created. The occupation movement has raised and exposed all of these problems in one way or another. We need to project the socialist alternative as the only practical alternative. The occupation movement, or a portion of it, will come to this view in its time.

A socialist movement in the US will not be a movement of the 99%. The working class, which is the only class capable of building socialism, is not 99% of the US population, and within that class even fewer people work and are exploited at the points of production and distribution. These people are the logical leaders of the socialist movement and the revolution needed to get us there. A revolution depends more on political will and the model and hope of an alternative culture than it does on majorities and minorities. The working class neeeds to lead the other oppressed social classes and groups to socialism.

The main part of my article, however, was concerned with some movement basics. No social movement can grow without theory and clear thinking, organizing, an alternate cultural model, opposition to racism and sexism, making going into the streets seem necessary and desireable, transformed individual and social relationships which show solidarity and love, class consciousness and class anger and networks of organizations which both take care of people and organize them for power simultaneously. And this is still not enough, because out of each struggle must come leaders who can unite and create and maintain a lasting political organization, a revolutionary political party, which speaks to the very best in the hopes of the exploited and oppressed people and gives them hope.

As I said in the first part of this article, our Old Left language sounds foreign to the occupation movement. This will probably bounce off of the activists who read this blog.

Let's approach it another way. These are the questions the occupation movement leaves me with. I'll address these questions directly and in solidarity to the movement.

*You say that you don't have leaders, but I see people leading every general assembly and others following. How do you account for that?

*You say that you are not political, but everything you do has a political edge and political content to it. How do you account for that?

*You say that you will not make demands because that admits that we cannot do something ourselves. How then can we free the political prisoners or improve the standard of living?

*What are your class, race and gender politics?