Benny Tai Yiu-ting, who put the original call out for the campaign of civil disobedience, spoke to Luke Cooper in Hong Kong shortly before the Chinese government confirmed the worst fears of the public with its recent announcement.

LC: Benny, I know that you’ve played a leading role in founding the Occupy Central movement over the last period. Perhaps we could start with an explanation of what led you to make the original call for a campaign of civil disobedience.

BT: That’s a long story. I’ve been involved in the democratic movement for thirty years, since I was a student at Hong Kong University in the mid-1980s. At that time, it was just the start of the Hong Kong democratic movement. We were striving for the election of our legislature – not yet for the chief executive because we were still under colonial rule and no such position existed. The ruling governor was still just ‘sent to us’ from London. Then I graduated and started to work at the university. I played less of a front line role, becoming more of a commentator and researcher. As a legal scholar, I was interested in constitutional law, which obviously has a very close relationship with the democratic movement and constitutional development.

After twenty years teaching and playing a less frontline role in the democratic movement, in 2013 we reached a point in Hong Kong where we needed to think about a way to achieve true universal suffrage in 2017 for our chief executive election. China has promised that we can have universal suffrage, but what do they mean by this? They tend to play with the concept. The kind of universal suffrage they say Hong Kong could have is just the right to vote, but who can you vote for? That will be something controlled by the nominating committee. And the nominating committee composition will follow the structure of the existing election committee – who are responsible for deciding the Chief Executive now – and represents a small circle of the elite with only a very narrow base in society.

This kind of universal suffrage, I like to call it “Chinese characteristics of universal suffrage”, will not be able to stand alongside what we believe to be the internationally accepted standards of universal suffrage. If that is the position of Beijing in the internal politics of Hong Kong, then we currently have no way to match their power. We must find some ways to raise and increase our bargaining power in the coming negotiation. We have used big rallies in the past. Sometimes these have been successful. Sometimes they have failed in achieving our goals.

But this time, because we are touching on something very important to Beijing, I suggested we have to find some other methods to achieve our goals. So that is why I proposed the idea of using civil disobedience. The idea of Occupy Central (‘Central’ is Hong Kong’s financial district) is borrowed from Occupy Wall Street, but with a different goal: not anti-capitalism but a democratic movement. We will have 10,000 people there with our plan clearly stated. The hope is that we can build and develop sufficient pressure for Beijing to modify the stance it has sadly taken.

LC: Could you describe how Occupy Central has developed since you put out the call?

BT: I wrote a public article suggesting the campaign in January of that year and two months later I, along with Professor Chan Kin-man and Reverend Chu Yiu-ming, put out a public call to form the Occupy Central campaign, inviting people to sign it if they agree with our goals. The three of us – coming from civil society or the academic sphere, though Reverend Chu has more links with civil society groups – wanted this action to be the property of civil society and not just the Hong Kong political parties.

We wanted to organise a movement for democracy in a democratic way. So the first thing that we did was to organise a deliberative meeting, open to all, but specifically inviting a number of civil society groups and political parties.

We had 700 people there in a half-day meeting back on 9th June 2013. We discussed and set the agenda on the day so that everyone who attended was involved.

Then we organised a series of other deliberative meetings with specific civil society groups, which each have their own networks and people to link with. So we have meetings with the churches, the social workers, the students, a number of other groups, each discussing it with their members. These took place in October to February last year. And then in May this year, we had the third deliberative meeting, which considered all the proposals put forward, with 2,500 people participating.

The last meeting chose three different proposals, which were to be put to a civil referendum. This was not an ‘official’ referendum but was organised by civil society; this allowed everyone in Hong Kong to participate and choose their favoured proposal of the three that came out of the meeting.

800,000 people voted in the referendum and we had one proposal that had the highest number of votes – which is now the proposal of the whole movement.

LC: What was common to the three proposals that came out of the meeting?

BT: In March this year, we had a group of international experts on human rights law, election law and constitutional law, who came to Hong Kong and met with local legal experts and researchers in political system design. They came up with a set of principles for international standards in the application of universal suffrage. We used this set of principles and applied it to a number of proposals and came up with 15 different options that were taken to the deliberative meeting of 2,500 people.

All three proposals included an arrangement for public nomination meaning that individual voters could jointly nominate a candidate with others – they would require simply one per cent of the total electorate, around 35,000 people. This proposal was common to the three proposals that came out of the meeting, although they had different arrangements on the composition of the nominating committee.

LC: You’ve talked about how the movement has organised itself through deliberative assemblies. The relationship between political parties and civil society has been something that is frequently discussed in the global justice movement. Could you outline the nature of the connection between the Occupy Central movement and political parties, such as the Pan-Democrats?

BT: The political parties participate in the movement not as an organisation but rather as individual members. Their members join in the deliberative meetings. When votes occur people cast their own personal vote and not the vote of a political party. This is not a coalition of the parties, and not a coalition of parties and organisations, but the decisions are instead made by individuals within the movement. We do however work together with the members of the political parties and also the civil society groups to organise the meetings, especially the second stage which saw a series of meetings with different parts of Hong Kong society. The political parties organised some of these deliberative meetings with their members, as one constituent group in society. These second stage meetings were primarily discussion. No decisions were actually made, which was the role of the larger deliberative meetings for the movement as a whole.

After this second stage we moved towards a stage of negotiations with Beijing. Now the political parties have seats in the Legislative Council so they will have the real decision making power. But through the Occupy movement we connect civil society groups with the political parties. The trust between the two sides needs to be developed. There is some existing distrust there. But we played a role in connecting the two sides. Up until this point we have still been able to maintain a coalition between the civil society groups supporting democracy and the political parties supporting democracy, in order to join together in this action. But nonetheless the relationship is very unstable and we have to work very hard to maintain it and ensure there is trust between the sides. In some respects our coalition is built on weak foundations, but up to this point we have played a role in forging unity. I am not claiming all of the credit for this, but we have played a role in connecting the parties with civil society, which is the hardest part of the movement. Maintaining this relationship is the biggest challenge that we face.

LC: As well as the 800,000 people participating in the Occupy Central referendum, there have been a number of large mobilisations in Hong Kong in recent months. The annual rallies to commemorate the 1st July Movement (which forced the withdrawal of national security legislation curtailing certain freedoms back in 2003) and the Tiananmen Massacre both attracted some 500,000 people. These were not organised by Occupy Central but there is some overlap between the constituencies mobilising. Taken together this suggests that there is a fervour in Hong Kong society for these democratic issues. But I’ve also noticed that the formation of Occupy Central has sparked considerable public commentary, far from all positive. Last Sunday, there was even a pro-Beijing demonstration against Occupy Central! Meanwhile a pro-Beijing petition has apparently received over 1 million names. Do you think its fair to say there has been a public backlash?

BT: Yes, I think there’s a clear split that exists in society about Occupy Central. Yet even though there may be a lot of people who supported the public signature campaign against Occupy Central, this is more of a top-down movement that has been carefully coordinated by Beijing groups and organisations that use their resources to win support, rather than a bottom-up campaign. I admit that while many people who have been listed as signatories may not have actually signed it, many people who went to the demonstration you mentioned may not have known why they were there, and may even have been paid to attend, there is nonetheless still a substantial number of people in Hong Kong who are truly against Occupy Central and the things we are doing.

There are 800,000 people who expressed their views through the civil referendum, supporting universal suffrage on certified international standards. But there is also a substantial number opposed to us, which may be bigger, or may be smaller, we don’t know exactly, who need to be taken seriously. We are now reaching a situation where we have two opposing views in society. So the challenge for us in how we can find a consensus between the groups.

There is also a group of moderates. And the group of moderates do not like society to be split in this way. They may not agree with Occupy Central but they think universal suffrage should be supported. So they agree with the goal of the movement, but they disagree with the means, i.e. civil disobedience. But this middle group will not join with the anti-Occupy Central campaign, because they have no demands on the meaning of universal suffrage. So they think we are wrong to occupy the central area, but want to see a substantial form of universal suffrage. We have therefore three sides. We must find a way to reach a consensus in the whole of society so that we can proceed to the future constitutional development.

LC: I know you probably won’t refer to statistics as such, but according to your impression what is the type of people that have been attracted to the Occupy Central movement, in terms of age, social class, etc?

BT: You can actually look at the survey undertaken by professors at the Baptist University Hong Kong on attitudes to the mainland and the Occupy Central movement. From the survey we found that Occupy Central has around 38 per cent support in the population, and against us is more than 50. But we found that our support amongst people under 29 is more than 50 per cent, and amongst those that have been to university is again more than 50 per cent. And those with a higher average of household income also indicated a higher level of support. This is the type of support that we have: younger people, educated, higher income groups.

LC: That’s very interesting. When you talked about the Occupy influence earlier you said that you took a similar idea but without the anticapitalist or austerity-focused form of politics. But how important do you think socio-economic demands are to reaching out to other social groups in Hong Kong?

BT: We have groups within Occupy Central that want the whole movement to also include campaigning for socio-economic rights. But we think it’s better to keep it simple: that we want to have universal suffrage that is more on the level of democratic and political rights, not socio-economic rights. This is not to say that I personally disagree with this kind of view, but if we include reference to this it will be harder to maintain the unity of the movement that is already on weak grounds in some respects. Now if we had universal suffrage those who wanted to pursue more protection of socio-economic rights would have more opportunities to express their view, and more opportunity to raise these campaigns and demands.

LC: So in terms of the traditional left/right spectrum where would you say that Occupy Central sits or is it difficult to define the movement in these terms?

BT: It is very difficult to say given the situation here. In Hong Kong, when you say “the left” what do you mean by “the left”? In everyday discussion you mean the Communist Party. But interestingly enough in Hong Kong the Communist Party work very closely with business people, the very wealthiest people. But they also have influence over some trade unions. So it’s interesting that this “left” in Hong Kong has among its supporters some who are at the furthest end of the right. You can say that we are on the centre, perhaps. But we also have the labour groups supporting us. We also have the lawyers and professionals who may classify themselves as more on the right, but they are also supporting us. So you cannot put the thing in such a simple way of either left or right. It’s more about the relationship with China. In Hong Kong, we have this very unique situation. The way we draw the line is not the traditional left or right but in our relationship with China. Those who China cannot trust, or those who do not trust China, etc, are on the one side, and those who support the regime are on the other side. This is where the line is drawn.

I hope that if we can achieve universal suffrage we can go back to the normal kind of political spectrum with a left and right. Labour groups whether or not they have a good relationship with China would, in this situation, be able to work together to pursue socio-economic rights. And also some of the political parties that now may be considered anti-Beijing will no doubt join with the businessman in supporting Beijing’s policy in Hong Kong if we had real democracy. There will be a very different political geography once our struggle for universal suffrage has been won.

LC: A student activist I spoke to made a similar point about Communist Party support in Hong Kong that it combines the support of the very, very rich with some of the poorest sections of society. To what extent has the CCP been successful in creating a quasi-civil society, so to speak, around itself in Hong Kong since 1997?

BT: Oh yes I think they have been quite successful. They have been able to utilise the resources of the state to secure this. Take for instance one of the biggest parties in Hong Kong, the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB), which is the main pro-Beijing political party. They are able to win a lot of seats at the local municipal level because in those elections the voters care more about the services that the district councillors can provide for them. So if the councillors can organise tours to visit the mainland or, at festival time, distribute mooncake, etc, for people living in the district, then they will be popular locally. How are they able to do this? Because they have the resources. Why do they have the resources? Because Beijing is behind them. The DAB also get a lot of money from business people who want to have a close connection to the DAB because of their economic interests in mainland China. Why is this? Well we can say it’s obviously not a communist party now; look at the policies they apply in mainland China. This is a society that is even more capitalist than many capitalist societies! If you want to do business in China then you must have good relations with the CCP. If you want to have good relations with the CCP you have to support the DAB in Hong Kong. These resources are then passed on by the pro-Beijing groups to help people of the lower classes, and it is partly successful in winning their support. So this is the situation.

LC: Some of the people I have spoken to, despite being very supportive of the Occupy Central movement, have in private been quite pessimistic about the situation and the possibility of Beijing conceding to the movement’s demands. But given the CCP has this social base in Hong Kong doesn’t that provide some scope for them to compromise and accept the movement’s democratic demands?

BT: We are making a similar argument. If the anti-Occupy Central movement can assemble over 1 million names supporting their demands then that means they have a very big social base. Why worry about democratic election that they’ll still be able to win? Actually we try to make the point that it’s very unlikely even that Hong Kongers would vote for a Pan-Democrat Chief Executive because they know such a candidate would not be able to work with Beijing. The Communist Party also to some degree understand this. They know that in the coming 2017 election a pro-Beijing candidate, i.e. one Beijing can trust, would be elected. But what they would not want is to see is any possibility of losing whatsoever. They want 100 per cent control over the matter.

LC: Perhaps as a final point we can discuss how your position as a legal scholar relates to all this. The Basic Law – the constitution of Hong Kong that enshrines ‘one country, two systems’ – is a rather unusual historical document because despite being agreed by the Communist Party it protects many basic rights and freedom, such as the rule of law, and establishes an independent judiciary. Given that the judiciary have the power of ‘final adjudication’ over whether laws are deemed constitutional do you see this as important to creating a space for political activism like Occupy Central? And how secure do you believe these rights are?

BT: This is a complicated question. But first thing to say is that I am a researcher into the rule of law in Hong Kong and I am interested in how it can be maintained. I find that the situation of the rule of law is deteriorating and one of the reasons for that is we don’t have a democratic electoral system to put it on a solid foundation. The rule of law is not just judicial independence – yes, this is important and many people emphasise this – but how to ensure judicial independence? You must have sufficient limits on the powers of the executive branch before you can have a good protection of this. And without democratic election the kind of protection will be weaker. As the Hong Kong situation deteriorates in terms of the rule of law we have to find a way to increase these protections. This is why we must have a democratic election. I am not saying that we don’t have a rule of law at the moment – we do – but how to protect it has become the central question when we are under a whole number of challenges. So we need to have a democratic system to sustain the rights that we have properly.

The second thing to say on this is about my own advocacy of civil disobedience, because some people have questioned this on the grounds: how can a law professor tell people to breach the law? This poses questions of what we mean by the rule of law, about the ideal of the rule of law, and what we are struggling for today. This is what Hong Kong people have not understood in the past: the mistaken idea that if you are planning civil disobedience – and therefore planning to breach the law – then you are somehow going against the rule of law. And this is something that the anti-Occupy Central campaign has developed as one of their main points. But the rule of law should not be literally understood as ‘obeying what the law says’. It is rather about whether you have a system of law that can achieve justice, including the political rights and freedoms of the people. So sometimes under certain conditions it is right to breach the law to help us achieve justice. That is the whole spirit of civil disobedience. Other people talking about that may not attract much attention but because I teach law here, at the University of Hong Kong, and am considered to be an expert on the rule of law in Hong Kong, these arguments have been raised over my role in Occupy Central. And this creates an interesting level of theoretical and practical argument within the movement.

LC: And most people I’ve spoken to in the movement think that the rights they enjoy today are more vulnerable than in the past, and that the current situation cannot hold: they can either go forward or back. So to defend what you have at the moment it is necessary to push for more. I assume you would agree with that?

BT: Yes, we see Beijing interfering into Hong Kong affairs more and more. We therefore need a democratic system in Hong Kong to ensure that we enjoy the autonomy that was originally granted under ‘one country, two systems’.

Source: http://www.redpepper.org.uk/the-spirit-of-civil-disobedience/

 [ 7th  June 2013. Beursplein, Amsterdam ]

Solidarity with protesters in Turkey

For many days, Turkish people have been taking to the streets to fight for their future. For many years, they have been facing the brutal repression of undemocratic regimes. The Turkish people paid the price of the economic crisis in the beginning of the previous decade and the ‘recovery’ that followed. The well-known recipe of IMF was also imposed on Turkey bringing privatizations, massive lay-offs, abolition of workers’ rights, union-busting and increased everyday repression at workplaces. Lately, the so-called ‘urban transformation’ policies of the government lead to distraction of free spaces and growing problems in urban areas.

Contrary to what the governments of both countries are trying to convince us, Greeks and Turks share many social and historical traits.  The latest events bear evidence also to the fact that we share the suffering by similar policies driven by the effort of the political and economic elites to deprive people from their basic rights. Greek people suffer by the social and economic war that is waged against them by the government and the Troika (EU, IMF, ECB). They also suffer by repression as strikes and demonstrations are practically prohibited and any protest faces violent attacks by the police and their neo-Nazi friends of the extreme right party Golden Dawn.  Same as in Greece, Turkish people and Turkish government are two separate worlds and light years apart from each other.

The only thing we can do at this moment is to take wholeheartedly the side of the Turkish people in their struggle for their basic rights. We, Greek and Turkish people are not enemies. We stand on the same side fighting against governments and supranational institutions that do not represent us and policies that undermine our present and our future. We share the same problems, we share the same vision and the same targets.

Therefore, your struggle is our struggle!

We support you and we fight at the same side as you!

Nazim Hikmet, September 24th 1945

Political group of Greeks living in the Netherlands

http://www.reinform.nl/

https://www.facebook.com/ReInformNL

https://twitter.com/reinformnl

‘Margaret Thatcher is Dead: This lady is not returning!’ is one way of the calmer statements celebrating Thatcher’s demise on my Facebook page. I can’t join the clamour singing ‘Ding dong the witch is dead’, trailing as it does its horrific historical sexism. More sadly, I can’t see anything to celebrate.

Whilst this once formidable Tory trailblazer is dead, her ideas are more resurgent than ever. Neither Cameron nor Osborne will ever be damned as warlocks or necromancers – this rarely happens to men – yet it is thanks to them that Margaret Thatcher dies triumphant. Thatcher’s success, like that of her pal, Ronald Reagan, was that through a combination of shrewdness and luck she could ride the high tide of corporate capital’s determination to increase profits by rolling back all the popular gains of the post-war settlement. She was neoliberalism’s willing tool, rather than something unique, evil or otherwise.

‘Markets know better than governments’

What is truly extraordinary about these times is that while Thatcher’s economic legacy has imploded, her ideological stance – which as she said was always her main agenda – is more viciously enforced than ever. ‘Markets know better than governments’, was her pivotal mantra, the rest flowed from this. Oh no they do not! You would think we must all have learned this from the catastrophic economic collapse in 2008, when so many banks had to be bailed out by governments, only to be returned as quickly as possible: old bonuses intact, new regulations non-existent.

All too quickly forgotten is the revelation of the cruel absurdity of the economic collapse set in motion by the buccaneers of the finance sector that Thatcher had ‘liberated’ in October 1986, with all the reckless gambling and belief that ‘toxic debt’ was itself a tradable commodity. Or at least, any such knowledge is drowned out by the continued combination of coalition rhetoric baiting Gordon Brown and the Labour Party, together with relentless media attacks on the ‘undeserving’ poor, or any other scapegoats conjured up to misdirect people’s sense of resentment, fear and insecurity: ‘Crisis: Blame the baby boomers, not the bankers’, was a typically absurd headline in The Times when Irish banks were on the point of collapse at the start of 2010, summarising the argument by their chief economic analyst, Anatole Kaletsky.

In these topsy-turvy times, any thoughtful, reforming responses to the crisis, no matter how carefully argued and widely supported by fellow economists – such as those put forward by the highly respected American economist, Paul Krugman – are tossed aside in the UK. No reference to Keynesianism or any policies for decreasing the obscene inequality that helped generate the crisis are considered. Instead, after so much mayhem, Thatcher’s worship of market values rules supreme, motivating vicious cuts in welfare and the surreptitious turning over of what remains of the public sector to the private, even as the crisis in market forces and the finance sector continues to deepen, especially in Europe.

Where is the alternative?

Of course there have been impressive flurries of resistance, and for a while in the wake of the Occupy movement, grass-roots dissent was back on the political agenda. Networks of resistance are active around the country, especially in defence of the NHS. Yet those eager to dance on Thatcher’s grave have much thinking to do, when there remains such a lack of connection between protesters and mainstream politics. Indeed, as Paul Mason admits in his book celebrating all the new protest movements around the globe, Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere, most of the people he interviewed ‘were hostile to the very idea of a unifying theory’. Yet it is surely some sort of compelling counter-ideology and alternative strategy to the ubiquitous rule of market forces that we are desperately in need of if we are ever to safely bury Thatcher.

Although the rich few get richer and the rest of us poorer, the left has yet to strike any real chord with the broader public. We know that it was Tony Blair, or ‘Blairism’, which – as Thatcher knew – did so much to entrench her legacy: with his seamless endorsement of market values and public veneration for wealth and celebrity, even as it furthered cynicism about politicians and politics generally. We have headed so far down that stream, it is hard now to turn things around.

It took the extraordinary conditions of the Second World War to create the Labour Party’s comprehensive commitment to welfare, albeit of a conservative and authoritarian kind. The reforms and nationalisations inaugurating the British welfare state, post-1945, were based on the deliberate spread of a consensus that it was economic insecurities and domestic unhappiness that created unhappy societies: ‘many of the maladjustments and neuroses of modern society’, as Bevan explained when minister of health, arose directly from poverty and insecurity. When will our politicians say these words again? Any direct action, movement politics or coalitions of resistance we build today has to find ways to influence national government to reaffirm that mind-set, hopefully with more creative agendas than hitherto, before we can bury Thatcher.

Thatcher and feminism

And since I began with a feminist note, let me also end there. Some women have argued that it was Thatcher who provided the best role model for helping women release their true potential. No she did not. She was the perfect role model for the ever deepening gulf between women, as the privileged few have been able to rise to the very heights of political or corporate power, even as the majority of women, affected at every turn by the rolling back of welfare and the politics of individual success she promoted, are ever more firmly left at the bottom of the heap.

Source: http://www.redpepper.org.uk/i-dont-feel-like-dancin/

The study’s assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. Pushing the analysis further, they say, could help to identify ways of making global capitalism more stable.

The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York’s Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere (see photo). But the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a network of power. It combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world’s transnational corporations (TNCs).

“Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it’s conspiracy theories or free-market,” says James Glattfelder. “Our analysis is reality-based.”

Previous studies have found that a few TNCs own large chunks of the world’s economy, but they included only a limited number of companies and omitted indirect ownerships, so could not say how this affected the global economy – whether it made it more or less stable, for instance.

The Zurich team can. From Orbis 2007, a database listing 37 million companies and investors worldwide, they pulled out all 43,060 TNCs and the share ownerships linking them. Then they constructed a model of which companies controlled others through shareholding networks, coupled with each company’s operating revenues, to map the structure of economic power.

The work, to be published in PLoS One, revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships (see image). Each of the 1318 had ties to two or more other companies, and on average they were connected to 20. What’s more, although they represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the 1318 appeared to collectively own through their shares the majority of the world’s large blue chip and manufacturing firms – the “real” economy – representing a further 60 per cent of global revenues.

When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a “super-entity” of 147 even more tightly knit companies – all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity – that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. “In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network,” says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.

John Driffill of the University of London, a macroeconomics expert, says the value of the analysis is not just to see if a small number of people controls the global economy, but rather its insights into economic stability.

Concentration of power is not good or bad in itself, says the Zurich team, but the core’s tight interconnections could be. As the world learned in 2008, such networks are unstable. “If one [company] suffers distress,” says Glattfelder, “this propagates.”

“It’s disconcerting to see how connected things really are,” agrees George Sugihara of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, a complex systems expert who has advised Deutsche Bank.

Yaneer Bar-Yam, head of the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI), warns that the analysis assumes ownership equates to control, which is not always true. Most company shares are held by fund managers who may or may not control what the companies they part-own actually do. The impact of this on the system’s behaviour, he says, requires more analysis.

Crucially, by identifying the architecture of global economic power, the analysis could help make it more stable. By finding the vulnerable aspects of the system, economists can suggest measures to prevent future collapses spreading through the entire economy. Glattfelder says we may need global anti-trust rules, which now exist only at national level, to limit over-connection among TNCs. Sugihara says the analysis suggests one possible solution: firms should be taxed for excess interconnectivity to discourage this risk.

One thing won’t chime with some of the protesters’ claims: the super-entity is unlikely to be the intentional result of a conspiracy to rule the world. “Such structures are common in nature,” says Sugihara.

Newcomers to any network connect preferentially to highly connected members. TNCs buy shares in each other for business reasons, not for world domination. If connectedness clusters, so does wealth, says Dan Braha of NECSI: in similar models, money flows towards the most highly connected members. The Zurich study, says Sugihara, “is strong evidence that simple rules governing TNCs give rise spontaneously to highly connected groups”. Or as Braha puts it: “The Occupy Wall Street claim that 1 per cent of people have most of the wealth reflects a logical phase of the self-organising economy.”

So, the super-entity may not result from conspiracy. The real question, says the Zurich team, is whether it can exert concerted political power. Driffill feels 147 is too many to sustain collusion. Braha suspects they will compete in the market but act together on common interests. Resisting changes to the network structure may be one such common interest.

When this article was first posted, the comment in the final sentence of the paragraph beginning “Crucially, by identifying the architecture of global economic power…” was misattributed.

From RT :

By Dennis J. Bernstein and Mara Verheyden-Hilliard

Newly obtained secret FBI documents show that the Feds treated the Occupy Movement as a criminal terrorist threat even though the movement rejected violence as a tactic, a fact that the FBI acknowledges in the files.

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, the executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, which obtained the documents, discussed the FBI disclosures in an interview with me on Pacifica Radio’s “Flashpoints.”

DB:  Before we get into some of the specifics talk a little bit about what motivated the request and your initial response to these heavily redacted documents that you did obtain.

MVH: The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund filed a series, or maybe more accurately a barrage of FOI [Freedom of Information] requests in the fall of 2011. At the point at which we could see, and the movement could see, that there was a coordinated crackdown against Occupy happening all over the country.

And we issued FOI demands against federal agencies including the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, the CIA and others, as well as against municipalities and police departments around the country. When we received these documents, which then have taken more than a year to obtain from the FBI, it was very clear to us and clearer, I think, to anyone reading these documents the very intense role that the FBI played in surveillance, mass surveillance operation against the peaceful Occupy Movement.

Photo:An Occupy poster, urging protests on behalf of the “99%”

DB: Alright, let’s talk a little bit about the documents that you received, despite the fact that they were blacked out, in many instances. Let’s go through some of the information … You got a document that was as early as Aug. 19, 2011, and what was the FBI doing? They were getting ready for this movement?

MVH: Yes.  It says a lot about the FBI’s conduct in the role of the American intelligence agencies that the FBI, before a single tent was put up in Zuccotti Park in New York, was meeting with the New York Stock Exchange to discuss the plans and upcoming Occupy protests and that was as early as August, 2011. And of course, the OccupyWallStreet started officially on September 17th.

And while, as you said, the documents are heavily redacted and it’s very clear, too, from the redaction that it’s a limited redaction. There’s obviously a lot more out there that we are working to get. That they were working with private entities, as well, meeting with businesses to alert them that they were the focus of protests.

And the documents, throughout, show the FBI, in cities around the country, different field offices, different joint terrorism task force networks communicating with the private banks, private security entities, really themselves acting as a private security arm of corporations, banks and Wall Street.

DB: That’s pretty extraordinary. It really did have the feel that they were working in concert, in conjunction, with some of the major banks. And it was interesting …. Well, talk a little bit about what happened in terms of Indianapolis and the potential criminal activity alert, whatever that is.

MVH:  Right. There’s a potential criminal activity alert put out by the Indianapolis Office of the FBI, even though they are saying that they are aware of the Occupy Movement, they don’t have a date specific for demonstrations or activities in Indiana. But, nonetheless, they are putting out these, you know, warnings, these alerts. Their documents acknowledge that the movement is peaceful.

And it raises these questions, that of course, so many have been asking, you have the FBI granted, you know, mass license since September 11th under the claims of the need for national security, you know, millions, billions of dollars poured into the FBI, Homeland Security and what are they doing?

They are turning their sights on a peaceful social justice movement and doing it at the same time that they are working, hand in hand, with the banks and Wall Street, the very focus of peoples’ demonstrations and organizing because of the economic crisis caused by the corporations, banks and Wall Street. And there you have American intelligence agencies acting as their partners.

DB: And we know that the Occupy Movement had a great deal of students involved, young people involved. What did you learn in terms of spying on campuses?

MVH: There’s a, the Campus Liaison Project of the FBI has been very controversial. Many student groups, campuses, activists have protested against it, saying that it was, you know, going to be an abusive program. And you have plain evidence of it here. You have evidence in New York, and in Albany, that the FBI was communicating outward to many campuses. The documents reference, at one point, that they were communicating information, and this was all just from the New York location, the 16 campuses, I believe it is, and then there’s another six.

And then a representative from SUNI Oswego, from the State University of New York in Oswego communicating information back, reporting to the FBI on the Occupy Movement on campus made up of students and professors. And, you know, in that instance and in many other instances around the country, the documents show this intense collaboration, not just with the banks and Wall Street, but also with state and local law enforcement entities, and the fusion centers.

So here you have this, you know, mass apparatus collecting huge amounts of information, a completely lawful, First Amendment protected — I mean cherished first amendment protected — conduct in the United States and putting it into these completely unregulated, and I think, very dangerous databases and data warehousing centers.

DB: Now were students, were professors employed to be a part of this surveillance. Is there any indication to have students, teachers were paid to surveil?

MVH: I didn’t see anything like that. The reference there appears to be a representative, so I am assuming it is someone in the administration or campus police. Not that I think it was someone who was a student, or a professor or something like that. You know, people can go look at the documents, which I really urge people to do there. We made them all publicly available on our web site, which is justiceonline.org.

And, you know, you can read through these documents and see the activities that are going on. There are multiple instances where it appears from the information in the text that is available that there was infiltration and surveillance or undercover operations of that nature going on.

For example, in Richmond, there is discussion where the FBI is conferring with the Federal Reserve, and there is an in-state law enforcement agencies and joint terrorism task force, and there is this reporting going on from these other entities back to the FBI giving them updates on planning meetings and general assembly discussions.

So that certainly raises that specter, and there’s another similar incident in Anchorage that we can see where someone whose private security working on behalf of the port in Anchorage, Alaska, is meeting with the FBI over the planned West Coast Occupy port actions. And saying that they are going to go attend the planning meeting of the protestors and report back.

DB: I guess the thing that I became concerned about, and I covered a number of these police attacks, really, on Occupy movements in New York and in Oakland, where we would see, maybe there’s a 130 people in an encampment in Oakland and you’d see 15 police forces converge. And apparently these police forces were being coordinated by the federal government who, I guess, was making deals that if they worked with the federal government they would be able to obtain certain weaponry from the military.

And, of course, there’s a concern there when the federal government gets involved in, if you will, community policing, coordinating police departments, bringing police in from other areas. This is sort of walking that, to that border called fascism, when the military and the federal government becomes involved in repression.

MVH: Well, we’ve certainly seen that trend, and that very shift in police in the United States into a paramilitary policing and our office has litigated, as you know, a number of large cases related to demonstrations and mass demonstrations in the United States. And, you know, in the Occupy context that’s really what we’re trying to get at is this connection and coordination between the federal government and local police agencies.

And, of course, the federal government always claims that they are completely hands off, and yet these documents are showing this relationship, over and over again. And you have that use of the legal term, imprimatur, that somehow these activities fall under domestic terrorism, I mean, because that’s how the FBI is categorizing it and that’s just stunning that the FBI is authorized to categorize a social justice movement, peaceful protest, First Amendment, free speech activities as domestic terrorism.

It says something too, that this is happening in this administration. People think if you shift the Democratic, Republican administration that somehow these abuses are not going to occur. But, of course, this is full license to have this type of activity going on under the Obama administration.

You know, let’s look at the Tea Party. The Tea Party was having rallies across the United States where they were open carrying [weapons]. They were bringing guns to their rallies, some of them outside of where the President of the United States was speaking but what does the FBI do? They are going after this non-violent, peaceful Occupy Movement.

DB: Say a little bit more about the role of the Domestic Security Alliance Council and what they are doing in the context of surveillance.

MVH: The Domestic Security Alliance Council is this coordinating body between the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and major corporate banking, other interests in the United States. And some of the documents we obtained from the FBI, and one of these documents the Northern California ACLU had also gotten a hold of. When you go through this document, it’s very interesting. It shows the relationship between these private entities and the federal government anti-terrorism security forces.

In this document, the one we have which is discussing demonstrations and the port actions there’s even this, I think it’s a routine kind of footnote that’s on the documents where they make the point of saying that everything that’s within this entity, this communication should not be disclosed to the public or to the media. That it’s to be kept internally between private corporate entities and the DHS and the FBI.

DB:   And is there, in terms of the FBI and these federal agencies working with corporate institutions like banks and like working with the Federal Reserve, what’s the problem there?

MVH: Well, I think we would all accept that, you know, having U.S. government intelligence agencies acting as private security with corporations, with banks, with Wall Street which, you know, in these instances also are the very entities, that are the focus of peoples’ social justice activism, and their attempts to change the status quo in the United States – is that what your billions of tax dollars are supposed to be going to do?  Is that what’s supposed to happen in a democracy? Of course not.  It is the negation of democracy to have the government acting arm in arm with corporations, and banks, and Wall Street, against the people of the United States.

And that’s exactly what’s happening here. I think for most people in the movement this doesn’t come as a shock but the fact that it’s being so plainly revealed here, and that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security don’t even feel that they have to explain it, apologize it or say it’s a mistake or an anomaly. It’s enshrined in what they are doing.

DB: And speaking about what they were doing … what was the Jackson, Mississippi, Joint Terrorism Task Force doing when they issued a counter terrorism preparedness alert, whatever that is?

MVH: Well, there are throughout the documents repeated references to domestic terrorism, counter-terrorism alerts. You have the FBI joint terrorism task forces meeting in like Biloxi with all these private banks to discuss an upcoming demonstration that they’d heard about where people were protesting that it was “bad bank sit-in day.” And yet here they are meeting with all these banks privately.

One of the documents that we have has the FBI domestic terrorism discussions referencing three groups, in essence, in domestic terrorism capacity and that would be the Arian Nation, Occupy and Anonymous. Which says a lot about the FBI’s perspective on social justice organizing that they can just lay that side by side with racist, violent, terrorist organizations, like the Arian Nation.

DB: And as you say the Tea Party is coming, openly, to their meetings with weaponry, I guess they are following the laws of the states that they are in. But it would seem to me that that would require some attention.

Before I let you go, I want to ask you what you think the significance is of what you found, and what you plan to do with the information. Do you plan to keep pushing forward given the fact that so much of this was redacted, or blacked out?

MVH: Yes, we’re filing an appeal. We’re challenging the redactions. We’re also challenging the scope of production. We believe there’s a lot more information, when you read the text of the document it’s plain that there is a lot more information that was being gathered, collected, meetings, memos that we don’t have, and we intend to get.

And the point of this and why we undertook this project, we have these materials from the FBI, we have other materials from The Department of Homeland Security, other materials from local police departments, and we’ve made them all available and searchable on our web site.

The point of doing this is because the people of the United States have the right to control the intelligence agencies and these kinds of government activities. They have the right to stop it.  But first you have to know about it. And so long as the government can act under this cloak of secrecy, in the dark, they are going to continue to get away with these actions.

But exposure is the first necessary step to trying to halt and bring an end to this extremity and these abuses. We want to make them available to the public because people need to actually see what’s happening and be able to take action.

DB:  Alright and if people again want to get more information about the work that you’re doing over at the Partnership for Civil Justice, how do they do that?

MVH: Please come to our web site. It is justiceonline.org. And on that site you can see  all of these documents that we’re getting, we’re continuing to get more regularly. And as we get them, we are posting them. And you can sign up for breaking news alerts so that as soon as we get material we send out e-mail alerts letting people know as the documents become available.

DB: Beautiful. Well, I want to thank you very much Mara Verheyden-Hilliard executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, trying to get documentation from the federal government, from the FBI in terms of potentially actions of illegal surveillance of Occupy actions in New York City and around the country. Thanks for being with us on Flashpoints. Have a happy holiday.

Founder and Director, Culture Collective

What started as a murmur in early October from First Nations People in Canada in response to Bill C45 has become a movement that echoes the sentiments of people all over the world, a battle cry of love for the planet, “Idle No More.” At first glance it might appear that this movement is isolated and doesn’t effect you if you are not native or if you don’t live in Canada, yet it does. It may appear that this resistance is not related to The Occupy Movement, The Arab Spring, The Unify Movement, Anonymous, or any of the other popular uprisings sparked by social unrest, but it is.

At its very core, all of these movements have very common threads and are born from common issues facing people everywhere. Those who represent financial interests that value money over life itself, that are devoid of basic respect for human decency, and for nature have dictated the future for too long and people everywhere are standing up to say, “No more.” This non-violent social uprising is viral in the minds and hearts of everyone across the planet determined to bring healing to our troubled communities, our planet, and the corruption that is eroding the highest places of governments around the world.

Idle No More was started in October by four ladies; Nina Wilson, Sylvia McAdam, Jessica Gordon & Sheelah McLean who felt it was “urgent to act on current and upcoming legislation that not only affects First Nations people but the rest of Canada’s citizens, lands and waters.” On December 11 Attawapiskat Chief, Theresa Spence, launched a hunger strike requesting a face-to-face meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to discuss broken treaties and protection of natural resources. Spence is staying in a tipi on the frozen Ottawa River facing Parliament Hill and has gained the support from many natives and non-natives who are in solidarity with this movement.

Chief Arvol Lookinghorse from South Dakota recently expressed his support in a letter posted on Facebook that states, “As Keeper of our Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe, I would like to send out support for the efforts of Chief Theresa Spence of the Attawapiskat First Nation, for giving of herself through fasting with prayers for the protection of Mother Earth.” He goes on to say,

This effort to protect Mother Earth is all Humanity’s responsibility, not just Aboriginal People. Every human being has had Ancestors in their lineage that understood their umbilical cord to the Earth, understanding the need to always protect and thank her. Therefore, all Humanity has to re-connect to their own Indigenous Roots of their lineage — to heal their connection and responsibility with Mother Earth and become a united voice… All Nations, All Faiths, One Prayer.

Society and nature work in similar ways to our own body’s immune system. We are given a symptom that causes us to be aware that there is an illness that needs to be addressed. We can try to suppress the symptom, but that does not heal the illness. Popular uprisings with very core commonalities are spreading all over the planet. Exploitation of our environment, as well as the exploitation of people and cultures for the sake of financial gain is immoral and must be stopped at the highest levels of our governments. It is possible to have a thriving economy and environmental ethics.

Here in America, the response to Occupy is tucked into NDAA as Washington prepares ways to suppress the symptoms of social discord. Without addressing the illness at its root nothing will change. It is like the mythical Many-Headed Hydra, if you cut one head off, two more will grow back. Popular uprisings will continue here and all over the world until leaders understand that people want real fundamental change in policy. Governments should lead by example if they want to be respected.

With Twitter, Facebook and the internet, these separate movements are finding solidarity with each other and converging as a global super-movement for the planet and all people. The quote used at Unify is, “Everyone, Everywhere, Together” and it is beginning to resonate more than ever.

Each of these movements share a commitment to non-violent revolution in their call to end the exploitation of people and the exploitation of natural resources. Sustainability can be applied to all aspects of social rights, economics and the environment. Social, economic, cultural, and environmental movements, resistance, civil disobedience, flash mobs and more will continue until this is addressed at home and abroad. Whether it is Anonymous and Wikileaks exposing the corruption of governments, or Indians with drums dancing and chanting in a local mall, people everywhere are awakening, speaking up, and acting for the needed changes. It’s time for politicians and religious leaders to get the message everywhere.

It is a simple choice: continue to be part of the cancer that slowly destroys our water, our air and the resources that are the fabric of life by staying unconscious, or become the conscious antidote that slowly kills the cancerous disease which threatens the existence of life on the planet? Is the disease capitalism, corruption, ignorance, greed, The Illuminati, or some combination of all of these things spiralling out of control? It doesn’t matter because it is becoming obvious that there are people from all nationalities, religions, and cultural backgrounds who are determined to resist the progression of imminent destruction. A factory producing monkey wrenches for the gears of the machine which is at the center of our collective demise.

Will the leaders wake up to this in order to play the roles they have sworn to uphold or will they further discredit their position, their institutions, and help to destroy the very systems that they have been entrusted to maintain? Every time Congress represents the will of a few wealthy people over the interests and the well-being of the planet and the people, they do more to subvert and destroy the state than ten thousand people protesting in the streets. When leaders fail, they destroy the trust that holds society together.

Is Harper cold and callous enough to ignore a constituent on hunger strike a short distance from his office? Can he afford to ignore these issues? Can any of us afford to ignore this call to be idle no more?

Take a moment and listen to the eloquent words of an 11-year-old girl in the video below. If a child can understand this, how come world leaders are still silent on making real changes to address these urgent issues?

Please support Idle No More, learn more about the movement, how it effects all of us and get involved. All of our futures depend on it.

The “Occupy Congress” protest comes as the government prepares to unveil further austerity measures on Thursday in a bid to shrink its budget deficit.

Spain is in its second recession in three years and unemployment is near 25%, with youth unemployment far higher.

The government will unveil the draft budget for 2013 on Thursday and is expected to present new cost-saving reforms to reassure lenders about the state of the country’s public finances.

Emergency funds

The demonstrators – known as Indignants – say “Occupy Congress” is a protest against the kidnapping of democracy.

Thousands of people had massed in Plaza de Neptuno square in central Madrid for the march on parliament.

But their route towards the parliament building’s main entrance was blocked off by metal railings, police vans and hundreds of Spanish riot police.

Mark Smith, who lives near the site of the protest, said: “I saw riot police with their batons charging at protesters trying to split up the crowd.”

Tuesday’s demonstration was organised via social media sites and many young people turned out, says the BBC’s Tom Burridge in Madrid – but the protest’s public profile meant the police were ready for them.

The police’s tactics seem to have been to target ringleaders to break up the crowds, adds our correspondent, which prompted some scuffles but no widespread fighting.

Buses had reportedly been laid on to ferry demonstrators into the capital from the provinces.

One of the main protest groups, Coordinadora #25S, said the Indignants did not plan to storm parliament, only to march around it.

The Coordinadora #25S manifesto reads: “Democracy has been kidnapped. On 25 September we are going to save it.”

Pablo Mendez, an activist from the 15M Indignants movement, told the Associated Press: “This is just a powerful signal that we are sending to politicians to let them know that the Spanish bailout is suicide and we don’t agree with it, and we will try to prevent it happening.”

Another demonstrator, Montse Puigdavall, said: “I’m here because of the situation we are living in now, because of all the social cuts and rights that we have lost, that took a lot of hard work to achieve.

“So we are here because we’re determined not to lose them.”

Under Spanish law, people who lead demonstrations outside parliament that disrupt its business while it is in session may be jailed for up to one year, AFP says.

Clashes have broken out at previous rallies and marches against the cuts and at least 1,300 police were said to be on duty at the Congress building.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19712203

19:00H, 25-09-2012, DAM SQUARE, AMSTERDAM

CONTEXT

The collective “Plataforma En Pie” (Stand Up Platform) made a calling through social media to force a new constitutive process in Spain, under the slogan “ On the 25th of September Occupy the Parliament”. The lack of clarity and transparency both in the objectives of the call and in the identity of the platform caused suspicion among 15M assemblies thus loosing their support. Nevertheless, this process shows the operability of the hundred of active assemblies in Spain. Moreover, it demonstrates their capacity to react and adopt a political position in relation to popular actions questioning the economic and social system. Thanks to this intense debate different 15M assemblies, some DRY (Real Democracy Now) nodes, social collectives and individuals, have integrated a state coordinator with a completely open horizontal working policy, based on the assembly system in order to generate consensus. This state coordinator has turned the action into “Rodea el Congreso” (Surround the Parliament), with a clear NON VIOLENT MANDATE. The access and exit of the parliamentarians will not be obstructed at any moment. The normal activity inside the Parliament will not be disturbed. Everything indicates that the 25S will be difficultly stopped. Also, part of the people inside15M seems to have assumed the challenge of turning this action into theirs, reformulating and opening it.

After this analysis of the context, background and 25S coordinator objectives among others, we have agreed to demonstrate in Amsterdam with the aim of giving the following approaches an international relevance:

“The 25^th of September the Spanish Parliament building will be surrounded as a symbol to rescue it from the kidnapping which has turned this institution into a useless organ. A kidnapping of the popular sovereignty by the Troika and by The Markets, executed under the blessing and collaboration of most of the political parties. Parties which have betrayed their electoral programs, their voters and the people in general, breaking their vows and contributing to people’s gradual pauperization.

A government chosen by the people that once it reaches the power operates on the opposite that the candidates promised, has no legitimacy. Winning an election does not give the government the right to make do as it wills, betraying the voters who elected it. The people, under these conditions, have the right to require the government to quit. The people have the right to have a government which governs according to the popular choices. This is the essence of democracy and popular sovereignty.

The Parliament will be surrounded by the 25S to tell those who unjustly govern us: we will disobey their unfair and illegitimate impositions to pay their debt. We will defend our collective rights: our houses, public education, public health system, employment, democratic participation and our decent life. We will initiate the process to stop the responsibles for this crisis. The arsonists who have caused our crisis will be judged instead of rewarded.

The demonstration on September 25^th around the Parliament takes place in order to recover our responsibility of our own future, rejecting impositions. We want to tell the ones who have kidnapped Democracy that it is their time to leave. We will require the resignation of this government, as a first step. Set it free. Let’s start anew our constitutive process: an open process with direct participation where we all determine together political institutions, participation tools, juridical and political mechanisms that we need to guarantee the efficiency of our collective decisions. A continuous constitutive process which collective definition starts, but does not end, on 25S”

From the Amsterdam and Zuid-Holland 15M assemblies we support, as we have been doing until now and as we will keep on doing in the future, every non-violent action, emerged into an open, horizontal and assembly process, which help the people to defend themselves from the attacks by an elite which impose us an unfair system and forces us to pay the consequences of a crisis that this elite generated and is still stimulating. This crisis is not just Spanish or European, but a globally systemic. So it can only be solved through an international collective action. For these reasons, we want to inform, in the country we are living now, The Netherlands, about the action “25S surround the Parliament” which will take place in Spain. Showing in this way the continuous questioning of the system and that there are alternatives. We will denounce any violent repression by the Spanish State. Always according to the non-violent and open spirit of the 25S Coordinator, and based on the following premisses:

-This is a non-violent action.

-It has been opened to everybody’s participation.

-The work developed during this year has been decisive and still is. This action must not compromise it, but reinforce it.

-The 25S action does not delegitimize at all the day by day and week by week work of the neighborhood assemblies. On the contrary, in the remote case an action success with the real starting of a constitutive process, this should lay on them.

CHECK THE FULL DETAILS AND UPDATES AT:

http://dutchrevolution.blogspot.nl/

MORE INFORMATION (in Spanish):

-25S coordinator full manifesto: https://coordinadora25s.wordpress.com/manifiesto/

-List of the assemblies, organizations and collectives which support or take part into 25S:

https://coordinadora25s.wordpress.com/participan-2/

CONTACT:

ttszuidholland@gmail.com

Their aim is to create a communal agricultural project - similar to other occupied farms, in order to and breathe new life into a region that has an unemployment rate of over 40%

Addressing the occupiers, Diego Canamero, a member of the Andalusian Union of Workers, said that:

The lavish well-kept gardens, house, and pool, are left empty, as the Duke lives in Seville, more than 60 miles away. The occupation is the latest example of the smouldering class tensions that are developing across the area.

An unemployed farm worker said that:

As well as suffering from the austerity measures that the rest of Spain has to deal with, the farming community are suffering further, due to wealthy farm owners choosing to accept large sums of money ‘not’ to grow crops, which then translates to massive job losses across the sector.

Canamero said that:

He added:

The Andalusian police have not yet responded to the occupation, but have evicted occupiers from other farms in Andalusia

The Occupy movement has been an extremely exciting development. Unprecedented, in fact. There’s never been anything like it that I can think of.  If the bonds and associations it has established can be sustained through a long, dark period ahead — because victory won’t come quickly — it could prove a significant moment in American history.

The fact that the Occupy movement is unprecedented is quite appropriate. After all, it’s an unprecedented era and has been so since the 1970s, which marked a major turning point in American history. For centuries, since the country began, it had been a developing society, and not always in very pretty ways. That’s another story, but the general progress was toward wealth, industrialization, development, and hope. There was a pretty constant expectation that it was going to go on like this. That was true even in very dark times.

I’m just old enough to remember the Great Depression. After the first few years, by the mid-1930s — although the situation was objectively much harsher than it is today — nevertheless, the spirit was quite different. There was a sense that “we’re gonna get out of it,” even among unemployed people, including a lot of my relatives, a sense that “it will get better.”

There was militant labor union organizing going on, especially from the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations). It was getting to the point of sit-down strikes, which are frightening to the business world — you could see it in the business press at the time — because a sit-down strike is just a step before taking over the factory and running it yourself. The idea of worker takeovers is something which is, incidentally, very much on the agenda today, and we should keep it in mind. Also New Deal legislation was beginning to come in as a result of popular pressure. Despite the hard times, there was a sense that, somehow, “we’re gonna get out of it.”

It’s quite different now. For many people in the United States, there’s a pervasive sense of hopelessness, sometimes despair. I think it’s quite new in American history. And it has an objective basis.

On the Working Class

In the 1930s, unemployed working people could anticipate that their jobs would come back. If you’re a worker in manufacturing today — the current level of unemployment there is approximately like the Depression — and current tendencies persist, those jobs aren’t going to come back.

The change took place in the 1970s. There are a lot of reasons for it. One of the underlying factors, discussed mainly by economic historian Robert Brenner, was the falling rate of profit in manufacturing. There were other factors. It led to major changes in the economy — a reversal of several hundred years of progress towards industrialization and development that turned into a process of de-industrialization and de-development. Of course, manufacturing production continued overseas very profitably, but it’s no good for the work force.

Along with that came a significant shift of the economy from productive enterprise — producing things people need or could use — to financial manipulation. The financialization of the economy really took off at that time.

On Banks

Before the 1970s, banks were banks. They did what banks were supposed to do in a state capitalist economy: they took unused funds from your bank account, for example, and transferred them to some potentially useful purpose like helping a family buy a home or send a kid to college. That changed dramatically in the 1970s. Until then, there had been no financial crises since the Great Depression. The 1950s and 1960s had been a period of enormous growth, the highest in American history, maybe in economic history.

And it was egalitarian.  The lowest quintile did about as well as the highest quintile. Lots of people moved into reasonable lifestyles — what’s called the “middle class” here, the “working class” in other countries — but it was real.  And the 1960s accelerated it. The activism of those years, after a pretty dismal decade, really civilized the country in lots of ways that are permanent.

When the 1970s came along, there were sudden and sharp changes: de-industrialization, the off-shoring of production, and the shift to financial institutions, which grew enormously. I should say that, in the 1950s and 1960s, there was also the development of what several decades later became the high-tech economy: computers, the Internet, the IT Revolution developed substantially in the state sector.

The developments that took place during the 1970s set off a vicious cycle. It led to the concentration of wealth increasingly in the hands of the financial sector. This doesn’t benefit the economy — it probably harms it and society — but it did lead to a tremendous concentration of wealth.

On Politics and Money

Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power. And concentration of political power gives rise to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle. The legislation, essentially bipartisan, drives new fiscal policies and tax changes, as well as the rules of corporate governance and deregulation. Alongside this began a sharp rise in the costs of elections, which drove the political parties even deeper into the pockets of the corporate sector.

The parties dissolved in many ways. It used to be that if a person in Congress hoped for a position such as a committee chair, he or she got it mainly through seniority and service. Within a couple of years, they started having to put money into the party coffers in order to get ahead, a topic studied mainly by Tom Ferguson. That just drove the whole system even deeper into the pockets of the corporate sector (increasingly the financial sector).

This cycle resulted in a tremendous concentration of wealth, mainly in the top tenth of one percent of the population. Meanwhile, it opened a period of stagnation or even decline for the majority of the population. People got by, but by artificial means such as longer working hours, high rates of borrowing and debt, and reliance on asset inflation like the recent housing bubble. Pretty soon those working hours were much higher in the United States than in other industrial countries like Japan and various places in Europe. So there was a period of stagnation and decline for the majority alongside a period of sharp concentration of wealth. The political system began to dissolve.

There has always been a gap between public policy and public will, but it just grew astronomically. You can see it right now, in fact.  Take a look at the big topic in Washington that everyone concentrates on: the deficit. For the public, correctly, the deficit is not regarded as much of an issue. And it isn’t really much of an issue. The issue is joblessness. There’s a deficit commission but no joblessness commission. As far as the deficit is concerned, the public has opinions. Take a look at the polls. The public overwhelmingly supports higher taxes on the wealthy, which have declined sharply in this period of stagnation and decline, and the preservation of limited social benefits.

The outcome of the deficit commission is probably going to be the opposite. The Occupy movements could provide a mass base for trying to avert what amounts to a dagger pointed at the heart of the country.

Plutonomy and the Precariat

For the general population, the 99% in the imagery of the Occupy movement, it’s been pretty harsh — and it could get worse. This could be a period of irreversible decline. For the 1% and even less — the .1% — it’s just fine. They are richer than ever, more powerful than ever, controlling the political system, disregarding the public. And if it can continue, as far as they’re concerned, sure, why not?

Take, for example, Citigroup. For decades, Citigroup has been one of the most corrupt of the major investment banking corporations, repeatedly bailed out by the taxpayer, starting in the early Reagan years and now once again. I won’t run through the corruption, but it’s pretty astonishing.

In 2005, Citigroup came out with a brochure for investors called “Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances.” It urged investors to put money into a “plutonomy index.” The brochure says, “The World is dividing into two blocs — the Plutonomy and the rest.”

Plutonomy refers to the rich, those who buy luxury goods and so on, and that’s where the action is. They claimed that their plutonomy index was way outperforming the stock market. As for the rest, we set them adrift. We don’t really care about them. We don’t really need them. They have to be around to provide a powerful state, which will protect us and bail us out when we get into trouble, but other than that they essentially have no function. These days they’re sometimes called the “precariat” — people who live a precarious existence at the periphery of society. Only it’s not the periphery anymore. It’s becoming a very substantial part of society in the United States and indeed elsewhere. And this is considered a good thing.

So, for example, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, at the time when he was still “Saint Alan” — hailed by the economics profession as one of the greatest economists of all time (this was before the crash for which he was substantially responsible) — was testifying to Congress in the Clinton years, and he explained the wonders of the great economy that he was supervising. He said a lot of its success was based substantially on what he called “growing worker insecurity.” If working people are insecure, if they’re part of the precariat, living precarious existences, they’re not going to make demands, they’re not going to try to get better wages, they won’t get improved benefits. We can kick ’em out, if we don’t need ’em. And that’s what’s called a “healthy” economy, technically speaking. And he was highly praised for this, greatly admired.

So the world is now indeed splitting into a plutonomy and a precariat — in the imagery of the Occupy movement, the 1% and the 99%. Not literal numbers, but the right picture. Now, the plutonomy is where the action is and it could continue like this.

If it does, the historic reversal that began in the 1970s could become irreversible. That’s where we’re heading. And the Occupy movement is the first real, major, popular reaction that could avert this. But it’s going to be necessary to face the fact that it’s a long, hard struggle. You don’t win victories tomorrow. You have to form the structures that will be sustained, that will go on through hard times and can win major victories. And there are a lot of things that can be done.

Toward Worker Takeover

I mentioned before that, in the 1930s, one of the most effective actions was the sit-down strike. And the reason is simple: that’s just a step before the takeover of an industry.

Through the 1970s, as the decline was setting in, there were some important events that took place.  In 1977, U.S. Steel decided to close one of its major facilities in Youngstown, Ohio. Instead of just walking away, the workforce and the community decided to get together and buy it from the company, hand it over to the work force, and turn it into a worker-run, worker-managed facility. They didn’t win. But with enough popular support, they could have won.  It’s a topic that Gar Alperovitz and Staughton Lynd, the lawyer for the workers and community, have discussed in detail.

It was a partial victory because, even though they lost, it set off other efforts. And now, throughout Ohio, and in other places, there’s a scattering of hundreds, maybe thousands, of sometimes not-so-small worker/community-owned industries that could become worker-managed. And that’s the basis for a real revolution. That’s how it takes place.

In one of the suburbs of Boston, about a year ago, something similar happened. A multinational decided to close down a profitable, functioning facility carrying out some high-tech manufacturing. Evidently, it just wasn’t profitable enough for them. The workforce and the union offered to buy it, take it over, and run it themselves. The multinational decided to close it down instead, probably for reasons of class-consciousness. I don’t think they want things like this to happen. If there had been enough popular support, if there had been something like the Occupy movement that could have gotten involved, they might have succeeded.

And there are other things going on like that. In fact, some of them are major. Not long ago, President Barack Obama took over the auto industry, which was basically owned by the public. And there were a number of things that could have been done. One was what was done: reconstitute it so that it could be handed back to the ownership, or very similar ownership, and continue on its traditional path.

The other possibility was to hand it over to the workforce — which owned it anyway — turn it into a worker-owned, worker-managed major industrial system that’s a big part of the economy, and have it produce things that people need. And there’s a lot that we need.

We all know or should know that the United States is extremely backward globally in high-speed transportation, and it’s very serious. It not only affects people’s lives, but the economy.  In that regard, here’s a personal story. I happened to be giving talks in France a couple of months ago and had to take a train from Avignon in southern France to Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris, the same distance as from Washington, DC, to Boston. It took two hours.  I don’t know if you’ve ever taken the train from Washington to Boston, but it’s operating at about the same speed it was 60 years ago when my wife and I first took it. It’s a scandal.

It could be done here as it’s been done in Europe. They had the capacity to do it, the skilled work force. It would have taken a little popular support, but it could have made a major change in the economy.

Just to make it more surreal, while this option was being avoided, the Obama administration was sending its transportation secretary to Spain to get contracts for developing high-speed rail for the United States, which could have been done right in the rust belt, which is being closed down. There are no economic reasons why this can’t happen. These are class reasons, and reflect the lack of popular political mobilization. Things like this continue.

Climate Change and Nuclear Weapons

I’ve kept to domestic issues, but there are two dangerous developments in the international arena, which are a kind of shadow that hangs over everything we’ve discussed. There are, for the first time in human history, real threats to the decent survival of the species.

One has been hanging around since 1945. It’s kind of a miracle that we’ve escaped it. That’s the threat of nuclear war and nuclear weapons. Though it isn’t being much discussed, that threat is, in fact, being escalated by the policies of this administration and its allies. And something has to be done about that or we’re in real trouble.

The other, of course, is environmental catastrophe. Practically every country in the world is taking at least halting steps towards trying to do something about it. The United States is also taking steps, mainly to accelerate the threat.  It is the only major country that is not only not doing something constructive to protect the environment, it’s not even climbing on the train. In some ways, it’s pulling it backwards.

And this is connected to a huge propaganda system, proudly and openly declared by the business world, to try to convince people that climate change is just a liberal hoax. “Why pay attention to these scientists?”

We’re really regressing back to the dark ages. It’s not a joke.  And if that’s happening in the most powerful, richest country in history, then this catastrophe isn’t going to be averted — and in a generation or two, everything else we’re talking about won’t matter. Something has to be done about it very soon in a dedicated, sustained way.

It’s not going to be easy to proceed. There are going to be barriers, difficulties, hardships, failures.  It’s inevitable. But unless the spirit of the last year, here and elsewhere in the country and around the globe, continues to grow and becomes a major force in the social and political world, the chances for a decent future are not very high.

Noam Chomsky’s latest book is Occupy.

This article was originally published by TomDispatch.

Source:  http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/05/08/on-the-history-of-the-u-s-economy-in-decline/