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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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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cCharles Fourier (1772-1837)
“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: Analyse du mecanisme d'agiotage, La Phalange, VII (1848).
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.
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To unveil the intrigues of the stock exchange and the brokers is to undertake a Herculean task. I doubt that the demi-god felt as much disgust in cleaning the Augean stables as I feel in probing the sink of moral filth which is called the bordel of exchange and brokerage. This is a subject that science has not even touched upon. To discuss it you need a practitioner grown grey in the service and raised in the mercantile pen, as I have been since the age of six. At that age I began to notice the contrast which exists between commerce and truth. I was taught at catechism and at school that one must never lie; then they took me to the store to accustom me to the noble trade of deceit or the art of selling. Shocked by the cheating and deception which I witnessed, I began to take the merchants aside and tell them what was being done to them. One of them, in his complaint, made the mistake of betraying me, and this earned me a hard spanking. My parents, who saw that I was addicted to the truth, exclaimed reproachfully: “This child will never do well in commerce.” In fact, I conceived a secret aversion for commerce; and at the age of seven I swore an oath like that which Hannibal swore against Rome at the age of nine: I swore myself to an eternal hatred of commerce.
They got me into commerce against my will. I was lured to Lyon by the prospect of a trip; but at the very door of Scherer’s banking house where they were taking me, I deserted, announcing that I would never be a merchant. It was like backing out of a marriage on the altar steps. They took me to Rouen where I quit a second time. In the end I bent to the yoke, and I lost the best years of my life in the workshops of deceit. Everywhere I went I heard echoes of the sinister prophecy: “What a fine, honest lad! He will never do well in commerce.” In fact, I have been duped and robbed in all my undertakings. But if I have no talent for the practice of commerce, I am quite able to unmask it.
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Charles Fourier (1772-1837)
“The Rise of Commerce and the Birth of Political Economy”
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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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Well! Why have nations taken so long to realise that the commercial order is a temporary monstrosity, an utterly senseless system that places the three productive classes — proprietors, farmers and manufacturers — at the mercy of a parasitical class which has no national loyalty and which can do whatever it wishes with the fruits of industry over which it exercises arbitrary control? So faulty a system is obviously the result of a failure in social science. Commerce could have seemed tolerable in the childhood of human societies, although even then it was scorned. But it is unworthy of the modern age which aspires to enlightenment and perfectibility, and which boasts of seeking the truth — of which commerce is the mortal enemy. Let us then investigate why the invention of a better system has been put off until our own time and why no effort has been made to discover some means of liberating society from the influence of commerce and deceit.[16]
I have already said that the wise men of antiquity never made commerce an object of study; they simply treated it with the scorn which it deserves. The masters of the world, the Alexanders and the Caesars, would have smiled with pity if someone had advised them to subordinate their policies, in today’s fashion, to the interests of dealers in oil and soap. The privileges that commerce had enjoyed at Carthage[17] were alone sufficient to debase it in the eyes of Rome., thus the Roman writers relegated it to a place among the filthy professions.
As for the small republics of Tyr, Carthage and Athens, which were devoted to traffic, they never influenced opinion in the great empires. They vaunted their trade for the same reason that brigandage was vaunted by the Tatars and piracy by the Algerians. They fleeced their neighbours as often as possible, and they were regarded as birds of prey whose voracity is abhorred but who are tolerated because they are not entirely useless...
The role of commerce in antiquity amounted to very little. Just what was the vaunted trade of Tyr, Carthage and Athens? I would say that the activity of these three ports was barely equal to that of three of our small ports, like Nice, Bayonne and Dieppe, in peacetime. At that time there was little to exchange among the states on the shores of the Mediterranean. Since the goods which they produced were just about the same, farming and industry provided few occasions for trade. The backwardness of navigation prevented them from finding markets for their goods in the torrid and cold zones... It is clear that the commerce of antiquity must have been quite insubstantial when we consider that its most important branch, the grain trade, was frequently controlled by rulers. We read that Hiero, the King of Syracuse, made shipments of wheat to the Roman Senate. Thus in the nations of antiquity commerce was only a shadow — no more than a tenth — of what it is today. For this reason it is not surprising that the statesmen of that time paid little attention to their merchants and scorned their wiles without trying to reform them, just as the gross customs of the lower classes are disdained but tolerated today. Antiquity neither could nor would devote itself to the search for another mode of exchange; it simply tolerated commerce as a vulgar vice.
Circumstances are very different today. Various unforeseen events have produced a colossal growth in commerce. Progress in the art of navigation, the discovery of the East and West Indies with all their resources, the extension of farming to northern latitudes, the establishment of communications between the three zones, the rapid development of manufacturing, and the competition for trade among a multitude of nations — all these factors have led to a prodigious increase in the volume of commerce. It can be said to have increased ten-fold since Antiquity. Trade has now become one of the principal branches of the social mechanism; it has finally drawn the attention of the philosophers; they have ceased to ridicule it. Among them one group of men, who are called the Economists, has devoted itself to the study of industrial policy...
When political economy emerged as a science, commerce was already powerful and revered. The Dutch had already accumulated their hoards of gold, they had discovered the means to bribe and corrupt kings and their courts long before anyone had heard of the Economists. At the outset, then, commerce was a giant and political economy was only a dwarf. When political economy entered the lists against commerce, the ports were already swarming with wealthy ship-fitters and the great cities were full of those dandified bankers who are intimate with ministers and give orders to diplomats. It was no longer possible, as in antiquity, to treat commerce as a laughing stock, for there is no greater title to respect in civilisation than a bulging safe. The first efforts of political economy were all the more modest in that its authors possessed neither wealth nor an established body of doctrine. Since the legacy of antiquity amounted to no more than a few jeers about commerce, they had to create everything for themselves. Deprived of the wisdom of antiquity and thrown back on their own resources, the poor Economists were obliged to adopt modest and timid dogmas. This was only becoming in a few unknown savants who had to enter the scientific world by doing combat with the Croesus of the age.
There could be no doubt about the outcome of such a combat. Political economy made only a faint gesture of resistance. Praise for that gesture is due to Quesnay, the leader of the French sect.[18] Trying to make the truth known, he propagated dogmas which tended to subordinate commerce to the interests of agriculture. But the English cabal, which had sold out to commerce, triumphed with the help of a few religious intrigues. Philosophy, which had opened hostilities against the priesthood, was in need of reinforcements; it prudently decided to ally itself with the money-bags and to flatter commerce, which was beginning to acquire a great influence. Thus the Economists hitched themselves to the wagon of commerce. They proclaimed it infallible like the ancient popes. They declared that a merchant’s dealings could never fail to promote the public interest and that the merchant ought therefore to enjoy an absolute liberty. All the dogmas were adapted to this paradox.
Soon merchants were being showered with adulation. Raynal, Voltaire, and all the most eminent philosophers could be seen kneeling before the golden calf. But they secretly scorned it; for when Voltaire dedicated his play Zaire to a London merchant, whom he overwhelmed with banal compliments, he was no more sincere than when he dedicated his Mahomet to Pope Benedict. Voltaire was himself a consummate practitioner of mercantile trickery; he excelled at duping book-sellers. Thus he knew the true worth of the fine art of trade; he knew that merchants detest learning, that they scorn the sciences and the arts, that they are bored even by the flattery of writers when it does not serve to fine their pockets. But the philosophical party was in need of new recruits, and so they praised the merchants to the skies. ...
It must be said in defence of the philosophers that during the eighteenth century commerce was not as perverse as it is today. There were relatively few merchants then and they made their profits easily. Thus they did not need to resort to the innumerable subtleties and audacious tricks that degrade their profession today. This is so true that elderly merchants are constantly voicing their stupefaction at today’s wiles. They are agreed in describing modern commerce as a snare, a Black Forest, by comparison with the friendly spirit in which trade was carried on before the Revolution. We should add that at that time the English monopoly was not yet dominant. France was still standing up to England and, along with its allies, it had a very substantial monopoly of its own. That is why the French philosophers were not alarmed by an abuse from which their own nation benefited. Everything conspired to make this mismatch seem attractive to philosophy. In associating itself with commerce philosophy behaved just like a young noblewoman who marries a commoner whom she supposes to be an honest man. And, in fact, it was impossible at that time to predict the immensity of vices and scourges that commerce was going to inflict upon the nineteenth century.
But now the mercantile spirit has shown its profound malevolence. The mask has fallen; monopoly and deceit are now revealed. Philosophy can no longer deceive itself about the infamies of the serpent with which it has been associated. It is time for philosophy to break with commerce and return to the path of Truth, which is wholly alien to the mercantile spirit. A discovery is about to banish commerce from the womb of civilisation. If it was pardonable to encourage commerce when there was some doubt about its perversity, it would be odious to do so today, now that Truth has unmasked it and cast it into disgrace.
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