#occupy London....
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And my present experience indicates that the kinds of peeps making decisions are so entrenched and cossetted in being babies that intellgent debate is just a side lineline, a show and an entertainment. Power seems to reside more than ever with the coteries. For me personally, I'm just trying to elaborate a word pool in which my language can get some breath. Self-serving and poncey I know, but if you mean to strike out against the fat massy arse, you need to have a lungful first innit.
Giggles BA. I like you for your rep anyhoo
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
What a delightful contrived 'word for another thing' world you live in. Can you move it and you to a more appropriate thread?
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Move it.Giggles BA. I like you for your rep anyhoo
Sure. I'll leave you to your Bacchantes.
Treacle Toes
Time
So....write something yourself that is factually accurate and send it in to the occupation for it to be published. They are taking submissions for the next Issue already.
Blagsta
Minimum cage, maximum cage
Do you talk like you type?
Only to his coteries.
No
. Also I was drunk.The worthiness of the thread got me pissed off though. Capitalism's falling apart all by itself: a process and the consequence of an increasingly interdependent world. Anxiety about diminishing resources and the spoiling of existing ones (global warming, pollution, how power's shared and distributed etc) seem a driver too. Protest is about as useful and influential as democracy in these contexts. People use it to look good but it's all bullshit in terms of changing anything. Change will happen when the rich are suffering and fear they're loosing control - not before.
Take these guys for example: http://www.gold.org/
They've recently set up a work group to frame and negotiate international legislation to clean up 'blood diamonds' and gold with a dodgy provenance. They'll succeed, and the result will be, partly, to succeed in hiding or burying abuses and murder.
This lilliputian thing here... Tssss. Actually, maybe it's about time to think again about distributing minced rioter burgers as nourishment for the unemployed? (Swift - I'm not being earnest)
e2a - or (more practically put) change will happen when the current wealth/power distrubution suits a minority that's unable to maintain itself. Whatever concessions that are eventually made will be tiny - just enough to keep power where it is. Or that's how it looks to me. All the same, the thread's liberal sentiments are of course marvellous.
nino_savatte
No pasaran!
I keep hearing the protest's detractors telling us how the protesters should use "democratic" means. it seems to me that some people have a rather odd view of democracy if they're against people protesting.
Yes, we seem to be living in a real life version of Terry Gilliam's Brazil.
It's a ruse. "Democratic means" rely on the power of the individual in relation to the State. Whereas political power is now safeguarded cleverly in processes that are much more effective in undermining personal integrity. It's near impossible to take the kind of clear position that democracy requires - too much at stake in an age that makes such heavy demands towards conformity.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
You think all this has happened by the system just carrying on - 'falling apart all by itself'? The system hasn't been forced to react by any pressures other than itself and that those pressures haven't forced it to react in ways that undermine it's wider functioning? Just how far in the past do you live?
No
The worthiness of the thread got me pissed off though. Capitalism's falling apart all by itself: a process and the consequence of an increasingly interdependent world. Anxiety about diminishing resources and the spoiling of existing ones (global warming, pollution, how power's shared and distributed etc) seem a driver too. Protest is about as useful and influential as democracy in these contexts. People use it to look good but it's all bullshit in terms of changing anything. Change will happen when the rich are suffering and fear they're loosing control - not before.
Well it depends what limits you put on the boundaries of the system, doesn't it? And which currents within the system are prevailing, no?
No idea what you mean by "living in the past" - is that just the usual willy waving BA?
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
No. I mean you a have a view of capital and its functioning that is seriously out of date and reminds me of the sort of thing put forward in the 19th century - machine based thinking.
Does it depends on that? You made a claim, i disagree with the claim, i think capital has been chased around the globe and forced to attempt all manner of restructurings by the actions of the w/c. It is being driven - it is not the driver. The result is the current crisis. Are you going to try and say that this is the system, all this is within its boundaries? Bit of a weak get out if so, and one that ignores the subjective element, back to the machine.
Does it depends on that? You made a claim, i disagree with the claim, i think capital has been chased around the globe and forced to attempt all manner of restructurings by the actions of the w/c. It is being driven - it is not the driver. The result is the current crisis. Are you going to try and say that this is the system, all this is within its boundaries? Bit of a weak get out if so, and one that ignores the subjective element, back to the machine.
'2pm – Rally for a just society – Marking our three week anniversary, we will be hosting a rally at St Paul’s Churchyard calling for a fairer, more just society. Beginning at 2pm, prominent speakers will advocate a range of progressive alternatives for the 99% who have been forced to help pay for a crisis that they did not create. After this people will be going to join the Jarrow marchers at Trafalgar Square. Speakers include: Caroline Lucas MP, John Pilger, Bruce Kent (CND), Seumas Milne (The Guardian), Kate Hudson (CND), Josie Long (UK Uncut/comedian), Aaron Kiely (NUS Black Students’ Campaign), Stef Newton (NUS LGBT Campaign & National Campaign Against Fees & Cuts), Weyman Bennett (Unite Against Fascism), Lindsey German (Stop the War Coalition). More details at [URL='http://occupylsx.org/?p=776'']http://occupylsx.org/?p[/URL]=776'
Oh dear, the venerable Lindseys been added to the speaker list, only Rees and Nineham left out now! I thought this was the new politics, i'm sure there are some great speakers if you have to have rallies amongst the OSLX themselves....
Oh dear, the venerable Lindseys been added to the speaker list, only Rees and Nineham left out now! I thought this was the new politics, i'm sure there are some great speakers if you have to have rallies amongst the OSLX themselves....
I think we're at cross-purposes here BA, and perhaps even in agreement about capital to the extent that it's a motivator of processes rather than a thing-in-itself. There are many different crises arising from present global circumstances though, no? Interlinked ones. Or can you put a finger on the most significant one?
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
I don't think we are at cross purposes. I think you're just waffling and trying to sound clever.
The revolt against the factory and the subsequent rise in the social wage in the developed countries in the latter half of the 60s through until the 80s that forced down the average rate of profit and led to productive capital heading for the financial/speculative sector and financialising the domestic economy (your pension, social-reproduction- i.education, health etc) and dismantling the established chains of real production (i.e moving them away) is pretty clearly the most significant series. Maybe that's just capital being capital though.
The revolt against the factory and the subsequent rise in the social wage in the developed countries in the latter half of the 60s through until the 80s that forced down the average rate of profit and led to productive capital heading for the financial/speculative sector and financialising the domestic economy (your pension, social-reproduction- i.education, health etc) and dismantling the established chains of real production (i.e moving them away) is pretty clearly the most significant series. Maybe that's just capital being capital though.
Apparently, the rally has been organised by COR and the OSLX are just supporting it, be careful, don't get co-opted, something new is being born..
Oh, and has it been organised to distract from the New Jarrow March which is of course organised by the SP?.
they are also getting involved in the teach-ins
7pm – International democracy panel at TCU with Joel Lazarus, Claes Belfrage , Richard Seymour, Alex Callinicos
Oh, and has it been organised to distract from the New Jarrow March which is of course organised by the SP?.
they are also getting involved in the teach-ins
7pm – International democracy panel at TCU with Joel Lazarus, Claes Belfrage , Richard Seymour, Alex Callinicos
You're a testy bugger BA! And rude at the drop of a hat... as per Blagsta's query directed at me, do you talk in the way that you write?
I'd certainly quibble with your "revolt against the factory" perspective. Otherwise some of the things you've said here are interesting but hardly the last word on the subject. You're certainly succeeding in sounding clever though. Well done!
In any case the only point I mean to make is that the occupy movement fails to engage with the real drivers behind what's going wrong (not just with capital, surely; not just as a consequence of problems with capital either). To me, democracy and oppositional politics seem hopelessly outdated if you like to look at things in a time frame. From the point of view of processes and systems development, I'd say they've been superceded and co-opted. I'm not in any way suggesting that's the only narrative, only that it's one worthy of consideration. As you point out yourself, subjectivity is inevitably an issue.
Sorry yep.
kavenism
Progressive misanthrope
I think that's pretty much right, although I think you might be conflating Democratic with Juridical means. Juridical in the sense of individual rights and liberties in relation to the state, old social contract stuff. But you are right sovereignty today is a thoroughly moot concept in the face of the majority of relations of power existing outside the control of juridical forms of law. This is why I just don't get some of the protestors who frame the argument in terms of 'the banks' or whoever having perverted our sovereign rights, as if this way of doing politics in the west hadn’t died about 60 years ago.
Treacle Toes
Time
Treacle Toes
Time
Kettled outside parliment...
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