The New Haberdasher

Occupy and the Tasks of Socialists « Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

I don’t know that I necessarily agree that the socialist left needs to take a more activist role in Occupy.  It is perfectly legitimate work to declare allegience and do parrallel work toward the same goals, working together where it is applicable, and not where it is not.  As far as OWS advancing socialism in the US, we can and should work together.  But the fact is, they are on their own program, and it diverges slightly with the program of socialism, which is and must be abolition of capitalism as the dominant paradigmatic model of our social organization in the US.  And so, as they try to build a new society within the camps, adopting an essentially inefficient and fundamentally dysfunctional government-like apparatus, this is where socialists need to leave them to it, and if they insist on maintaining that this is the only legitimate source of authority within the movement, let them drown with it.  There is a reason that socialists take a dim view of their methods.  It’s because socialists don’t trust anarchists to govern.  Nor should we.

At any rate, this is a nice long article, which has a bit o the old Marxism splattered throughout, and I highly recommend reading it, despite the Marxism.

A sample:

Although the socialist left might see these problems as a vindication of its dim view of modified consensus and Occupy’s decision-making process generally, the task of socialists is not be vindicated but to aid the uprising in overcoming its stumbling blocks with practical solutions arising from the experiences of Occupy participants that utilize the uprising’s existing framework, infrastructure, and terminology. Instead of proposing at a GA or a working group to scrap modified consensus from the outset, a more fruitful approach would be to raise process reform proposals only after building close relationships with fellow activists through joint work.

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