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Eviction is the Best Thing That Could Happen to Occupy London
Occupy claims it operates 'real democracy'. In fact it is a tyranny in which one vote can block any motion. It needs a rethink.
The camp at St Paul's cathedral was a beacon: it drew people from all over London together and united them in a common cause, it gave the movement unprecedented media coverage and provided a focus for the thousands of sympathizers that have visited the camp. But now the camp itself has achieved all it needs to, and the trials of day to day life at St Paul's are drawing too much energy from the bigger picture.
'An Occupy presence at St Paul’s certainly needs to remain as the symbolic heart of the movement, but for it to be more than a space for general assemblies and lectures is superfluous.' I cannot speak for Occupy. But at least I have been more involved in it than many commentators. The camp is divided into two broad ideologies, the reformists who want to expose the harsh realities of life under neoliberal capitalism, and the revolutionaries seeking a fundamental shift in society. Realistically, Occupy can achieve only one of these aims without the grassroots support of the public and neither is best served by sleeping on the steps of St Paul's. In fact, continuing to stay will more than likely damage its chances of success, attracting a lot of negative publicity and undermining its important work highlighting economic and social injustice.
Occupy has become too wrapped up in openness and inclusion, and although these are noble goals it means the camp is plagued with problems of self-policing. The occupations have drawn revelers and the homeless from across the capital, and with them they have brought issues of alcohol and substance abuse and violence. Occupy has tried to help these people, offering food, shelter, counseling and companionship, the vast majority are grateful for this kindness, but a few consistently cause trouble.
There have been some serious incidents at the camp in the last few months including: thefts, tents being slashed and minor assaults. These problems are not of Occupy's making, but they're happening on its watch. When anyone is challenged about people's behavior they're quick to cry "persecution" and appeal to the founding principles of inclusion. If Occupy can't solve the problem of behavior on-site, a hostile media and the police will end the movement before it gets going.
Even people who aren't aggressive or violent can derail the movement. The very nature of the general assembly (GA), whereby everyone can wield a veto, makes it inevitable. A block should be used only if the blocker feels so strongly that they would rather leave the movement than see it carried through, but it is rarely used as such and rarely with a full understanding of the issues at stake. Occupy proudly states that the GA is "real democracy", in fact it is a tyranny that makes it possible to drown out a hundred rational voices with a single irrational one. A simple 10% threshold on a block as used in Occupy Wall Street would greatly reduce the disruption any individual could cause.
The largest stumbling block for Occupy is the obsession with horizontal organization – there is a difference between having a leader and allowing leadership. The leaderless structure caused enough problems when activity was just focused on St Paul's, but with three other loosely tied occupations just in London, in places the organization has broken down almost entirely.
The current consensus model is workable, but at a great cost of time and energy, both of which are in short supply among occupiers and could be more productively spent elsewhere. This is fact recognized by many within the movement. If the legitimacy of the general assembly and the consensus process breaks down further then Occupy risks a total rupture as clans within the movement begin to act independently. Only a form of hierarchy can hold all the disparate groups and individuals together as the movement grows.
There needs to be a reassessment of what the campaign is trying to achieve and how best to do it, and what the aftermath of the eviction will be when these questions are answered. A presence at St Paul's certainly needs to remain as the symbolic heart of the movement, but for it to be more than a space for GAs and lectures is superfluous. Legally the City of London can have no objection to people congregating in the square for general assemblies and the church has considered letting Occupy keep a non-residential presence. Loss of the campsite would also go a long way to shake off the strong counter-culture vibe around the movement that tends to galvanize more people against it than for it. If Occupy is working towards revolution it will need far more public support than it commands today.
Without a doubt there is great work going on at the camp, to name a few the recent talk against high executive pay by Lord Glasman and others outside the FSA building, corporate criminals being put on trial at Occupy Justice and meetings with the treasury select committee. There is a lot more for Occupy to achieve but currently the movement has neither the organisation to get large groups to work towards a common goal nor the autonomy to attract new talent and skills and allow people to use them as best they can.
There may be many challenges that Occupy faces, but none are insurmountable. Only if the movement can pull together and address its own failings can it legitimately address the failings of the rest of the world. At the moment it's not in the right shape to do that.
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20 Comments so far
Show AllThe article makes a few good points. Staying overnight is not necessary (though a semi-constant presence is important, in my view), and Occupy groups would be better off embracing a "10% threshold on a block as used in Occupy Wall Street".
The rest of the article is garbage, however. Sid states --
"The largest stumbling block for Occupy is the obsession with horizontal organization – there is a difference between having a leader and allowing leadership. Only a form of hierarchy can hold all the disparate groups and individuals together as the movement grows."
No, no and no. What the author claims is Occupy's greatest weakness is in fact Occupy's greatest strength. Hierarchy will spell the death of the movement. You might as well just appoint a bunch of Trotskyists or Democrats as leaders. What Occupy needs is more sophisticated delegation and coordination between individual units. "Leaders" can and should be appointed to represent groups, but they should not have the capacity to make important decisions without the strong support of the majority. Ideally, every Occupy "clan" in the world should be appointing delegates and beginning a process of action coordination; for this, more centralized nexus points and communication need to be established -- but keep the actual power structure decentralized and BOTTOM UP.
The biggest problem here is the instant gratification culture embraced by individuals like the author of this piece. Liberals are already insisting that Occupy revert to failed forms of organization, namely hierarchy. These people are expecting, what -- that Occupy should have profoundly altered society in a few weeks? Keep it horizontal, or it was all for naught.
Ryan does imply that the form of "leadership" he is envisioning would look much like you describe.
It seems like the term "heirarchy" is the sticking point here.
I have two thoughts that might be helpful:
1. No Consensus- based system that I know of has ever been larger than the Iroquois League. To get to where the got, a flexible, but also strong and complex hierarchy was indeed employed. The key is that member could leave the group. And that the two categories of "leaders" could check/recall each other.
2. The question of organization is secondary to the question of PURPOSE. If the OWS could only come together (as you so rightly suggest and in that manner) on Global Goals and some basic structures (like bottom up power), then not only could reall effort at organization begin, but the inevitable factionalizing could be endured without full break-up of the Movement.
In fact, that last one gets me so excited I'll begin the call:
Global Assembly Now!
"It seems like the term "heirarchy" is the sticking point here."
Yes. Certainly the Iroquois were not "hierarchical" in the modern sense of the term.
Kanatiiosh (Barbara Gray) has argued that "western law emerges with a structure based on hierarchy, which I believe is attributed, to their treatment of women as secondary citizens. Whereas, Haudenosaunee law emerges with a democratic structure based on equality and goodwill for all."
Bonaparte --
“a lot of our people don't like using the term "chief" instead of "royaner," because chief is such a generic term. You've got fire chiefs, police chiefs, chief of staff, etc. Those are positions where the people who have them are empowered to make decisions for a group, whereas our "royaners" are facilitators for having the group itself come to the decision, and who then act upon that decision.”
David Graeber --
"Longhouses were governed by councils made up entirely of women, who, since they controlled its food supplies, could evict any in-married male at will. Villages were governed by both male and female councils. Councils on the national and league level were made up of both male and female office-holders. It’s true that the higher one went in the structure, the less relative importance the female councils had--on the longhouse level, there wasn’t any male organization at all, while on the league level, the female council merely had veto power over male decisions--but it’s also true that decisions on the lower level were of much more immediate relevance to daily life. In terms of everyday affairs, Iroquois society often seems to have been about as close as there is to a documented case of a matriarchy."
Anthropological archaeologist Dean Snow rejects the term "matriarchy" --
"Iroquois women were not matriarchs, or Amazons, or drudges. They were Iroquois women, who lived in a nonhierarchical society in which their role as food producers was properly appreciated and in which the elevation of some aspects of kinship to political significance gave them influence that they might not otherwise have had."
Kahentinetha Horn's description of consensual decision-making among the Kanien'kehá:ka:
"[N]o one can impose their will nor make decisions for another, all must understand the viewpoint and agree of their own free will. The goal is not total agreement, but total understanding. If there is no agreement, then the consensus is to retain the status quo. If there is understanding by all then they go ahead with the decision... In entering the consensual decision-making process, whatever ideas are put into the process, the needs and attitudes of each is considered and complements the decision. Also, the individual has a duty to be directly involved, and to bring their ideas into the discussion within their clan. The final decision will be fully satisfactory to some, satisfactory to others and relatively satisfactory to the remainder, and will reflect elements from every group. This is a slow careful process requiring the reaching of a full understanding by each individual and not a decision made by a 'leader.' The person who explains the decision is a spokesman." (102)
David Graeber --
"for all the complex federative structure, society was in most respects highly egalitarian. Office-holders, male and female, were elected from among a pool of possible heirs; the offices themselves, at least the male political ones, were considered as much a responsibility as a reward as they involved no real material rewards and certainly granted the holder no coercive power." (88)
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There are disagreements about the importance of lineage in the structure of Iroquois society.
Teiowí:sonte describes modern debates around heredity: "To some, heredity is the very essence of Haudenosaunee governance and an integral factor in leadership selection... To others, this concept represents the infiltration of European corruption into Haundenosaunee leadership selection and the fortification of a class system invading our traditional concept of democracy with notions of royalty. Likewise, advocates against the heredity concept believe it to be a non-traditional convention that is a fairly recent development resulting from colonization."
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The problem I have with the 100% consensus model is that -- in modern times, under a police state -- infiltrators can too easily monkeywrench the process. You suggest some good strategies for dealing with the problem. And I agree -- Global Assembly Now.
Excellent information!
These short quotes represent a treasure-trove of obsevations on long-term experimentations with social formations that OWS may wish to emulate.
VERY important.
And I wasn't even thinking of infiltrators.
Always a dangerous business, that of identifying the "true" and the "spy", but OWS openess and crypto-goals simply INVITE such activity on the part of the control minders -it is a business that must be dealt with.
Steering away from "100% consensus" will do a lot for this.
Actually bad idea!! Keep consensus. It aint' broke. Don't fix it! This is a movement of the streets. If consensus goes, so goes the protection that comes with it of being all for one and one for all. Hierarchies are the source of the problems, not the solution in the least. Power always tends to corrupt. Not maybe! Those who aren't in the streets can still come up with plans outside this framework and do other things on their own. But the OWS does what it does well because all back it. The one way to destroy this movement is by allowing it to become a "tyranny of the majority" with those who are seeking to undermine the movement then having more leeway to do so, as they can at times get enough to the scene to "outvote" others. This is bull unless some want to destroy the unity that OWS has so far had and allow those would destroy it this club to beat over the head with. More violence will be likely not less likely by law enforcement in such cases with less unity and less consensus to protect those victims of such police brutality. Sound dangerous. It is. Twenty two and knows it all! Hey no you don't!
I've done some protesting myself in a less hostile state environment than now prevails. That said, we better allow for just how megalomaniac some of the power elites are before some take a fatal step to solve a non problem. It's not efficient. Democracy isn't supposed to be. Want the trains to run on time. They always did in the Third Reich and Fascist Italy. I'll take ineffeciency and being late any day. Let the trains and especially this congress, president, and so many other power elties run behind time in ruining everything in sight. Give me inefficiency!
I suppose time will tell, eh?
I see no problem with putting at least a social emphasis on only blocking the Majority when you really, really, REALLY mean it.
But I still say this would lack the critical ability to have split-offs that remain within the larger Movement.
The choice to me is not "consensus or not consensus".
The choice to me is "weak consensus model versus strong consensus model".
DURRUTIX: Marvelous post! It's always refreshing when a poster contributes information that is truly unique, or otherwise difficult to find elsewhere. Your scholarship is at times remarkable. Thank you for adding to this forum.
If some infiltrate this movement for power elties or more to the point, they probably already have. But with consensus, what good will that do them. They can't get a consensus to do what they want which is to serve the one per cent. If OWS goes to a real non consensual model, then all protections against such take overs go with it. Allow for that before panic takes over allowing for this we "have to have efficiency" BS to run wild and take with it the movement which already even got GOP politicians scared to "death"-- words of one of their top strategists. Openness scare the bad people. They know they can't BS the OWS movement into their agenda with this consensus model. But with a top down one such might be possible. Keep that in mind when considering alternatives. As to violence would non consensus model make the chief causes of the violence who are even not part of OWS any less violent? How?
Law enforcement types who would be prone to violence might become more prone to same if they see any disunity in this street movement. They do divide and rule real well. We don't.
"Realism" is part of the problem, not the solution. We must look at such "unrealistic" actions as non violent civil disobedience and internationalization of this as a real move toward an actual solution. The GAs can be internationalized. Then at that level, some consensus will also develop.
Bear in mind, OWS isn't going to be but just one movement. We can have offshoots and other offshoots of these. This is how progress can take place. Evolution! Some will continue and should simultaneously. Once the power elites are on the run, as they're becoming, let's take heart from that. Historically, a number of movements have been going on at the same time, and often complimenting each other. Those who seek to build coaltions, should simply do so. The OWS doesn't have to do that. Actuallly some coalitions are already coming together. Some may be informal. So what! The media which otherwise would be in an attack mode is now having to back off. All the better that the mouthpieces for the status quo are puzzled. They are less effective echo chambers for the power elites which otherwise would be the case.
"Eviction" in this case though be a good thing. It would then make the power elites look bad. Good! It's about time!
I agree except that it is not the liberals in Occupy that want hierarchy. It is nearly always the conservatives of right or left who want hierarchy.
"A block should be used only if the blocker feels so strongly that they would rather leave the movement than see it carried through, but it is rarely used as such and rarely with a full understanding of the issues at stake."
What Ryan is asking for here is how historical -succesful- Consensus Decision Making groupings -like the Iroquois League villages- ACTUALLY FUNCTIONED.
This gets to the fundamental difference between what I have labelled (perhaps poorly) "Unanimity-Seeking Consensus" and "Liberty-Preserving Consensus".
OWS has been largely following the former model becuase that is the one that has cache amongst Campus Left theoriticians and their glossers/readers.
But it is the latter model that has a proven track-record of success!
Ryan's proposed 10% threshold is a good start for a rethink, but it is a bit arbitrary.
The way it SHOULD work is that if someone is really vehemently opposed to the desires of the Majority, they should be challenged to either sway the Majority to their position in some given time, similarly sway a Minority sufficient to justify postponing the question, remain silently opposed for now as the group moves the Majority's way, or leave, on their own or with others to form a new grouping.
But because OWS is -currently- modeled as "Unanimity-Seeking", they cannot -it seems- stand for this sort of splitting off or "factionalizing" within the over-grouping.
This has led directly to the stagnation/loss of participation that Ryan is identifying in the London OWS -there and everywhere.
The way it SHOULD work is that if someone is really vehemently opposed to the desires of the Majority, they should be challenged to either sway the Majority to their position in some given time, similarly sway a Minority sufficient to justify postponing the question, remain silently opposed for now as the group moves the Majority's way, or leave, on their own or with others to form a new grouping.
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Perhaps not. That's how religions both god-bothering and secular get fragmented into tinier and tinier sects, each sure that it alone has The Truth.
Revolt is messy. Get over it.
The Masses make a Revolt.
OWS is not a Mass Movement yet.
And let us not forget that "those who provide the mass support for a revolution, those who lead it, and those who ultimately profit from it are very different sets of people."
From the Occupy sites, OWS haven't caught up with the overseas movements they fired up. These talk about direct democracy, a term seldom heard here. It may be that OWS hesitates to follow an example of a successful direct democracy like the Swiss because of national pride or grievances, or that they don't know how to go about reaching consensus, having had no prior experience with it. Guides to direct democracy like NI4D.US are available online.
"The current consensus model is workable, but at a great cost of time and energy, both of which are in short supply among occupiers and could be more productively spent elsewhere."
The author doesn't yet get it. He's joined a movement, and it doesn't matter much to him what the characteristics of the movement are except for its power. If the author really understood what's special about the occupy movement he would simply not criticize it so harshly, but instead he might criticize his very own indoctrination by Das Kapital that caused him to blind himself to the answers.
The time and energy required by the consensus process above and beyond that of representative governance is more than worth it. First, compare the value of the two types of activity competing for our time/energy, governance, and the rest. Given that over human history we've been grotesquely lacking in effective governance, we give priority to governance in this new movement. I don't think the author has thought much about this. Second, properly weigh the pros and cons of the two approaches, consensus versus representation. Consensus pros - Utmost potential for universal equity/justice. Cons - takes a while. Representation pros - it's quick, it's abbreviated! So we can get to other things like building more crapola that we don't need, fighting warz, and watching TeeVee - weee! Cons - if not death, then slave shackles - meet the new boss, same as the old boss, business as usual, yeah, law of the jungle, might makes right, heh heh, etc, etc, etc.
Universal equity/justice are worth it.
Hey the author has some growing up to do - but not on MY back. I'm absolutely thrilled with everything he criticized about Occupy. He should go join the Labor party and leave Occupy alone. Occupy, you are doing EVERYTHING RIGHT.
Eviction has not worked anywhere, has it? Isn't that what the ruling class wants? Corporations occupy almost every space--that is the goal of corporations. For people to take back anything has become miraculous, to hold it for more than 24 hours, here is the US, is now inviting physical assault by armed thugs called 'police.'
What is lost when public space is no longer public? What is lost when organizing and protest is banned? I will remind you of what I have written previously...
What have we LOST by not being able to occupy public space in an ongoing, energizing, peaceful, educational protest in public spaces throughout the US?
1) We have lost the right to work with people who have nowhere else to go. We have lost a bridge with the dispossessed who were a feature of those encampments.
2) We have lost the ability to coordinate a series of organizing events and activities in, and through, a public venue which was open to passersby, the curious, and the poor.
3) We lost the ability to share resources such as computers, a library, expertise, and experience through public space.
4) We lost a space that served as a magnet, a portal that many people passed through, through which many people came and went, learned, shared, and experienced direct democracy.
5) Many participants lost their tents and all of their possessions, and for some of those people, that was all they had.
The arrogance of the privileged is on display in this disconnection from the home that were these occupations, in these theoretical discussions about the 'tactic' of being 'dispersed' as an advantage, but what about those who were beaten? What about those arrested? What about those who were beaten, arrested, and had all their possessions stolen? Tell those people about this great victory.
Ask yourselves: How could the brutal repression by the state be a victory? It is true that many of us are still around. But it would be foolish not to note, and note well, what has been lost, and what we have lost forever if we cannot hold on to public space. We are the dispossessed. We are the homeless. We are the indigenous people. Maybe some of us still live in boxes, but corporations will make slaves of us all; corporations and their police have a goal too: Occupy everything.
Quakers aka the Religous Society of Friends have used consensus for over three hundred years. It can be a much slower process than most of us are used to, but it's one that permits everyone's thoughts & proposals to be heard.
There can be BIG problems with consensus decision-making, though, when a single disruptive or less-than-conscientious indiviidual is allowed to block the entire group. An infiltrator could take advantage of this flaw.