> On Oct 20, 2011, at 5:51 PM, Joseph Catron wrote:
>
> That's one way to look at it. Another is, if you aren't going to get the
> minimal acceptable demands (in this case, full employment in the public
> sector, etc., etc.) for the foreseeable future, why not reach for the sky?
I think that's totally mistaking the beauty of these demands. What makes them the perfect demands -- the grail of demands, i.e., "structural reforms" -- is precisely that for any of them to be realized, American politics would have to radically change.
But it gives that demand for radical change a focus: a society where human needs are protected from the market in several crucial areas: health, education, housing, pension.
Achieve that, and you've de- (or less) commodified large strategic pieces of the economy and drastically increased the market power of the 99%.
And yet for all this utopian content, the demands are perfectly imaginable and doable.
And there is also a near horizon that speaks directly to the needs of hte moment. The US and much of the world is in a liquidity trap. Massive government direct employment is precisely the policy that is needed -- and yet which can't even be uttered at the moment because our politics are so fucked.
So for OWS to identify with these demands would cast it as the only rational actor on the American political stage. Combine that with utopian context and I don't see how you could improve on them for this moment and this movement.
I love these demands. I think anywhere further one wants to go, it goes through here. And at the moment, simply to demand them is to demand, to paraphase Richard Seymour, that the American imaginaire change.
Which is think is a large part of what every faction of OWS want: to change the thought of what is possible. To change the national mindset, you need to get a purchase on it. A set of clear and far reaching demands that everything turn out is how you get one.
Michael