On Dec 9, 2011, at 6:40 AM, shag carpet bomb wrote:
> I think the thing to do is to maybe be a lot less CERTAIN when you are
> posting under such conditions. Words like "maybe" or "could it be" or
> "i'm not sure, but it seems like..."
Ah! And here I thought that your rhetorical style was one of high dudgeon, liberally seasoned with abuse and insult. But no, it's actually modest and provisional!
You know, could it be, maybe, that I've read the article you like and just don't agree with it? It's funny that Bady cites an NLR article on David Harvey, because Harvey's position is - I'm not sure, but it seems like - different from his? And maybe closer to mine?
Bady:
> My point is that using a comparative lens—that mode of analysis by which “Occupy” is a category, a series of variations on a theme that first emerged in Zuccotti Park—will almost inevitably lead us to overlook the ways that an autochthonic Oakland Commune rises up and makes sense of itself, in resolutely local terms, by reference to nothing other than itself.
> And those who were there, before the city tore it down, know that the pulsing heart of the camp was never primarily the General Assembly. It was the kitchen.
Harvey:
> Unlike the fiscal system, however, the urban and peri-urban social movements of opposition, of which there are many around the world, are not tightly coupled; indeed most have no connection to each other. If they somehow did come together, what should they demand?
>
> The answer to the last question is simple enough in principle: greater democratic control over the production and utilization of the surplus. Since the urban process is a major channel of surplus use, establishing democratic management over its urban deployment constitutes the right to the city. Throughout capitalist history, some of the surplus value has been taxed, and in social-democratic phases the proportion at the state’s disposal rose significantly. The neoliberal project over the last thirty years has been oriented towards privatizing that control. The data for all OECD countries show, however, that the state’s portion of gross output has been roughly constant since the 1970s. [17] The main achievement of the neoliberal assault, then, has been to prevent the public share from expanding as it did in the 1960s. Neoliberalism has also created new systems of governance that integrate state and corporate interests, and through the application of money power, it has ensured that the disbursement of the surplus through the state apparatus favours corporate capital and the upper classes in shaping the urban process. Raising the proportion of the surplus held by the state will only have a positive impact if the state itself is brought back under democratic control.
Harvey's position is, it seems to me, not resolutely local, not autochthonic, and not about the kitchen as beating heart. Feeding the homeless is a wonderful thing to do. But it doesn't have much to do with claiming "democratic control over the production and utilization of the surplus." It doesn't have much to do with bringing the state under democratic control.
More Harvey:
> In the US, there have been calls for much of the $700 billion bail-out for financial institutions to be diverted into a Reconstruction Bank, which would help prevent foreclosures and fund efforts at neighbourhood revitalization and infrastructural renewal at municipal level. The urban crisis that is affecting millions would then be prioritized over the needs of big investors and financiers. Unfortunately the social movements are not strong enough or sufficiently mobilized to force through this solution. Nor have these movements yet converged on the singular aim of gaining greater control over the uses of the surplus—let alone over the conditions of its production.
More Bady:
> The construction of a thing called “The Oakland Commune” at a plaza that was re-named after Oscar Grant was, in this sense, not a franchise of Occupy Wall Street but a revolutionary defense of that particular space, the demand that we who occupy it have the right to decide what will be made of it.
Conceiving the erection of the tent itself as the revolutionary act itself is rather different from seeing it as part of a process of mobilizing a movement to gain "greater control over the uses of the surplus." And seeing the homeless - who are probably no more than 0.3% of the U.S. population - not merely as the most extremely immiserated group around but the core of your social movement - is not promising. Since Bady is so concerned about how anti-bank rhetoric can easily be co-opted by the liberal bourgeoisie, he - perhaps, maybe, I'm just suggesting - might see that feeding the homeless could even more easily be recuperated as a form of charity, more about condescending "help" than social transformation.
Doug