I think this criticism – which has come not only from the mainstream media in its attempts to belittle the movement, but also from older leftists and progressives who have been organizing for decades, and who all have their favorite “demands” they would like OWS to embrace – is largely misguided for three reasons.
(1) Agreeing on demands will prove divisive. People participating in the OWS movement are very diverse – which is one of the great strengths of the movement. But this also means they would predictably have difficulty agreeing on specific demands. There is a better way to take care of this issue that the OWS movement seems to have adopted instinctively. Instead of issuing demands from OWS, better to issue statements of solidarity with actual groups of people in struggle for solutions to different problems, and then to search for concrete ways to help these progressive organizations and in their activities in the cities where there are occupations.
(2) Specific demands are really unnecessary because everybody knows what the OWS occupiers and supporters are for and against. Why state the obvious, and in the process turn great sound bites into boring policy wonk talk? Right now OWS is saying loud and clear: We know the 1% are ripping off the 99% as never before. We know both the economic and political system is rigged to serve the 1% no matter how detrimental this may be to the interests of the 99%. We will no longer tolerate this. Nor will we any longer place our hopes in pleas to politicians who are in power only because of their willingness to serve the 1%. Instead we are starting to solve problems, and eventually crises, ourselves. We are going about this in the way we want all decisions to be made in the future – through participatory democracy. Any laundry list of demands will be less effective than this message.
(3) There is no chance that ruling elites will accede to any significant demands at this point in time – not even the ones that would pull the system that serves them well back from the abyss. Maybe this is less true in Europe than here in the US, in which case European protesters should put more priority on coming up with demands they can fight for and hope to win in the near future. But part of the power of the OWS movement here is that it says very loudly that the entire ruling establishment in the US is completely unresponsive. Republicans are hell-bent on scorched earth class warfare while feeding the destructive Wall Street monster everything it asks for. The Democrats are either powerless to achieve any reforms, and/or don’t want to, and/or are too gutless or discouraged to even stand up and fight for real solutions to any of our crises, which are numerous and growing worse by the day: The financial system remains unregulated and even more likely to suffer a crisis than it was before 2008. The recession is deepening and unemployment is rising with no jobs program or fiscal stimulus in sight. The healthcare bill that was passed created at least as many problems as it solved, and is now being dismantled in any case. Public education in America is under frontal attack by draconian budget cuts and demonization of its employees. Resolving the status of immigrants is a more distant dream than ever. And last, but certainly not least, any discussion, much less effective action to begin the urgent process of weaning America off fossil fuels and promoting energy efficiency before catastrophic climate change becomes a probability rather than merely an unlikely possibility has been defeated by the fossil fuel industry and its political allies. What is the point of us arguing among ourselves at great length over a wonderful set of demands when there is no chance they would get a hearing? Isn’t it better, at least for now, to concentrate instead on the only thing that can help -- which is appealing to more and more people affected by our worsening crises to join and act with the only movement that has any hope of solving any of our real problems?
There is no lack of sensible proposals that would help a great deal. I have been speaking and writing about what needs to be done to prevent financial crises and pull us out of recession for well over three years, as have a number of better known left economists. People like us who have expertise in climate change policy have explained how we could reduce emissions dramatically and rebate the proceeds from putting a price on carbon to make the bottom 70% of the population financially better off. In short, there is no lack of progressive policy expertise. More to the point, people within the mainstream who have bigger megaphones than policy experts on the left have trotted out plenty of specific reform packages that are perfectly sound and would be immensely helpful. The problem is not that nobody has good solutions. The problem is that ruling elites have paid absolutely no attention to good proposals, and show no signs of doing so in the near future.
Nor is there any reason to believe this situation will change here in the US for at least five more years. Between now and the election of 2012 Republicans will stonewall all real solutions to all problems. The Obama-led Democrats will try to frighten the electorate into voting for them simply because they are not as scary as the Republicans, while currying favor with mildly helpful proposals knowing full well there is no chance they can come to pass. The Citizens United Supreme Court decision will unleash a tsunami of corporate money into many more campaigns than in 2010, while the worsening crises will embitter an electorate toward those who promised change in 2008 but failed to deliver any relief. After the 2012 election, at best the US Congress will be slightly more conservative, and at worst much more under Republican control. After the 2012 election more state houses and legislatures will be under Republican control. After the 2012 election, at best Obama will remain in the White House, further committed to and locked into collaboration with Republican non-solutions, and even more willing to thumb his nose at progressives who voted for him because they had nowhere else to go. At worst we will have a Republican in the White House who makes Bush/Cheney a fond memory!
Five years from now a list of good demands will make sense and be necessary. And at that point I don’t think the movement will have much difficulty agreeing on demands for which the intellectual work is already largely done. But the truth is there is no need for the OWS movement to rush to agree on the best list of demands for reforms. There is plenty of time to come to agreement while the movement is becoming powerful enough so there is a chance of winning them.