Occupy…

In Taunton, a manufacturing town outside of Boston, there was a small, reasonably successful manufacturing plant. It was producing hi -tech equipment for aircraft, and apparently it was doing ok; but it wasn’t making enough profit for the managers and the multinational corporation that owned it. So the corporation wanted to just dismantle it. The United Electrical Workers Union wanted to buy the operation and run it themselves, but the corporation wouldn’t agree. I suspect that they wouldn’t agree on class grounds: it’s not a good idea to let people own and manage their own work places- people might get the wrong idea. But maybe making a deal in the multinationals’ favour would have been a plausible compromise; workers get to keep their jobs, and corporations keeps making the profit without incurring any cost?

…These are the kinds of things, feasible things, that could have a big effect on society. 

Obama is praised for having essentially nationalised the auto industry and reconstructed it. but there were two alternatives: One alternative would have been to hand the auto industry over to the workforce/the stake holders, in the the image of what the country really needs. Another possibility was to hand it back to the original owners- not the same names, but to the same banks, the same class, and so on. and of course, that’s what was done. 

The population has a sensible attitude about what ought to be done, like for example, higher taxes for the rich and going back to the way things were during the big growth periods. Something like Occupy could help lead society on a more human course.

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Lastly, The United States is the only major country that is not doing something constructive to protect the environment. And this is connected with 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. It’s not going to be easy to proceed. There are going to be barriers, difficulties, hardships, failures- it’s inevitable. the human species face a very serious problem of whether even decent existence can be carried forward. We are coming close to the edge of a precipice of environmental destruction. Unless there’s a major force in the social and the political world, the chances for a decent future are not very high.

‘Growth’ is understood and accepted to include constant attacks on the physical environment that sustains life – like, for example, greenhouse emissions, destruction of agricultural land, destruction of the earth’s protective ozone layer and so forth. This isn’t what growth has to mean. It takes work and doesn’t come by itself; it takes development of a different kind (and the US can and should be on the forefront of this). A different way of living, which is not based on maximizing consumer goods, but on maximizing values that are important for life. 

That’s growth too. 

That’s real growth. 

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In conclusion, the more active public support there is the better defence there is against repression, corruption and violence. 

If people don’t want to think about what’s going on, try and bring up the importance of understanding facts. In fact, even the Tea Party, they’re kind of social-democratic. 

A considerable majority are in favour of more spending for health and more spending for education. They’re against welfare but not for more spending to help, say, women with dependent children. That’s the result of very effective propaganda. One of Ronald Reagan’s great successes was to demonize the concept of welfare. In Reagonite rhetoric, welfare means a rich black woman driving to a welfare office in a chauffeured cadillac so she can take your hard earned money and spend it on drugs or something. Well, nobody’s in favour of that. 

But are you in favour of what welfare actually does? Well, yeah, that ought to be supported. 

The same is true on health care, on the deficit. Special interests indirectly villainize certain things to be misunderstood when, in reality, most would support it. 

2/3s of the population think that corporations should be deprived of personal rights. It’s not just Citizens United. 

It goes back a century. And that’s against the will of about 2/3s of the population. 

we have to make the people understand clearly what’s going on. The goal should be simply to educate. 

And again, you can’t do anything unless there is a large popular base.

If something like the Occupy movement was a leading force in the country, you could push many things forward. 

Remember, most people don’t know that this is happening. 

Economists and Nobel Laureates think that austerity in a period of recession is guaranteed to make the situation worse. Growth is what is needed in a period of recession, not austerity. Europe has the resources to stimulate growth, but their resources are not being used because of the policies of the Central Bank. A rational way to judge purposes is to look at predictable consequences and who benefits. One consequence is that these policies would of course put more power in the hands of the corporate sector and the wealthy. 

It’s also necessary to get people to understand what the consequences are of not doing anything about it.

The only way to mobilize the public is by going out and joining them. Getting involved with them and trying to learn from them, to bring about a change of consciousness among them. 

One of the achievements of the Occupy movement has been people involved are in it for one another, for the broader society and for future generations.

Major organisations of ‘unknown people’, as Howard Zinn put it, created the grounds that enabled King to gain significant influence. This forced the country to honor the constitutional amendments of a century earlier which had theoretically granted elementary civil rights. 

…No need to stress, there remains a long way to go.