Review: Occupy by Noam Chomsky
Recently I
bought ‘Occupy’, a book produced by Zuccotti Park Press as part of their
Occupied Media Pamphlet Series. The book contains a series of lectures and
interviews with Noam Chomsky and others about the Occupy movement in the United
States. As it’s really a pamphlet rather than a book, it was quite short and
very readable. On the whole I found it both very interesting and pertinent.
The main
points that I took out of the book were:
1.
The
Occupy movement in the USA has flourished in a context of a society that has
become increasingly atomised over the last thirty or forty years. Social ties
have become increasingly weak in the USA (and much of the Western World) and by
bringing together people from all walks of life with the shared understanding
of wanting to take action to make the USA a better place, Occupy has achieved
something wonderful.
2.
The
commonly levelled criticism that Occupy cannot formulate a list of demands and
therefore can’t achieve anything fails to recognise that this is in fact a
strength of the movement. Chomsky points out a number of times throughout the
book progressive campaigns in the USA that didn’t get off the ground because of
the lack of capacity for people to undertake solidarity actions in other
cities/geographical areas.
In an Australian context campaigns that are fought by groups outside the
major cities often don’t make their way into mainstream media because rural
communities are often viewed as ‘other’ by people living in major cities. Some examples of this are the health impacts
of coal or CSG on rural communities and how they are overlooked by people in
major Australian cities. If the Occupy movement had taken off in Australia in
the same way it has in the USA, it could have significantly magnified the
impact of such campaigns.
3.
The
book provided me with a reminder that although history is often recorded as a
story of great people, the reality is much different – history is the story of
“countless small actions of unknown people” that make up “great moments.”
Popular perspectives of history as being the history of great people are very
disempowering and provide a partial explanation for that eternal problem that
confronts us in persuading others to take action on issues - “how can one
person make a difference?” Breaking down political apathy stemming from
individualistic perspectives on history is an important task and something I
hope to contribute to in a future blog post. I plan on doing so after I’ve got
my hands on some books detailing the history of social movements from the
perspectives of those unknown people.
4.
Noam
Chomsky’s commitment to being facilitative during Q&A’s is quite hilarious!
Chomsky is renowned for his intellect and is treated with much reverence,
particularly by people who have unorthodox or radical political views. So
naturally during Q&A’s with Chomsky, Occupy activists ask him questions
about every possible problem, to
which his answer is usually the same: it’s up to you to decide the answer to
that question. This plays out many times throughout the book, undoubtedly to
the disappointment of those asking questions. It would be both easy and
counterproductive for Chomsky to provide answers to such questions, so he should
be commended for not providing answers.
To some extent
Occupy has fizzled out recently. It’s difficult to know whether it’s just been
a flash in the pan, mainly because mainstream media seems to revel in saying
that it’s just that. Regardless of whether or not it proves to be a flash in
the pan, some of the achievements of Occupy I think will endure. Occupy’s class
driven rhetoric – the 99% and the 1% has fallen into mainstream usage – the fact
that people now explicitly talk about inequality in the USA is a fantastic
thing given the negative social outcomes that inequality brings. Another aspect
that I think will endure I have mentioned previously in this post – the social
ties that the movement has created. People can become used to being socially isolated – it’s
possible to forget how great it is to have friends – but the experience of
relearning the importance of friendship sticks around.
I’d like to
leave you with a rather long quote that I found in the book from Howard Zinn, a
recently deceased American organiser and academic: “To be hopeful in bad times
is not to be foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is
a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage and
kindness. What we choose to emphasise in this complex history will determine
our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something.
If we remember those times and places - and there are so many - where people
have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the
possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in some small way, we don't have to wait for some grand
utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents and to live
now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around
us is a marvellous victory.”
