Occupy Movement through a Global Lens

• In Event: 440 - Section on Marxist Sociology Paper Session. From the Arab Uprisings to Occupy and Beyond: Marxist Perspectives

Abstract

We propose that the Occupy Movement in the United States was emblematic of a worldwide wave of protests and mobilizations that can be linked to the aftermath of the global financial meltdown of 2008-2009. In this paper, we discuss various regional manifestations of this “non-horizonatalist” organizing mode, illustrate how it is tied to a “precariat” that developed across the industrialized affluent countries over the last few decades, and suggest this inimically tied to a broader battle between labor and capital and, indeed, a crisis in world capitalism. In particular, we argue that the increasingly pervasive role of financially induced debt as a mechanism to bolster corporate profits lies behind the growing inequality gaps that were made famous framing of “1 percent versus the 99 percent” (and link declining fate of working people and the poor in core countries to pervasive debt and poverty in the world-economic periphery). Occupy then is seen as an “anti-systemic” movement of radically participatory politics challenging global capitalism, linked to “labor” issues, vehemently opposed to global neoliberalism, and driven by debt. One of the key challenges for this sort of movement is its decentralized and loosely networked character; another is the need to move demands and actions beyond various national frames – so the attack on debt and inequality must move beyond an exclusive focus on either the squeeze on core workers, the fiscal crisis of industrial democratic states (and the battle against “austerity mongers”) to encompass the global poor and their issues in peripheral regions.

Authors

• Robert John MacPherson, University of California-Irvine

• David A. Smith, University of California-Irvine