How did we, all of the sudden, become one giant equally disenfranchised 99%?
Try as I may in my humble street economist/political analyst capacity, I just couldn't make that slogan's implied "oneness in struggle" add up in my head.
Why?
Race:
In 2009, and even after the bubble, which indeed negatively impacted the pocketbooks of almost all sector of society (save the 1%?), U.S. household wealth median net worth (net worth is assets minus debt), was: $113,149 for whites, $6,325 for Latinos and $5,677 for Blacks.
In 2005, before the bust, it was still a hugely disproportionate $134,992 for whites, $18,359 for Hispanics and $12,124 for Blacks.*
Class:
While it is true that the 1 % of the population controls a hugely disproportionate % of wealth (around 36%), when we look at US wealth in population quintiles, it is also true that the top 20% of the population controls 87% of all the wealth. Additionally, the next 20% is still awfully wealthy, holding 14% of the nation's wealth. Compared to the bottom 3 quintiles comprising the remaining 60 % of the population, and who jointly only hold 4.3% of the nations wealth (this 60% includes not just Latinos and Blacks, but also millions of Whites), these top two quintiles jointly hold 95.7 of the wealth!
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| US wealth quintiles |
I wonder which class interests the non 1% in this 40% group most identifies with and defends? If we take the 99% slogan to heart, we would have to say that with those of the wealth-less 60%. I simply don't see how anyone could assert that and truly believe it. Since the French revolution onwards, the ambitions of the bourgeoisie and the "struggles" they've waged against, not just against the organized working class, but also against the wealth "aristocracy" have always been to further or secure the accumulation of wealth for their own class, not for its redistribution among the poor!. To assume otherwise is not only politically irresponsible, but also a historical aberration.
After this quick look at class and race breakdowns of wealth realities in the US, please again explain to me how we've arrived at this 99% unity slogan when the 60% of the population holding only 4.3 % of the wealth are almost all people of color and working class whites. Last time I checked, this 60%, specially those non-whites in this group, couldn't even walk in the neighborhoods or get lost in the cul de sacs of the other 40% without some psycho cop quickly materializing to ask us what the hell did we think we were doing there, or worse...
So, call me bitter and resentful, in short, a bonafide hater, but is it because middle class whites lost their Wall Street fed pension plans and college funds and thus tragically need to sell their Padre Island condos for below market price that we are suddenly just a two class, 99 to 1% ratio society? Really? This is a lie and not what both historic and present economic oppression struggle actually means and looks like. A movement supposedly created in rejection to the lies and falsehood of class privilege and a corrupt system can not be found introducing and towing even more social and economic deceptions, no matter how warm, fuzzy and "united" these might make us feel.
As many of us mobilized across the nation to express our shared anger and discontent against a corrupt and failed system these economic apartheid realities were not absent. Not in the power dynamics being played out daily across occupations across the country, nor from the subsequent political discourse resulting out of the struggle to see which political analysis would ultimately prevail in the occupations and throughout other related and emerging resistance groups and structures.
Part II- Conflicting Interests
Should not require a PHD in political science to realize that what one might aspire a particular occupation or political organization to demand or accomplish as a young working class African American, and what tools and actions one might be prepared to utilize to attain these objectives as such, might not at all be what a young affluent class white person might be prepared to support in relation to his or her own class interests...
When was the last time in history that the privileged middle class willingly allowed for the working class to truly assume leadership of a shared movement or of a victorious "united front" revolution? History teaches us that this has NEVER happened, and as we know, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
99% Leadership
Occupation leadership existed, regardless of the rhetoric about it being a leaderless movement. Many occupation movement folks systemically exercised their race and class privilege to effectively assume control of many occupations, moving very quickly to silence any and all political and ideological dissent as to the dangers of the 99% construct, if not the slogan. Be it on racial or class grounds, efforts to widen the analysis aimed at naming and recognizing the critical multiplicity of race and class privileges that were being manifested in occupations across the country, were in no uncertain terms, silenced by the "arisen" middle class. I believe that the term that finally caught on to tag dissenters was "movement hijackers"...
Therefore, even as we have indeed tried to move towards true horizontal structures and direct democracy processes, the question of the impact of bourgeoisie leadership and leadership aspirations can not be reduced to an issue of "inclusion" and "diversity" in our movement. Real radical movement building can not be accomplished without a head-on challenge to the bourgeoisie's dominant racist and classist power paradigms still thriving inside of it.
The bourgeoisie's domination of so-called resistance organizations must be challenged head on and far beyond seeking pathetic cooptation and tokenizing agreements with it. "Agreeing" to a series of non-binding teach-ins on oppression, or moving to "empower" a homeless person here, and a couple of people of color somewhere else, might achieve fabricating the illusion of power transformation, but it falls way short in challenging white bourgeoisie's class domination of the social, political and economic premises of the organization. This should never have been accepted or even negotiated with historical class enemies.
Part III- Revolutionary Movement Building for and by the 60%
A movement or organization which aims to embrace radical struggle against our class and race exploitative and oppressive system needs leadership that understands revolutionary socio-political class and race analysis, not more tokenizing of the historically oppressed and cooptation of their struggles and voices. An analysis is needed across all leadership structures of ant radical organization that is conscious of all the present day manifestations of historical and institutionalized systems of class, race and gender oppression, including the unquestionable oppressive power of the bourgeoisie. This MUST result in an unchallengeable commitment to deconstruct all class privilege throughout society, not just the privilege of the 1 % in Wall Street. Starting with the blatantly poisonous and also subtle manifestations of middle class power inside the movement building and/or radical organization itself.
Bit of Recent History Retrospection...
The interests of the middle and upper middle classes inside the progressive movement, as they call for "reforming" and/or "fixing" their once noble but now 1% corrupted system, is not a revolutionary call in any way, but it is a highly dangerous and reactionary one. If this is the dominant "resistance" discourse allowed to come out of this historical political moment, it is nothing short of a political coup for the WHOLE ruling oligarchy. This is not unlike the system saving consequences of the support by liberal whites of the reformist positions of the MLK led movement and their often agressive opposition to the more concrete anti capitalist and imperialist analysis and positions advanced by the Malcolm X led movement, as these struggled to gain dominance over the civil rights discourse.
Also, not unlike what occurred in Tahir Square when a deal was cut between the military and the "rebellious" upper classes there to share power once Mubarak was deposed. What happened to the interests of the workers, the peasants the Bedouins? Where are they in the New Egypt? Are those now referring to what happened in Egypt as a model to look towards, and even as a successful revolution even aware of the magnitude of the bourgeoisie's betrayal of the real revolutionary efforts that many in the organized peasant and working classes were aiming to accomplish through the uprising?
A movement being led by the privileged but slightly bruised middle and upper middle classes becomes another way of protecting and safeguarding some of the same historical and systemic processes, structures and institutions which have oppressed working class and people of color for centuries. Anyone telling you that no such differences or class driven struggles of interest and for power exist within almost all progressive movements, is either not very clever or trying to intentionally deceive you about the true nature of class struggle and political power.
Part III- The Challenges Moving Forward/Conclusion
Movement building led by class and race conscious radical activists is still a threat to the "enlightened" bourgeoisie in our ranks. It is a dangerous threat to their now somewhat shaken but still historical and institutionalized sense of entitlement, i.e., privilege and supremacy...Thus their need to silence these radical voices of dissent. These "radical", "disruptive", "divisive" voices which were stepping up to the general assembly microphone and proposing all sorts of radical aberrations about rejecting capitalism, recognizing and destroying race and class and gender privileges in our ranks, fully democratizing the occupations operating mechanisms or demanding accountability and transparency in all decision making processes...Silence them at any cost. "it is not what WE, the REAL 99% want..." These "movement hijacking" radical voices needed to be undermined and demonized, lest affluent whites lost control of the dominance of the occupation's self-serving reformist discourse.
Understanding and internalizing revolutionary solidarity through commitments to the intentional and direct deconstructing of not just class and race, but also of all other past and present systems of oppression, is the only way to form true radical movement building alliances across class. Not just against those injustices now being experienced by the white middle class after their college and retirement funds were gutted by the very policies and institutions they benefited from and supported for decades, but against the the true historical brutality of capitalist imperialism. Against all the power behind the policies and institutions which have failed the 55%: Blacks, Latinos and poor Whites who have never been served by this corrupt capitalist system because they have never belonged to it except as cannon fodder and cheap labor.
What is Wall Street? Columbus was Not Wall Street? The genocide of Indigenous People and the raping of this land is not Wall Street? The disproportionate toxic burden of communities of color in Austin's East Side is not Wall Street? Brutal gentrification of desirable people of color neighborhoods is not Wall Street? Prohibitive college and university tuition is not Wall Street? The criminalization of poverty is not Wall Street?
Is this what some whites in the Austin occupation wanted us to believe when they said that the Indigenous Day March organized by working class women of color and solidarious whites was a hijacking of "THEIR" movement? I ask you, Why did they want or need to believe this self-deception so badly? Why was this type of entrenched disconnect from the true race and class face of capitalism's historical brutality so important for so many "progressive" or even "radical" whites in the occupation movement? Out of a fear of divisions, really? Or maybe more out of fear that by establishing a historically sound class and race informed foundation a completely different approach and leadership composition of the so-called movement for change would be required? Ones where political premises and strategies would be driven by real resistance to capitalist imperialism and not by a desire to defend the bruised privilege of liberal affluent whites.
REAL radical movements demand critical and revolutionary thought, analysis and actions including understanding that the comfort zone of the dominant classes' paradigm can not be what informs or gives our movement agency. Nor can such a movement allow for catchy slogans to dismiss more than 500 years of brutal social, political and economic apartheid in our country, not just at the hands of the 1 % economic aristocracy alone, but also at the complicit hands all the privileged classes, including those of the liberal bourgeoisie.
A slogan should be allowed to be only as powerful and as guiding as it is real.
Class war is real, and as such it must be portrayed by any self respecting movement or organization seeking radical change. The interests of the bourgeoisie, just as those of all privileged classes, are not, nor have they ever been, the same interests as those of the historically marginalized and oppressed. Neither have been or will be their chosen methods for advancing their own class interests. Individuals of the bourgeoisie class might or might not choose to be real allies in any popular struggle against capitalism. It mostly depends on their capacity to learn what being in honest solidarity with the revolutionary class actually means to their need to surrender power, privilege and sense of entitlement. Historically, as a class, the bourgeoisie is not to be trusted or ever seen as a potentially revolutionary class. They are not, and there is no false slogan, no matter how well intentioned, that should be allowed to undermine this critical political reality.
Adrián Boutureira
* Pew Research Institute
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