[D66] Politics and the international Occupy movement

[Henk Elegeert]

Ik denk dat MEERGGZ nu wel in actie moet komen en internationaal gaan!
Er zit bij 1% communisten en dat WSWS editorial board overduidelijk wat
steekjes los ..

Henk Elegeert


2011/10/14 Antid Oto <protocosmos66 at gmail.com>

> Politics and the international Occupy movement
> By the WSWS editorial board
> 14 October 2011
>
> The spread of the Occupy Wall Street protests internationally has
> undeniable
> political significance. On October 15, occupations will begin in cities in
> Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, Canada, South America and Africa.
>
> The movement that is developing is, in its essence, anti-capitalist. The
> protests are animated by aspirations for social equality. Their banner
> slogan,
> “We are the 99 percent”, is imbued with working class hostility to the
> monopolisation of society’s wealth by a tiny financial and corporate
> elite—the
> “one percent.”
>
> In the United States, the myth of the superiority of “free enterprise” has
> been
> discredited in the minds of tens of millions, particularly in the three
> years
> since the onset of the global financial crisis. The conditions facing
> workers
> and young people in the centre of world capitalism are forcing them to
> seriously
> consider radical social change and the perspective of socialism.
>
> The occupations emerged outside the influence of official political
> institutions, parties, trade unions and pseudo-left protest organisations
> and
> are implicitly directed against their subservience to big business
> interests.
> They are giving voice to the opposition to mass unemployment, the slashing
> of
> wages and conditions, soaring education and health costs, environmental
> degradation and war.
>
> The resonance of such sentiments around the world expresses the fact that
> the
> experiences shaping the attitudes of the American working class have been
> universal.
>
> Three years after the financial collapse, it is clear that the speculative
> and
> semi-criminal financial operations that came to dominate the wealth
> accumulation
> of the capitalist “one percent” have led to the breakdown of the entire
> structure of world capitalism and a descent into economic depression and
> inter-state tensions.
>
> In every country, the mantra of the ruling elite is the same. They are
> demanding
> that the full burden of the crisis they caused be imposed on the working
> class
> through job destruction, wage cuts and the elimination of essential social
> programs and rights. Capitalism has failed as a world system. It offers
> only a
> future of poverty, degradation, environmental catastrophe and, if not
> overthrown, the threat of devastating new wars between rival capitalist
> nations.
>
> However large or small, the initial global protests this weekend reflect
> the
> elementary awareness that the working class everywhere confronts common
> problems
> and a common enemy—globally organised finance and corporations and the
> elite
> that owns them. There are no national solutions.
>
> The critical issue now is to make conscious the impulses that have given
> rise to
> the Occupy movement. The fight that faces the working class and oppressed
> will
> require a worked out political perspective of revolutionary social change
> on an
> international scale. It is essential that a thorough discussion take place
> on
> the questions of political program, strategy and tactics.
>
> First of all, the working class must discuss and carry out a political
> break
> with the nationalist and pro-capitalist organisations that serve the ruling
> classes—the Democratic Party and AFL-CIO in the US, the social democratic
> and
> Stalinist parties and trade unions across Europe, the Labor Party and
> unions in
> Australia, and their equivalents in other countries.
>
> The fact must be faced by Occupy protestors that defenders of these
> reactionary
> organisations have rushed to try and take control of the movement in order
> to
> block such a discussion. They are easily identified. They are those who are
> most
> vocally insisting that “no politics” should be permitted within the
> protests.
> The administrator of the “Occupy Sydney” Facebook page in Australia is one
> example. He or she declared this week: “[A]ny political party or group who
> wishes to try and hijack this into a political agenda, we will throw them
> out.”
>
> Such positions are profoundly anti-democratic and hostile to the
> aspirations
> behind the Occupy movement. They amount to nothing more than a ban on any
> critique of the parties and unions whose pro-capitalist political agenda is
> responsible for the conditions facing the working class. It is an attempt
> to
> censor socialist politics and prevent the development of a genuine
> political
> alternative.
>
> At every level, “no politics” is an absurdity. It is obvious to any serious
> person that a struggle against the capitalist “one percent” poses critical
> political issues. Every social movement in history has been compelled to
> adopt a
> standpoint on the basic question of politics—which class should rule.
>
> A genuine movement for social change must be orientated to the
> revolutionary
> mobilisation of the only social force that has the power to overthrow
> capitalism—the international working class. It must advance a solution to
> the
> historic problems confronting society as a whole. It will need to be
> consciously
> aimed at ending the private ownership of the means of production and the
> nation-state system which are the basis for the domination of the
> capitalist
> oligarchy and give rise to the contradictions wracking the world economy.
>
> The danger that is confronting the Occupy movement is that it will be
> reduced to
> yet another protest that vents popular anger and opposition, but is
> harmlessly
> channeled back behind the parties and institutions of the political
> establishment.
>
> In the United States, for example, supporters of the governing Democratic
> Party
> are already seeking to direct the Wall Street protests into the campaign
> for the
> re-election of Barack Obama in 2012, on fraudulent “lesser evil” claims
> that he
> is more of an opponent of Wall Street than the Republicans.
>
> In Australia, elements within the protests this weekend are seeking to
> direct
> them into futile appeals for change by the Labor Party government, its
> Green
> Party partners and the trade unions—the very organisations that are
> presiding
> over an escalating assault on the living standards of the working class on
> behalf of the Australian corporate elite.
>
> Across Europe, similar efforts will be made to steer the movement under the
> wing
> of the official political establishment. Organisations like the New
> Anti-Capitalist Party in France, the Left Party in Germany, and the
> Socialist
> Workers Party in Britain work deliberately and consciously to block any
> independent political movement.
>
> What is required is a conscious rebellion against the pro-capitalist
> apparatuses. A unified world party of the working class must be forged, one
> that
> will combat every form of nationalism and chauvinism and lead the struggle
> in
> every country for the establishment of genuinely democratic workers’
> governments
> and the socialist reorganisation of society. The progressive answer to the
> rule
> of the “one percent” and the failure of capitalism is the transformation of
> the
> major financial institutions and corporations into publicly owned and
> democratically controlled institutions, and the planning of world economy
> to
> meet social need, not private profit.
>
> The Socialist Equality parties and the World Socialist Web Site, as part of
> the
> International Committee of the Fourth International, consciously embody
> this
> perspective. We encourage all participants in the Occupy protests
> internationally to contact us for a discussion on the policies, history and
> tradition of the world Trotskyist movement.
>
> http://wsws.org/articles/2011/oct2011/into-o14.shtml
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