Finished!
It’s taken a couple of months (I’ve read a lot of other books at the same time), but I have finally finished The Occupy Handbook. Instead of reviewing the book though, I thought today I would do a reflection on one of its final chapters; Jeffrey Sachs’ Occupy Global Capitalism. Whilst I don’t agree with all of what Sachs says, his piece comes closest to being a review of the book itself.
Before I do that however, let’s have a quick look at the book. As I’ve said, The Occupy Handbook is a series of essays on the occupy movement. The book is broken up into three categories; How we got here, looking at the lead up to the financial crisis and the occupy movement, Where we are now, looking at the economic situation we face and how the occupy movement stands, and Solutions, looking at, well, the solutions. In doing so, the book covers a lot – ranging from detailed and technical economic policy to analysis of how anti-capitalist social movements form and can succeed. And whilst it is this broad analysis that makes the book worthwhile, it also brings it problems. Although it has an overall leftist critique (despite some very notable exceptions), the Handbook in many ways lacks a true narrative.
This is where Sach’s piece is really useful. Just like the book itself, Sachs’ piece covers the key issues of how we got here, where we are now, and solutions to the problems. In doing so he provides an overall analysis that I think is largely in line with much of the narrative of the book itself.
So, let’s start at the beginning. Where are we? Throughout the book we heard about a world of financial crises, massive economic inequality, and high poverty rates. To understand how we got to this, Sachs says we need to look directly at capitalism as a system:
Global capitalism has arisen during the past thirty years as a system of deep contradictions. On the positive side, global corporations have created a deeply interconnected network of production and finance that is fueling worldwide technological advancement at an unprecedented rate…
Yet global capitalism has also created massive new hardships and has sapped the political will and perhaps even the ability of national governments to response to the needs of those hurt or left behind by economic change.
Sachs’ analysis is therefore based largely around power. As capitalism has gone global so has the power of the global corporation. This is to the extent where economic interests have become more power Governments, or even broader society. The 1% is more powerful than the 99%.
Many of today’s multinational corporations are more powerful than the host governments. By virtue of their immense financial wealth and their credible threat to move jobs across borders, the corporate giants push local politicians to ease regulations, lower corporate tax rates, and weaken or abolish environmental and labor standards. The “race to the bottom” is evident in every sphere of government: business relations, financial regulation, accounting practices, tax police, labor standards, environmental regulations, and the compliance of boards and managers with fiduciary responsibilities.
The problem, as Sachs argues, is that the 1% only really have their own interests at heart:
Here, then, is the picture of today’s global capitalism: a ferociously productive juggernaut that brings new high-tech products to the marketplace but ruthlessly divides societies according to power, education level, and income. The rich are getting richer and more politically powerful; the poor are being left behind, without decent jobs, income security, an income safety net, or a political voice.
So, what are the solutions? There has been much criticism of the occupy movement since it arose – largely that it provides ‘no solutions’ and that it has no staying power. Sachs disagrees. He starts by looking at the history of social movements – arguing that the occupy movement has some good history to back it up, but also a unique challenge in itself.
Revolutions, protests, and anticolonial upheavals have often traveled across national boundaries. The year 1848 saw a wave of antimonarcial upheavals across Europe. Russia’s October Revolution in 1917 spurred several failed attempts at revolution in Europe. Anticolonial movements leaped from India and Indonesia in the late 1940s across Asia and Africa in the 1950s and 1960s. Nineteen sixty-eight was a year of global youth protest, and in 1989, anticommunist revolutions spread like wildfires across central and Eastern Europe. The 2003 U.S. war on Iraq spurred coordinated antiwar protests around the world, showing how a global protest movement could be quickly organized with online support.
Yet the Occupy Movement is distinctive. It is a wave of social protest that spans rich and poor countries alike. While each country swept up in protest has its distinctive political and economic grievances, there are important commonalities in the aims of the protests in countries as disparate as Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, Spain, Chile and the United States. The protests can reasonably be labeled Occupy Global Capitalism.
By framing it as the Occupy Global Capitalism movement, Sachs argues that the occupy movement has the capacity to bring about the next ‘progressive era’ of politics. Inherent in this is a range of demands that have clearly been articulated. He lists them:
Politics in the hands of the 99 percent, not of the 1 percent that control large corporations.
Rebuilding a mixed economy with a proper balance of markets and government
Ending reckless wars and downsizing the military.
Shifting public funds into training and education so that young people can develop the skills needed for gainful employment
Taxing the rich and the financial sector, including with a financial transactions tax
Building or rebuilding a social safety net and active labor-market policies more along the lines of northern Europe
Reinventing key services, such as health and education, to bring them within reach of everybody, rich and poor
Global cooperation to put this agenda into effect
Sachs argues that even though this sort of era may look a far way off, it could just be around the corner. The movement has staying power, and the real capacity to make change. To leave off, here is where he sees it going.
Today’s youth already changed politics in 2011, even though the new progressive era is yet to truly arrive. Authoritarian rulers were toppled, and long-standing social crises were brought dramatically and vividly to the public’s view.
Civil society is gaining strength by inventing new methods of social cooperation. Global civil society will increasingly be positioned to challenge, and to help reform, the global economy. We are entering an era of networked politics, education, healthcare, energy systems, and other key parts of our global economy. An era of transformation and reform is at hand.
The Moonbat 