It is easy to paint the Occupy movement as a negative phenomenon, a collective with a precise idea about what it opposes but absolutely no idea of what to replace it with. This very idea has already surfaced numerous times in the press. Is it a Marxist thing? Anarchist, perhaps? Or just a bunch of trust-fund kids out for a month long street party, ignorant and apathetic of they cause they verbally support?
We need a positive vision of the future if this Occupy thing is going to succeed. In this article I attempt to provide just that.
But before I do, we need to look to the past. The current economic settlement, governed by the ideologies of Free Market Capitalism, can be seen as a sort of Economic Anarchism where anyone can do as they please with no restriction on their freedom. Once, according to some philosophers, mankind used to live like this in Political Anarchism. And then the State was formed. So how did this occur, and why, and can this give us any hint as to how to take the movement forward?
Mankind used to live in the "State of Nature", so the story goes. Every person had absolute freedom to do whatever he, or she, pleased; there was no law, no government, no politics. You could pick anything you wanted from any tree or bush and eat it. You could take any piece of land for your own and live on it. You were king of your own world.
Trouble is, so was everyone else. If you have a world whee everyone has ultimate, complete freedom- the ultimate, complete right to do whatever you want with whoever or whatever you want- then you're bound to get clashes and conflict and war. Why have you picked my apple from my tree? What are you doing, taking that piece of land, when I wanted it? What do you mean I need your consent to do that?
In a world without law, injustice appears. The idyllic "State of Nature" soon becomes an anarchic hell-hole, where the strongest rule and the weak are enslaved. Without the benefit of law and Human Rights to ensure equality, there is no justice except that which comes from the fist of the strong, or the rich, or the powerful.
So to remedy this situation, mankind came together to form the State under what scholars and philosophers call the "Social Contract". Each man limited his rights to protect his rights. Each man promised to respect the rights of everyone else in return for them respecting his rights, and a government was set up to punish those who decided to break the deal. No longer could anyone claim a piece of land for their own, but neither could they take away a piece of land you had already claimed. The strong man could no longer lord it over the weak, for he was now subject to the same Rule of Law as everyone else.
The Social Contract created a very formal set of rules which only really protected a limited amount of rights. While it can now be said that a man's life, liberty and property are very much protected by the law (through the criminalisation of murder, slavery and theft), there are other rights still missing.
These are the economic rights. The original narrative sees men limiting their freedom to protect others' rights. Back then, man's ultimate freedom was over his whole world, and nothing was stopping him from killing, raping or burgling another creature in it. Then we made our Social Contract, but man still has ultimate freedom over economic matters. He may find himself with the ultimate freedom to take home a bonus of one hundred thousand dollars, and nothing is stopping him from doing that at the expense of his employees or society.
Since Thatcher and Reagan in the 1980s, this brand of Economic Anarchism has been on the rise and its effects are shocking. Productivity in business has increased at the same rate as before, perhaps even higher; yet wages and living standards have remained largely the same or even fallen. What this means is obvious: those at the top are keeping the profits and refusing to share them with those at the bottom (often, the very people whose labour earned that money in the first place). Sometimes this allows the company to boast record profits while their workers are left with barely enough money to feed and house themselves. In other words, those at the top are exploiting their economic freedom to take whatever they want while systematically ignoring the basic rights of those at the bottom.
It falls to now determine what rights we actually have. John Locke defined our rights (even outside the Social Contract) as the rights to life, liberty and property, and the 19th century German philosopher Fichte included within the definition of "property" the right to choose a profession and earn a living from it. Looking at it like this, our current settlement is not protecting our rights. While those at the top enjoy mansions and yachts, those at the bottom think themselves lucky if they find a porch to shelter under for the night. The right to life is more than just the right not to be killed; it also covers the right to have enough food, shelter and basic medical care to keep going. In many cases our society if failing to provide.
What does this mean for us? It provides us with a vision. The Contract needs to be renegotiated so that those at the top limit their freedom for the protection of the rights of those at the bottom. And as I write this, I do not just refer to the situation in one country like Britain, the USA or Germany. Compared to many in third world countries, even the poorest here are well off. We need a global Social Contract that encompasses those in the Horn of Africa suffering from drought and starvation; those in Haiti, still trying to rebuild after their earthquake in 2010; and those in Guatemala, paid below subsistence wages by their multinational employer and fired if they try to do something about it. The Occupy movement has been criticised for being western-centric, hopping on the bandwagon of an Arabic revolution and representing the globally well-off rather than the actual 99% who live on one dollar a day. Unless we demand something world-wide, a settlement which realises the rights of the poor to have access to life rather than the freedom of the rich to ever more gluttony, then those criticisms will be sadly justified.
The way things are cannot stand. The Occupiers in London, New York and Rome are demanding an end to capitalism, and the media and politicians look on and ask what the replacement might be. They say the economics of today is the only way it can be, the best way it can be; the theorists say it's the way of nature, where Survival of the Fittest rules.
We lived according to nature once before. Then we made a Social Contract and became civilised. Perhaps we can do it again.
If you want to know more about your rights as a protestor, download my book "OCCUPY! An Activist's Guide to Protestors' Rights"
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