darinsullivan.blogspot.com: En Passant » Yes, we the 99% can #OWS #occupy

Yes, we the 99% can

Posted by John, October 18th, 2011 - under Occupy Australia, Occupy Wall Street, Occupy!.

500,000 in Madrid according to El Pais, 100,000 in Times Square and 60,000 in Santiago.

This is a global movement expressing the anger and frustration of ordinary working people with the way the world works.

They want change. Not the fake Obama change which is more of the Bush same, but real change that makes their lives better, gives them a job, adequate pay and social services and a real say in the running of society.

These are of course demands that capitalism in crisis cannot meet. The agenda of the global capitalist class for the last 30 years has been to expropriate more and more of the wealth we create.

This shift in wealth to the elite from the rest of us is a global phenomenon. But it hasn’t addressed the economic crisis at all, only worsened it.

Part of that shift has been to make us work longer and longer hours. We work more and they get the benefits.

The Occupy movement is a step to the left in society. It expresses our anger with 30 years of neoliberal wealth transfer, and in countries where the crisis is deepest, of the austerity that makes us pay for their crisis of profitability.

In Australia, where the economy is holding up tolerably well at the moment, the Occupy movement as been smaller. A few thousand around Australia demonstrated on the weekend and a hundred or more have Occupied in Sydney and Melbourne.

But what this has done has raised the very issues of inequality and corporate greed – shorthand in my view for the exploitation that is capitalism and the elite’s response to systemic economic crisis - and put on the agenda alternative visions.

In Australia, and I suspect much of the developed world, the possibility for opening up a space to the Left has developed because of the bankruptcy of the social democratic parties – by and large captured by neoliberalism – and the inaction of the trade union bureaucracy.

This does not mean reformism is dead. It arises from the very relations between labour and capital. But it does mean the more political sections of the working class and society in general, having seen that bankruptcy, seeing the global movement, might draw more radical conclusions than relying on Barack Obama or Julia Gillard for change.

And therein lies the beauty of this movement. The focus of change is not from on high, from above, from the elite, but from below, from the protestors, from us.

The movement has the potential to develop and orient to the one force in society which can carry out fundamental change from below – the working class.

If the necessity for a democratic society to run production to satisfy human need becomes clearer, then the very real possibility of addressing inequality and corporate greed can arise, not through the chimera of capitalist ‘reform’ but through the reality of revolution.

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Comments

Comment from Dally M
Time October 18, 2011 at 8:55 am

But you’re not “the 99%”, you’re a microscopic minority of disaffected individuals with no real solution to the issues you go on about. You remind me of angry public servants at a pub after hours, whinging about your supervisor, each of you voicing the “obvious solution” if only the Minister would miraculously put you in charge of the system. Then back to work the next day for more unproductive duties, staring into the abyss of irrelevance, the bitter taste of defeat in your mouth.

Free yourselves, embrace the idea of actually arguing your case to the people you so desperately want to impress: the mythical “99%”.

Register a political party and go to the next election with a platform.

If you can’t do that then you are in fact just engaging in adolescent fantasy in the guise of a political philosophy.

Your fans deserve better, surely.

Comment from Henrik the Intact
Time October 18, 2011 at 3:35 pm

Now, let’s get a few facts straight.

1. You know me/us/we.

2. You have never been to South Africa, visited your ‘brothers’ in Zimbabwe, travelled to Libya, Egypt, Gaza, the West bank, Syria, Israel or Iran … yet you claim to be some expert on these countries. This annoys us as we have been to these countries and more and your second-hand internet googleing is no substitute for reality.

3. You get all self righteous and thin skinned when criticised, yet bandy about terms like ‘zionist’, ‘genocide’ and ‘fascist’ at everyone who disagrees with you. It is irksome that you are so quick to denigrate and belittle yet when challenged you revert to type – an angry, frustrated and ignored man with unaddressed temperament issues.

4. You are a middle-class tenured academic in a sleepy hollow university yet pretend to be some working-class warrior. We get miffed by your laziness and/or fear of travelling to the places where real workers fight real battles. You are a chocolate soldier and your claims of solidarity and support are rather silly when you’ve never actually left your comfort zone to confront war, terrorism, violence and a police state.

5. You call our government ‘mass murderers’ and killers, yet happily bank your pay check and accept money from the same state you attack. We call this hypocrisy. Go work for a non-state organisation if you believe this; but it makes you duplicitous and mendacious to label the state as terrorists and then take their money.

6. You are no more ‘socialist’ than Cory Bernardi is. You wear clothing made in sweatshops in Asia, send text messages using technology invented by Zionists, use a computer with components invented in Israel and then stand outside some poor sap’s chocolate shop pretending your Che Guevara and abusing innocent workers. We think this is a joke, but apparently not. We invite you to travel to Gaza … or is actually leaving Kambah all too much and you’d rather just rant and rave than see the world for yourself.

7. Your website is read by about 15 people and you are so desperate for comments than you don’t realise how many of them are from the same person.

8. You are, in many ways, a fraud. You lecture on taxation and the economy yet hide behind accusations of greed and class and the proletariat. You are not a worker. Your hands are soft and you are complacent and middle class. You support multimillionaire football teams whose players are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars yet pretend this doesn’t conflict with your ‘working class socialist alternative’. Is not watching Channel 9 a conflict in itself.

9. You advertise and promote banks and capitalism on your website. How is this not a conflict of interest? Apparently the ANZ is worthy of your endorsement, but banks are also evil. Answer that and stay fashionable. If you hate the banks, don’t promote them.

10. You smell. Sorry, but it’s true.

Kind regards
Henrik

Comment from Leonore Thompson
Time October 18, 2011 at 4:46 pm

No shite Sherlock, you’ve just woken up to this? And you missed a few too – that’s when we use a different laptop.

Now, let’s get a few facts straight John P.

1. You know me/us/we.

2. You have never been to South Africa, visited your ‘brothers’ in Zimbabwe, travelled to Libya, Egypt, Gaza, the West bank, Syria, Israel or Iran … yet you claim to be some expert on these countries. This annoys us as we have been to these countries and more and your second-hand internet googleing is no substitute for reality.

3. You get all self righteous and thin skinned when criticised, yet bandy about terms like ‘zionist’, ‘genocide’ and ‘fascist’ at everyone who disagrees with you. It is irksome that you are so quick to denigrate and belittle yet when challenged you revert to type – an angry, frustrated and ignored man with unaddressed temperament issues.

4. You are a middle-class tenured academic in a sleepy hollow university yet pretend to be some working-class warrior. We get miffed by your laziness and/or fear of travelling to the places where real workers fight real battles. You are a chocolate soldier and your claims of solidarity and support are rather silly when you’ve never actually left your comfort zone to confront war, terrorism, violence and a police state.

5. You call our government ‘mass murderers’ and killers, yet happily bank your pay check and accept money from the same state you attack. We call this hypocrisy. Go work for a non-state organisation if you believe this; but it makes you duplicitous and mendacious to label the state as terrorists and then take their money.

6. You are no more ‘socialist’ than Cory Bernardi is. You wear clothing made in sweatshops in Asia, send text messages using technology invented by Zionists, use a computer with components invented in Israel and then stand outside some poor sap’s chocolate shop pretending your Che Guevara and abusing innocent workers. We think this is a joke, but apparently not. We invite you to travel to Gaza … or is actually leaving Kambah all too much and you’d rather just rant and rave than see the world for yourself.

7. Your website is read by about 15 people and you are so desperate for comments than you don’t realise how many of them are from the same person.

8. You are, in many ways, a fraud. You lecture on taxation and the economy yet hide behind accusations of greed and class and the proletariat. You are not a worker. Your hands are soft and you are complacent and middle class. You support multimillionaire football teams whose players are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars yet pretend this doesn’t conflict with your ‘working class socialist alternative’. Is not watching Channel 9 a conflict in itself.

9. You advertise and promote banks and capitalism on your website. How is this not a conflict of interest? Apparently the ANZ is worthy of your endorsement, but banks are also evil. Answer that and stay fashionable. If you hate the banks, don’t promote them.

10. You smell. Sorry, but it’s true.

See you round, like a rissole

Comment from John
Time October 18, 2011 at 5:07 pm

Actually my dear Leonore/Terrance/IB,/Wendy 123 (how was Mackillop College by the way?) my website is read by about 200 people a day (and your reading adds to my numbers and revenue. Thank you). God, some students can be so silly. Maybe you should grow up. Too bad I take people at face value. Shows my trusting nature. Oh well. Actually I am quite restrained and the deceit you went to just proves my indignation with all your lies was appropriate. Go back to your cubicle and read your textbooks for a change. Maybe that is why you failed.

Comment from John
Time October 18, 2011 at 5:32 pm

Student misconduct rules 5(i) and (k).

Comment from Comrade V
Time October 18, 2011 at 5:58 pm

Oh man, Wendy/Terrance/Leonore (and possibly Gradool aswell??) but such an elaborate act of sockpuppetry like this doesn’t give one the impression of you being clever, just unprincipled and pathetic.
And take this from someone that loves trolling Internet Forums & Blogs.
I’d personally be more flattered than offended over this deception, that some pimple-faced dweeb of an apologist for Benjamin Netanyahu’s right wing government has lavished such attention toward Evil John and his nasty words concerning Israel, and consequently wasted a couple of months of his/her life on fruitlessly trolling.
Btw who is this person? A disgruntled student?
I’d also recommend blocking such persons IP address. It’s tedious to see the comment section of every blog post on this site become filled up with obloquys and insults, concerning the latest phase in the battle between the Israelites and the Cannannites.

Comment from Wendy
Time October 18, 2011 at 6:47 pm

“Student misconduct rules 5(i) and (k).”

John my friend, you wouldn’t be invoking the instruments of state oppression to silence my right to free speech, would you? Surely no matter how much I annoy you, it seems, well a tad ‘repressive’ to cite student rules as a way to oppress and subjagate my freedom of expression.

Unless this is a Hamas led place, isn’t a website like this a place for all opinions, views, comments and the like – or are you the gatekeeper of what is said and read in a manner we see in other cultures and societes where those you isagree with are silenced?

A moral question I believe I have posed here.

Comment from John
Time October 18, 2011 at 7:41 pm

No comment. The matter is with my advisers.

Comment from Gradool
Time October 18, 2011 at 7:42 pm

Holy shit, I am but a crazed visitor to this wacky blog, I never imagined JP was actually a real source of campus hatred. But hey, it figures. Wendy etal, if I ever travel to Canberra for work again I’ll buy you a drink. Believe me comrades, I will. And I won’t smell. )

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