Democracy of the many? Occupy Wall Street and the dead end of prefiguration

Abstract

This article discusses prefigurative practices of Occupy Wall Street (OWS). Although OWS cannot be reduced to this aspect, the idea of creating ‘a microcosm of what democracy really looks like’ next to Wall Street played an important role for the attractiveness of this new movement. Following Claude Lefort, OWS's criticism of representative government and the practice of general assemblies can be understood as a reaction to the ‘dissolution of the markers of certainty’ in modern democracies. Having recourse to assemblies of citizens and bodily experiences is a way to make ‘the people’, i.e. the invisible sovereign of modern democracies, visible and tangible. However, OWS does not fall back on fantasies of the people as a body with a unitary will: the ‘People-as-One’ (Lefort). Instead ‘the people’ is imagined as a crowd, a gathering of the many, as multitudes, swarms, or networks. The prefiguration of a democracy of the many entails practices of consensus decision-making that accommodate and maintain plurality and difference. Yet, while the democracy of the many can work in social movements it cannot serve as a model for a democracy at a larger scale. At the worst, prefiguration can even prevent fruitful social analysis and effective political struggle.

Keywords:

• democracy
• imaginary
• Lefort
• Occupy Wall Street
• prefiguration
• social movements

Notes

Time magazine, for instance, elected the nameless ‘protester’ of these movements person of the year 2011.

The last-mentioned being popularized by best-selling authors Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in their Empire trilogy. This shift in how activists imagine and describe themselves can probably be traced back to the social movements of the late 1960s and 1970s. However, it was the Global Justice Movement since the 1990s that enthusiastically embraced the images of networks, swarms, multitudes, and the like. The rise of the internet at the same time obviously fueled this imagination (cf. Juris 2008; Maeckelbergh 2009; Pleyers 2010; Smith 2008).

This discussion of OWS is part of a study on the political imaginary of the alterglobalization movement which draws upon the theories of authors like Eric Voegelin, Cornelius Castoriadis, Claude Lefort, Charles Taylor, Yves Bizeul, or Manfred B. Steger.

There is, of course, a long and vivid tradition of participatory democracy in the US (cf. Polletta 2004).

Further interpretations of OWS could be cited here; e.g. Chomsky (2011), Critchley (2011), Harvey (2011), Holloway (2012).

‘Be the change you want to see in the world’ (attributed to Gandhi) is often cited to illustrate the concept of prefiguration.

This so-called hashtag allows for tracking corresponding messages on twitter.com and similar social media platforms.

‘Are you ready for your Tahrir moment?’, the Adbusters' call to action asked. Furthermore, White and Lassn made direct reference to the Spanish indignados and the Global Justice Movement.

The initiators did not take part in the preparations. David Graeber (2012, 25–32) reports a conflict between remaining proponents of the paradigm of the vanguard party and those of a loosely anarchist paradigm in which the former finally had to withdraw (cf. Schneider 2012, 50).

Although Rousseau and his political thought are not of import in the discourses of OWS, questions of unity/diversity and consent/dissent surely play a major role.

The signs were also part of an art exhibition at the historic JP Morgan building at 23 Wall Street already in October 2011.

wearethe99percent.tumblr.com. For diverging interpretations of the ‘narrative’ of this blog see Konczal (2011), Roth (2011), and Graeber (2012, 70–7).

‘It's a way to focus the message and really bring the human side to the fore by calling attention to the real human costs of our current economic setup’ as one post on occupywallst.org (29 August 2011) put it. ‘Letters of resignation from the American Dream’ is the apt title of Marco Roth's article on the project (Roth 2011).

As of the occupation in London, commentator Laurie Penny (2012) spoke of an ‘economy of care, a network of mutual aid’. A New York activist self-confidently stated:

Occupy Wall Street is a thriving commons of economic activity. Inside Zuccotti Park, and many other occupation sites, there is the production, consumption, and distribution of useful goods and services. […] How could we organize the entire economy to look like Zuccotti Park? (Safri 2011)

To avoid the term ‘post-democracy’ as made popular by political scientist Colin Crouch (2004).

On consensus in OWS cf. Kaufman (2011), Lim (2011), Muse (2011), Squibb (2011), Graeber (2012, 136–46), Gitlin (2012, 73–99). Also cf. the documents on consensus decision-making in the #howto-section of the OWS-website (www.occupywallst.org).

Perhaps even in the manner this activist statement suggests: ‘Our only demand then would be to be left alone in our plazas, parks, schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods so as to meet one another, reflect together, and in assembly forms to decide what our alternatives are’ (Sitrin 2011).

Which is also admitted by the activists. As a guide on ‘Making consensus decisions’ (Seeds for Change 2011) provided on the OWS-website states:

Everyone at the meeting needs to be united in a clear common goal – whether it's the desire to take action at a specific event, or a shared ethos. Being clear about the shared goal helps to keep a meeting focused and united. […] Consensus requires commitment, patience, tolerance and a willingness to put the group first. It can be damaging if individuals secretly want to return to majority voting, just waiting for the chance to say ‘I told you it wouldn't work’.

In his comparison of OWS and Solidarność Gerald B. Beyer (2012) also overlooks this difference.

The ‘Quick Guide for a Revolution’ (OWS 2012) couches this idea as follows

[E]ach individual subjectivity and the collective imaginary created among all will be our first battlefield. The revolution is a fight to make people believe in a change that seemed impossible before. If you get this, the revolution wins – the structural change that comes afterwards is inevitable.

For a critical view also cf. Žižek (2011) and Smucker (2012).

I would like to thank Anna Feigenbaum and Fabian Frenzel as well as Britta Timm Knudsen for pointing me at this aspect.