The Role of Mass Movements in the World of Politics: Catalysts for Change or Destroyers of the System - Essay Example

The Role of Mass Movements in the World of Politics: Catalysts for Change or Destroyers of the System The emergence and formation of the Occupy Movement Introduction While the Occupy Movement, which has emerged as a global protest movement against socioeconomic inequality, is considered to have commenced with the occupation of Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan on September 17th, 2011, by nearly 2000 people (Davenport, 2011), the actual roots of this form of public protest – civil disobedience and resistance – could be traced back to the early 16th century. Protestantism, for instance, was per se a religion of protest by then, quite at ease with the culture of the streets and other public places (Collinson, 1988). In this train of thought, the popular street culture of pre-industrial England consisted in ‘inventive pastimes’, which, besides their entertaining and orgiastic character, are thought to have functioned as relatively harmless expressions of public reaction against violations of social norms and other irregularities, thus decreasing tension and suppressing conflict (Collinson, 1988). The early stages of the War of American Independence appear a notable example of civil disobedience, including mob violence and resistance, which, however, subsequently developed into a full-scale armed conflict (Williams, 1980). Furthermore, the depth of the social crisis in France brought to the French Revolution of 1789 (Breuilly, 1993), which inter alia fully and explicitly demonstrated the potential civil disobedience has for both destruction and creation, as the case might be. A working-class movement in the early 19th-century Britain, named the Luddites, attempted to hold up the “steady march of capitalism” by destroying and sabotaging the machines that were ousting the workers from their jobs (Richmond, 2012); while the advent of the socialist movement eventually brought the world the 1917 October Revolution, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the Cuban missile crisis, etc. Despite some differences – in terms of geography, country-specific grievances and demands, the outcome, and a scale of impact on the world political system – the above-mentioned cases, along with many others as reviewed in the section below, appear to have two common features. First, civil disobedience had been sparked by existing power relations within a particular spatial and temporal configuration, and second, it was aimed at changing those power relations, thus bringing about disruption for state and society’s modus operandi on a massive scale. This paper is intended to review the history of the Occupy Movement in order to establish the actual motives behind its emergence; which, in turn, could provide some answers in regard to the tenability of capitalist and neo-liberal modes of production, the role and success of mass action in bringing about political change at both national and international levels, and, most notably, the feasibility of a fully functioning democracy. Historical Background In more recent times, there are many examples of mass movements that played more or less an important, if not decisive, role in the development of the respective states and societies. These include the Non-Cooperation Movement inspired and led by Mohandas ‘Mahatma’ Gandhi in the 1920s (Bakshi, 1988; Brown, 2009), The African-American Civil Rights Movement which operated between 1955 and 1968, and later on gave birth to the Black Power movement (McAdam, 2009), Stephen Biko’s Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa (Gerhart, 1978), the Anti-Vietnam War Movement in the United States (DeBenedetti and Chatfield, 1990), also the 1989 velvet and colour revolutions in Eastern Europe (Sorin and Tismaneanu, 2000), and the so-called ‘Orange Revolution’ in Ukraine that followed the 2004 presidential election, etc. (Gee, 2011). Although the list is by no means exhaustive, it’s rather illustrative of the way mass action can bring about a great change in national and international politics. In fact, the twentieth century abounded with examples of protest camping in countries that are considered ‘mature democracies’; which, in a way or another, appeared a precursor of the present-day protests. These include the 1980s permanent camps outside military bases in the UK, established by activists of the peace movement, amongst which the women’s camp on Greenham Common in Berkshire - having lasted for over 10 years - was the most famous and successful one; the 1992 camp on the M3 motorway over Twyford Down, which was joined by environmental activists and lasted 10 months; the 2005 “a purpose-built non-hierarchical eco-village in Scotland”, which set off the preparations for the Camp for Climate Action; as well as the first Climate Camp in 2006, followed by the 2007 protests at Heathrow Airport, Kingsnorth Power Station in 2008, City of London and Trafalgar Square in 2009, RBS headquarters in Edinburgh in 2010, etc. (Gee, 2011). It’s noteworthy that Climate Camps, along with their equivalents, spread across the world, being established in the United States, Canada, Europe – including Denmark, Sweden, France, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and Ukraine – India, New Zealand, Australia, Ghana, etc. (Gee, 2011). The so-called Arab Spring, which is believed to have begun in December 2010 (Reuters, 2010), gave birth to the 2011 Egyptian ‘revolution’, whose focal point became Tahrir Square in the capital Cairo (Gee, 2011). The tented city in Tahrir Square, in turn, is believed to be more or less the forerunner –along with the protests in Spain, Israel, etc. of the Occupy Wall Street Movement in the US (Gee, 2011). While the first date for an occupation of Zuccotti Park, namely June 14, 2011, proved to be a complete failure with four people present (Bennett, 2011), just three months later – on September 17 – nearly 2000 showed up and occupied the same place (Schneider, 2011). Having started with a very simple email, sent out by the small Canadian magazine named ‘Adbusters’ to its 90,000-member distribution list (Schneider, 2011), the Occupy Wall Street Movement quickly spread across the planet, affecting countries like Australia, Armenia, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Cyprus, France, Denmark, Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Mexico, Nigeria, Mongolia, Norway, New Zealand, South Korea, the Republic of Ireland, Hong Kong, South Korea, South Africa, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States and Switzerland (Davenport, 2011). The Occupy Movement – Context and Triggering Factors Each and every one of the above-mentioned mass movements, actions and manifestations of civil resistance, took place within a specific context which consisted in certain political, social and economic realities, at both national and international levels. Having constituted – in the broader sense – the existing power relations (Foucault, 1982), these realities served as antecedents of the emergence of any given mass movement or crowd action; while the triggering factors appeared much more diverse and, as a rule, are represented by external forces (Schneider, 2011). Yet another phenomenon should be taken into consideration as an important part of the context within which all aforementioned developments – including the Occupy Movement’s emergence and spread – have occurred. Globalisation, with all ambiguity, imprecision and inconsistency that term actually emanates (Scholte, 2000) and whose initial phases are thought to have taken place between the 1870s and 1920s (Robertson, 1992), has contributed towards the far-reaching repercussions of those developments to become by far more serious, mainly by the increasing informational currents that cut across countries and continents and pour into people’s life. With the electronic networks, like the Internet, mobile telephony, etc., which openly and overwhelmingly dominate the post-modern world, this process has become not only much faster, but also, and most notably, much more effective. Thus, the context in which the 2011 Occupy Wall Street Movement took place could be presumably defined as long-standing unfair power relations, manifested by ruthless financial speculative exploitation and unsustainable government control over capital movements and exchange rates (Hope, 2011; Žižek, 2009); both being held responsible not only for the creation of a stateless system worldwide, dominated by private multinational corporations, but also for most, if not all, of the present-day economic woes (Castells, 2000, Dicken, 2003, Held et al., 1999, cited in Hope, 2011). The wealth in the United States, for example, is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands, with just twenty per cent of the population being in possession of nearly 90 per cent of all privately held wealth, as of 2010 (Wolff, 2012); which, in turn, along with the existing political consumerism, quite naturally led to flare-up of protests . Additionally, the electronic networks, like the Internet, mobile telephony, etc., facilitated the globalisation of financial flows, inevitably affecting all large global economies and strategic alliances (Hope, 2011); ironically, however, they also facilitated the methods of civil resistance – mass rallies, strikes, boycotts, etc. – especially via the online social networks. The triggering factors of Occupy Movement, just as in most cases listed above, appear rather diverse, varying from high unemployment rates, underemployment, income inequality, an absence of financial and social security, etc., to the impact of similar events that occur in other parts of the world and apparently bore the same characteristics, or at least have set a precedent (Gee, 2011). In this regard, the protests in Tahrir Square, along with the ‘indignados’ march in Spain, could be identified as predecessors, or triggering factors, of the Occupy Movement (Gee, 2011; Baiocchi and Ganuza, 2012). The Occupy Movement – Composition, Essence and Parallels As mentioned above, there are several external, or triggering, factors which have allowed the Occupy Wall St. movement to emerge (Davenport, 2011). This section, in turn, attempts to address – according to the competence of the author – the actual motives behind the protests, their structure, in terms of leadership, political backup, etc., as well as some psychological aspects that would contribute to such occurrences. In regard to the recent protests in many countries around the world – especially those related to the Occupy movement in mature democracies, like the US, UK, Spain, Greece, etc. – it’s important to get identified the specific aims and objectives, if any, as well as the organizational structure, which altogether could render important information about the nature of what’s going on. The reference to identity politics would identify the social interest groups involved in the protest, while the organisational structure – the strong leadership or the lack of it – would reveal the movement dynamics. Additionally, drawing parallels between prima facie similar events or developments, like the protests in Egypt and the protests in the United States and Europe, would produce the sufficient knowledge necessary for state leaders and/or politicians to foresee the far-reaching repercussions of such events. The protests in Egypt’s Tahrir Square emanated from the long-lasting political suppression in the country, and, in the broader sense, in the Arab world. Despite being considered to have taken charge of virtually everything, including food, trash, security, politics (Gee, 2011, the protesters on Tahrir Square have had more or less a clear-cut agenda – the struggle for civil rights hitherto suppressed by the regime. The active participation of Islamist organisations in the protests, along with the predominantly political demands raised by the people, explicitly indicates the link to politics and democracy issues. Being rather loose, without one specific leader or strong leadership, the Occupy Wall Street movement, in turn, bear the characteristics of an anti-globalist rally, and, in fact, could be considered the culmination of all anti-globalist actions worldwide during the last century. Its agenda is largely economic, despite certain reference to direct democracy and the adequacy of the existing political system. On the other hand, the stated goals of the Occupy Movement which included equality in income distribution, the proscription of high-frequency trading, the abatement of the influences that large multinational corporations have on politics, the creation of better and more jobs, de facto questioned the existing modes of capitalist production and distribution, most notably the neoliberal approaches to economics. Both movements, however, shared one distinct feature, represented by the role of the Internet – as the connector to bring together people and ideas that might not otherwise find one another, which, in the case of the Occupy movement, was personified by a small Canadian magazine ‘Adbusters’ (Davenport, 2011); while, according to Ginneken (2007), the human nature and social instinct could be believed to have done the rest of the job. Conclusion - Consequences and Lessons There are several issues at stake that emanated from the rise of Occupy Movement. One of them is the feasibility of capitalism and the neoliberal approaches to economics; another matter is that mature democracies such as the UK and the US are not found to be as democratic as they are reputed; thus the very feasibility of a fully functioning democracy might be questioned. In that regard, capitalism and democracy have survived the Great Depression years, along with over 250 smaller recessions between 1870 and 2006. 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