Click on the headline to link to the archives of the Occupy Boston General Assembly minutes from the Occupy Boston website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011. The General Assembly is the core political institution of the Occupy movement. Some of the minutes will reflect the growing pains of that movement and its concepts of political organization. Note that I used the word embryo in the headline and I believe that gives a fair estimate of its status, and its possibilities.
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An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Protesters Everywhere!
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Charles Fourier (1772-1837)
“The Vices of Commerce”
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Source: The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier. Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction. Translated, Edited and with an Introduction by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. Published by Jonathan Cape, 1972;
First Published: Manuscrits de Charles Fourier. Années 1857-58.
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden
Proofread: by Andy Carloff 2010.
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What are the vices inherent in the commercial mechanism? Others have defined it in flattering terms; I am going to adopt a very different tone and show commerce to be the source of all sorts of crimes and misdeeds. I will refer to just seven.
The first disorder is Bankruptcy which scoffs at the efforts of legislators and triumphs in spite of all their legal codes.[20] Just recently French legislation was put to shame when it purported to repress bankruptcy with a new code of commerce. Bankruptcy has only become bolder and more confident in changing its form, and the new code is merely a weapon with which the bankrupt threaten the creditors whom they wish to rob.
The second vice is Smuggling by which commerce rebels openly against authority and forms industrial Vendees against which the state must maintain parasitical armies of customs officers. Certain cities like Basel and other such centres of contraband exploit neighbouring empires in the same way that the Algerian pirates exploit seafarers. The ones are sea-robbers and the others are land-robbers. I shall prove in one of the chapters of this work that, by means of its contraband, the city of Basel alone exacts an annual tribute of several million from France. You can draw your own conclusions about the extent of the smuggling carried on each year over the whole territory of France, Germany, Spain and Italy.
What shall I say of the Usurers who, under the name of bankers, are waging war against property owners? Take for example the hordes of Jews and vagabonds who have practically overrun the four departments on the right bank of the Rhine. They would soon have gobbled up most of the French property there if the government had not restrained them by decrees and by means of an economic struggle that involved the Bank of France, which is an agent of resistance against usury.
Speculation is the fourth of the plagues to which I am calling attention; it is another one of the weapons used by commerce against governments. Speculation abuses public confidence and makes sport of the ascendency of the noblest heroes. Witness the campaign of Austerlitz during which a horde of Parisian speculators ravaged French industry, discredited the Bank of France and the government bonds, and created all the symptoms of a panic at the very moment when the Empire was echoing with cries of admiration and blind confidence in its illustrious chief.
Hoarding is not the least of the mercantile feats. It creates famine in the midst of abundance; by means of contrived panics it can double the price of goods and exploit society in the interest of the commercial vampires.
Parasitism is a less obvious but not less harmful disorder. Hosts of merchants encumber the cities, and the streets are cluttered with solicitors who swarm without limit or purpose. There was competition enough when their number was only a quarter of what it is today, and then agriculture profited from the capital and labour of the crowd of parasites with which commerce is now inundating the cities.
Of all the commercial vices Cheating is the one which is making the most rapid progress. Today it has reached such a point that merchants of the old type are thought to be incompetent because they don’t know the tricks to which abusive competition has given rise.
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It, It’s Ours! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
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Below I am posting, occasionally, comments on the Occupy movement as I see or hear things of interest, or that cause alarm bells to ring in my head. The first comment directly below from October 1, which represented my first impressions of Occupy Boston, is the lead for all further postings.
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Markin comment October 1, 2011:
There is a lot of naiveté expressed about the nature of capitalism, capitalists, and the way to win in the class struggle by various participants in this occupation. Many also have attempted to make a virtue out of that naiveté, particularly around the issues of effective democratic organization (the General Assembly, its unrepresentative nature and its undemocratic consensus process) and relationships with the police (they are not our friends, no way, when the deal goes down). However, their spirit is refreshing, they are acting out of good subjective anti-capitalist motives and, most importantly, even those of us who call ourselves "reds" (communists), including this writer, started out from liberal premises as naive, if not more so, than those encountered at the occupation site. We can all learn something but in the meantime we must defend the "occupation" and the occupiers. More later as the occupation continues.
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In the recent past as part of my one of my commentaries I noted the following:
“… The idea of the General Assembly with each individual attendee acting as a “tribune of the people” is interesting and important. And, of course, it represents, for today anyway, the embryo of what the ‘new world’ we need to create might look like at the governmental level.”
A couple of the people that I have talked to lately were not quite sure what to make of that idea. The idea that what is going on in Occupy Boston at the governmental level could, should, would be a possible form of governing this society in the “new world a-borning” with the rise of the Occupy movement. Part of the problem is that there was some confusion on the part of the listeners that one of the possible aims of this movement is to create an alternative government, or at least provide a model for such a government. I will argue here now, and in the future, that it should be one of the goals. In short, we need to take power away from the Democrats and Republicans and their tired old congressional/executive/judicial doesn’t work- checks and balances-form of governing and place it at the grassroots level and work upward from there rather than, as now, have power devolve from the top. (And stop well short of the bottom.)
I will leave aside the question (the problem really) of what it would take to create such a possibility. Of course a revolutionary solution would, of necessity, have be on the table since there is no way that the current powerful interests, Democratic, Republican or those of the "one percent" having no named politics, is going to give up power without a fight. What I want to pose now is the use of the General Assembly as a deliberative executive, legislative, and judicial body all rolled into one.
Previous historical models readily come to mind; the short-lived but heroic Paris Commune of 1871 that Karl Marx tirelessly defended against the reactionaries of Europe as the prototype of a workers government; the early heroic days of the Russian October Revolution of 1917 when the workers councils (soviets in Russian parlance) acted as a true workers' government; and the period in the Spanish Revolution of 1936-39 where the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias acted, de facto, as a workers government. All the just mentioned examples had their problems and flaws, no question. However, merely mentioning the General Assembly concept in the same paragraph as these great historic examples should signal that thoughtful leftists and other militants need to investigate and study these examples.
In order to facilitate the investigation and study of those examples I will, occasionally, post works in this space that deal with these forbears from several leftist perspectives (rightist perspectives were clear- crush all the above examples ruthlessly, and with no mercy- so we need not look at them now). I started this Lessons Of History series with Karl Marx’s classic defense and critique of the Paris Commune, The Civil War In France and today’s presentation noted in the headline continues on in that same vein.
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A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-Mart- Defend the right of public and private sector workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dues on organizing the unorganized and other labor-specific causes (example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed.
Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!
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