October 6, 2011 by
By Michael Rectenwald
The movement must utterly reject all ties to the Democratic Party, including its boosters, apologists, ginger groups and union surrogates. These can be spotted by their suggestions and deflections. Do they call on the removal of greed and a character change of individuals, or do they reject a system that necessarily promotes and rewards greed? Do they point to the other political party as the culprit, or to the Federal Reserve, or do they recognize the complicity of the entire political and economic establishment in the conditions that obtain for the vast majority? Do they appeal to and petition the lords and masters for mercy, or do they work to mobilize the vast majority for a showdown against them?”
OBAMA’s “accomplishments”. They forgot “healthcare reform”
THE WORLD ECONOMIC ORDER is in the throes of severe crisis, a crisis for which economic or political experts and advisors have no answers at all. The crisis is the direct result of the contradictions of capitalist production and exchange, which have come to a head as capitalists have reached (perhaps temporary) limits in global labor exploitation and resource acquisition. The political establishment is also hostage to the same capitalist crisis. It has nothing on offer for the vast majority within existing conditions, and certainly cannot propose anything beyond them. Reformers have no new tricks left in their bag and the reforms that haven’t been enacted are beyond the reach of the system.
The Occupy Wall Street movement represents the long-standing, brewing and boiling over of anger, disillusionment, dispossession, and growing despair of the many millions affected by this systemic crisis. Indeed, the movement represents, at least figuratively, the cry of the vast majority of the nation’s and the world’s population – “the 99%.” The movement thus contains the germ of revolutionary potential – a potential, however incipient and faint — to completely overthrow the existing state of affairs and to commence the long revolutionary process of inaugurating a successor social order. Continue reading »