The threat I am referring to
is not that of being pepper-sprayed, arrested, beaten or imprisoned. It is a
different type of threat: a stealthy challenger that while pretending to
advance the goals of the Occupy Movement tends to undermine it from
within--more or less like the proverbial elephant in the room. I am
referring to the threat of preemption, or cooptation, posed by the Democratic
Party and union officials. In light of their unsavory record of undermining the
revolutionary energy of social movements, projections of sympathy for the
anti-Wall Street protesters by the White House, the Democratic Party officials
and union leaders can be viewed only with suspicion.
Expressing sympathy for the
protester, President Obama recently stated: "I think people are
frustrated, and the protesters are giving voice to a more broad-based
frustration about how our financial system works." At the same time he
also defended the decision to bail out banks and other Wall Street speculators,
arguing that the decision was necessitated by the need to salvage our financial
system. It is obvious that, as usual, the president is talking from both side
of his mouth.
On the same day (October
6th) that the president projected sympathy for the protesters, Vice President
Biden also expressed similar sentiments. Comparing the Wall Street protests
with the Tea Party, he stated: "The Tea Party started, why? TARP. They
thought it was unfair -- we were bailing out the big guy." The vice
president's reference to the Tea Party is by no means fortuitous; there are
clear indications the Democrats are trying to utilize the Occupy movement the
way the Republicans do the Tea Party. "The mushrooming protests could be
the start of a populist movement on the left that counterbalances the surge of
the Tea Party on the right, and closes what some Democrats fear is an
"enthusiasm gap,'" reported the New York Times on
Friday, October 7th.
Projections of sympathy for
the Occupy movement have not been limited to the White House. Many officials of
the Democratic Party have either personally appeared at the Zuccotti Park
Likewise, a number of union
leaders joined a large protest rally held in New York City Foley Square
Then there are the liberal
political pundits and media outlets such as the New York Times that
are also trying the build bridges between the Democratic Party and the Occupy
movement in an effort to channel the protesters' energy to the party's
electoral machine. For example, the New York Times' columnist Paul
Krugman recently wrote: "And there are real political opportunities here.
Not, of course, for today's Republicans. . . . But Democrats are being given
what amounts to a second chance. The Obama administration squandered a lot of
potential good will early on by adopting banker-friendly policies. . . . Now,
however, Mr. Obama's party has a chance for a do-over."
On the face of it there is
nothing wrong with the Democratic Party officials or union leaders expressing
support for the protesters. In light of their actual economic policies,
however, that support can be characterized only as hypocritical. The Democrats are
as much responsible for the economic problems that have triggered the protests
as their Republican counterparts. The Obama administration has played an
especially destructive role in pursuing a devastating neoliberal austerity
agenda in term of bailing out the Wall Street gamblers, extending the Bush tax
breaks for the wealthy, expanding the US wars of choice--and then cutting vital
social spending to pay for the financial resources thus usurped.
Equally blameworthy are
union bureaucrats who have enabled the White House and the Congress in the
implementation of such brutal austerity programs. Hollow posturing aside, the
AFL-CIO has opposed neither the neoliberal austerity policies at home nor the
imperialist wars of aggression abroad. Well-paid union officials have not even
seriously challenged factory closures; nor have they earnestly resisted brutal
cuts in workers' wages and benefits.
In projecting sympathy for
the Occupy Movement, the Democrats are essentially trying to have their cake
and eat it too! Their efforts to express support for the protests can be
interpreted only as opportunistic and utilitarian: to identify themselves with
the rapidly spreading popular protests against the status quo, to mask the
Obama administration's neoliberal devotion to Wall Street, and to harness the
energy of the protesters in order to garner their vote in the 2012 elections.
If successful, this would
not be the first time the Democratic Party would have derailed and dissipated
social struggles for change; it has a long record of such policies of betrayal,
going back all the way to the Populist Movement of the late 19th century.
Barack Obama's promise of change in the 2008 elections in pursuit of garnering
the grassroots' vote was only the latest of the Democrats' strategy of playing
the good cop in order to contain radical energy. Two years
earlier they had managed to undermine a vigorous antiwar movement by voicing
the protesters' demands to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan if they won the
majority seats in the Congress. Having thus gained the control of both houses
of the Congress in the mid-term election of 2006, they shamelessly backed away
from their promise to antiwar voters.
One can only hope that the
Occupy Movement is armed with the knowledge of the Democratic Party's record of
cooptation and betrayal of radical movements; and will therefore chart a
political movement of the working people and other grassroots independent of
both parties of big business.
Ismael Hossein-zadeh is Professor Emeritus of Economics, Drake University,
Des Moines, Iowa. He is the author of The
Political Economy of U.S. Militarism (Palgrave-Macmillan 2007) and
the Soviet
Non-capitalist Development: The Case of Nasser's Egypt (Praeger
Publishers 1989).
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