To Demand or Not to Demand

             Depending on whom you ask, Occupy Wall Street either has issued an official declaration of guiding political principles or it hasn’t. The standard message given to mainstream reporters is, “We have no demands,” but early on in the protest the General Assembly issued an official proclamation that let it be known precisely how its members wanted things to change. Available on the occupywallstreet.org website (and printed in The Reformer on Friday October 7), the “peaceably assembled” protesters articulated twenty-three “facts” that show how terribly out of whack our world has become. Those “facts” (and I use quotations to refer to the language of the document not to cast doubt upon the word’s veracity) give shape to the particular form of injustice currently being perpetrated against most of the world’s people by Big Banks and Agribusiness and Armies that prefer torture to lawful conflict. But when it comes to speaking to “outsiders,” the protesters insist they have no demands.

            I was puzzled by this apparent inconsistency. To my mind the Declaration of Occupation of Wall Street was a triumph of political thought. In one single document, the Occupiers of Wall Street had revealed the dark side of global capitalism. The Declaration points to banks that sold mortgages to conglomerates, which then imposed demands that the original lender never mentioned; to food companies that cultivate an unhealthy addiction for corn syrup and vegetable fat; and to Secretaries of Defense who thought an awesome firepower might save our soldiers from the shame incurred by breaking human rights conventions. Each of the 23 Declarations points to an unjust and incompetent action of elite actors who don’t seem to learn from their mistakes. (“They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.”) So why weren’t these declarations of injustice and incompetence more of a talking point?

            “Why do we have to have demands? It’s only the media that wants us to have them,” explained a junior who has been migrating back and forth since the occupation started. “But what about those Declarations?” I asked. “Aren’t they demands?” I pointed to a crowd-sourcing document on Google docs that lists the 23 principles for the occupation but she was suspicious of its authority. “In order to be legitimate it needed to come from the General Assembly.” “I think it did,” I suggested, but she wanted better proof.

“There are no demands because the occupiers are not asking anything of the government,” explained another student. “What matters are the forms of decision-making not the content of the decisions.” I insisted that content and form need not be mutually exclusive. If the declarations were produced by the General Assembly weren’t the protesters making demands of the government? Who else would regulate the banks, oversee food production, and prosecute the generals? “We’re not making demands,” they repeated.

It’s not just Marlboro College students who downplay the goals of the occupation. A Google search turned up commentators from across the political spectrum scratching their heads about what the protesters really want. Few of these commentators seem to take the Declarations seriously, wanting to explain the mass protest as the discontent of college students who have no hope of finding jobs.

“By not highlighting the Declarations,” I told them, “Occupy Wall Street looks like the left’s version of the Tea Party. It makes it seem like you’re only interested in your own affairs.” They grimaced, but to their credit they maintained their position. “The press can say what they want to say. We’re not engaging with the old form of politics. We’re doing something else.”

There was something credible in their resistance that made me rethink my position. “To some degree, you’re right,” I conceded, “These declarations are not demands; they are indictments. They catalog a list of wrongs that cannot be satisfied by a mere piece of legislation, even if some supporters of Occupy Wall Street can envision ways of improving the situation with policy.” I was not completely convinced, however, that their new form of politics would constrain these very powerful elite actors.

As I think back on this discussion, though, I begin to see the error of my thinking. Modern political thought, wrote Sheldon Wolin back in 1960, has “a penchant… for converting political problems into administrative ones.” Since the time of John Locke, argues Wolin, politics has meant the means whereby the state fulfills its mission to provide enough economic security that the majority of people can lead fulfilling lives. Those means have been both institutional and legislative. The state fulfills its mission by creating governmental agencies and passing laws.

You have to go back earlier than Locke to find a theory of politics that does not immediately run to administrative solutions. For Hobbes, the political comprised three elements: the authority of the decision-maker; the obligations on members; and the set of common rules. When we went with Locke, argues Wolin, we stopped paying attention to the touchstones of politics. We let administrative agencies take over the political sphere, leaving the population with nothing but the business of self-interest.

For four hundred years, politics has been administratively managed. But as Hobbes and the migrating denizens of Wall Street point out, there is another form of politics available to us. By not making demands, Occupy Wall Street returns us to a more public form of politics: where authority must prove itself, where assemblies follow common rules, and where members are obligated to hold the elite and each other accountable for their unjust and incompetent actions. As we hold on to those three principles, we’ll start seeing very different habits in the political sphere.

No demands, yes, but lots more politics. What the occupiers want is nothing less than the transformation of the public sphere, from one determined by self-interest to one where rules, authority, and obligation are a crucial part of the discussion. I couldn’t be happier.