The Other of Stalinism is an international socialist economic order, embracing from the start, whole continents. – C.L.R. James.
The cheerleaders of the “Arab Spring” have gone silent as the winds of change blow from North Africa, across Europe, to the United States. This ostrich-like denial of the revolution in the centre of capitalism will not make it disappear.
While the defenders of capitalism may underplay the significance of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) Movement, it is important that the Caribbean develops its own objective understanding to prepare for future possibilities.
Thankfully, we do not have to rely on the mainstream United States media to understand the OWS revolts.
A Caribbean scholar – CLR James – in the 1940s had provided a searching analysis of the internal contradictions of capitalism in which he anticipated the rise of spontaneous revolutions, resembling very closely the OWS movement.
His central argument was that the technological developments in capitalism would lead people, not only to spontaneously organise independently of the top-down formal bureaucracies like political parties and trade unions, but their own self organisation would propel them to replace capitalist production and distribution with new socialist forms.
In this regard, James was as critical of the communist political and economic system, as he was of capitalism. James felt that the “free creative activity” of the working people would smash and replace both systems, once the technological means of doing so had sufficiently matured.
Whilst the current struggle is still in its infancy, James’ framework allows us to see the revolts from Tunisia to New York, as part of a global movement whose time has come. James had remained unimpressed with the achievements of Russian communism (remarkable as they had been) because of the USSR’s undemocratic, and statist nature.
To James, a future socialist revolution would be far more democratic than what had been achieved under capitalism with its elitist, representative forms.
Interestingly, those who deride the OWS movement, do so wearing the blinkered lenses of the old bureaucracies. The movement is criticised for not having a clear leadership, programme, aim or objective. According to their thinking, there are no headquarters or telephone numbers, so there is no movement.
However, what exists is a broad coalition of the victims of capitalism at a moment when the system is in deep crisis. It is linked technologically as a global one movement. Students burdened by loans are demanding free education. Persons rendered homeless by foreclosures are demanding housing. OWS is engaged in a deep conversation about economic re-distribution and the need to break the link between money and politics.
Significantly, it is determined to remain permanently mobilised. It is young, and it has a long way to go. It will disappear only through counter-revolutionary violence or through the accession to its demands. We can ignore it, but only at our peril.
