Saswat Pattanayak

"He who tells the people revolutionary legends,
he who amuses them with sensational stories,
is as criminal as the geographer
who would draw up false charts for navigators."
HPO Lissagaray, "History of the Paris Commune of 1871" (1877)

The challenges to Occupy Wall Street are many. Some even more critical than the very issues the protestors are fighting against. Whereas it claims to be the 99%, yet the movement practices the age-old privileges of class and race blindness. Similar to most white liberal movements, the OWS is hardly inclusive of the people of colour. Although the spirit is radical and the intent is revolutionary, the movement itself suffers from a lack of critical understanding on how race and class intersect. In reality, 99% of people do not form a class in themselves. This is because the 99% of population comprise a significant amount of aspiring rich, a "middle class" category of people who have steadfastly refused to side with the poor working class whenever the latter has organised itself. In the US, this segment of opportunistic liberal citizens have always believed in the country’s racist foundations, its heritage of exclusionary democracy, and its segregated educational system, and amply benefited from patriotic allegiances. And as a result, they have lent unconditional supports to electoral reforms that sustain an individualistic social order, to corporate policies that help private business thrive, to political outfits such as the Democratic Party in recent times, which upholds the status quo in every level of governance defining American imperialism.

Be first to comment this article | Quote this article on your site | Print | E-mail

 Saswat Pattanayak

The homeless and the Hippies, the socialists and the students, the communists and the commoners - the Wall Street has been occupied for good by the countless human beings demanding dignity of life denied to them under American capitalism. Every disenfranchised minority is now decrying the citadel of private capital, greed and monstrosity. And contrary to White House assertions and corporate media verdicts, the defamed Wall Street has been denied a bail-out - by the people of the United States.

Be first to comment this article | Quote this article on your site | Print | E-mail

 Pothik Ghosh

Can the decimation of an institutionalised and bureaucratised working-class force like the CPI(M)-led Left Front in West Bengal be a legitimate revolutionary task of the proletariat? The answer to that must, doubtless, be a resounding yes! But does that make the Trinamool Congress juggernaut that demolished the 34-year-old decadent LF regime in the state the bearer of a progressive, working-class impulse? Strange as it may sound, the reply to that has to be an equally emphatic no! This paradox stems from the fact that the politics which helped Mamata Banerjee slay the "Stalinist" demon of Bengal has simultaneously enabled her alliance with the Congress to seek the perpetuation of its ideological project of discrediting the revolutionary working-class horizon that goes under the name of Communism. The open propaganda by the spinmeisters of Mamata Banerjee's extended "family of democracy" on sundry 'public' fora, where they held up her decisive electoral triumph in West Bengal as an example of  the 'indisputable demise' of the Communist political project and its Marxist 'ideology', bears that out.

Be first to comment this article | Quote this article on your site | Print | E-mail

Be first to comment this article | Quote this article on your site | Print | E-mail