“Occupy has the power to effect change”

“If they are to endure, occupations need to spread and escalate, and be complemented by other forms of action. Our struggle will prevail once we begin not only to deplore or condemn but also to interrupt the mechanisms that exploit the labour and resources of the immense majority.” Read the rest of Peter Hallward’s article here.

A comment:

Hallward is right to argue that “only direct action on a mass scale now offers any prospect of an alternative to local variations on market-imposed plutocracy,” and that movements need to develop “a commanding political standpoint” and “forms of collective action that exceed the repressive mechanisms set up to contain them.”

But to say that “there is no government that could resist a co-ordinated combination of occupations and sit-ins on the one hand, and of mass strikes and stayaways on the other” dodges the problem that a mass movement of direct action that threatens capitalism will still have to reckon with threat of repression by the police and the military.

 

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