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The American political landscape is undergoing rapid change. I published the first edition of 21^st Century Revolution (as Revolutionary Change: An Expatriate View) on August 30, 2011. Two weeks later, the book was totally out of date with the launch of Occupy Wall Street (OWS) in Zuccotti Square. No one, even its founders, anticipated the ability of the Occupy movement to catch fire among disenfranchised American youth and impel them to direct political action. The corporate elite believed a massive anti-austerity movement, comparable to those in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, was impossible in the US. They fully believed that Americans would passively accept deep austerity cuts, supposedly necessitated by the 2008 banking crisis, because they lacked the will and wherewithal to mount or maintain organized resistance to oppose them.

The elite were also caught off guard by the massive Seattle anti-WTO protest in 1999. Then, as now, no one believed massive antiglobalization protests overseas would spread to the US. The US power elite had total confidence that continuous exposure to a corporate-state system of sophisticated psychological messaging (i.e. brainwashing) had rendered the American people too confused, demoralized and apathetic to try to hold their own elected leaders to account.

In 2011, as in 1999, they were wrong. In just two months, the Occupy movement has used the combined tools of social networking, strategic outreach, consensus governance and mass civil disobedience to build the largest mass resistance in the US since the 1930s.

Like the first edition, 21^st Century Revolution differs from other books and articles on the Occupy movement in its emphasis on social class and obstacles the progressive movement faces in recruiting low income and disadvantaged workers. Nine years of living overseas as an American expatriate has caused me to see this issue very differently than when I first emigrated in 2002.

Like Revolutionary Change (the 2010 edition), 21^st Century Revolution is a collection of articles originally published on my blog: “The Most Revolutionary Act.” I divide the book into six parts. The first, “Occupy Wall Street and the New Economics,” is totally new. In addition to looking at the class dynamics influencing the Occupy movement, it examines the new light OWS has shed on our broken banking and monetary system. Part II, “My New Life in New Zealand,” briefly discusses my reasons for leaving the US and the political and social features that make my new home uniquely different from the US. Part III, “Capitalism’s Last Gasp,” examines the train wreck global capitalism has imposed on society and the planet. Part IV, “Psychological Oppression: the Role of Corporate Media,” looks at the role of the mainstream media in shaping the American psyche and preserving the status quo. Part V, “Change Making,” makes some wild guesses about how real change is likely to come about. Part V contains two new articles on gun control and the citizens’ rights movement. Part VI, “The Endgame,” makes a few predictions about post-capitalist society.

Part I Occupy Wall Street and the New Economics

With the recent simultaneous (Homeland Security coordinated) crackdown on numerous public occupations across the US, the future of OWS as an inclusive mass movement is uncertain. Of the major urban occupations, only (as of January 11, 2012), only Occupy DC remains. Many local occupy movements have morphed into anti-eviction groups and are occupying foreclosed homes, both to prevent their owners from being thrown into the street and to open up vacant housing for the homeless. Despite the clear need this fills, some organizers are concerned that the narrower focus will be less effective in attracting new activists. Young people struggling with student loans, unemployment, inability to access medical care, and other urgent problems are likely to be too distracted by their own stresses to be drawn into a movement that doesn’t address their specific needs.

The Risk of Turning Into a Social Welfare Movement

The Zuccotti Square occupation has moved into donated offices in lower Wall Street, complete with computer stations and large meeting spaces and storage space for donated food, clothing and bedding

(http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/01/exclusive-inside-the-offices-of-occupy-wall-street/).

While they continue to carry on outreach and organizing activities, the original Occupy Wall Street activists are far less visible tucked away in offices. Moreover it seems they devote a lot of time to assisting the homeless with food, housing, and other social services. This is a very different role from building a mass protest movement. Although they continue to hold general assembly meetings in their new digs, in a lot of ways they are starting to resemble all the other foundations and non-profits who struggle – and fail - to empower the disadvantaged through outreach, education and direct social services.

For these and other reasons, I believe there will be strong consensus to resume the public occupations when the weather warms up. There are discussions on a number of Occupy sites about the need to follow the example of the Spanish anti-austerity movement – by setting up smaller, neighborhood focused occupations to facilitate the involvement of minorities and the traditional working class. (http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/occupy-wall-street-beyond-encampment)

The Value of Public Occupation as a Tactic

First, nothing crosses the digital divide quite so effectively to Americans without Internet access. While the majority of low income minorities now have Web access via their smartphones, their ability to download data, music, video etc. is extremely limited compared to activists who access the Internet through their PCs and laptops (http://www.theverge.com/2011/12/6/2615518/new-digital-divide-internet-access). Second, the Occupy movement has given American youth their first taste of genuine civic engagement, a powerfully intense alternative to the empty, isolated lives we all lead under post-industrial capitalism. Most will be strongly motivated to continue to seek out the natural high associated with group membership and involvement. Third, the rapid destruction of the US middle class will greatly enhance the size and effectiveness of Occupy Wall Street as a blossoming resistance movement. The continuing lay off of thousands of teachers, social workers, counsellors and other government workers creates an extremely large pool of well-educated and self-disciplined prospective activists to recruit from. It also eliminates the traditional buffering/monitoring a strong middle class plays in preserving and protecting the status quo (I discuss the “policing” role of the middle class at length in “Engaging the Working Class in Part V). By eliminating this stabilizing force, the ruling elite has no choice but to fall back on brute force (police, army, intelligence security personnel) to control their domestic population.

Finally in the two short months OWS monopolized the public and media spotlight, we could already see evidence of its impact on global financial markets and domestic and foreign policy. According to many analysts, the refusal of Americans to passively accept austerity cuts has been a major factor in the current Eurozone crisis – largely because further austerity cuts is the only option on the table to address the debt crisis in Ireland, Greece, Spain and Portugal.

(http://www.dailyforex.com/forex-figures/financial-news/occupy-wall-street/369)

Meanwhile many American pundits attribute the failure of the Supercommittee to reach agreement on cutting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security to OWS. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/23/how-occupy-stopped-supercommittee)

It also seems likely the presence of popular unrest in all major US cities emboldened the Iraqi parliament to withdraw legal immunity (for war crimes) for any US troops who remained after December 2011 (thwarting Obama’s efforts to extend the December deadline for their withdrawal.

(http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/iraq-pm-immunity-issue-scuttled-us-troop-deal/2011/10/22/gIQAX6k26L_video.html).

The Occupy Movement: Ramifications for Radical Change

Occupy New Plymouth - Day 3 and Report on New Zealand Occupy Movement

(October 18, 2011)

In my view, the most impressive accomplishment of #OccupyWallStreet (OWS) is the speed with which we have found a collective voice -- without resorting to cookie cutter slogans or short term policy demands. This hasn't been easy. Coming from the perspective that nearly everything in the system is broken, where exactly do you start? Yet the coherence of the OWS vision is obvious from the speed with which it has spread to 1,000 similar occupations around the world. My own participation in Occupy New Plymouth has to be one of the most inspiring, soul-changing experiences of my life. Not only has it given me the unique privilege of connecting and hearing the views of young (some high school age) activists, but it has taught me how to totally set aside my usual routine for the more important task of change making.

Occupy New Plymouth started with a rally of about 35, and an open forum in which activists read statements and spoke about their reasons for participating. The forum was videoed and will be uploaded to YouTube. It was a big shock for the older established activist community to meet a strong cadre of 15 young (some high school age) well-read activists with highly developed political views. Neither group had any idea the other existed.

A total of about 50 of us maintained the occupation throughout Saturday with five maintaining it overnight. The occupation has received surprisingly strong support from the community and the police (we're right across from the New Plymouth police station). People of all ages drop in throughout the day to ask about our reasons for occupying Robe Street Park and express their own thoughts about fixing a broken New Zealand economy and political system. My main role has been helping to coordinate food and other necessities. Occupy New Plymouth updates are available from http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=227956857259804

The Occupy protests were larger in the bigger New Zealand cities (New Plymouth only has a population of 55,000). Wellington had a kick-off rally 200, with a dozen maintaining the occupation overnight; several hundred marched in Christchurch, with thirty staying overnight; in Auckland 2,000 marched up Queen Street with 100 committed to maintaining the occupation until November 30; in Dunedin (a strong student town) there is an on-going occupation of 70 on the Upper Octagon. Occupy Invercargill had a similar turnout as New Plymouth but have yet to post a Facebook update.

Refusing to Let the Media Define Us

I feel the second most important accomplishment of the Occupy movement is our absolute refusal to let the media to define us. I was sitting next to our spokesperson Luke (age 17) when the Taranaki Daily News rang him Sunday to find out why Occupy New Plymouth was still occupying the park in front of the courthouse. Luke had already given them a detailed explanation on Saturday about the New Zealand political process being totally controlled by international banks and corporations and the 1% of New Zealanders who own most of this country's wealth. That wasn't good enough. They wanted to know specifically what was going on in New Plymouth that we were protesting.

Luke covered the phone to consult with the rest of us. "We don't have a say," I suggested. The others seemed to like this. The reporter didn't get it. "We all feel that we don't have a say in government policy," Luke explained. Today's Daily News also quotes from a pamphlet Occupy New Plymouth handed out stating, "One in five of our children currently live in poverty," and “Our government repeatedly undermines democracy by passing legislation under urgency to fast track public consultation." (http://www.stuff.co.nz/taranaki-daily-news/news/5795147/Protesters-line-up-against-corporates)

The national coverage of New Zealand occupations (which TVNZ refers to as Anti-Greed Protests) in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin and Invercargill has been mostly even handed. However we have received the same criticism - of being incoherent and disorganized - as the American OWS protests. I suspect the New Zealand coverage we're getting stems from success of US activists in transforming initial dismissiveness and derision to grudging respect.

The Media Already Know Why We're There

After a valiant attempt to ignore #occupywallstreet, the US media pretended not to understand why the American people might be unhappy with the corporate takeover of government. It's an extremely flimsy façade. Witness the abrupt turnabout by the New York Times in their October 9 editorial, under the headline "It's obvious what they want. What took so long, and where are the nation's leaders?" (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/opinion/sunday/protesters-against-wall-street.html)

The editorial speaks of "income inequality grinding down the middle class, increasing the ranks of the poor, and threatening to create a permanent underclass of able, willing but jobless people" and the outrage being "compounded by bailouts and by elected officials' hunger for campaign cash from Wall Street, a toxic combination that has reaffirmed the economic and political power of banks and bankers, while ordinary Americans suffer."

It concludes with the highly insightful paragraph:

"It is not the job of the protesters to draft legislation. That's the job of the nation's leaders, and if they had been doing it all along there might not be a need for these marches and rallies. Because they have not, the public airing of grievances is a legitimate and important end in itself. It is also the first line of defense against a return to the Wall Street ways that plunged the nation into an economic crisis from which it has yet to emerge."

#OccupyWallStreet: A Quandary for Longtime Activists

(November 5, 2011)

Many long time activists are in a quandary how to relate to #OccupyWallStreet (OWS). A vibrant, growing mass movement involving thousands of activists is always far more interesting and exciting than the dreary drudgery (fundraising, event organizing, education and outreach, etc) of keeping existing grassroots organizations going. There is a strong temptation to abandon current organizing commitments to join the groundswell created by the Occupy movement. While this might be the right move for some activists, it's also vitally important that others use their existing roles in union, peace and justice and environmental networks to bolster and support the anti-greed movement. There is still lots of furious debate over OWS’s long and short term goals. However there seems to be broad agreement about the need to end corporate rule and establish an alternative non-corporate economy and political system

All Our Single Issues Have the Same Root Cause

There are strong strategic arguments for all unions and single issue peace and justice and environmental groups to get on board, in some way, with the Occupy Movement. All the corporate and government abuses our single issue groups are fighting have the same root cause -- namely the corporate takeover of government. Yet many of us find it difficult to address the corporate tie-in from our single issue silos. Moreover there is already evidence (as I discuss in the introduction to Part I) that recent civil unrest in the major US cities is beginning to impact global financial markets, as well as US policy-making, both domestically and abroad.

How to Best Support OWS

At the same time, I question the value of long time union, antiwar, pro-democracy, peace and justice, homeless, sustainability and immigrants rights activists abandoning our existing commitments to camp out in the park. Many older activists, especially in the Open Source, sustainability and local democracy movements have already made significant gains in undermining corporate rule (see Part V “Making Change”). The sustainability movement, for example, is responsible for an explosion of community-based alternatives to corporate controlled food and energy production and distribution and even banking/financial services (See “Sustainability: Choosing the Right Crisis” in Part V “Making Change”). Equally impressive are the hundreds of communities in the local democracy movement which have passed ordinances restricting the right of corporations to build new hog farms, spread sewage sludge and deplete aquifers with bottled water operations (see “The Citizens Rights Movement” in Part V “Making Change”)

I think it makes more strategic sense to use our influence in the grassroots networks we have built up over decades to support and collaborate with #OccupyWallStreet. In this way we can provide inroads for younger, more militant OWS activists to sectors of society they might otherwise find difficult to access. We can also provide logistical, material and tactical support as the Occupy movement expands into the productive sector. . We are unlikely to see major policy or infrastructure changes until our new movement hits the 1% where it really hurts – in their pocketbook. OWS can only exert real pressure on government, banks and other multinational corporations by disrupting business as usual -- with corporate-targeted sit-ins, consumer boycotts, wild cat strikes or a combination of all three. In Egypt, it was the unions' threat to shut down the Suez Canal that ultimately forced Mubarak to step down.

Appealing to a Broad Base of Supporters

For their part, the Zuccotti Square occupation has already been remarkably effective in networking with existing groups. Good examples include the participation of OWS members in a march supporting Communication of American workers in their dispute with Verizon, an anti-eviction action OWS helped homeless advocates organize in Brooklyn, and the formal backing OWS has received from organized labor. I attribute this success in coalition building to OWS’s insistence on a broad inclusive vision (i.e. refusing to make specific demands). This enables them appeal to the widest possible base of potential supporters. I can't count the number of large coalitions I have joined in the last thirty years that were scattered to the winds the moment we decided to formulate concrete demands. The last one was the 9-11 Coalition Seattle activists formed in September 2001 to protest the impending US war in Afghanistan. Over the five weeks we spent arguing over specific demands, our numbers shrank from one hundred plus to fifteen.

The Role of Organized Labor

Despite nominal support from organized labor, full union participation is one area where OWS differs significantly from the major uprisings in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. In other parts of the world, massive anti-austerity demonstrations received a major boost from general strikes that shutdown economic activity. In Egypt, it was the unions’ threat to shut down economic activity. The November 2 general strike that shut down the Port of Oakland was the first real test of OWS's fragile coalition with labor. In a period of high unemployment, persuading unionists who still have work to put their own jobs on the line is no mean feat. While Occupy Oakland was unsuccessful in shutting the city of Oakland down, a wild cat strike by Oakland longshoremen succeeded in closing down the Port of Oakland:

(http://tvnz.co.nz/world-news/occupy-oakland-succeeds-in-shutting-down-port-4499879).

In the US the choice of a port shutdown is no accident (on Dec 12, ILWU and Occupy activists also shut down ports in Longview, Seattle, Tacoma, Oakland, Long Beach, Portland, Vancouver BC, San Diego and Ventura County), as the ILWU is one of the few unions to undertake industrial action for political issues unrelated to conditions of employment. For example, in 1935, they refused to load scrap metal bound for Italy, during Mussolini’s war of aggression against Ethiopia. In 1971, during the civil war in Pakistan, they shut down all arms shipments to the Pakistani dictator who was trying to crush Bangladeshi independence. In 2008, 25,000 longshoremen walked off the job to protest the war in Iraq.

Is #OccupyWallStreet Working Class?

(November 19, 2011)

This is the first of two articles on the effect of #OccupyWallStreet (OWS) on the traditional working class.

The personal profiles of OWS occupiers suggest that most are disenfranchised members of the middle class. Their interviews, blogs and tweets portray individuals originating from comfortable professional, academic or union-wage homes, who have come of age with no hope of ever replicating their parents' lifestyle. The critical question for me is the effect extended unemployment and OWS itself has had on the way participants perceive and project themselves. Have they come to identify with the 80% (that's the real number -- not 99%) who live at or around minimum wage? Or are they still holding out for a cushy professional, academic or business career when the recession ends?

Getting the Numbers Right

It's an extremely difficult question to unpack because discussion of social class is still largely taboo in the US (see the article “Working Class Culture” in Part II and “Engaging the Working Class” in Part V). Since the end of World War II, there has been a concerted effort by government and the corporate media to portray America as a classless society. In the US, referring to oneself as a "worker" or "working class" invokes a sense of shame. Thus even minimum wage workers consider themselves middle class. Calling OWS the 99% is also extremely misleading. A more accurate demographic breakdown would be 1% elite, 80% low income workers (including manual labor, office and domestic work, caretaking, retail clerking and similar "entry level" work), and 20% "salaried" professionals, academics, and managers.

Getting Real About Social Class

The ultimate success of OWS in expanding into the traditional working class will depend on their willingness to discard the label middle class. Although our corporate-controlled western democracies are rapidly dismantling the middle class in the name of austerity cuts and debt reduction, the professional and academic bedrock of the American middle class is still largely intact. What's more, middle class values and prejudices die hard, even as individual economic circumstances change.

In all western democracies, the upper middle class has always played a critical role in maintaining social order as teachers, college professors, lawyers, judges, doctors, social workers, bank managers, religious leaders and similar "helping" and gatekeeping professionals. They do so mainly by defining and enforcing "appropriate" social behavior (examples include formal or unwritten rules against gangsta dress and culture, profanity, bad grammar, public expression of anger, racial slurs and sexual harassment) . While "appropriate" social behavior is formally defined as behavior advantageous to social stability, it's nearly always behavior that protects the interests of the ruling elite.

While the role of lawyers and judges in enforcing "appropriate" behavior is obvious, the role teachers, college professors and religious leaders play is more subtle. Many teachers and college professors play both a teaching role in the rules of "appropriate" social behavior and a gatekeeping role in selecting who gets credentialed for admission to the upper middle class. Bank managers, doctors and social workers also function as gatekeepers. Bank managers control admission to the middle class by controlling access to credit. Doctors also play a major economic role, as they have sole authority to declare whether workers are eligible for sick leave and health and disability benefits. Social workers, in turn, have the power to ascertain fitness to parent and terminate parental rights.

The Source of Class Antagonism in the US

In the working class clients I encounter, class antagonism stems less from income inequality, than from resentment towards upper middle class professionals who are perceived as arbitrary and/or biased in exercising their gatekeeping role. Working class Americans learn from an early age that American society isn't a level playing field and that so-called equal opportunity is a myth. Overt discrimination on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation, physical disability, social class and age are still rife in determining who will receive bank loans, be admitted to college and professional schools, and be granted sick leave and disability benefits.

Yet much of the bias in these situations stems from the mistaken belief on the part of professionals that earning a comfortable living is the result of hard work and sacrifice. Most middle class professionals automatically lump workers who are stuck on minimum wage into a category of "others" who fail to meet minimal stands of self-discipline and personal responsibility.

The majority of low income Americans know this is rubbish. When 80% of the population struggles to meet basic survival needs, there are obviously factors at play other than personal responsibility. Most low income workers have always known that failing to land a high paying job -- or any job for that matter -- has nothing to do with personal failing. It's the natural result of social and political policies that only work for 20% of the US population.

Why the Working Class Abandoned Progressive Politics

The important question is whether the majority of OWS occupiers know this. If OWS comes to be seen as a movement run predominantly by and for the working class, it will be the first grassroots movement to do so since the Great Depression. The last major mass movement during the Vietnam War was mainly a student-led movement. The working class, which in the sixties was represented by organized labor, was cleverly manipulated through a variety of strategies to throw their support behind the Vietnam War and other reactionary pro-corporate policies.

The anti-union restrictions of the 1948 Taft-Hartley Act and extensive red-baiting during the McCarthy Era laid the groundwork for turning organized labor into the reactionary servant of corporate interests. After red-baiting caused the expulsion of militant rank and file unionists, unions became largely toothless in addressing workplace grievances outside of wage demands. It also gave rise to a trade union bureaucracy that felt closer to management than the workers they supposedly represented. Corporate managers rewarded union officials with all manner of perks for delivering "labor discipline" (i.e. preventing rank and file workers from participating in disruptive industrial action). As former CIA officer Tom Braden bragged in the Saturday Evening Post in 1967, many AFL-CIO leaders were also on the CIA payroll. See http://revitalisinglabour.blogspot.com/2009/04/lenny-brenner-on-tom-braden.html, http://www.laboreducator.org/darkpast2.htm and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Braden

Ideological Barriers to Organizing the Working Class

While the decline of the trade union movement (representing only 11.9 percent of US workers according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics -- http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/organizations/b/bureau_of_labor_statistics/index.html?inline=nyt-org) is a catastrophic event for workers faced with massive layoffs and job and benefit cuts, it also means there are no well-funded institutions like the AFL-CIO to obstruct working class participation in populist causes.

In 2011 the main obstacle to organizing the working class is ideological. As Wilhelm Reich notes in his 1933 Mass Psychology of Fascism, fascism and reactionary politics have always exerted a powerful attraction for men (and some women) from authoritarian working class families. Karl Rove and other spin doctors in the Republican Party are masters at exploiting these tendencies to convince low income men and women that pro-corporate candidates like George Bush and last year's freshmen Tea Party candidates would significantly improve their lives. Obviously this flies in the face of a well established pattern of enacting laws that actually make living conditions much more difficult (for example, by cutting unemployment benefits, scrapping public services, laying off public service workers, and gutting Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and food and environmental standards).

As noted by Reich, John Strachey (The Coming Struggle for Power 1933) and other students of early fascism, working class allegiance to reactionary politics is only temporary, as reactionary lawmakers consistently fail to improve working and living conditions. This has certainly been the case with newly elected Tea Party congressmen, who abandoned basic Tea Party goals of shutting down the Federal Reserve and ending the Middle East wars the moment they took office.

The Danger of Progressive Involvement in Lifestyle Campaigns

Nevertheless the same right wing spin doctors who gave us George W Bush and the Tea Party movement have also been remarkably successful in painting liberals and progressives as politically correct intellectuals whose main goal in life is to moralize and dictate lifestyle choices for low-income Americans.

Unfortunately many liberals and progressives play into their hand by jumping in on the wrong side of lifestyle debates. When liberals and progressives champion anti-smoking, anti-obesity, and gun control campaigns, it only solidifies their reputation as politically correct lifestyle police. Low income workers have difficulty distinguishing these lifestyle campaigns from the moralizing and gatekeeping role many liberals play as "helping professionals" (teachers, lawyers, religious leaders, social workers, doctors, psychologists). Thus they serve to reinforce natural resentment, mistrust and class antagonism these professionals generate as enforcers of so-called "appropriate" behavior. This is doubly dangerous with reactionary spin doctors like Karl Rove in the wings, ready to gleefully exploit these feelings to win Republican votes.

OWS Demographics and Privilege

November 23, 2011

This is the second of two articles regarding the likelihood the OWS movement will expand into the traditional working class.

Young OWS protestors tell a variety of personal stories. Some are new college graduates who have spent sixteen years of their life preparing for professional careers that no longer exist. Some are high school grads who had jobs prior to the economic collapse and were the first to be laid off. Others have come of age since 2008 to find they belong to a permanent underclass with no hope of ever finding permanent employment.

In addition to the dispossessed middle class OWS protestors, there are a few that journalist Chris Hedges (http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/a_master_class_in_occupation_20111031/) describes as "revolutionists." These are intellectuals who opt out of society for political reasons and live in squats and eat out of dumptsers. The term "revolutionist" was first popularized by George Bernard Shaw in 1903 in the Revolutionists Handbook. Shaw (http://www.bartleby.com/157/5.html) defines a "revolutionist" as "one who desires to discard the existing social order."

Because I was married to one in the 1970s, I am aware of the fine line between homelessness and "revolutionism." Although it never occurred to my ex to join with others in discarding the existing social order, he utterly refused to subject himself to the exploitation of regular employment, even if it meant sleeping in fields and city parks.

The OWS occupations have also drawn in older, long time anarchists, socialists and single issue activists. Most have consciously incorporated their local homeless population, which includes a disproportionate number of unemployed and disabled veterans and former criminals. There are also a number of part-time and shift workers and full time students who participate as their schedule accommodates.

A Question of Privilege

I believe the ability of OWS to pull the traditional working class into their ranks will boil down to a single factor: their ability to be radicalized, i.e. discard the inherent sense of privilege that is fundamental to middle class identity. The post-war progressive movement has failed to attract working class activists mainly because it's been dominated by middle class academics and professionals unwilling to relinquish their privileged status. They want a better and fairer society, but not too fair. They want social change, but not extensive change that would require them to relinquish their comfortable incomes and lifestyles.

Owing to their inability to come to grips with their (largely unconscious) sense of privilege, they always find it easier to fight for third world peasants than the disadvantaged in their own communities. This is also why they repeatedly get sucked into pro-corporate propaganda about "personal responsibility" and find themselves moralizing to lower income groups about political correctness, as well as lobbying for lifestyle (anti-smoking, gun control, anti-obesity, etc) legislation.

Why Some Kids Develop a Sense of Privilege

I have always found class orientation to center around the presence or absence of a sense of privilege. By privilege, I mean an inherent belief common to the middle class that someone is more deserving (due to higher intelligence, better education, stronger character and/or sense of personality responsibility) than the less well off. One of my special interests, as a child and adolescent psychiatrist, is the child rearing practices that contribute to a sense of privilege in adulthood. Obviously parents who subscribe to the ideology of privilege will inspire it in their kids. However this seems to be a minor factor. The nature of early childhood relationships and parental discipline seem to be far more important.

Free Play vs Preparation for Adulthood

As any new mother will vouch, infants have a strong craving almost from birth for the company of older children. If allowed to pursue this natural instinct, the vast majority of kids will choose to spend their time in the streets in the company of playmates. However children of the elite and upper middle class families are subject to a much more structured childhood, focused on "preparing" them for adulthood. In their early years, it's common for their mother or other caretaker to be their primary companion. Even with the growing emphasis on academically oriented preschools, the focus is on working with adults to develop language, reading and numeric skills -- not on free play with other children. Once middle class kids start school, after school hours are taken up with piano, violin, dancing or art lessons or structured team sports, and adult-centered "family" weekends.

The working class kids who play in the streets get a far different type of education, one focusing on social skills such as group loyalty, fair play, dispute resolution and tolerance and respect for personal differences. The business world has known for decades that the best managers come from this type of background.

The Role of Permissive Discipline

Working class kids are disciplined very differently from their middle class peers. My own clinical experience corresponds very closely with the findings sociologist Lillian Breslow Rubin describes in Worlds of Pain. Blue collar parents typically set very strict (at times overly harsh) limits on children's behavior. In contrast, discipline in academic and professional families tends to be much more permissive. Discipline is usually left to the mother, who is more likely to invoke guilt over bad behavior than to enforce specific consequences.

This continual use of guilt as punishment leads many members of the middle class to have extremely ambivalent attitudes towards their mothers, which often carries over into stormy romantic relationships and difficulty parenting. I have always found that children from permissive households have more difficulty learning self-discipline. They also tend to grow up with an imperfect sense of right and wrong and are far more dependent on external rewards (for example, earning a lot of money). Often good behavior is whatever they can get away with.

Mixed Marriages

Class identification can become extremely complicated when parents originate from different social classes, This often leads to major conflict over discipline, child rearing and money management. In these cases, a child will usually identify with the class of origin of the parent they feel closest to.

How Hardship Radicalizes Young People

I have seen numerous instances in which personal crisis in adolescence or early adulthood causes an individual from a privileged background to switch their class identification from middle to working class. School bullying (especially by kids from wealthier backgrounds) and work place harassment are the most common events causing them to alter their allegiance. A police arrest, serious medical illness, depression, loss of a parent, family home or other sudden change in economic circumstances can also be key events that radicalize people. It's highly significant that the life histories of many young OWS occupiers are filled with such life events.

In contrast, it's extremely rare for working class kids who go to college and become professionals to switch their allegiance to the middle class. It's a topic discussed at length by in Worlds of Pain, by Richard Sennett in Hidden Injuries of Class, by Jake Ryan and Charles Sackrey in Strangers in Paradise: Academics from the Working Class, and more recently by Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Alfred Lubrano in Limbo: Blue Collar Roots and White Collar Dreams. It relates, in part, to the inability of children from working class homes to ever be fully accepted as middle class. However, in my own experience, it stems more from the profound loyalty to family, neighborhood and community that evolves out of shared hardship.

Which Way Will OWS Go?

In my view, OWS protestors have little hope of recruiting the traditional working class if they self-identify as middle class. Moreover the question of their class orientation will revolve around what they want OWS to accomplish. Are they mainly interested in achieving short term personal goals? Are they willing to settle for student loan forgiveness or a massive jobs creations program that enables the brightest and best qualified among them to enter a career path? Or do they have a vision for massive social change that will benefit everyone who has joined them in the park?

The V-Word

(December 13, 2011)

Debating the Government Monopoly on Violence

It will be instructive over coming months to watch the response of OWS protestors to the orgy of militarized police violence that has all but shut down the major public occupations. In just two months, the Occupy movement has used the combined tools of social networking, strategic outreach, consensus governance and mass civil disobedience to build the largest mass resistance in the US since the 1930s. The Office of Homeland Security and other federal agencies coordinating the simultaneous crackdowns seem to think a show of force will persuade protestors to give it up and return to their former lives. As many have nothing to return to (no jobs and, in many cases, no homes), I think this may be a serious tactical error. Even before the police crackdown, there was growing concern about keeping numbers up over winter, as well as inadequate representation of women, minorities and unskilled and blue collar workers. With a little nudge from the authorities, Occupy activists have made a good decision to regroup and engage in strategic planning.

I believe there will be strong consensus to resume their public occupations when the weather warms up. Nothing crosses the digital divide quite so effectively to Americans without Internet access. How committed the government is to stopping them is uncertain. Are the 1% and their lackeys are determined to suppress the Occupy movement by any means necessary? If so, how far are OWS participants are willing to go to preserve their movement?

Our Culture of Violence

As OWS groups across the country strategize over winter, younger activists, especially, will ask why the police should have a monopoly on violence. These discussions won't take place on Facebook or Twitter, but they will happen (at least they are happening in New Zealand). A pending bill to authorize the indefinite detention of American citizens without criminal charges amplifies the urgency of these discussions. Violence is an integral part of the American psyche, as demonstrated by the continuing upsurge in gun ownership. We are all bombarded on a daily basis with mindless violence, through TV, movies and videogames. The view of American foreign policy presented by the mainstream media centers around violent retaliation. The vast majority of Americans will tell you that the US had to attack Afghanistan and Iraq to retaliate for the 3,000 Americans killed on 9-11. This pervasive emphasis on violence occurs in an intensely competitive, consumer-driven culture in the absence of any moral framework to channel aggression into more "humane" or "civilized" outlets.

Government Violence Against Minorities

In this social context, the OWS commitment to non-violence will be extremely difficult to maintain, especially as the movement reaches out to traditional blue collar and minority communities. I can't name a single working class or minority activist I have worked with in the last thirty years who would stand or lie there passively while the police beat them in the head or squirted them in the face with pepper spray. Police violence in minority communities is a daily occurrence.

The treatment of minority activists, even nonviolent ones, is especially brutal. December 4th is the 42nd anniversary of the unprovoked raid on Fred Hampton's apartment, in which the FBI and Chicago police murdered the Black Panther leader in his sleep. Four days later, on December 8, 1969 they carried out a similar raid in Los Angeles that Black Panther leader Geronimo Pratt miraculously escaped. This was followed by years of federally sponsored "death squad" activity on the Pine Ridge Sioux Reservation in South Dakota (which Ward Churchill documents with FOIA memos in his 1990 book Cointelpro Papers), culminating in an armed FBI siege against American Indian Movement activists who had come to protect older residents. In 1985 the Philadelphia police, with federal support, destroyed an entire neighborhood by dropping a bomb on a household of activists belonging to the black liberation movement Move.

Fast forward to 2011, and police shootings of unarmed black men are so commonplace they are almost never prosecuted. This is on top of the thousands of cases of sub-lethal police violence (beatings, tasering, pepper spray) that all minority communities struggle to cope with as they go about their daily lives.

Is Occupy Wall Street Just a "Color" Revolution?

The main advantage of nonviolent resistance is its effectiveness in reaching large numbers of potential supporters. History shows that civil disobedience, by itself, is relatively ineffective in producing genuine political change. The nonviolent "color" revolutions in Eastern Europe and Egypt have been very effective in producing cosmetic regime change without challenging fundamental power structures. In other words, they get rid of the unpopular dictator but leave a US-friendly elite in control of government (just as Wall Street remains firmly in control no matter who we elect as president).

The success of nonviolent resistance as a recruiting tool stems mainly from its knack for provoking state violence. This provides dramatic mainstream media coverage that forces apolitical members of society to re-examine fundamental beliefs about freedom, justice and the rule of law. Although nonviolent civil disobedience involves lawbreaking, it does so from a moral high ground. There is a strong tradition in Judeo-Christian religions that people of conscience have a duty to uphold international, religious and humanitarian law when it conflicts with unjust national and local laws. Because these views enjoy strong public support, the Internet and social media can be used to recruit participants and supporters for nonviolent actions in the thousands and potentially tens of thousands. In contrast, using the Internet to recruit activists for "violent" actions, even those limited to property destruction, is illegal and provokes an instantaneous response from the authorities.

The two biggest obstacles OWS will face in maintaining their commitment to non-violence will be the attitude of low income and minority groups who deal with police violence on a daily basis and growing concerns about the possible role CIA-funded left gatekeeping foundations have played in engineering the Occupy movement's exclusive commitment to nonviolence. This concern is heightened by the use of nonviolent guru Gene Sharp's materials at several Occupy sites.

The CIA Role in Nonviolent Revolutions

Sharp's longstanding ties with the CIA and the "democracy manipulating" foundations that instigated the "color" revolutions in Eastern Europe, Asia, the Middle East and North Africa (including Egypt) receive little attention in the foundation-funded "alternative" media. However the issue has begun to seep into the blogosphere, thanks to good coverage in the French and Australian left-progressive media. One example is a well-referenced November 25th article by Tony Carlucci in Land Destroyer entitled "How to Start (a Wall Street backed) Revolution" (http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2011/11/how-to-start-wall-street-backed.html).I first came across the article December 1st on the Occupy Oakland website. It was taken down a week later, which I find quite ominous.

As Tierry Messan outlines in January 2005 on Votairenet (http://www.voltairenet.org/The-Albert-Einstein-Institution), Sharp, a fervent anticommunist, initially formulated his nonviolence theory to assist anticommunist movements. He wrote his 1993 From Dictatorship to Democracy while working for the Albert Einstein Institution (AEI), specifically for use in the Myanmar (Burma) "pro-democracy" movement. He subsequently participated in the establishment of Burma's Democratic Alliance -- a coalition of notable anticommunists that were quick to join the military government. He later worked with Taiwan's Progressive Democratic Party, which favored the independence of the island from communist China, something the US officially opposed. His other work included unifying the Tibetan opposition under the Dalai Lama; trying to form a dissident group to split the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO); and secretly training the Psychological Action division of the Israeli armed forces.

The "Color" Revolutions in Eastern Europe and Asia

The CIA would subsequently utilize Sharp's book, From Dictatorship to Democracy, throughout Eastern Europe and Asia, and in 2011, the US-engineered "Arab Spring." Sharp himself, with funding from the AEI, the US government backed National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its subsidiary International Republican Institute (IRI), and George Soros' Open Society Institute, is also on record as providing "humanitarian" advice and training to antigovernment activists in Serbia, Zimbabwe, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iran, Belarus, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, and Malaysia.

The February 2011 Al Jazeera documentary Egypt: Seeds of Change http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrNz0dZgqN8 echoes many of Messan's and Carlucci's concerns regarding the influence of CIA-backed foundations in the Egyptian uprising.

Ahmed Bensaada goes even further in Arabesque American, published in May 2011. Bensaada describes the direct involvement of the CIA-backed Serbian group Otpor in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) "revolutions," as well as a series of joint conferences organized by the CIA-backed Center for Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS) and the State Department, in which Arab activists were brought to the US for training in "nonviolent" organizing techniques (http://www.opednews.com/articles/Smoking-Gun-US-Government-by-Dr-Stuart-Jeanne-B-110910-52.html).

Why the CIA Promotes Nonviolence

So why is the CIA so keen on promoting nonviolent revolution? University of California-Santa Barbara sociology professor Peter Robinson outlines the new CIA strategy in his 1996 book Promoting Polyarchy. According to Robinson, as CIA-backed dictatorships around the world lose their grip, the CIA preemptively co-opts the natural (violent) insurgencies that arise to topple them. They themselves instigate popular unrest, using the ensuing chaos to install a puppet of their choosing.

The International Center for Nonviolent Conflict

The International Center for Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC) is another important "democracy manipulating" foundation that promotes Sharp's work. Australian researcher and journalist Michael Barker's articles about ICNC (http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/38214) reveal it has strong intelligence links but is independently funded by Peter Ackerman, Michael Milken's second in command in his junk bond empire. Barker and others also raise concerns about Stephen Zunes, ICNC's chief academic adviser and one of Sharp's strongest defenders in the mainstream and alternative media (http://xevolutie.blogspot.com/2011/03/124-peter-myers-over-gene-sharp-en-de.html).

In "The Junk Bond "Teflon Guy' Behind Egypt's Nonviolent Revolution," Middle East investigative journalist Maidhc O Cathail examines Ackerman's involvement (along with the Albert Einstein Institution) in the attempted coup against Hugo Chavez. He also asks the thought-provoking question: why Milken was sent to jail, while Ackerman made off with a fortune (http://maidhcocathail.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/the-junk-bond-%E2%80%9Cteflon-guy%E2%80%9D-behind-egypt%E2%80%99s-nonviolent-revolution)?

OWS and the New Economics

The End of Global Economic Growth

(November 1, 2011)

Book Review

The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality

by Richard Heinberg

(New Society Publishers Aug 2011)

The basic premise of The End of Growth is that the world economy has flat-lined. Not only is it contracting, rather than expanding as many politicians claim, but there are important reasons why it will never return to the pre-2007 growth rates that characterized the last century.

Now that #OccupyWallStreet has seized control of the narrative around the banks that control the US government, the End of Growth will likely be the most important book of 2011. As well as making an ironclad case that the era of perpetual economic expansion has ended -- that the US, like most western nations, has become a Steady State economy -- Heinberg also gives examples of far-sighted governments (Japan, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland) who have enacted policies to ensure the welfare of their citizenry as they confront the massive downsizing required by this new economic reality. Beyond organizing to end to corporate rule, #OccupyWallStreet needs to pressure the US and other western governments to abandon the pretense and enact similar measures.

Why Capitalism Hit the Wall in 2008

Heinberg and others in the Peak Oil/climate change movement have always argued that infinite economic expansion is mathematically impossible, given that we live on a planet with finite natural resources. They point to the massive ecological devastation caused by this reckless obsession with economic growth and warn that we are depriving our children and grandchildren of natural resources (fossil fuels, water, industrial fertilizers, fish stocks, top soil) that are essential for basic survival.

In Heinberg's previous work on resource scarcity, he envisions a timeline of a decade or more before the scarcity and prohibitive cost of natural resources (oil, coal, water, etc.) cause the capitalist economic system to hit the wall. In The End of Growth, he argues that it has already happened -- when global economic expansion ended in October 2008. His data shows that while a few countries can claim an occasional quarter of increased GDP, aggregate global economic growth is either stagnant or slowly contracting. Even China's so-called economic "miracle" hasn't been sufficient to generate a genuine increase in total global wealth.

Heinberg's new book is unique is that it combines his extensive research into resource depletion with an analysis of our flawed fractional reserve banking system. He is also the first, to my knowledge, to factor in the immense cost of the growing epidemic of natural disasters. Most (the floods, droughts, wildfires, landslides, etc.) relate to climate change. However some, like last year's Gulf oil spill, relate to the depletion of global oil and gas resources and the adoption of riskier methods of fossil fuel extraction.

In addition to quoting a number of highly placed financial business experts, like Microsoft CEO Steve Bollmar, who agree that global economic expansion has permanently ended, Heinberg also presents a wealth of statistical data. This includes graphs from John Williams (see http://www.shadowstats.com), who argues that the US government is misrepresenting the true Gross Domestic Product (GDP), just like they misrepresent the true unemployment rate -- which is really 16-18%. According to Williams, after government figures are adjusted for inflation and methodological reporting changes, 2010 GDP actually decreased by 1%.

The Ultimate Ponzi Scheme

Even a look at conventional World Bank and IMF data leaves the clear sense that the American public is being systemically lied to. Although we are told that total global wealth has nearly returned to its 2007 high of $63 trillion, this figure doesn't take account of the $40 trillion owed by the US and other governments nor the $60 trillion of debt owed by banks, businesses and households. Even if global GDP does increase by 3% per year (which, as Heinberg clearly shows, it won't), 3% of $63 trillion barely covers interest payments on a $100 trillion debt, much less paying down the original loans.

Yet as Heinberg points out, none of these numbers represent true wealth. Under the fractional reserve lending system, this debt has been invented out of thin air by banks to generate interest payments. As he points out, it's the ultimate Ponzi pyramid scheme. It only works so long as suckers keep putting money into it. In a global monetary system where money is created through bank loans, there is never enough money in the system to pay back all the debts with interest. This type of system can only continue to function so long as there is continued growth. It's precisely because economic expansion has stopped, Heinberg argues, that the world confronts its current massive debt crisis.

A Basic Lesson in Economics

Heinberg's analysis of the 2008 economic collapse starts with an introduction to classical economic theory, as outlined by Adam Smith, Ricardo, Malthus and Marx. He goes on to describe the "financialization" of the US economy that occurred in the 1980s, the various financial derivatives investment banks and brokers devised to entice investors, and the financial deregulation that led to a decade of worsening "debt" bubbles. Beginning with the dot com boom in 2000 (quickly followed by the real estate boom and the subprime/derivative boom), large amounts of borrowed money was speculated on supposed growth industries, which plunged the entire economy into recession when they collapsed.

Heinberg talks in detail about the TARP bailouts and the secret $12.5 bailouts Bernie Saunders exposed in December 2010. He stresses that have merely postponed total economic collapse. They are incapable of restoring economic expansion to pre-2007 levels.

The End of Growth in China

He then presents a painstaking analysis of why the China's current phenomenal growth rate (7-8% per year) and somewhat slower growth rates in India, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam also represent "bubbles" that will eventually pop and cause severe recession. As well as outlining the absolute limits resource scarcity will impose on Chinese growth, he argues that China is pursuing the same economic strategies that caused the Japanese economic miracle to collapse in the 1990s -- resulting in a two decade long recession.

Chinese economic growth is entirely dependent on cheap coal and electricity, and Heinberg lays out strong evidence that world coal production peaked earlier this year. This means coal will soon undergo the same steep rise in prices that oil did after oil production peaked in 2005-2006. He also shows how the current Chinese growth spurt is driven by same economic policies -- an export driven economy where Chinese consumers must sacrifice and save to protect export industries -- that drove Japan's post-war growth. The outcome of such policies is to crush consumer demand. This, in turn, results in rapid economic contraction when global demand for exports drops.

Heinberg concludes by describing China's current real estate bubble (which translates into hundreds of empty malls, factories and cities), which was created by two factors 1) a stimulus package the government enacted when the 2008 global collapse triggered a drop in Chinese exports 2) a preference the Chinese middle class show for real estate investments, owing to a notoriously unreliable (and unregulated) share market.

As China is one of New Zealand's trading partners, we're already seeing evidence that the Chinese growth rate has peaked and is beginning to decline. There has been a significant drop in Chinese demand for our dairy and lamb exports -- dairy exports and prices have declined by 10% and lamb by 20%.

Life in a Steady State Economy

Obviously the end of economic growth and continuing loss of wealth and jobs means that people in most industrialized countries will be forced to massively downsize their lifestyles. However, as Heinberg emphasizes, there are a number of ways government can intervene to make this transition less painful. He gives examples of countries (Japan, Sweden, Denmark, Japan, Norway) who openly acknowledge that they have Steady State economies and enact policies to ensure their populations are looked after as the global economy massively contracts. Sweden, for example, has transformed depressed industrial towns into "ecomunicpalities" by "dematerializing' their economies, making them fossil fuel-free with organic farming, public transportation and alternative energy projects -- while simultaneously fostering social equity.

Although Finland and Germany had modest GDP increases last year, they are adopting similar measures to protect their citizenry as global economic wealth continues to decline. In addition to preserving scarce natural resources and reducing carbon emissions, these measures also address the serious income inequality that is so harmful to the health of communities. They include, among others:

Requiring corporations to pay fairer prices on mining and fossil fuel extraction
Taxing resource depletion, pollution, speculation and financial transactions instead of income
Legislating limits on income inequality
Government subsidies to help sustainable businesses become competitive with non-sustainable ones
Pigovian taxes on corporations equal to the negative, externalized costs they impose on society.
Defining property rights in a way that guarantee citizens rights to clean air and water
Breaking up investment banks, and eliminating of debt-based lending (to government, businesses and individuals) through the creation of national and state banks
Government support for cooperatives and local currencies
Downgrading the World Bank and IMF to clearing houses
Corporate law reform
Replacement of GDP with the Gross National Happiness Index
Publicly subsidized health care

Fairy Tale Economics

(November 24, 2011)

This is the first of three articles debunking the myths we are fed about the global economic crisis.

Unpacking the Lies About the Global Economic Crisis

The only way I know to make sense of the global economic crisis is to assume, until proven otherwise, that everything Obama, Wall Street and the corporate media tell us is a lie. The economy Obama, US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke talk about is a fairy tale economy that bears no relation whatsoever to the real world. Obama, like most western leaders, makes out that the only way to "solve" the debt crisis is to tighten our belts and destroy the middle class via wage, benefit and social service cuts. Thanks to Occupy Wall Street, a new narrative about the global economic crisis is beginning to emerge. And guess what? Once people get a clear view of what's really happening, they come up with some fairly straightforward and painless solutions.

Debunking the Fairy Tale:

1. When is a recession not a recession? When it's really a deflationary spiral.

Obama, Geithner and Bernanke keep telling us the current economic crisis is a recession. It's not. It's really a deflationary spiral. Deflation occurs when the economy shrinks. The US economy is clearly shrinking, just as Japan's economy has been doing for the last two decades. The US economy lost 10-20% of its real wealth in 2008 and has been slowly shrinking ever since. Consumer buying power continues to decrease, as Americans deplete their savings and experience wage and benefit cuts. Because people have less money to purchase goods and services, many businesses have quit producing them. This, in turn, causes more workers to be laid off.

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