Our Ethics, Our Future

“Don’t fall in love with yourselves, with the nice time we are having here. Carnivals come cheap-the true test of their worth is what remains the day after, how our normal daily life will be changed. Fall in love with hard and patient work – we are the beginning, not the end.” – Slavoj Žižek

In order to abolish the present state of things, revolution is a certainty. Reformism and pleading with those who have power will not (as if it ever could!) accomplish our egalitarian goals. Similarly, we must not fool ourselves into thinking that we can resist from outside the system, especially considering how widely and deeply capital has saturated our lives. Our culture is sponsored by Exxon Mobil for art and Tennent’s for music. As Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt write in their book “Empire”, “[It] is not to simply [enough to] resist these processes but [necessary] to reorganise them and redirect them towards new ends”.

Occupy has placed itself as at the centre of radical action in the UK. It is a place and an event. A place for flowers to grow and to blossom. However, the process of revolution must take a more concrete form. It is not enough to just wait for the revolution and it is not enough to occupy space.

I. Resist

The economic and political are dovetailing together once more. On the one hand, we are rediscovering the economic sphere as a political project – something that can be altered and shaped by our hands. Yet on the other hand, the oppressive constitution of politics and the global economy are being used to support each other under the rationality of functionalism. Our state is constituted of two contradictory ethics: the state stands for justice, peace, prosperity, security, and life. It proclaims family values and motivation to work hard. However, its process of consolidation of power to enforce these ethics reduces the laws and motivations of the state strictly to a functional ethic. This other, functional ethic is the ethics of austerity propagated by the likes of Moody’s AAA ratings and the focus on gross domestic product.

This coalescence of power is only maintained through our subjugation under the instruments legitimised by this ethic of austerity. Therefore, our first and foremost task is to oppose austerity and oppose those that practice and preach its methods.

Our forms of resistance should be of our own creation, and should not be those safe-routes espoused by liberals who, through either their inexperience or a desire to co-opt, reduce our movements to images, devoid of concrete revolutionary effect. When we say forms of resistance should be of our own creation, we do not preach ideals and utopias. We say that resistance must be based on the material analysis of peoples’ lives.

In the first world, we are no longer solely alienated by capitalists who own the means of production. We are oppressed in a more unstable and abstract sense. Today, in the UK, we are valued in our capacity to produce networks and circuits of communication. It is in our capacity to service our debt through labour, produce more of it through consumption, and to communicate circuits of debt (“I like this post on Facebook, and that book on Amazon – and don’t you too?”) that our value is created. With this new and open form of valuing the people, new and open ways are required to organise and direct action. Strikes, marches and sit-ins are not enough!

II. Reorganise

Capital is ‘a motley painting of everything that ever was’, a process that flows, shifts and changes. We must change and shift to combat it; otherwise we will remain politically stagnant and neutralised. While Occupy stands still, the state moves and adapts. It is attempting to find ways to push through Occupy using the police force and the laws to try to stamp it out. The news cycle has moved on as well, leaving behind a memory of a revolt that seemed to promise the renewal and the re-invigoration of resistance in our society.

Occupy is an open space – but so is the state. Occupy is not localised – but neither is the state. There seems to be a belief amongst the multitude of participants within the Occupy movement that openness and egalitarianism is to allow all voices an equal volume. Through which consensus and conference progress is made. This consensus approach can open up problems as Occupy members, such as in Glasgow, use their open approach to negotiate their way out of taking responsibility for events in their camp or we engage in dialogue with the likes of the EDL, an organisation that is fundamentally opposed to the actions of Occupy and its supporters. Consensus is only a tool to help achieve concrete aims and is not exclusive to egalitarian resistance. The state aggregates consensus to exert its power as well through policing, law, government, and appeals to our wallets. We must match it.

We think a positive and proactive response that is more than an advert is necessary. Occupy should challenge itself to move beyond press statements, music albums, and directionless actions. It should organise around the proposal of an aim and gather allies under that aim. We are not just anti-capitalists but, instead, pro-revolutionaries.

III. Redirect

Occupy has set itself up to challenge the functional ethics of our state. We see words for fairness and redistribution. Everyone has to pay their way to protect each others’ rights: the rights of the worker, the rights of the exploited, and the rights of everyone. By challenging austerity with this ethic, we shake the state. By itself, however, shaking the state is not enough.

This is not a question of fairness and rights – this is a statement for the eradication of debt and the wage system for all. We do not believe, or care, about taming Capitalism. We do not call for stitching a human face to the abhorrent, shambling form capital takes. When we challenge austerity, we also challenge the ethics that are built on top of the state. We challenge it all or we do not challenge it at all. Simply removing austerity will create spaces for movement but you will just be encouraging a vacuum.

The state has more power and resources to occupy that vacuum than the Occupy movement. We must forge our own ethics and our own future. This is an ethic opposed to rights and wrongs and fairness. This is an ethic that says, “end all debt,” and the other concrete material conditions of our existence that oppress us. We must stress a revolutionary character. Dispense with the ideals and concentrate on what matters: the cancellation of all debt, and the end of greed.

By the people behind the Demand Nothing website. www.demandnothing.org