Michael Rectenwald

To avoid being co-opted or crushed, the Wall Street Occupation must become Occupy Main Street. It must attract the many layers of the 99% that are not yet literally represented within its ranks.

The world economic order is in the throes of severe crisis, a crisis for which economic or political experts and advisors have no answers at all. The crisis is the direct result of the contradictions of capitalist production and exchange, which have come to a head as capitalists have reached (perhaps temporary) limits in global labor exploitation and resource acquisition. The political establishment is also hostage to the same capitalist crisis. It has nothing on offer for the vast majority within existing conditions, and certainly cannot propose anything beyond them. Reformers have no new tricks left in their bag and the reforms that haven't been enacted are beyond the reach of the system.

The Occupy Wall Street movement represents the long-standing, brewing and boiling over of anger, disillusionment, dispossession, and growing despair of the many millions affected by this systemic crisis. Indeed, the movement represents, at least figuratively, the cry of the vast majority of the nation’s and the world's population – "the 99%." The movement thus contains the germ of revolutionary potential – a potential, however incipient and faint -- to completely overthrow the existing state of affairs and to commence the long revolutionary process of inaugurating a successor social order.

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Michael Rectenwald & Lori Price

In our encounters on various social networking sites and political blogs, we consistently encounter the faithful remnants of the “hope-and-change” believers. To combat the onslaught of evidence and opinion that leads one to the conclusion that Obama is a fraud at best and represents a hoax at worst, they point to lists of his accomplishments and the ways he has delivered on his campaign promises. Such lists, we believe, are generally misrepresentations and fail to rise to the level of credibility. They are misleading because they represent minor deeds that might very well have been accomplished otherwise. We have characterized them as delivering on promises to “sharpen the pencils in the White House --mission accomplished.” There are some notable changes, but are they commensurate with Obama’s euphuistic campaign rhetoric? We think not. We believe that Obama’s rhetoric was a complete fabrication aimed at diverting real energy for change into a cul de sac of Democratic apologetics. It was, in short, a hoax.

By “hoax” we mean that it represents a corporate takeover the dissent that bubbled up in the country against the Bush administration, including his economic but mostly his imperialist agenda in Iraq and Afghanistan. Presenting Obama as a candidate of amorphous “hope-and-change,” the corporate sponsors of Obama intended to divert this dissent into acceptable (Democratic) channels. Some if not most of it had, indeed, arisen from Democratic channels, but the meaning of this dissent far exceeded anything that the Democratic Party represented either in its stated platform, or its actual practices, especially the consistent and over-riding support of the wars. The corporate and military backers of Obama bet on Obama’s oratorical skill and civil-rights-sounding rhetoric to effect a prestidigitation of incredible proportions. The intention of the magic was to fool tens of millions of voters, small-scale individual contributors, and campaigners into believing that Obama was the genuine article, that he represented change from the very policies and practices that had made Bush so virulently despised and vehemently opposed. These policies include first and foremost the war.

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