Wall Street Occupied

Wall Street Occupied 

A couple of days ago Occupy Wall Street hit their 1 year anniversary and, well, let's just put it this way - their actions are pretty much wasted now a days. Sure, there's still a good ol' 150+ showing up, but let's just face the facts, you best keep your skepticism over the long term effectiveness of OWS as a whole.

My general sense is that OWS is devolving into a self-congratulatory theater while various affinity groups are trying to do more concrete things. At this point I'm not even sure if there is any attempt being made to occupy anything. Like any permanent presence anywhere.

At this point, the occupy movement is pretty much done. It served its purpose as a testing ground for what a modern mass leftist movement could look like when inequality comes to the forefront. David Graeber said a few months ago that "the biggest problem with the Occupy movement is that it's afraid of success"


He's a fairly decent fella, but if that's the sort of hard hitting analysis that the figureheads of OWS are cranking out at this point, it's probably safe to say that it's not going anywhere at this point.


Even worse is that when I talked to the Occupy folks and asked them what they have read to for economic guidance, granted, this is just hearsay, but far and away the most common response is not Marx, nor Chomsky. Not even Klein. More than often it's Paul Fuckin' Krugman.

Yeah, that's when you know the shit's gone super reactionary, when the state sends riot control police to beat up Neo-Keynesians.


Occupy just ended up being a strange, collective existential crisis in late capitalism that can't work itself out. Like the social, economic and ideological alienation of an entire mass of humanity that has bottomed out and some reaction was inevitable, but it just takes this awkward form that has to play itself out in practice.

Or maybe it's just that the economy just hasn't gone to shit enough for there to be real mass action. Occupy was a taste of what is around the bend when the Euro finally goes down in a blaze of horror and people realize China is not going to be growing exponentially any more to buy the rest of us up. It's important for organizing and connecting. But for now it really just has to wait for its moment. The capitalist crisis is just very far from bottoming out.