I am emale has followed the developments of the occupy movement with some interest over the last couple of months. Present in their absence of any single coherent agenda apart from a stalwart and silent protest against the State Apparatus, the occupy movement steals space to promote an end – to democracy?
If sixteen million people stopped voting, the System would have to change.
Here is a movement devoted to nothing. Purposive activity is lacking here – its another aristocratic one per cent representing the views of the majority.
This is not a protest against capitalism (evidenced by the extensive use of dumbphones by the protesters) but against the political process that endorses the widening division between rich and poor in developed countries and, globally, between rich and poor countries.
There are burgeoning examples of growth in the powerhouse nation-states of China and India. Their populations still dwell in abject poverty for the most part.
This would spell out the significance of a world-wide capitalism. As Chomsky pointed out in his public lecture in Melbourne on Friday night, the invisible hand is commonly believed to be a magical correction device to ensure the playing field remains level. Chomsky quotes from Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations:
By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain;
and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand
to promote an end which was no part of his intention.
Milton Friedman wrote the biggest danger to the free market and capitalism is from the multi-national corporations seeking monopolisation, subsuming as much of the market share as possible. The MNCs can afford to operate at a loss and make inefficient use of scarce resources, up to a certain point that Borders reached.
Why not occupy then?
I am emale reads a religious ecumenism in the discourse of the local occupy movement, an “enthusiasm” as Hegel phrased the idea of a Spirit that does not include the labour of the negative – me, being for self, I am emale.
Picturing an ideal society of freedom and equality for all, the occupy movement arrogates itself to speak for the “99%”. They do not operate as an individual organisation as one amongst many but a mass movement self-governed by direct democracy with broad brushstrokes of social justice by which they hope to capture the whole picture in one canvas.
I am emale is too much of an art critic to paint the public sphere. As Heidegger wrote, the moment language enters into the public sphere, it enters into a pit of nihilism.
On the other hand, the movement smooths a striated space, encountering the State appropriated war machine again and again until we finally hear the cry – “the police are with us!” – as the DC refuse to arrest the protesters unless they trangress the law.
This is a major victory for Occupy Melbourne. I am emale supports the movement for opening up a space for networking and face-to-face conversations between like-minded individuals, a situation more like the oft (mis-)idealised democratic rule of Athens in fifth century BC.
The Occupy movement is saying to I am emale: we are beginning again. Go back to the start and re-invent. Plant your tent in the earth, turn around and talk to people. Act out your desires. The current political process is flawed by a notion of government serving a monopoly of interests: CEOs and business owners beholden to a small class, the shareholders.
What we need is a peaceful notion.
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